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Rereading Cultural Anthropology

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Book

Pages: 376

Published: October 1992

Editor: George E. Marcus

Contributors: Stephen A. Tyler, Michael Taussig, Robert J. Thornton, Appadurai, Arjun, Alcida Rita Ramos, Ted Swedenburg, Geoffrey M. White, George E. Marcus, Orin Starn, Keith H. Basso, Kathleen Stewart, David B. Coplan, John Russell, Fred R. Myers, Faye Ginsburg, Julie Taylor

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

Praise

"Cultural Anthropology under George Marcus's editorship creatively pioneered bringing cultural studies to anthropology; Rereading Cultural Anthropology achieves the reverse, blessing an already happy union." - James Peacock, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

"Placing the local in its historical and political context, while at the same time showing how migrations and media have made the world smaller, Rereading Cultural Anthropology brings together (some of the best) work which has learned from and gone beyond the recent critiques of anthropological writing." - Paul Rabinow, University of California, Berkeley

"Stubbornly loyal to the discipline and its continuing possibilities, this collection. . . . advances the interests of anthropology by claiming the interest of readers who are not anthropologists—all readers who have any concern with the production of trans-national knowledge." - Bruce Robbins, Rutgers University

"This fine collection of essays from cultural anthropology usefully surveys the issues that have animated discussions in the field for the last several years. It can be read profitably by anyone interested in cultural studies." - Janice A. Radway, Duke University

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Introduction vii

On Being out of Words / Stephen A. Tyler 1

Tactility and Distraction / Michael Taussig 8

The Rhetoric of Ethnographic Holism / Robert J. Thornton 15

Putting Hierarchy in Its Place / Arjun Appadurai 34

Reflecting on the Yanomami: Ethnographic Images and the Pursuit of the Exotic / Alcida R. Ramos 48

Occupational Hazards: Palestine Ethnography / Ted Swedenburg 69

The Politics of Remembering: Notes on a Pacific Conference / Geoffrey M. White 77

The Postmodern Crisis: Discourse, Parody, Memory / Vincent Crapanzano 87

A Broad(er)side to the Canon, Being a Partial Account of a Year of Travel Among Textual Communities in the Realm of Humanities Centers, and Including a Collection of Artificial Curiosities / George E. Marcus 103

Cultural Relativism and the Future of Anthropology / Melford E. Spiro 124

Missing the Revolution: Anthropologists and the War in Peru / Orin Starn 152

Peru in Deep Trouble: Mario Vargas Llosa's "Inquest in the Andes" Reexamined / Enrique Mayer 181

"Speaking with Names": Language and Landscape Among the Western Apache / Keith H. Basso 220

Nostalgia- A Polemic / Kathleen Stewart 252

Fictions that Save: Migrants' Performance and Basotho National Culture / David B Coplan 267

Race and Reflexivity: The Black Other in Contemporary Japanese Mass Culture / John Russell 296

Representing Culture: The Production of Discourse(s) for Aboriginal Acrylic Paintings / Fred Myers 319

Indigenous Media: Faustian Contract or Global Village? / Faye Ginsburg 356

Tano / Julie Taylor 377

Index 391

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Paper ISBN: 978-0-8223-1297-0 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8223-1279-6 / eISBN: 978-0-8223-9786-1 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822397861

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