Both Rabinow and Marcus participated in the milestone collection Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Published in 1986, Writing Culture catalyzed a reassessment of how ethnographers encountered, studied, and wrote about their subjects. In the opening conversations of Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary, Rabinow and Marcus take stock of anthropology’s recent past by discussing the intellectual scene in which Writing Culture intervened, the book’s contributions, and its conceptual limitations. Considering how the field has developed since the publication of that volume, they address topics including ethnography’s self-reflexive turn, scholars’ increased focus on questions of identity, the Public Culture project, science and technology studies, and the changing interests and goals of students. Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary allows readers to eavesdrop on lively conversations between anthropologists who have helped to shape their field’s recent past and are deeply invested in its future.
Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle.
Learn more
FREE Two-Day Shipping for Students. Learn more |
| ||||||||||||||||||||
 Sell Back Your Copy for $5.39
Whether you buy it used on Amazon for $11.28 or somewhere else, you can sell it back through our Book Trade-In Program at the current price of $5.39.
Used Price$11.28
Trade-in Price$5.39
Price after
Trade-in$5.89 |
Book Description
In this compact volume two of anthropology’s most influential theorists, Paul Rabinow and George E. Marcus, engage in a series of conversations about the past, present, and future of anthropological knowledge, pedagogy, and practice. James D. Faubion joins in several exchanges to facilitate and elaborate the dialogue, and Tobias Rees moderates the discussions and contributes an introduction and an afterword to the volume. Most of the conversations are focused on contemporary challenges to how anthropology understands its subject and how ethnographic research projects are designed and carried out. Rabinow and Marcus reflect on what remains distinctly anthropological about the study of contemporary events and processes, and they contemplate productive new directions for the field. The two converge in Marcus’s emphasis on the need to redesign pedagogical practices for training anthropological researchers and in Rabinow’s proposal of collaborative initiatives in which ethnographic research designs could be analyzed, experimented with, and transformed.
Special Offers and Product Promotions
- Buy $50 in qualifying physical textbooks, get $5 in Amazon MP3 Credit. Here's how (restrictions apply)
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
Review
“[T]he book exemplifies another ‘aesthetic’ approach, a noble response if hardly a solution, to the problem of how to think today. Very serious scholars might simply speak candidly, on the record, with one another about matters they have considered for years. It is such a simple genre, one we should
all try. Right. Designs is a bravura performance.”
- David A. Westbrook, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
all try. Right. Designs is a bravura performance.”
- David A. Westbrook, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
“This series of thought-provoking exchanges between senior anthropologists Paul Rabinow, George Marcus, and James Faubion address the past, present, and future of the discipline and the challenges involved in designing anthropologies of the contemporary. . . . [R]ecommended reading for anthropology students, especially those feeling lost in the forest of anthropological approaches, and for all those curious what several of the discipline’s most influential theorists have to say about the past, present, and future of anthropology.” - Noel Salazar, Anthropology Review Database
“Rees does a great job in summing up what is the result of a fascinating dialogue among intellectuals. . . . There are also those who started with Writing Culture and reached positions from where they can rethink and renew the structure of dissertation projects and start conversations on the anthropology of the contemporary with a new generation of anthropology students. This small collaborative and dialogic book will serve them well as a permanent inspiration.” - Werner Krauss, American Ethnologist
“Full of grace and erudition, of intellectual pleasures and provocations, this book is a rich exchange about inheritances, curiosity, pedagogy, ethnography, and experimental practice. What counts as the ‘contemporary’ is far from self-evident, and the need to think about what is happening in the world—what forms of life are in play and emerging—has never been greater. This book makes a strong ethical and epistemological claim on me, and perhaps on all its readers, to respond to this difficult task. At a time when brilliant performance prevails over collective craft, and systematic shared knowledge seems like a thing of the past, it highlights the necessity of accountability in building knowledge.”—Donna Haraway, University of California, Santa Cruz
“Paul Rabinow and George E. Marcus have very creative minds, a great deal of courage, and appealing intellectual intensity. Their lucid, conversational dialogues in Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary are significant and almost sure to be influential. There is a hunger in anthropology for forward-looking suggestions.”—Virginia R. Dominguez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“What an interchange! While these fascinating conversations make much work of the concept of the ‘contemporary,’ it is how one might ‘design’ anthropology that drives them. And by the end it is ‘anthropology’ that emerges from its own history, from its fortunes and misfortunes, as a fresh instrument of education. The search for renewal is neither here nor there; an act of renewal is another matter altogether. The enthusiasm of these thinkers is wrought through dialogue at once collaborative and agonistic, setting a standard of reflection that creates its own present tense.”—Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge
From the Publisher
"Paul Rabinow and George E. Marcus have very creative minds, a great deal of courage, and appealing intellectual intensity. Their lucid, conversational dialogues in Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary are significant and almost sure to be influential. There is a hunger in anthropology for forward-looking suggestions."-- Virginia R. Dominguez, Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Professor of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rethinking the Contemporary,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary (Paperback)
Reviewing several axial moments of canonical anthropology, Rabinow and Marcus challenge ethnographers to reimagine what fieldwork is and to reconceptualize long accepted methods in ethnographic research. Building on Nietzsche's notion of the untimely, Rabinow urges his readers not to overdetermine the role of history in shaping the contemporary. As Rabinow understands it, the contemporary is an atemporal space determined not so much by history as by rapid technological innovations. Both Marcus and Rabinow agree that instituting new methods and approaches that attempt to interpret the contemporary must begin with pedagogy. For those interested in radical reconceptualizations of social space and the means to interpret it, this book is highly recommended.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A guiding conversation,
By
This review is from: Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary (Paperback)
When I bought this book I was looking for a discussion on anthropology's challenges and metamorphoses that would guide me on designing a research on contemporary politics. The book accomplishes that, in a certain way, and offers something more. The "authors" discuss their works, their methodologies and the difficulties they have faced with contemporary anthropological research, and offer ideas and possible paths in pursuing new questions, places and objects. This is not a research manual, of course (and many of my questions and doubts remain unanswered), but the dialogues between scholars and friends point to new concerns and directions. Though the discussion is not linear, the reader may catch an idea or two between lines. The dialogues are easy to follow and both the introduction and the afterword are useful to understand the particularities of the discussion and the general context in which anthropology is set. Though a common reader may profit from this book, it is rather an academic reading.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Inside This Book
(learn more)
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
