The Anthropology of Power

by Cheater,Angela; Cheater,Angela

• ISBN13: 9780415193887
• ISBN10: 0415193885
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-04-01
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The Anthropology of Powerpresents case studies from a wide range of societies to examine the issues surrounding power and empowerment and to question whether power is actually being transferred to the powerless. This collection draws on ethnographic material from Europe, the Middle East, Australasia, Africa and the Americas exploring how traditionally disempowered groups gain influence in postcolonial and multicultural settings, from civil war to new communication technologies, from religious imperialism to transnational mining investments. It surveys the relationships between empowerment and economic development, gender and environmentalism. The contributors confront post-Foucauldian theoretical issues on the nature, distribution and balance of power, and ask whether the rhetoric of "empowerment" actually masks a lack of change in established power relations. This is a wide-ranging international collection featuring contributors from the UK, Portugal, Iceland, the Czech Republic, South Africa,Zimbabwe, Canada, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.

Author Biography

Madawi Al-Rasheed (PhD Cantab) is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies (King's College, University of London). Angela Cheater (PhD Natal) has recently taken early retirement from the chair of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the University of Waikato. Colin Filer (PhD Cantab) is Head of the Social and Cultural Studies Division of the PNG National Research Institute. Rudo Gaidzanwa (MA, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague) is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Zimbabwe. Ngapare K. Hopa (DPhil Oxon), who served on New Zealand's Waitangi Tribunal (1989-92), has recently become Professor of Maori Studies at the University of Auckland. Wendy James (DPhil Oxon), fellow of St Cross College, is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Sigridur Duna Kristmundsdottir (PhD Rochester, New York), formerly Member of the Icelandic Parliament for the Feminist Party (1983-7), has been Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Iceland since 1990. Robert Layton is Professor of Anthropology at Durham University. Manuel Joao Ramos is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Instituto Superior de Ciencias do Trabalho e da Empresa, Lisbon, Portugal. Peter Skalnik (PhDr, CSc Charles University), Ambassador of the Czech Republic to Lebanon from 1993-6, now teaches Social Anthropology and African Studies at Charles University, Prague. Andrew Spiegel (PhD Cape Town), is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cape Town. Peter Wade (PhD Cantab) is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. Vanessa Watson (Masters in City and Regional Planning, Cape Town), is Associate Professor in City and Regional Planning at the University of Cape Town. Richard Werbner (PhD Manchester) is Professor of African Anthropology and Director of the International Centre for Contemporary Cultural Research at the University of Manchester. Peter Wilkinson (Masters in City and Regional Planning, Cape Town), is Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture and Planning and Director of the Urban Problems Research Unit, University of Cape Town. Daniel Yon (PhD York University, Toronto, Canada) is Assistant Professor at York University.

Table of Contents

List of contributors	vii
Acknowledgements	x
Power in the postmodern era	1	(12)
Angela Cheater
Empowering ambiguities	13	(15)
Wendy James
The discursive space of schooling: on the theories of power and empowerment in multiculturalism and anti--racism	28	(14)
Daniel Yon
`Father did not answer that question': power, gender and globalisation in Europe	42	(15)
Sigridur Duna Kristmundsdottir
The reach of the postcolonial state: development, empowerment/disempowerment and technocracy	57	(16)
Richard Werbner
The guardians of power: biodiversity and multiculturality in Colombia	73	(15)
Peter Wade
The dialectics of negation and negotiation in the anthropology of mineral resource development in Papua New Guinea	88	(15)
Colin Filer
Land and re--empowerment: `The Waikato case'	103	(15)
Ngapare K. Hopa
Indigenisation as empowerment? Gender and race in the empowerment discourse in Zimbabwe	118	(15)
Rudo Gaidzanwa
Exploitation after Marx	133	(16)
Robert Layton
Evading state control: political protest and technology in Saudi Arabia	149	(14)
Madawai Al-Rasheed
Authority versus power: a view from social anthropology	163	(12)
Peter Skalnik
Speaking truth to power? Some problems using ethnographic methods to influence the formulation of housing policy in South Africa	175	(16)
Andrew Spiegel
Vanessa Watson
Peter Wilkinson
Machiavellian empowerment and disempowerment: the violent political changes in early seventeenth--century Ethiopia	191	(15)
Manuel Joao Ramos
Index	206