A Comparative Ethnography of Alternative Spaces

by Fihl, Esther; Dahl, Jens

• ISBN13: 9781137299536
• ISBN10: 1137299533
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-01-22
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Many people seek to carve out a space for themselves independently of the existing social and political realities of which they are a part. Through a range of ethnographical cases, the book addresses the innovative and complex ways in which social groups show the ability to position themselves between cultures, states, moralities, or local communities and state authorities, thus creating new opportunities for agency in the modern world. As an analytical term, alternative spaces designate "in-between" spaces rather than oppositional structures and are as such both "inside" and "outside" their constituent elements.

Author Biography

Esther Fihl is a professor in the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Her ethnographic research among fishers of the Coromandel Coast of Tamilnadu, India, has focused on long term socio-economic transformations. She has done research on cultural encounters, and processes of social inclusion and exclusions and is the author of Exploring Central Asia: From the Steppes to the High Pamirs 1896-1899.

Jens Dahl is an adjunct professor in the Department of Regional and Cross-Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen. He has carried out anthropological research in the United Nations and among indigenous peoples in Greenland and other places. He is the former director of the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs and taught Inuit studies at the University of Copenhagen and is the author of Indigenous Space and Marginalized Peoples in the United Nations.

Table of Contents

To come.