Decolonisation, modernisation, globalisation, the crisis of representation, and the 'cultural turn' in neighbouring disciplines have unsettled anthropology to such an extent that the field's ...foundations, the subjects of its study as well as its methods and concepts, appear to be eroded. It is now time to take stock and either abandon anthropology as a fundamentally untenable or superfluous project, or to set it on more solid foundations. In this volume some of the world's leading anthropologists - including Vincent Crapanzano, Maurice Godelier, Ulf Hannerz and Adam Kuper - do just that. Reflecting on how to meet the manifold institutional, theoretical, methodological, and epistemological challenges to the field, as well as on the continued, if not heightened, importance of anthropology in a world where diversity and cultural difference are becoming ever more important economically, politically, and legally, they set upon the task of reconstructing anthropology's foundations and firming up its stance vis-à-vis these challenges. 'With a backward glance at earlier predictions of the demise of anthropology, the essays present a confident account of the future of the discipline. Defining in clear terms what it is that anthropologists do, a well-chosen group of distinguished contributors confront the diversity and internal distinctions that characterize the field, weigh the seriousness of the trend toward interdisciplinary studies in the human sciences, and redefine the strengths of the anthropological mode of knowledge production'. (Shirley Lindenbaum, Professor Emerita, City University of New York).
The last decade has seen a new wave of interest in philosophical and theoretical circles in the writings of Walter Benjamin. In Body-and Image-Space Sigrid Weigel, one of Germany's leading feminist ...theorists and a renowned commentator on the work of Walter Benjamin, argues that the reception of his work has so far overlooked a crucial aspect of his thought - his use of images. Weigel shows that it is precisely his practice of thinking in images that holds the key to understanding the full complexity, richness and topicality of Benjamin's theory.
Die Buchreihe "Philosopische Anthropologie" wird mit einem Band eröffnet, der die Philosophische Anthropologie im Streit vorstellt. Geführt wird dieser Streit um das Paradigma der Philosophischen ...Anthropologie und um ihre Methoden im Unterschied sowohl zu anderen Philosophien als auch zu den verschiedenen Erfahrungswissenschaften. Ihre Grenzbestimmungen und Grenzübergänge finden schließlich anhand ausgewählter Themen eine exemplarische Erprobung.
Passion and Action is an exploration of the role of the emotions in early modern thought. Susan James offers fresh readings of a broad range of thinkers, including such canonical figures as Hobbes, ...Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Pascal, and Locke, and shows that a full understanding of their philosophies must take account of their interpretations of our affective life. This ground-breaking study throws new light upon the shaping of our ideas about the mind, knowledge, and action, and provides a historical context for burgeoning current debates about the emotions.
In Body and Story, Richard Terdiman explores the tension between what might seem to be two fundamentally different ways of understanding the world: as physical reality and as representation in ...language. In demonstrating the complicated relationship between these two modes of being, he also presents a new bold approach to the problem of conflicts between irreconcilable but equally compelling theoretical ideas.
Enlightenment rationalism is most often understood as maintaining that words can meaningfully refer to and grasp things in the material world, while Postmodernism famously argues that nothing exists outside of language. Terdiman challenges this clean distinction, finding the early seeds of Postmodern doubt in the Enlightenment, and demonstrating the stubborn resistance of material reality—particularly that of the body—to language even today. Building on readings of works by 18th-century encyclopedist Denis Diderot and contemporary philosopher-icon Jacques Derrida, Terdiman argues that despite their genuine and profound opposition, a constant negotiation or mutual interrogation has always been taking place between these two world-views, even as the balance at times shifts to one side or the other. In analyzing these shifts he proposes a new model for understanding how seemingly unabridgeable theories legitimately coexist in our intellectual conception of the world, and he suggests a new ethics for managing this coexistence.
In its new Second Edition, the innovative and ever-popular Investigating Culturehas been updated and revised to incorporate new teacher and student feedback. Carol Delaney and Deborah Kaspin provide ...an expanded introduction to cultural anthropology that is even more accessible to students.Revised and enhanced new edition that incorporates additional material and classroom feedbackAccessible to a wider range of students and educational settingsProvides a refreshing alternative to traditional textbooks by challenging students to think in new ways and to apply ideas of culture to their own livesFocuses on the ways that humans orient themselves, e.g., in space and time, according to language, food, the body, and the symbols provided by public myth and ritualIncludes chapters that frame the central issues and provide examples from a range of cultures, with selected readings, additional suggested readings, and student exercises
In the wake of independence from Spain in 1898, Cuba's intellectual avant-garde struggled to cast their country as a modern nation. They grappled with the challenges presented by the postcolonial ...situation in general and with the location of blackness within a narrative of Cuban-ness in particular.
In this breakthrough study, Emily Maguire examines how a cadre of writers reimagined the nation and re-valorized Afro-Cuban culture through a textual production that incorporated elements of the ethnographic with the literary. Singling out the work of Lydia Cabrera as emblematic of the experimentation with genre that characterized the age, Maguire constructs a series of counterpoints that place Cabrera's work in dialogue with that of her Cuban contemporaries--including Fernando Ortiz, Nicolas Guillen, and Alejo Carpentier. An illuminating final chapter on Cabrera and Zora Neale Hurston widens the scope to contextualize Cuban texts within a hemispheric movement to represent black culture.
Questions of vision and knowledge are central to debates about the world in which we live. Developing new analytical approaches toward ways of seeing is a key challenge facing those working across a ...wide range of disciplines. This text maps experiments in the forms and techniques of visual enquiry.
