Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This book is a collection of the most exciting work being done in sociocultural anthropology and the social sciences more broadly. The innovation of this ethnographic research is that the authors examine their topics through very technical analyses, finding the ethical dimensions, often through expert interlocutors. A key premise of Global Assemblages is that epistemology (how to know) and ethics (how to act) are inextricably linked, a stance most academic disciplines currently reject.
We find that what are often portrayed as merely academic or philosophical debates (debates on objectivity versus social constructivism or the value of anecdotal evidence versus quantitative evidence, for example) are actually problems that people outside academia such as accountants, bandits, Alan Greenspan (or any other head of the Federal Reserve is), and securities traders face and find solutions to, sometimes on a daily basis.
The essays that stand out to me as the most interesting and groundbreaking are the ones by Bill Maurer on accounting, Janet Roitman on banditry, and Caitlin Zaloom on futures trading.
If you are a student in sociocultural anthropology this book is a must. It is also valuable for people from other disciplines who want to be part of the most exciting shift in the social sciences. Perhaps the best introduction to contemporary anthropology and ethnography is Anthropology as Cultural Critique by George Marcus and Michael M. J. Fischer, which is more accessible to most audiences because it was written with undergraduates in mind. Global Assemblages on the other hand may require more careful reading. Other important recent texts have been written by Paul Rabinow, Anna Tsing, George Marcus, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, among others.
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Provides an exciting approach to some of the most contentious issues in discussions around globalization—bioscientific research, neoliberalism, governance—from the perspective of the "anthropological" problems they pose; in other words, in terms of their implications for how individual and collective life is subject to technological, political, and ethical reflection and intervention.
Offers a ground-breaking approach to central debates about globalization with chapters written by leading scholars from across the social sciences.
Examines a range of phenomena that articulate broad structural transformations: technoscience, circuits of exchange, systems of governance, and regimes of ethics or values.
Investigates these phenomena from the perspective of the "anthropological" problems they pose.
Covers a broad range of geographical areas: Africa, the Middle East, East and South Asia, North America, South America, and Europe.
Grapples with a number of empirical problems of popular and academic interest — from the organ trade, to accountancy, to pharmaceutical research, to neoliberal reform.
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