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News journalism is in the midst of radical transformation brought about by the spread of digital information and communication technology and the rise of neoliberalism. What does it look like, however, from the inside of a news organization? In The Life Informatic, Dominic Boyer offers the first anthropological ethnography of contemporary office-based news journalism. The result is a fascinating account of journalists struggling to maintain their expertise and authority, even as they find their principles and skills profoundly challenged by ever more complex and fast-moving streams of information. Boyer conducted his fieldwork inside three news organizations in Germany (a world leader in dig...
The Future of Difference theorises contemporary regimes of power as engaged primarily in the violent production of difference. In this moment, the logic of ‘other and rule’ thoroughly permeates the social and the political; our contemporary condition is increasingly premised on endless subtle hierarchical distinctions, which determine whole populations’ attitudes, feelings and actions. Hark and Villa make a compelling case for the detoxification of public and political discourse, in favor of an ethical mode of living-with the world, that is, living with plurality and alterity.
Through an ambitious and critical revision of Michel Foucault's investigation of ethics, James Faubion develops an original program of empirical inquiry into the ethical domain. From an anthropological perspective, Faubion argues that Foucault's specification of the analytical parameters of this domain is the most productive point of departure in conceptualizing its distinctive features. He further argues that Foucault's framework is in need of substantial revision to be of genuinely anthropological scope. In making this revision, Faubion illustrates his program with two extended case studies: one of a Portuguese marquis and the other of a dual subject made up of the author and a millenarian prophetess. The result is a conceptual apparatus that is able to accommodate ethical pluralism and yield an account of the limits of ethical variation, providing a novel resolution of the problem of relativism that has haunted anthropological inquiry into ethics since its inception.
This book is based on the understanding that the diversity and heterogeneity of science and society are not only issue of critique, but engender experimental forms of collaboration. Building on John Dewey’s experimental theory of knowledge and inquiry, practice theory, science and technology studies and the anthropology of nature, the book offers a trenchant redefinition of a present-focused sociology as a science of experience in the spirit of experimentalism. Crisis, instead of being a mere problem, is understood as the baseline for creativity and innovation. Committed to the experimental pursuit, the book provides an experience-based methodological approach for an inter- and trans disciplinary sociology. Finally, it argues for a globalized and transformative sociological outreach beyond established epistemic and national borders. This book is of interest to sociologists and other social scientists pursuing experimentalism in theory, method and/or practice.
What is the relationship between colonialism and culture? Jeff Bowersox answers this question by looking at how young Germans imagined the wider world around them during the age of high imperialism.
Anthropological Abstracts (AA) is a reference journal published once a year in print, but also under www.anthropology-online.de and announces - in English language - most publications in the field of cultural/social anthropology published in the German language area (Austria, Germany, Switzerland). Since many of these publications have been written in German, and most German publications are not included in the major English language abstracting services, Anthropological Abstracts offers a convenient source of information for anthropologists and social scientists in general who do not read German, to become aware of anthropological research and publications in German-speaking countries. Included are journal articles, monographs, anthologies, exhibition catalogs, yearbooks, etc. Most abstracts are authored by the editor, others are specified accordingly. This journal is edited by Ulrich Oberdiek since 1993 (formerly: Abstracts in German Anthropology; since 2002: Anthropological Abstract
How can we develop a cultural theory starting with the basic insight that human beings are "storytelling animals"? Within literary studies, narratology is a highly developed field. However, literary historians have not paid much attention to the large and small stories abounding in everyday discourse, guiding all kinds of social activity, and providing common ground for whole societies—but also fueling controversies and hostilities. Moreover, "narrative" is not only a scholarly category but has come into use in many fields of social activity as a tool for cultural self-fashioning. This book is based on the assumption that to a large extent, social dynamics is modeled in an aesthetic manner...
Hartmut Rosa advances an account of the temporal structure of society from the perspective of critical theory. He identifies three categories of change in the tempo of modern social life: technological acceleration, evident in transportation, communication, and production; the acceleration of social change, reflected in cultural knowledge, social institutions, and personal relationships; and acceleration in the pace of life, which happens despite the expectation that technological change should increase an individual's free time. According to Rosa, both the structural and cultural aspects of our institutions and practices are marked by the "shrinking of the present," a decreasing time period...
This volume addresses an issue that was until recently taboo: children fathered by Black American GIs who were stationed in Europe during and after World War II and whose mothers were local citizens. They were born into societies that defined themselves as White and rejected this extremely visible portion of the so-called occupation children. Black and White are in this volume not (only) understood as descriptions of skin color, but above all as social constructs and political categories with racist attributions and effects. The authors of the contributions examine the manner in which these mixed-race children and their mothers were treated by their societies and the respective authorities; they assess the experiences and self-understandings of the individuals affected; they discuss their institutionalization and the strategy practiced by the youth welfare agencies of giving these children up for adoption abroad; and finally they highlight how African American couples in the USA interpreted the adoption of these mixed-race children from Europe as an act of Black resistance against White supremacy.
Ausgangspunkt der Beiträge in diesem Band ist die von Niklas Luhmann in den frühen 1970er Jahren vorgeschlagene „Systemtypologie“: die Unterscheidung von Interaktion, Organisation und (Welt)Gesellschaft als drei gleichwertigen Typen von Sozialsystemen. Dieser gemeinsame Bezugspunkt ist durch einen hier erstmalig publizierten Text von Luhmann aus dem Jahr 1975 repräsentiert, der allen Autorinnen und Autoren vorgelegen hat. Diese Luhmann’sche Ebenentrias ist der Ausgangspunkt, mit dem sich alle Beiträge auseinandersetzen. Sie tun dies auf verschiedene Weise und mit unterschiedlicher Akzentuierung, und sie gelangen zu teilweise abweichenden Antworten bis hin zu alternativen Ordnungsmodellen. Eine zweite Klammer, die den Band zusammenhält, ist deshalb die allgemeinere Frage, wie sich das weite Feld des Sozialen in seiner Vielgestaltigkeit soziologisch ordnen und aufeinander beziehen lässt und welchen empirischen Wert diese Ebenentrias hat.