Exotics at Home: Anthropologies, Others, and American Modernity (Women in Culture and Society) [Paperback]

Micaela di Leonardo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 16, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0226472647 | ISBN-13: 978-0226472645 | Edition: 1

In this pathbreaking study, Micaela di Leonardo reveals the face of power within the mask of cultural difference. From the 1893 World's Fair to Body Shop advertisements, di Leonardo focuses on the intimate and shifting relations between popular portrayals of exotic Others and the practice of anthropology. In so doing, she casts new light on gender, race, and the public sphere in America's past and present.

"An impressive work of scholarship that is mordantly witty, passionately argued, and takes no prisoners."—Lesley Gill, News Politics

"[Micaela] di Leonardo eloquently argues for the importance of empirical, interdisciplinary social science in addressing the tragedy that is urban America at the end of the century."—Jonathan Spencer, Times Literary Supplement

"In her quirky new contribution to the American culture brawl, feminist anthropologist Micaela di Leonardo explains how anthropologists, 'technicians of the sacred,' have distorted American popular debate and social life."—Rachel Mattson, Voice Literary Supplement

"At the end of di Leonardo's analyses one is struck by her rare combination of rigor and passion. Simply, [she] is a marvelous iconoclast."—Matthew T. McGuire, Boston Book Review

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The title refers simultaneously to American anthropologists and the domestic subjects they most often study: ethnic minorities and women. As evidenced by new retail chains such as Anthropologie, the public and the media often perceive anthropologists as what the author refers to as "guardians of the offbeat." Similarly, women and minorities are often viewed both by anthropologists and the public as "temporally distant" primitives. In this work, di Leonardo (anthropology and women's studies, Northwestern Univ.) presents an in-depth, fascinating history of the changing political context and public personae of American anthropology. Unlike recent histories such as Curtis Hinsley's Savages and Scientists (Smithsonian Institution, 1981), which focuses on anthropology's changing theoretical paradigms, di Leonardo concerns herself with how anthropologists are perceived by the public and portrayed by the media. Although written in sometimes cryptic academic language, this is an engaging study. Recommended for large public libraries with strong social science departments and academic anthropology collections.?Jim Woodman, Boston Athenaeum
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (March 16, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226472647
• ISBN-13: 978-0226472645
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,026,987 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars US popular culture suffers from its own exotic imagination, November 27, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Exotics at Home: Anthropologies, Others, and American Modernity (Women in Culture and Society Series) (Hardcover)

In this savvy book about American culture, anthropologist di Leonardo dissects the foibles of our "exotic" sensibility--that is, the ways in which we so pleasurably work to define others as different from ourselves. Employing such disparate evidence as Gary Larson cartoons, shops that trade in so-called ethnic goods, fortune tellers, and popular notions of gender, di Leonardo also critiques the role that American anthropologists from Margaret Mead to Clifford Geertz and the popular press have played in promoting the cultural myth of "difference" which ultimately serves to separate us all, one from the other. di Leonardo's meditation on Margaret Mead alone is worth the cost of admission, but be assured the book is about so much more as it takes the entire discipline of anthropology to task. It's about time we had a smart, complex book like this that serves as a cultural reckoning. Makes Torgovnick's "Gone Primitive" look like a first-grade primer.

2 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Rambles on without any real point, June 26, 2006

By 

Maria Gonzalez (L.A.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Exotics at Home: Anthropologies, Others, and American Modernity (Women in Culture and Society) (Paperback)

This book seems too cute by half. Its postmodern pretensions made reading it a chore and I made the mistake of hoping that di Leonardo was going to try and make some specific point rather than just treat the entire book as if it were some rambling conversation at a dinner party.