Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa (Paperback)

by Charles Piot (Author) "This study is an attempt to retheorize a classic out-of-the-way place (Tsing 1993)-a society in the savanna region of West Africa where Meyer Fortes, Jack..." (more)
Key Phrases: male moiety, northern massif, descent theorists, West Africa, Jack Goody, Peace Corps (more...)

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At first glance, the remote villages of the Kabre people of northern Togo appear to have all the trappings of a classic "out of the way" African culture—subsistence farming, straw-roofed houses, and rituals to the spirits and ancestors. Arguing that village life is in fact an effect of the modern and the global, Charles Piot suggests that Kabre culture is shaped as much by colonial and postcolonial history as by anything "indigenous" or local. Through analyses of everyday and ceremonial social practices, Piot illustrates the intertwining of modernity with tradition and of the local with the national and global. In a striking example of the appropriation of tradition by the state, Togo's Kabre president regularly flies to the region in his helicopter to witness male initiation ceremonies.

Confounding both anthropological theorizations and the State Department's stereotyped images of African village life, Remotely Global aims to rethink Euroamerican theories that fail to come to terms with the fluidity of everyday relations in a society where persons and things are forever in motion.

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Product Details Paperback: 238 pages Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (October 15, 1999) Language: English ISBN-10: 0226669696 ISBN-13: 978-0226669694 Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies) Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews) Amazon.com Sales Rank: #558,229 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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First Sentence:
This study is an attempt to retheorize a classic out-of-the-way place (Tsing 1993)-a society in the savanna region of West Africa where Meyer Fortes, Jack Goody, and Marcel Griaule conducted their ethnographic research. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
male moiety, northern massif, descent theorists, calendrical ceremonies, southern massif, seed yams, bush communities, red palm oil, male initiates

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
West Africa, Jack Goody, Peace Corps, State Department

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

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Citations (learn more)

This book cites 100 books:

• African Political Systems by FORTES in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
• Beyond the Second Sex: New Directions in the Anthropology of Gender by Peggy Reeves Sanday in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
• The Developmental Cycle in Domestic Groups (Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology) by Jack Goody in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
• Technology, Tradition and the State in Africa by Jack Goody in Back Matter
• The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism by Ashis Nandy in Back Matter

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45 books cite this book:

• Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies by Bruce M. Knauft on page 52, page 80, and page 192
• Strange Sounds: Music, Technology and Culture by Timothy Taylor in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
• Tongnaab: The History of a West African God by Jean Allman in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
• Africa's Armies: From Honor to Infamy--A History from 1791 to the Present by Robert Edgerton in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
• Female Circumcision: Multicultural Perspectives (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights) by Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)

See all 45 books citing this book

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2 Reviews 5 star:  (1) 4 star:    (0) 3 star:  (1) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 4.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews 9 of 12 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars A new "take" on the history of colonization in West Africa., March 4, 2000 By  Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews The thesis of Remotely Global is complex yet condensed: current Kabre culture, a classic remote African people of Northern Togo, illustrates a specific melding of influences both modern and traditional, global and local that is clearly driven by the desire to imitate or usurp the powers of the colonizers. "As should be amply clear by now, the Kabre world is one of promiscuous mixing, in which sacrifice and MTV, rainmakers and civil servants, fetishists and catechists exist side by side and coauthor an uncontainable hybrid cultural landscape...They (the Kabre) are as at home in the world of so-called tradition as in that of the modern, and see the mixture of the two not only as unproblematic but also as desirable...An empty signifier whose content is forever shifting, modernity itself is not only intrinsically impure and hopelessly hybridized, but also incorrigibly plural and forever incomplete." (page 178) Remotely Global has a refreshing, astringent tone. It is clearly written with rich detail. As an ethnographer's outlook, it provides a new 'take' on the process of colonization and offers much to challenge or complete the common Western viewpoint of colonial civilization. 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful: 3.0 out of 5 stars Interstices of the traditional and the modern, March 7, 2009 By  Valter Cvijic (Slovenia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    Piot's book is a work of ethnographic mastery. The author shows how we can think gift economies, translocalities, ritual, commodities, gender, etc. in terms of dynamic interplay in which traditional societies are not passive absorbers of colonial power, but rather inform their own cultural categories by appropriating the colonial. Piot here exposes the error of seeing traditional societies as ahistorical, static societies, when they are actually as much modern as traditional; societies which dynamically communicate with the 'outside'. Piot's reflexivity in writing is stimulating as it rejects the Western analytical gaze, informed by individualization, essentialization and all too often seeking for mechanical solidarity.		Ad feedback   Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews

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Product Details

• Paperback: 238 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (October 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226669696
• ISBN-13: 978-0226669694
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #558,229 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new "take" on the history of colonization in West Africa., March 4, 2000

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

The thesis of Remotely Global is complex yet condensed: current Kabre culture, a classic remote African people of Northern Togo, illustrates a specific melding of influences both modern and traditional, global and local that is clearly driven by the desire to imitate or usurp the powers of the colonizers.

"As should be amply clear by now, the Kabre world is one of promiscuous mixing, in which sacrifice and MTV, rainmakers and civil servants, fetishists and catechists exist side by side and coauthor an uncontainable hybrid cultural landscape...They (the Kabre) are as at home in the world of so-called tradition as in that of the modern, and see the mixture of the two not only as unproblematic but also as desirable...An empty signifier whose content is forever shifting, modernity itself is not only intrinsically impure and hopelessly hybridized, but also incorrigibly plural and forever incomplete." (page 178)

Remotely Global has a refreshing, astringent tone. It is clearly written with rich detail. As an ethnographer's outlook, it provides a new 'take' on the process of colonization and offers much to challenge or complete the common Western viewpoint of colonial civilization.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interstices of the traditional and the modern, March 7, 2009

By	Valter Cvijic (Slovenia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Piot's book is a work of ethnographic mastery.

The author shows how we can think gift economies, translocalities, ritual, commodities, gender, etc. in terms of dynamic interplay in which traditional societies are not passive absorbers of colonial power, but rather inform their own cultural categories by appropriating the colonial.

Piot here exposes the error of seeing traditional societies as ahistorical, static societies, when they are actually as much modern as traditional; societies which dynamically communicate with the 'outside'.

Piot's reflexivity in writing is stimulating as it rejects the Western analytical gaze, informed by individualization, essentialization and all too often seeking for mechanical solidarity.