Futures Of The Study Of Culture

How can we approach possible but unknown futures of the study of culture? This volume explores this question in the context of a changing global world. The contributions in this volume discuss the necessity of significant shifts in our conceptual and epistemological frameworks. Taking into account changing institutional research settings, the authors develop pathways to future cultural research, addressing the crucial concerns of the cultural and social worlds themselves. The contributions thereby utilize contact zones within a wide range of disciplines such as cultural anthropology, sociology, cultural history, literary studies, the history of science and bioethics as well as the environmental and medical humanities. Examining emerging inter- and transdisciplinary points of reference, the volume invites scholars in the humanities and social sciences to take part in a conversation about theories, methods, and practices for the future study of culture.

Lawrence Grossberg, one of the most influential figures in cultural studies, assesses the mission of cultural studies as a discipline in the past, present and future

Culture is essential to everything we do and is going to play a very significant role in the world of the future. In spite of this, most of us have only a hazy understanding of culture and do not realize how it will affect individual, institutional, community, national, and international affairs. This volume delves into the domain of culture—both as a concept and as a reality—and proposes a formulation of the world system of the future according to culture's highest and most enduring principles. The author draws on many disciplines—anthropology, sociology, philosophy, cosmology, history, economics, and the arts—to make his case that culture and cultures should be accorded a central position in global development and human affairs in the future.

In Anthropological Futures, Michael M. J. Fischer explores the uses of anthropology as a mode of philosophical inquiry, an evolving academic discipline, and a means for explicating the complex and shifting interweaving of human bonds and social interactions on a global level. Through linked essays, which are both speculative and experimental, Fischer seeks to break new ground for anthropology by illuminating the field’s broad analytical capacity and its attentiveness to emergent cultural systems. Fischer is particularly concerned with cultural anthropology’s interactions with science studies, and throughout the book he investigates how emerging knowledge formations in molecular biology, environmental studies, computer science, and bioengineering are transforming some of anthropology’s key concepts including nature, culture, personhood, and the body. In an essay on culture, he uses the science studies paradigm of “experimental systems” to consider how the social scientific notion of culture has evolved as an analytical tool since the nineteenth century. Charting anthropology’s role in understanding and analyzing the production of knowledge within the sciences since the 1990s, he highlights anthropology’s aptitude for tracing the transnational collaborations and multisited networks that constitute contemporary scientific practice. Fischer investigates changing ideas about cultural inscription on the human body in a world where genetic engineering, robotics, and cybernetics are constantly redefining our understanding of biology. In the final essay, Fischer turns to Kant’s philosophical anthropology to reassess the object of study for contemporary anthropology and to reassert the field’s primacy for answering the largest questions about human beings, societies, culture, and our interactions with the world around us. In Anthropological Futures, Fischer continues to advance what Clifford Geertz, in reviewing Fischer’s earlier book Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice, called “a broad new agenda for cultural description and political critique.”

"Occasionally, a book comes along that towers above others. The World Ahead is such a book. . .. Textor shows how Mead was a generation ahead of almost all her contemporaries in understanding the importance of studying the sociocultural future of learning what is possible, probable, and preferable in order to know how life could and should be made better. . .." - Wendell Bell, Yale University "As protégé and friend of Margaret Mead for the last thirty years of her illustrious life, I welcome Textor's showcase of her various views of the future. Mead was at her best in planning for future generations." - Wilton S. Dillon, Senior Scholar Emeritus, Smithsonian Institute "[Mead] sought to clarify images of the future as they were current and to articulate images that would be preferable. . .. Textor's commentaries connect these papers and articles in a way that establishes 'the future' as a proper central focus in anthropology. . .." - Reed D. Riner, Northern Arizona University "A valuable contribution that shows Mead's broad range of future-oriented interests." - Future Survey Born in the first year of the 20th century, it is fitting that Margaret Mead should have been one of the first anthropologists to use anthropological analysis to study the future course of human civilization. This volume collects, for the first time, her writings on the future of humanity and how humans can shape that future through purposeful action. For Mead, the study of the future was born out of her lifelong interest in processes of change. Many of these papers were originally published as conference proceedings or in limited-circulation journals, testimony before government bodies and chapters in works edited by others. They show Mead's wisdom, prescience and concern for the future of humanity.

Culture is essential to everything we do and is going to play a very significant role in the world of the future. In spite of this, most of us have only a hazy understanding of culture and do not realize how it will affect individual, institutional, community, national, and international affairs. This volume delves into the domain of culture—both as a concept and as a reality—and proposes a formulation of the world system of the future according to culture's highest and most enduring principles. The author draws on many disciplines—anthropology, sociology, philosophy, cosmology, history, economics, and the arts—to make his case that culture and cultures should be accorded a central position in global development and human affairs in the future.

There are now new experiences of space and time; new tensions between globalism and regionalism, socialism and consumerism, reality and spectacle; new instabilities of value, meaning and identity - a dialectic between past and future. How are we to understand these? Mapping the Futures is the first of a series which brings together cultural theorists from different disciplines to assess the implications of economic, political and social change for intellectual inquiry and cultural practice.