The World Multiple: The Quotidian Politics of Knowing and Generating Entangled Worlds

Routledge Advances in Sociology

by Kei'ichi Omura (Editor), Keiichi Ōmura (Editor), Shiho Satsuka (Editor)

The World Multiple , as a collection, is an ambitious ethnographic experiment in understanding how the world is experienced and generated in multiple ways through people’s everyday practices. Against the dominant assumption that the world is a single universal reality that can only be known by modern expert science, this book argues that worlds are worlded―they are socially and materially crafted in multiple forms in everyday practices involving humans, landscapes, animals, plants, fungi, rocks, and other beings. These practices do not converge to a singular knowledge of the world, but generate a world multiple―a world that is more than one integrated whole, yet less than many fragmented parts. The book brings together authors from Europe, Japan, and North America, in conversation with ethnographic material from Africa, the Americas, and Asia, in order to explore the possibilities of the world multiple to reveal new ways to intervene in the legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism that inflict damage on humans and nonhumans. The contributors show how the world is formed through interactions among techno-scientific, vernacular, local, and indigenous practices, and examine the new forms of politics that emerge out of them. Engaged with recent anthropological discussions of ontologies, the Anthropocene, and multi-species ethnography, the book addresses the multidimensional realities of people’s lives and the quotidian politics they entail.

278 pages, Hardcover

Published November 6, 2018

Reviews

[Gabby R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for anyone in anthropology and philosophy looking to read more work on cosmopolitics, ontology, and multispecies relationships. The thread of Mol’s body multiple and quotidian practices connects well throughout the edited volume. In particular, I enjoyed the chapters by Swanson, Satsuka, and Tsing.