Professor Jarvie examines the nature of the revolution in social anthropology in order to investigate its results. Working within Karl Popper's radical view of the nature of science, he argues that the subject is one of the oldest and most fundamental of all studies and suggests it can easily be traced back to Plato and Aristotle, not merely as a matter of historical curiosity, but as having fruitful results for the understanding of Malinowski and the revolution.
A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. What can anthropological thinking contribute to the study of revolutions? The first book-length attempt to develop an anthropological approach to revolutions, Anthropologies of Revolution proposes that revolutions should be seen as concerted attempts to radically reconstitute the worlds people inhabit. Viewing revolutions as all-embracing, world-creating projects, the authors ask readers to move beyond the idea of revolutions as acts of violent political rupture, and instead view them as processes of societal transformation that penetrate deeply into the fabric of people’s lives, unfolding and refolding the coordinates of human existence.
What happens to student activism once mass protests have disappeared from view, and youth no longer embody the political frustrations and hopes of a nation? After the Revolution chronicles the lives of student activists as they confront the possibilities and disappointments of democracy in the shadow of the recent revolution in Serbia. Greenberg's narrative highlights the stories of young student activists as they seek to define their role and articulate a new form of legitimate political activity, post-socialism. When student activists in Serbia helped topple dictator Slobodan Milosevic on October 5, 2000, they unexpectedly found that the post-revolutionary period brought even greater problems. How do you actually live and practice democracy in the wake of war and the shadow of a recent revolution? How do young Serbians attempt to translate the energy and excitement generated by wide scale mobilization into the slow work of building democratic institutions? Greenberg navigates through the ranks of student organizations as they transition their activism from the streets back into the halls of the university. In exploring the everyday practices of student activists—their triumphs and frustrations—After the Revolution argues that disappointment is not a failure of democracy but a fundamental feature of how people live and practice it. This fascinating book develops a critical vocabulary for the social life of disappointment with the aim of helping citizens, scholars, and policymakers worldwide escape the trap of framing new democracies as doomed to failure.
This is a study of the history and consequences of the revolutionary campaign to transform culture and ritual in northern Vietnam. Based on official documents and several years of field research, it provides a detailed account of the nature of revolutionary cultural reform in Vietnam.
Professor Jarvie examines the nature of the revolution in social anthropology in order to investigate its results. Working within Karl Popper's radical view of the nature of science, he argues that the subject is one of the oldest and most fundamental of all studies and suggests it can easily be traced back to Plato and Aristotle, not merely as a matter of historical curiosity, but as having fruitful results for the understanding of Malinowski and the revolution.
During recent years, attempts have been made to move beyond the Eurocentric perspective that characterized the social sciences, especially anthropology, for over 150 years. A debate on the “anthropology of anthropology” was needed, one that would consider other forms of knowledge, modalities of writing, and political and intellectual practices. This volume undertakes that challenge: it is the result of discussions held at the first organized encounter between Iranian, American, and European anthropologists since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. It is considered an important first step in overcoming the dichotomy between “peripheral anthropologies” versus “central anthropologies.” The contributors examine, from a critical perspective, the historical, cultural, and political field in which anthropological research emerged in Iran at the beginning of the twentieth century and in which it continues to develop today.
Exploring the ways in which the development of linguistic practices helped expand national politics in remote, rural areas of Venezuela, Language and Revolutionary Magic in the Orinoco Delta situates language as a mediating force in the creation of the 'magical state'. Focusing on the Waraos speakers of the Orinoco Delta, this book explores center–periphery dynamics in Venezuela through an innovative linguistic anthropological lens. Using a semiotic framework informed by concepts of 'transduction' and 'translation', this book combines ethnographic and historical evidence to analyze the ideological mediation and linguistic practices involved in managing a multi-ethnic citizenry in Venezuela. Juan Luis Rodriguez shows how indigenous populations participate in the formation and contestation of state power through daily practices and the use of different speech genres, emphasising the performative and semiotic work required to produce revolutionary subjects. Establishing the centrality of language and semiosis in the constitution of authority and political power, this book moves away from seeing revolution in solely economic or ideological terms. Through the collision between Warao and Spanish, it highlights how language ideologies can exclude or integrate indigenous populations in the public sphere and how they were transformed by Hugo Chavez' revolutionary government to promote loyalty to the regime.
The volume is a comprehensive study of the People's War in Nepal. Adopting an anthropological and historical approach, it presents an account of the War's impact in the country. It is based on extensive fieldwork before, during, and after the revolutionary movement. It thus reflects the revolution brought about in the conception of Nepalese history, which is now commonly presented as a series of uprisings.
During its first six years (1986-1991), the journal Cultural Anthropology provided a unique forum for registering the lively traffic between anthropology and the emergent arena of cultural studies. The nineteen essays collected in Rereading Cultural Anthropology, all of which originally appeared in the journal, capture the range of approaches, internal critiques, and new questions that have characterized the study of anthropology in the 1980s, and which set the agenda for the present. Drawing together work by both younger and well-established scholars, this volume reveals various influences in the remaking of traditions of ethnographic work in anthropology; feminist studies, poststructuralism, cultural critiques, and disciplinary challenges to established boundaries between the social sciences and humanities. Moving from critiques of anthropological representation and practices to modes of political awareness and experiments in writing, this collection offers systematic access to what is now understood to be a fundamental shift (still ongoing) in anthropology toward engagement with the broader interdisciplinary stream of cultural studies. Contributors. Arjun Appadurai, Keith H. Basso, David B. Coplan, Vincent Crapanzano, Faye Ginsburg, George E. Marcus, Enrique Mayer, Fred Meyers, Alcida R. Ramos, John Russell, Orin Starn, Kathleen Stewart, Melford E. Spiro, Ted Swedenburg, Michael Taussig, Julie Taylor, Robert Thornton, Stephen A. Tyler, Geoffrey M. White
In Cold War Anthropology, David H. Price offers a provocative account of the profound influence that the American security state has had on the field of anthropology since the Second World War. Using a wealth of information unearthed in CIA, FBI, and military records, he maps out the intricate connections between academia and the intelligence community and the strategic use of anthropological research to further the goals of the American military complex. The rise of area studies programs, funded both openly and covertly by government agencies, encouraged anthropologists to produce work that had intellectual value within the field while also shaping global counterinsurgency and development programs that furthered America’s Cold War objectives. Ultimately, the moral issues raised by these activities prompted the American Anthropological Association to establish its first ethics code. Price concludes by comparing Cold War-era anthropology to the anthropological expertise deployed by the military in the post-9/11 era.
