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Exotic No More: Anthropology on the Front Lines
Since its founding in the nineteenth century, social anthropology has been seen as the study of exotic peoples in faraway places. But today more and more anthropologists are dedicating themselves not just to observing but to understanding and helping solve social problems wherever they occur—in international aid organizations, British TV studios, American hospitals, or racist enclaves in Eastern Europe, for example.
In Exotic No More, an initiative of the Royal Anthropological Institute, some of today's most respected anthropologists demonstrate, in clear, unpretentious prose, the tremendous contributions that anthropology can make to contemporary society. They cover issues ranging from fundamentalism to forced migration, child labor to crack dealing, human rights to hunger, ethnicity to environmentalism, intellectual property rights to international capitalisms. But Exotic No More is more than a litany of gloom and doom; the essays also explore topics usually associated with leisure or "high" culture, including the media, visual arts, tourism, and music. Each author uses specific examples from their fieldwork to illustrate their discussions, and 62 photographs enliven the text.
Throughout the book, the contributors highlight anthropology's commitment to taking people seriously on their own terms, paying close attention to what they are saying and doing, and trying to understand how they see the world and why. Sometimes this bottom-up perspective makes the strange familiar, but it can also make the familiar strange, exposing the cultural basis of seemingly "natural" behaviors and challenging us to rethink some of our most cherished ideas—about gender, "free" markets, "race," and "refugees," among many others.
William O. Beeman
Philippe Bourgois
John Chernoff
E. Valentine Daniel
Alex de Waal
Judith Ennew
James Fairhead
Sarah Franklin
Michael Gilsenan
Faye Ginsburg
Alma Gottlieb
Christopher Hann
Faye V. Harrison
Richard Jenkins
Melissa Leach
Margaret Lock
Jeremy MacClancy
Jonathan Mazower
Ellen Messer
A. David Napier
Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Jane Schneider
Parker Shipton
Christopher B. Steiner
In Exotic No More, an initiative of the Royal Anthropological Institute, some of today's most respected anthropologists demonstrate, in clear, unpretentious prose, the tremendous contributions that anthropology can make to contemporary society. They cover issues ranging from fundamentalism to forced migration, child labor to crack dealing, human rights to hunger, ethnicity to environmentalism, intellectual property rights to international capitalisms. But Exotic No More is more than a litany of gloom and doom; the essays also explore topics usually associated with leisure or "high" culture, including the media, visual arts, tourism, and music. Each author uses specific examples from their fieldwork to illustrate their discussions, and 62 photographs enliven the text.
Throughout the book, the contributors highlight anthropology's commitment to taking people seriously on their own terms, paying close attention to what they are saying and doing, and trying to understand how they see the world and why. Sometimes this bottom-up perspective makes the strange familiar, but it can also make the familiar strange, exposing the cultural basis of seemingly "natural" behaviors and challenging us to rethink some of our most cherished ideas—about gender, "free" markets, "race," and "refugees," among many others.
William O. Beeman
Philippe Bourgois
John Chernoff
E. Valentine Daniel
Alex de Waal
Judith Ennew
James Fairhead
Sarah Franklin
Michael Gilsenan
Faye Ginsburg
Alma Gottlieb
Christopher Hann
Faye V. Harrison
Richard Jenkins
Melissa Leach
Margaret Lock
Jeremy MacClancy
Jonathan Mazower
Ellen Messer
A. David Napier
Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Jane Schneider
Parker Shipton
Christopher B. Steiner
464 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 12, 2010
The authors are in love with the nobel savages.
a collection of uninformed essays, lacking worldview, a background in colonialism, economics, politics, or anything that this book covers. non-academic, packed full of unbacked and unjustified opinions, assumptions, and pseudo-racist earnestly gushing ideas like "wow, i just loooove how indigenous people can know things about their environments without white people or science having told them."
actually, if you're racist, and it's just occurring to you now that this might be a stupid standpoint, this book will probably help to ease you away from your beliefs. for the rest of us, the surprise in the authors' voices makes makes me want to rip this book up.
this book is sexist and xenophobic. it alienates and infantilizes indigenous people and depicts them as sensationalist novelties.
it lists "homosexual prostitution" as a separate negative effect of tourism, in addition to "prostitution".
god that's magic.
a collection of uninformed essays, lacking worldview, a background in colonialism, economics, politics, or anything that this book covers. non-academic, packed full of unbacked and unjustified opinions, assumptions, and pseudo-racist earnestly gushing ideas like "wow, i just loooove how indigenous people can know things about their environments without white people or science having told them."
actually, if you're racist, and it's just occurring to you now that this might be a stupid standpoint, this book will probably help to ease you away from your beliefs. for the rest of us, the surprise in the authors' voices makes makes me want to rip this book up.
this book is sexist and xenophobic. it alienates and infantilizes indigenous people and depicts them as sensationalist novelties.
it lists "homosexual prostitution" as a separate negative effect of tourism, in addition to "prostitution".
god that's magic.
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August 15, 2013301 E9642 2002
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews