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Product: Book
ISBN-10: 0-674-77960-6
ISBN-13: 9780674779600
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Country:
Year: April 21, 1997
Size: 16.66 x 23.95 x 2.87cm
Number of pages: 416
Weight: 739gr
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN-10: 0-674-77960-6
ISBN-13: 9780674779600
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Country:
Year: April 21, 1997
Size: 16.66 x 23.95 x 2.87cm
Number of pages: 416
Weight: 739gr
Binding: Hardcover
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James Clifford
Harvard University Press; 1997
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Product Description
When culture makes itself at home in motion, where does an anthropologist stand? In a follow-up to The Predicament of Culture, one of the defining books for anthropology in the last decade, James Clifford offers a new view of anthropology. It is, he says, a moving picture of a world that reveals itself en route, in the airport lounge and the parking lot as much as in the marketplace and the museum. In this collage of essays, meditations, poems, and travel reports, Clifford takes travel and its difficult companion--translation--as openings into a complex modernity.
When culture makes itself at home in motion, where does an anthropologist stand? In a follow-up to The Predicament of Culture, one of the defining books for anthropology in the last decade, James Clifford offers a new view of anthropology. It is, he says, a moving picture of a world that reveals itself en route, in the airport lounge and the parking lot as much as in the marketplace and the museum. In this collage of essays, meditations, poems, and travel reports, Clifford takes travel and its difficult companion--translation--as openings into a complex modernity.
Amazon.com Review
Early on in Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, James Clifford describes his new approach to studying cultures: »Where professional anthropology has erected a border, I portray a borderland, a zone of contacts--blocked and permitted, policed and transgressive.« In the not-too-distant past, anthropologists traveled to remote areas and observed cultures that they assumed were not influenced much by the outside world. Clifford points out that since there is no such thing as an isolated culture today, the tools and assumptions of anthropology must change to suit the hybrid and fluid cultures that currently populate the world. In this book, Clifford examines a series of places where culture is in transition--places he calls »borderlands.« He visits a few art museums, some Mayan ruins, and the New York subway. Everywhere he goes, he finds cultures colliding and changing. That's not terribly surprising, but his interpretation of these otherwise banal places is thought-provoking.
Early on in Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, James Clifford describes his new approach to studying cultures: »Where professional anthropology has erected a border, I portray a borderland, a zone of contacts--blocked and permitted, policed and transgressive.« In the not-too-distant past, anthropologists traveled to remote areas and observed cultures that they assumed were not influenced much by the outside world. Clifford points out that since there is no such thing as an isolated culture today, the tools and assumptions of anthropology must change to suit the hybrid and fluid cultures that currently populate the world. In this book, Clifford examines a series of places where culture is in transition--places he calls »borderlands.« He visits a few art museums, some Mayan ruins, and the New York subway. Everywhere he goes, he finds cultures colliding and changing. That's not terribly surprising, but his interpretation of these otherwise banal places is thought-provoking.
This book is a grab bag: a collection of academic lectures, travel-journal entries, meditations on history, and impressionistic recollections. In the chapter entitled »White Ethnicity,« Clifford interweaves his memories of a subway ride across New York City several decades ago with paragraphs from an Audre Lourde essay on identity politics and paragraphs from John Wesley Powell's account of his exploration of the Colorado River. In less capable hands, this format could be quite muddled and confusing, but Clifford pulls it off nicely. Clifford uses these three »travel« narratives to explore the major concerns of this collection. Routes is an accessible, innovative guide to one of the major issues anthropologists are grappling with today. --Jill Marquis
reviews
An Anthropology for Postmodern Times 
I really had a hard time conceptualizing my own ethnographic research in sociology concerning a non-federally recognized Native American community in South Carolina (now a book: Native Americans in the Carolina Borderlands: A Critical Ethnography, Carolinas Press, 2000). The lights came on after reading the Predicament of Cultures by Clifford. His theme of »Borderlands« is so central to the experience of many cultures around the globe--including our own! To understand how people occupy and contend with borderzones between races, classes, cultures, and histories, turn to Clifford's work. His work is essential for the social analyst because we, all of us, are increasingly living within borderlands and, thus, the need for new conceptualizations of the nature of the social/cultural. Clifford is one of the leading figures within the growing movement toward new, critical, and alternative forms of ethnography. Routes is about travel and how we might conceptualize culture when it is »put into motion.« A must-read for all ethnographers, as well as those concerned with postmodernity and postcolonialism.
I really had a hard time conceptualizing my own ethnographic research in sociology concerning a non-federally recognized Native American community in South Carolina (now a book: Native Americans in the Carolina Borderlands: A Critical Ethnography, Carolinas Press, 2000). The lights came on after reading the Predicament of Cultures by Clifford. His theme of »Borderlands« is so central to the experience of many cultures around the globe--including our own! To understand how people occupy and contend with borderzones between races, classes, cultures, and histories, turn to Clifford's work. His work is essential for the social analyst because we, all of us, are increasingly living within borderlands and, thus, the need for new conceptualizations of the nature of the social/cultural. Clifford is one of the leading figures within the growing movement toward new, critical, and alternative forms of ethnography. Routes is about travel and how we might conceptualize culture when it is »put into motion.« A must-read for all ethnographers, as well as those concerned with postmodernity and postcolonialism.
Roots/routes of transnational belonging explored.
The roote/routes of transnational (as well as local) belonging are explored in all their full global/local complexity and poetics. Probing and interesting at many points. I use one of the poems/essays/travelogues, »Honolulu: The Year of the Ram« in my course on the literatures of Hawai'i, as it gives a tourist view of Hawaii and moves way beyond that in its critique of US militarism and the arrogant masculinist gaze of »anthropology.« Clifford is, for me, a kind of global and local poet of the postcolonial condition, an honest and caring soul in the muck.
The roote/routes of transnational (as well as local) belonging are explored in all their full global/local complexity and poetics. Probing and interesting at many points. I use one of the poems/essays/travelogues, »Honolulu: The Year of the Ram« in my course on the literatures of Hawai'i, as it gives a tourist view of Hawaii and moves way beyond that in its critique of US militarism and the arrogant masculinist gaze of »anthropology.« Clifford is, for me, a kind of global and local poet of the postcolonial condition, an honest and caring soul in the muck.
keywords
- Anthropology
- Anthropology|Cultural
- Anthropology|General
- Cultural And Social Anthropology
- Ethnology
- Field work
- Fieldwork
- Human Geography
- Philosophy
- Social Science
- Social Science|Anthropology|Cultural
- Social Science|Anthropology|General
- Social Science|Ethnology
- Sociology
- Sociology & Anthropology: Professional
- Travel
- Travel writing
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