World Anthropologies Disciplinary Transformations in Systems of Power

by Ribeiro, Gustavo Lins; Escobar, Arturo

• ISBN13: 9781845201906
• ISBN10: 1845201906
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781000181319
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-04-02
• Publisher: Berg Pub Ltd

Summary

Since its inception, anthropology's authority has been based on the assumption that it is a unified discipline emanating from the West. In an age of heightened globalization, anthropologists have failed to discuss consistently the current status of their practice and its mutations across the globe. World Anthropologies is the first book to provoke this conversation from various regions of the world in order to assess the diversity of relations between regional or national anthropologies and a contested, power-laden Western discourse. Can a planetary anthropology cope with both the 'provincial cosmopolitanism' of alternative anthropologies and the 'metropolitan provincialism' of hegemonic schools? How might the resulting 'world anthropologies' challenge the current panorama in which certain allegedly national anthropological traditions have more paradigmatic weight - and hence more power - than others? Critically examining the international dissemination of anthropology within and across national power fields, contributors address these questions and provide the outline for a veritable world anthropologies project.

Author Biography

Gustavo Lins Ribeiro is Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Brasilia, Brazil and Researcher of the National Council of Research and Scientific Development, Brazil. Arturo Escobar is Kenan Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Director, Institute of Latin American Studies, University of North Carolina.

Table of Contents

Preface	viii
World Anthropologies: Disciplinary Transformations within Systems of Power	1	(28)
Gustavo Lins Ribeiro
Arturo Escobar
Part 1: Transnationalism and State Power
Reshaping Anthropology: A View from Japan	29	(20)
Shinji Yamashita
Transformations in Siberian Anthropology: An Insider's Perspective	49	(20)
Nikolai Vakhtin
In Search of Anthropology in China: A Discipline Caught in a Web of Nation Building, Socialist Capitalism, and Globalization	69	(18)
Josephine Smart
Mexican Anthropology's Ongoing Search for Identity	87	(26)
Esteban Krotz
Part 2: Power and Hegemony in World Anthropologies
How Many Centers and Peripheries in Anthropology? A Critical View of France	113	(20)
Eduardo P. Archetti
The Production of Knowledge and the Production of Hegemony: Anthropological Theory and Political Struggles in Spain	133	(24)
Susana Narotzky
Anthropology in a Postcolonial Africa: The Survival Debate	157	(24)
Paul Nchoji Nkwi
Part 3: Epistemological, Sociological, and Disciplinary Predicaments
Generating Nontrivial Knowledge in Awkward Situations: Anthropology in the United Kingdom	181	(20)
Eeva Berglund
The Production of Other Knowledges and Its Tensions: From Andeanist Anthropology to Interculturalidad?	201	(24)
Marisol de la Cadena
A Time and Place beyond and of the Center: Australian Anthropologies in the Process of Becoming	225	(14)
Sandy Toussaint
Official Hegemony and Contesting Pluralisms	239	(22)
Shiv Visvanathan
Part 4: From Anthropology Today to World Anthropologies
The Pictographics of Tristesse: An Anthropology of Nation Building in the Tropics and Its Aftermath	261	(20)
Otavio Velho
``World Anthropologies'': Questions	281	(16)
Johannes Fabian
References	297	(38)
Index	335