Counterworks: Managing the Diversity of Knowledge / Edition 1

by Richard Fardon

Overview

Globalization is often described as the spread of western culture to other parts of the world. How accurate is the depiction of 'cultural flow'? In Counterworks, ten anthropologists examine the ways in which global processes have affected particular localities where they have carried out research. They challenge the validity of anthropological concepts of culture in the light of the pervasive connections which exist between local and global factors everywhere.

Rather than assuming that the world is culturally diverse, this book proposes that culture is itself a representation of the similarities and difference recognized between forms of social life. The authors address issues of globalization in terms of diverse histories and traditions of knowledge, which may include the construction of difference as cultural.

In its attention to specific local situations, such as Bali, Cuba, Bolivia, Greece, Kenya, and the Maoris in New Zealand, Counterworks argues that the apparent oppositoin between strong westernizing, global forces and weak concept of culture, which supposes cultures to be integrated and possessed of essential properties, needs rethinking in a contemporary world where a marked sense of culture has become a wide-spread property of people's social knowledge.

The book will have wide appeal to anthropologists, to students of comparative studies in history, religion and language, and to anyone interested in the phenomenon of postmodernism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415107938
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/14/1995
Series:	ASA Decennial Conference Series: The Uses of Knowledge
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	244
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Richard Fardon is Reader in West African Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies, London and Chairman of the Centre of African Studies, University of London.

Table of Contents

Preface, Richard Fardon; Chapter 1 Introduction, Richard Fardon; Chapter 2 Self and other in contemporary anthropology, Anne Salmond; Chapter 3 As I lay laughing, Mark Hobart; Chapter 4 Against syncretism, Stephan Palmié; Chapter 5 Knowing the past, Olivia Harris; Chapter 6 It takes one to know one, Michael Herzfeld; Chapter 7 Latticed knowledge, David Parkin; Chapter 8 Whose knowledge and whose power?, Signe Howell; Chapter 9 From cosmology to environmentalism, Piers Vitebsky; Chapter 10 The production of locality, Arjun Appadurai;