Over the last two decades anthropologists have drawn on insights from ethnographic inquiry to challenge accepted definitions and ideas of space and place. Their efforts have led to an understanding that both the conceptual and material dimensions of space as well as of built forms and landscape characteristics are central to the production (and reproduction) of social life. The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture is an unprecedented collection of key articles presented explicitly for students and researchers in anthropology, environmental psychology, sociology, architecture, geography, and urban planning. The volume includes an introduction that synthesizes existing literature, highlights core issues, and maps potential directions for future research.
This book demonstrates the value of ethnographic theory and methods in understanding space and place, and considers how ethnographically-based spatial analyses can yield insight into prejudices, inequalities and social exclusion as well as offering people the means for understanding the places where they live, work, shop and socialize. In developing the concept of spatializing culture, Setha Low draws on over twenty years of research to examine social production, social construction, embodied, discursive, emotive and affective, as well as translocal approaches. A global range of fieldwork examples are employed throughout the text to highlight not just the theoretical development of the idea of spatializing culture, but how it can be used in undertaking ethnographies of space and place. The volume will be valuable for students and scholars from a number of disciplines who are interested in the study of culture through the lens of space and place.
The Themed Space: Locating Culture, Nation, and Self is the first edited collection focused on the significance of the theme space. The first section of the text discusses the ways in which theming acts as a form of authenticity. Included are articles on the theme park Dollywood, the historic Coney Island, the uses of theming in Flagstaff, Arizona, and the Las Vegas Strip. Section two considers theming as a reflection of nation, and its authors focus on Chinese theme parks and shopping malls, the Lost City theme park in South Africa, and the Ain Diab resort district in Casablanca. The third section of the book illustrates how theming often targets the person—whether famous or everyday. The authors look at spaces ranging from the Liverpool John Lennon Airport, love hotels in Japan, and the Houston, Texas theme park AstroWorld. The final section emphasizes theming as a projection of the mind and psychology. The authors focus on behind-the-scenes tourism at Universal Studios and the Ford Rouge Factory Tour, the use of theming in unexpected spaces like Florida themed clinics, theming in virtual reality spaces of video games, and the social controversies related to theming in various parts of the world. The book includes a comprehensive bibliography on theming and a list of key terms. The Themed Space is of great interest to students of all levels and scholars of anthropology, urban studies and sociology.
Are reports of the death of conventional fieldwork in anthropology greatly exaggerated? This book takes a critical look at the latest developments and key issues in fieldwork. The nature of "locality" itself is problematic for both research subjects and fieldworkers, on the grounds that it now must be maintained and represented in relation to widening (and fragmenting) social frames and networks. Such developments have raised questions concerning the nature of ethnographic presence and scales of comparison. From the social space of a cybercafé, to cities in India, the UK and South Africa among others, this book features a wide range of ethnographic studies that provide new ways of looking at the concepts of "locality" and "site".
Anthropology has traditionally relied on a spatially localized society or culture as its object of study. The essays in Culture, Power, Place demonstrate how in recent years this anthropological convention and its attendant assumptions about identity and cultural difference have undergone a series of important challenges. In light of increasing mass migration and the transnational cultural flows of a late capitalist, postcolonial world, the contributors to this volume examine shifts in anthropological thought regarding issues of identity, place, power, and resistance. This collection of both new and well-known essays begins by critically exploring the concepts of locality and community; first, as they have had an impact on contemporary global understandings of displacement and mobility, and, second, as they have had a part in defining identity and subjectivity itself. With sites of discussion ranging from a democratic Spain to a Puerto Rican barrio in North Philadelphia, from Burundian Hutu refugees in Tanzania to Asian landscapes in rural California, from the silk factories of Hangzhou to the long-sought-after home of the Palestinians, these essays examine the interplay between changing schemes of categorization and the discourses of difference on which these concepts are based. The effect of the placeless mass media on our understanding of place—and the forces that make certain identities viable in the world and others not—are also discussed, as are the intertwining of place-making, identity, and resistance as they interact with the meaning and consumption of signs. Finally, this volume offers a self-reflective look at the social and political location of anthropologists in relation to the questions of culture, power, and place—the effect of their participation in what was once seen as their descriptions of these constructions. Contesting the classical idea of culture as the shared, the agreed upon, and the orderly, Culture, Power, Place is an important intervention in the disciplines of anthropology and cultural studies. Contributors. George E. Bisharat, John Borneman, Rosemary J. Coombe, Mary M. Crain, James Ferguson, Akhil Gupta, Kristin Koptiuch, Karen Leonard, Richard Maddox, Lisa H. Malkki, John Durham Peters, Lisa Rofel
Spatial Anthropology draws together a number of interrelated strands of research focused on landscape, place and cultural memory in the north-west of England. At the core of the book lies an engagement with the methodological opportunities offered by new interdisciplinary frameworks of research and practice that have emerged in the wake of a putative ‘spatial turn’ in arts and humanities scholarship in recent years. The spatial methods explored in the book represent a consolidation of site-specific interventions enacted in landscapes located in the north-west and beyond. Utilising digital tools and geospatial technologies alongside ethnographic, performative and autoethnographic modes of spatio-cultural analysis, spatial anthropology is presented as a geographically immersive and critically reflexive set of practices designed to explore the embodied and increasingly multi-faceted spatialities of place, mobility and memory. From the radically placeless environment of a motorway traffic island, to the ‘affective archipelago’ of former cinema sites, or the ‘songlines’ and micro-geographies of musical memory, Spatial Anthropology offers a rich tapestry of landscapes, practices and spatial stories that speaks to both the particularities of place and locality as well as the more delocalised topographies of regional, national and global mobility.
"A vitally important contribution to anthropology. . . . Most importantly, although the critique is sharply directed, the tone of the volume is constructive rather than destructive—or deconstructive."—Joan Vincent, Barnard College "A rich, thought-provoking, and highly original collection. . . . The research presented is new and the perspectives original. This collection of essays casts significant new light on phenomena and practices which have long been central to anthropology, while at the same time introducing new substantive materials."—Don Brenneis, University of California, Santa Cruz
This anthology provides a single-volume overview of the essential theoretical debates in the anthropology of art. Drawing together significant work in the field from the second half of the twentieth century, it enables readers to appreciate the art of different cultures at different times. Advances a cross-cultural concept of art that moves beyond traditional distinctions between Western and non-Western art. Provides the basis for the appreciation of art of different cultures and times. Enhances readers’ appreciation of the aesthetics of art and of the important role it plays in human society.
Culture has been subject to critical debate in anthropology during the past decade and this is related to a shift in emphasis from the bounded local culture to transnational cultural flows. At the same time that cultural mobility is being emphasized, the people studied by anthropologists are recasting culture as a place of belonging as they construct local identities within global fields of relations. So far, much of the analysis of the role of place in culture has been carried out at a level of theoretical debate. Siting Culture argues that it is only through rich ethnographic studies that anthropologists may explore the significance of place in the global space of relations which mould the lives of people throughout the world. By examining the concept of culture through case studies from Europe, Africa, Oceania, Latin America and the Caribbean it probes the methodological and theoretical implications of the divergent scholarly and popular concepts of culture.
