This book brings together a range of anthropological writings that are inspired by the French philosopher Michel Foucault and examine Foucault’s contribution to current theories of modernity. Treats modernity as an ethnographic object by focusing on its concrete manifestations. Tackles issues of broad interest: from colonialism and globalization to war, genetics, and AIDS. Draws on work from North and South America, Europe, Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. Contributors include James Ferguson, Akhil Gupta, Aihwa Ong, Paul Rabinow, and Rayna Rapp.

Hybrids of Modernity considers the relationship between three Western modernist institutions: anthropology, the nation state and the universal exhibition, in particular examining the emergence of culture as a commodity.

Recent insights into the nature of representation and power relations have signaled an important shift in perspective on anthropology: from a fieldwork-based "science" of culture to an interpretive activity bound to the discursive and ideological process called "text-making." This collection of essays reflects the ongoing cross-fertilization between literary criticism and anthropology. Focusing on texts written or influenced by anthropologists between 1900 and 1945, the work relates current perspectives on anthropology's discursive nature to the literary period known as "Modernism.". The essays, each demonstrating anthropology's profound influence on this important cultural movement, are organized according to discourse type: from the comparativist text of Frazer, to the ethnographies of Boas, Benedict, Mead, and Hurston, and on to the surrealist experiments of the College de Sociologie. Meanwhile the book's orientation shifts from essays that approach anthropology from the vantage points of literariness and textual power to those that contemplate what bearing the junction of cultural theory and anthropology can have upon present and future social institutions. In addition to the editor, contributors include Vincent Crapanzano, Deborah Gordon, Richard Handler, Arnold Krupat, Francesco Loriggio, Michele Richman, Marty Roth, Marilyn Strathern, Robert Sullivan, John B. Vickery, and Steven Webster. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

What is the exotic, after all? In this study, Micaela di Leonardo reveals the face of power within the mask of cultural difference. Focusing on the intimate and shifting relations between popular portrayals of exotic Others and the practice of anthropology, that profession assumed to be America's Guardian of the Offbeat, she casts new light on gender, race, and the public sphere in America's past and present. Chicago's 1893 Columbian World Exposition and today's college-town ethnic boutiques frame di Leonardo's century-long analysis.

"Critically Modern makes a critical intervention in one of the great debates of the moment. It offers a variety of rich and fascinating empirical analyses of 'modern' phenomena from diverse societies, and contributes a powerful (and largely missing) voice to the growing literature on globalization and modernity outside anthropology." —Charles Piot "In these essays theory and ethnography are presented in ways that make them mutually enriching. The volume should appeal to scholars across the entire range of disciplines that deal with modernity and/or globalization." —Edward LiPuma Are there multiple ways of being "modern" in the world today? How do people in various parts of the world become modern in their own distinct ways? Does the current focus on modernity in the social sciences resurrect a series of dichotomies ("traditional" and "modern," "the West" and "the Rest," "developed" and "undeveloped") that social theorists have sought to move beyond in recent years? Or do inflections of modernity capture key features of ideology and influence in the contemporary world? Combining rich ethnographic analysis with incisive theoretical critiques, this timely volume is certain to make an important mark in anthropology and in all related fields in which modernity is a central problematic. Contributors: Donald L. Donham, Robert J. Foster, Jonathan Friedman, Ivan Karp, John D. Kelly, Bruce M. Knauft, Lisa B. Rofel, Debra A. Spitulnik, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, and Holly Wardlow.

This Companion provides the first definitive overview of psychocultural anthropology: a subject that focuses on cultural, psychological, and social interrelations across cultures. Brings together original essays by leading scholars in the field Offers an in-depth exploration of the concepts and topics that have emerged through contemporary ethnographic work and the processes of global change Key issues range from studies of consciousness and time, emotion, cognition, dreaming, and memory, to the lingering effects of racism and ethnocentrism, violence, identity and subjectivity

This book provides a critical review of the varied interpretations of modernity and development supported by original case studies from the Netherlands, the former USSR, Tanzania, Sri Lanka and Guatemala.

This first English translation of lectures Claude Lévi-Strauss delivered in Tokyo in 1986 synthesizes his ideas about structural anthropology, critiques his earlier writings on civilization, and assesses the dilemmas of cultural and moral relativism, including economic inequality, religious fundamentalism, and genetic and reproductive engineering.

The longing for authenticity, on an individual or collective level, connects the search for external expressions to internal orientations. What is largely referred to as production of authenticity is a reformulation of cultural values and norms within the ongoing process of modernity, impacted by globalization and contemporary transnational cultural flows. This collection interrogates the notion of authenticity from an anthropological point of view and considers authenticity in terms of how meaning is produced in and through discourses about authenticity. Incorporating case studies from four continents, the topics reach from art and colonialism to exoticism-primitivism, film, ritual and wilderness. Some contributors emphasise the dichotomy between the academic use of the term and the one deployed in public spaces and political projects. All, however, consider authenticity as something that can only be understood ethnographically, and not as a simple characteristic or category used to distinguish some behaviors, experiences or material things from other less authentic versions.