Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice

Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice PDF Author: Michael M. J. Fischer
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822332381
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
Table of contents

Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice

Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice PDF Author: Michael M. J. Fischer
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822332381
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
Table of contents

Anthropological Futures

Anthropological Futures PDF Author: Michael M. J. Fischer
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822390795
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
In Anthropological Futures, Michael M. J. Fischer explores the uses of anthropology as a mode of philosophical inquiry, an evolving academic discipline, and a means for explicating the complex and shifting interweaving of human bonds and social interactions on a global level. Through linked essays, which are both speculative and experimental, Fischer seeks to break new ground for anthropology by illuminating the field’s broad analytical capacity and its attentiveness to emergent cultural systems. Fischer is particularly concerned with cultural anthropology’s interactions with science studies, and throughout the book he investigates how emerging knowledge formations in molecular biology, environmental studies, computer science, and bioengineering are transforming some of anthropology’s key concepts including nature, culture, personhood, and the body. In an essay on culture, he uses the science studies paradigm of “experimental systems” to consider how the social scientific notion of culture has evolved as an analytical tool since the nineteenth century. Charting anthropology’s role in understanding and analyzing the production of knowledge within the sciences since the 1990s, he highlights anthropology’s aptitude for tracing the transnational collaborations and multisited networks that constitute contemporary scientific practice. Fischer investigates changing ideas about cultural inscription on the human body in a world where genetic engineering, robotics, and cybernetics are constantly redefining our understanding of biology. In the final essay, Fischer turns to Kant’s philosophical anthropology to reassess the object of study for contemporary anthropology and to reassert the field’s primacy for answering the largest questions about human beings, societies, culture, and our interactions with the world around us. In Anthropological Futures, Fischer continues to advance what Clifford Geertz, in reviewing Fischer’s earlier book Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice, called “a broad new agenda for cultural description and political critique.”

Anthropology in the Meantime

Anthropology in the Meantime PDF Author: Michael M. J. Fischer
Publisher: Experimental Futures
ISBN: 9781478000402
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Providing a history of experimental methods and frameworks in anthropology from the 1920s to the present, Michael M. J. Fischer draws on his real world, multi-causal, multi-scale, and multi-locale research to rebuild theory for the twenty-first century.

Memory Against Culture

Memory Against Culture PDF Author: Johannes Fabian
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822340775
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Recent essays by prominent anthropologist on questions of time, memory, and ethnography.

Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology

Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology PDF Author: R. Jon McGee
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1452276307
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1053

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Book Description
Social and cultural anthropology and archaeology are rich subjects with deep connections in the social and physical sciences. Over the past 150 years, the subject matter and different theoretical perspectives have expanded so greatly that no single individual can command all of it. Consequently, both advanced students and professionals may be confronted with theoretical positions and names of theorists with whom they are only partially familiar, if they have heard of them at all. Students, in particular, are likely to turn to the web to find quick background information on theorists and theories. However, most web-based information is inaccurate and/or lacks depth. Students and professionals need a source to provide a quick overview of a particular theory and theorist with just the basics—the "who, what, where, how, and why," if you will. In response, SAGE Reference plans to publish the two-volume Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology: An Encyclopedia. Features & Benefits: Two volumes containing approximately 335 signed entries provide users with the most authoritative and thorough reference resource available on anthropology theory, both in terms of breadth and depth of coverage. To ease navigation between and among related entries, a Reader's Guide groups entries thematically and each entry is followed by Cross-References. In the electronic version, the Reader's Guide combines with the Cross-References and a detailed Index to provide robust search-and-browse capabilities. An appendix with a Chronology of Anthropology Theory allows students to easily chart directions and trends in thought and theory from early times to the present. Suggestions for Further Reading at the end of each entry and a Master Bibliography at the end guide readers to sources for more detailed research and discussion.

Mute Dreams, Blind Owls, and Dispersed Knowledges

Mute Dreams, Blind Owls, and Dispersed Knowledges PDF Author: Michael M. J. Fischer
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822385511
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 487

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Book Description
Over the past decade Iranian films have received enormous international attention, garnering both critical praise and popular success. Combining his extensive ethnographic experience in Iran and his broad command of critical theory, Michael M. J. Fischer argues that the widespread appeal of Iranian cinema is based in a poetics that speaks not only to Iran’s domestic cultural politics but also to the more general ethical dilemmas of a world simultaneously torn apart and pushed together. Approaching film as a tool for anthropological analysis, he illuminates how Iranian filmmakers have incorporated and remade the rich traditions of oral, literary, and visual media in Persian culture. Fischer reveals how the distinctive expressive idiom emerging in contemporary Iranian film reworks Persian imagery that has itself been in dialogue with other cultures since the time of Zoroaster and ancient Greece. He examines a range of narrative influences on this expressive idiom and imagery, including Zoroastrian ritual as it is practiced in Iran, North America, and India; the mythic stories, moral lessons, and historical figures written about in Iran’s national epic, the Shahnameh; the dreamlike allegorical world of Persian surrealism exemplified in Sadeq Hedayat’s 1939 novella The Blind Owl; and the politically charged films of the 1960s and 1970s. Fischer contends that by combining Persian traditions with cosmopolitan influences, contemporary Iranian filmmakers—many of whom studied in Europe and America—provide audiences around the world with new modes of accessing ethical and political experiences.

EmTech Anthropology

EmTech Anthropology PDF Author: Matt Artz
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040091555
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
EmTech Anthropology: Careers at the Frontier emphasizes anthropology’s critical role at the frontier of emerging technologies (EmTech). The book explores the opportunities and challenges that arise as anthropologists venture into the territory of EmTech, pushing the boundaries of traditional academic approaches and methodologies. By sharing the stories and insights of early to mid-career anthropologists working in AI, robotics, Web3, cybersecurity, and other cutting-edge fields, the book provides a possible roadmap for future practitioners seeking to make an impact in the world of EmTech. These anthropologists demonstrate how the discipline's unique perspective and skills can be applied to address the complex ethical, social, and cultural implications of emerging technologies. The volume showcases how anthropologists can act as visionaries, innovators, and early adopters, shaping the trajectory of EmTech towards more ethical, equitable, inclusive, and sustainable futures. It highlights the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration, practical impact, and intervention in EmTech contexts while also acknowledging the need for anthropologists to challenge existing narratives and push the boundaries of the discipline itself. EmTech Anthropology: Stories from the Frontier serves as an essential resource for anthropologists, students, and professionals from related disciplines who are interested in exploring the frontiers of anthropology and emerging technologies. By offering a glimpse into the exciting possibilities and compelling insights that emerge when anthropology meets EmTech, the book inspires and guides the next generation of anthropological innovators.

Biocapital

Biocapital PDF Author: Kaushik Sunder Rajan
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822337201
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
DIVAn ethnography about the work of genome scientists, entrepreneurs, and policy makers in biotech drug development in the United States and India./div

African Futures

African Futures PDF Author: Brian Goldstone
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022640241X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Civil wars, corporate exploitation, AIDS, and Ebola—but also democracy, burgeoning cities, and unprecedented communication and mobility: the future of Africa has never been more uncertain. Indeed, that future is one of the most complex issues in contemporary anthropology, as evidenced by the incredible wealth of ideas offered in this landmark volume. A consortium comprised of some of the most important scholars of Africa today, this book surveys an intellectual landscape of opposed perspectives in order to think within the contradictions that characterize this central question: Where is Africa headed? The experts in this book address Africa’s future as it is embedded within various social and cultural forms emerging on the continent today: the reconfiguration of the urban, the efflorescence of signs and wonders and gospels of prosperity, the assorted techniques of legality and illegality, lotteries and Ponzi schemes, apocalyptic visions, a yearning for exile, and many other phenomena. Bringing together social, political, religious, and economic viewpoints, the book reveals not one but multiple prospects for the future of Africa. In doing so, it offers a pathbreaking model of pluralistic and open-ended thinking and a powerful tool for addressing the vexing uncertainties that underlie so many futures around the world.

Barcoding Nature

Barcoding Nature PDF Author: Claire Waterton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351574787
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
DNA Barcoding has been promoted since 2003 as a new, fast, digital genomics-based means of identifying natural species based on the idea that a small standard fragment of any organism's genome (a so-called "micro-genome") can faithfully identify and help to classify every species on the planet. The fear that species are becoming extinct before they have ever been known fuels barcoders, and the speed, scope, economy and "user-friendliness" claimed for DNA barcoding, as part of the larger ferment around the "genomics revolution", has also encouraged promises that it could inspire humanity to reverse its biodiversity-destructive habits. This book is based on six years of ethnographic research on changing practices in the identification and classification of natural species. Informed both by Science and Technology Studies (STS) and the anthropology of science, the authors analyse DNA barcoding in the context of a sense of crisis concerning global biodiversity loss, but also the felt inadequacy of taxonomic science to address such loss. The authors chart the specific changes that this innovation is propelling in the collecting, organizing, analyzing, and archiving of biological specimens and biodiversity data. As they do so they highlight the many questions, ambiguities and contradictions that accompany the quest to create a genomics-based environmental technoscience dedicated to biodiversity protection. They ask what it might mean to recognise ambiguity, contradiction, and excess more publicly as a constitutive part of this and other genomic technosciences. Barcoding Nature will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology of science, science and technology studies, politics of the environment, genomics and post-genomics, philosophy and history of biology, and the anthropology of science.