Anthropology as Cultural Critique

Anthropology as Cultural Critique PDF Author: George E. Marcus
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022622953X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Get Book Here

Book Description
Using cultural anthropology to analyze debates that reverberate throughout the human sciences, George E. Marcus and Michael M. J. Fischer look closely at cultural anthropology's past accomplishments, its current predicaments, its future direction, and the insights it has to offer other fields of study. The result is a provocative work that is important for scholars interested in a critical approach to social science, art, literature, and history, as well as anthropology. This second edition considers new challenges to the field which have arisen since the book's original publication.

Anthropology as Cultural Critique

Anthropology as Cultural Critique PDF Author: George E. Marcus
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022622953X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Get Book Here

Book Description
Using cultural anthropology to analyze debates that reverberate throughout the human sciences, George E. Marcus and Michael M. J. Fischer look closely at cultural anthropology's past accomplishments, its current predicaments, its future direction, and the insights it has to offer other fields of study. The result is a provocative work that is important for scholars interested in a critical approach to social science, art, literature, and history, as well as anthropology. This second edition considers new challenges to the field which have arisen since the book's original publication.

Reason and Morality

Reason and Morality PDF Author: Joanna Overing
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135800472
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Get Book Here

Book Description
First Published in 1985. What is the place of reason and conversely of the unreasonable, the contradictory, the emotional and the chaotic in social life? What is the nature of general human rationality? Are there such things as incommensurable world views? How efficacious are typologies or 'modes of thought' or cognitive styles? These are some of the controversies addressed by the contributors to this volume which draws together papers from the 1984 Malinowski Centennial Conference of the ASA.

Ethnography Through Thick and Thin

Ethnography Through Thick and Thin PDF Author: George E. Marcus
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691002533
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the 1980s, George Marcus spearheaded a major critique of cultural anthropology, expressed most clearly in the landmark book Writing Culture, which he coedited with James Clifford. Ethnography through Thick and Thin updates and advances that critique for the late 1990s. Marcus presents a series of penetrating and provocative essays on the changes that continue to sweep across anthropology. He examines, in particular, how the discipline's central practice of ethnography has been changed by "multi-sited" approaches to anthropology and how new research patterns are transforming anthropologists' careers. Marcus rejects the view, often expressed, that these changes are undermining anthropology. The combination of traditional ethnography with scholarly experimentation, he argues, will only make the discipline more lively and diverse. The book is divided into three main parts. In the first, Marcus shows how ethnographers' tradition of defining fieldwork in terms of peoples and places is now being challenged by the need to study culture by exploring connections, parallels, and contrasts among a variety of often seemingly incommensurate sites. The second part illustrates this emergent multi-sited condition of research by reflecting it in some of Marcus's own past research on Tongan elites and dynastic American fortunes. In the final section, which includes the previously unpublished essay "Sticking with Ethnography through Thick and Thin," Marcus examines the evolving professional culture of anthropology and the predicaments of its new scholars. He shows how students have increasingly been drawn to the field as much by such powerful interdisciplinary movements as feminism, postcolonial studies, and cultural studies as by anthropology's own traditions. He also considers the impact of demographic changes within the discipline--in particular the fact that anthropologists are no longer almost exclusively Euro-Americans studying non-Euro-Americans. These changes raise new issues about the identities of anthropologists in relation to those they study, and indeed, about what is to define standards of ethnographic scholarship. Filled with keen and highly illuminating observations, Ethnography through Thick and Thin will stimulate fresh debate about the past, present, and future of a discipline undergoing profound transformations.

In Defense of Anthropology

In Defense of Anthropology PDF Author: Herbert S. Lewis
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 1412852897
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book argues that the history and character of modern anthropology has been egregiously distorted to the detriment of this intellectual pursuit and academic discipline. The "critique of anthropology" is a product of the momentous and tormented events of the 1960s when students and some of their elders cried, "Trust no one over thirty!" The Marxist, postmodern, and postcolonial waves that followed took aim at anthropology and the result has been a serious loss of confidence; both the reputation and the practice of anthropology has suffered greatly. The time has come to move past this damaging discourse. Herbert S. Lewis chronicles these developments, and subjects the "critique" to a long overdue interrogation based on wide-ranging knowledge of the field and its history, as well as the application of common sense. The book questions discourses about anthropology and colonialism, anthropologists and history, the problem of "exoticizing 'the Other,'" anthropologists and the Cold War, and more. Written by a master of the profession, In Defense of Anthropology will require consideration by all anthropologists, historians, sociologists of science, and cultural theorists.

Ethnography through Thick and Thin

Ethnography through Thick and Thin PDF Author: George E. Marcus
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400851807
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the 1980s, George Marcus spearheaded a major critique of cultural anthropology, expressed most clearly in the landmark book Writing Culture, which he coedited with James Clifford. Ethnography through Thick and Thin updates and advances that critique for the late 1990s. Marcus presents a series of penetrating and provocative essays on the changes that continue to sweep across anthropology. He examines, in particular, how the discipline's central practice of ethnography has been changed by "multi-sited" approaches to anthropology and how new research patterns are transforming anthropologists' careers. Marcus rejects the view, often expressed, that these changes are undermining anthropology. The combination of traditional ethnography with scholarly experimentation, he argues, will only make the discipline more lively and diverse. The book is divided into three main parts. In the first, Marcus shows how ethnographers' tradition of defining fieldwork in terms of peoples and places is now being challenged by the need to study culture by exploring connections, parallels, and contrasts among a variety of often seemingly incommensurate sites. The second part illustrates this emergent multi-sited condition of research by reflecting it in some of Marcus's own past research on Tongan elites and dynastic American fortunes. In the final section, which includes the previously unpublished essay "Sticking with Ethnography through Thick and Thin," Marcus examines the evolving professional culture of anthropology and the predicaments of its new scholars. He shows how students have increasingly been drawn to the field as much by such powerful interdisciplinary movements as feminism, postcolonial studies, and cultural studies as by anthropology's own traditions. He also considers the impact of demographic changes within the discipline--in particular the fact that anthropologists are no longer almost exclusively Euro-Americans studying non-Euro-Americans. These changes raise new issues about the identities of anthropologists in relation to those they study, and indeed, about what is to define standards of ethnographic scholarship. Filled with keen and highly illuminating observations, Ethnography through Thick and Thin will stimulate fresh debate about the past, present, and future of a discipline undergoing profound transformations.

Comparison in Anthropology

Comparison in Anthropology PDF Author: Matei Candea
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108474608
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 407

Get Book Here

Book Description
Presents a systematic rethinking of the power and limits of comparison in anthropology.

Heading for the Scene of the Crash

Heading for the Scene of the Crash PDF Author: Lee Drummond
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785336479
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
American anthropologists have long advocated cultural anthropology as a tool for cultural critique, yet seldom has that approach been employed in discussions of major events and cultural productions that impact the lives of tens of millions of Americans. This collection of essays aims to refashion cultural analysis into a hard-edged tool for the study of American society and culture, addressing topics including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, abortion, sports doping, and the Jonestown massacre-suicides. Grounded in the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, the essays advance an inquiry into the nature of culture in American society.

Culture, Economy, Power

Culture, Economy, Power PDF Author: Winnie Lem
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791489000
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book Here

Book Description
Grounded in a conviction that anthropological knowledge implies critique and that engaging in anthropology is also ultimately an act of praxis, various contributors explore the ways in which the precepts of Marxism continue to illuminate and enhance our understanding of culture, economy, and politics. They focus on the question of epistemology to examine the process of anthropological intellectual production in different national settings and analyze the ways in which hierarchies of power and forms of state domination figure in the formation of subjectivities in different ethnographic contexts. The authors also reflect upon how class, gender, ethnicity, racialized forms of ethnicity, as well as regional and national identities, are configured through the relationships involved in making a living under late capitalism.

Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary

Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary PDF Author: Paul Rabinow
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 082239006X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 150

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this compact volume two of anthropology’s most influential theorists, Paul Rabinow and George E. Marcus, engage in a series of conversations about the past, present, and future of anthropological knowledge, pedagogy, and practice. James D. Faubion joins in several exchanges to facilitate and elaborate the dialogue, and Tobias Rees moderates the discussions and contributes an introduction and an afterword to the volume. Most of the conversations are focused on contemporary challenges to how anthropology understands its subject and how ethnographic research projects are designed and carried out. Rabinow and Marcus reflect on what remains distinctly anthropological about the study of contemporary events and processes, and they contemplate productive new directions for the field. The two converge in Marcus’s emphasis on the need to redesign pedagogical practices for training anthropological researchers and in Rabinow’s proposal of collaborative initiatives in which ethnographic research designs could be analyzed, experimented with, and transformed. Both Rabinow and Marcus participated in the milestone collection Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Published in 1986, Writing Culture catalyzed a reassessment of how ethnographers encountered, studied, and wrote about their subjects. In the opening conversations of Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary, Rabinow and Marcus take stock of anthropology’s recent past by discussing the intellectual scene in which Writing Culture intervened, the book’s contributions, and its conceptual limitations. Considering how the field has developed since the publication of that volume, they address topics including ethnography’s self-reflexive turn, scholars’ increased focus on questions of identity, the Public Culture project, science and technology studies, and the changing interests and goals of students. Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary allows readers to eavesdrop on lively conversations between anthropologists who have helped to shape their field’s recent past and are deeply invested in its future.

Anthropology and Social Theory

Anthropology and Social Theory PDF Author: Sherry B. Ortner
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822338642
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206

Get Book Here

Book Description
The award-winning anthropologist Sherry B. Ortner draws on her longstanding interest in theories of cultural practice to rethink key concepts of culture, agency, and subjectivity.