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Beyond Writing Culture
Two decades after the publication of Clifford and Marcus' volume Writing Culture, this collection provides a fresh and diverse reassessment of the debates that this pioneering volume unleashed. At the same time, Beyond Writing Culture moves the debate on by embracing the more fundamental challenge as to how to conceptualise the intricate relationship between epistemology and representational practices rather than maintaining the original narrow focus on textual analysis. It thus offers a thought-provoking tapestry of new ideas relevant for scholars not only concerned with 'the ethnographic Other', but with representation in general.
Connections
Have you ever wondered how the internal space of our brain connects with the external space of society? Drawing on hermeneutics and neuroscience Stephen Reyna develops an anthropological theory that explains the relationship between the biological and the cultural. Recent popular interest in the brain is evident, and now social anthropologists are starting to consider connections between science and anthropology. Reyna is an anthropologist prepared to tackle big and difficult questions. This accessibly written book will cause quite a stir in anthropology, and will appeal to those interested in the mysteries of the brain.
Irish/ness Is All Around Us
Focusing on Irish speakers in Catholic West Belfast, this ethnography on Irish language and identity explores the complexities of changing, and contradictory, senses of Irishness and shifting practices of 'Irish culture' in the domains of language, music, dance and sports. The author’s theoretical approach to ethnicity and ethnic revivals presents an expanded explanatory framework for the social (re)production of ethnicity, theorizing the mutual interrelations between representations and cultural practices regarding their combined capacity to engender ethnic revivals. Relevant not only to readers with an interest in the intricacies of the Northern Irish situation, this book also appeals to a broader readership in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, history and political science concerned with the mechanisms behind ethnonational conflict and the politics of culture and identity in general.
Order and Anarchy
Through the study of civil society, the evolution of social relations, and the breakdown of social order, Order and Anarchy re-examines the role of violence in human social evolution. Drawing on anthropology, political science, and evolutionary theory, it offers a novel approach to understanding stability and instability in human society. Robert Layton provides a radical critique of current concepts of civil society, arguing that rational action is characteristic of all human societies and not unique to post-Enlightenment Europe. Case studies range from ephemeral African gold rush communities and the night club scene in Britain to stable hunter-gatherer and peasant cultures. The dynamics of recent civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, Chad, Somalia and Indonesia are compared to war in small-scale tribal societies, arguing that recent claims for the evolutionary value of violence have misunderstood the complexity of human strategies and the social environments in which they are played out.
Globalisation and the Asia-Pacific
Most books that analyse the crucial subject of globalisation only look at it from a western perspective. This is the first detailed study to look at globalisation specifically in the Asia-Pacific region. An impressive collection of leading, interdisciplinary scholars explore various dimensions of globalisation and their relationship to development processes in the region.
Late Victorian Holocausts
Examining a series of El Niño-induced droughts and the famines that they spawned around the globe in the last third of the 19th century, Mike Davis discloses the intimate, baleful relationship between imperial arrogance and natural incident that combined to produce some of the worst tragedies in human history. Late Victorian Holocausts focuses on three zones of drought and subsequent famine: India, Northern China; and Northeastern Brazil. All were affected by the same global climatic factors that caused massive crop failures, and all experienced brutal famines that decimated local populations. But the effects of drought were magnified in each case because of singularly destructive policies promulgated by different ruling elites. Davis argues that the seeds of underdevelopment in what later became known as the Third World were sown in this era of High Imperialism, as the price for capitalist modernization was paid in the currency of millions of peasants' lives.
The Grimace of Macho Ratón
An ethnographic account of indigenous artisans in Nicaragua and the complex ways they have understood and constructed their own identity from the period of the Sandanistas to the present.
Silent Violence
Why do famines occur and how have their effects changed through time? Why are those who produce food so often the casualties of famines? Looking at the food crisis that struck the West African Sahel during the 1970s, Michael J. Watts examines the relationships between famine, climate, and political economy. Through a longue durée history and a detailed village study Watts argues that famines are socially produced and that the market is as fickle and incalculable as the weather. Droughts are natural occurrences, matters of climatic change, but famines expose the inner workings of society, politics, and markets. His analysis moves from household and individual farming practices in the face of...
Cultures of Energy
This path-breaking volume explores cultures of energy, the underlying but under-appreciated dimensions of both crisis and innovation in resource use around the globe. Theoretical chapters situate pressing energy issues in larger conceptual frames, and ethnographic case studies reveal energy as it is imagined, used, and contested in a variety of cultural contexts. Contributors address issues including the connection between resource flows and social relationships in energy systems; cultural transformation and notions of progress and collapse; the blurring of technology and magic; social tensions that accompany energy contraction; and sociocultural changes required in affluent societies to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Each of five thematic sections concludes with an integrative and provocative conversation among the authors. The volume is an ideal tool for teaching unique, contemporary, and comparative perspectives on social theories of science and technology in undergraduate and graduate courses.
The State, Identity and Violence
In this book, a collection of experts investigate the varied forces - from global systems to local beliefs - that lead to civil violence, chaos and, perhaps, a new political order. The State, Identity and Violence explores acts of mass violence occurring within national borders and examines the links such acts have to personal identities and how they challenge the character or very existence of the state. Building upon the anthropological premises of holism and cross-cultural comparison, this volume shows how violent challenges to existing states should be conceptualized as layered problems, with multiple kinds of causes. It not only goes beyond the "ancient hatreds" explanation, but shows the inadequacy of the concept of "ethnic violence" and of theories which treat interests and identities as separate, sometimes opposed variables
