Why America S Top Pundits Are Wrong

In this fresh, literate, and biting critique of current thinking on some of today's most important and controversial topics, leading anthropologists take on some of America's top pundits. This absorbing collection of essays subjects such popular commentators as Thomas Friedman, Samuel Huntington, Robert Kaplan, and Dinesh D'Souza to cold, hard scrutiny and finds that their writing is often misleadingly simplistic, culturally ill-informed, and politically dangerous. Mixing critical reflection with insights from their own fieldwork, twelve distinguished anthropologists respond by offering fresh perspectives on globalization, ethnic violence, social justice, and the biological roots of behavior. They take on such topics as the collapse of Yugoslavia, the consumer practices of the American poor, American foreign policy in the Balkans, and contemporary debates over race, welfare, and violence against women. In the clear, vigorous prose of the pundits themselves, these contributors reveal the hollowness of what often passes as prevailing wisdom and passionately demonstrate the need for a humanistically complex and democratic understanding of the contemporary world. Available: November 2004 Pub Date: January 2005

This absorbing collection of essays subjects such popular commentators as Thomas Friedman, Samuel Huntington, Robert Kaplan, and Dinesh D'Souza to cold, hard scrutiny and finds that their writing is often misleadingly simplistic, culturally ill-informed, and politically dangerous. Mixing critical reflection with insights from their own fieldwork, twelve distinguished anthropologists respond by offering fresh perspectives on globalization, ethnic violence, social justice, and the biological roots of behavior. They take on such topics as the collapse of Yugoslavia, the consumer practices of the American poor, American foreign policy in the Balkans, and contemporary debates over race, welfare, and violence against women. In the clear, vigorous prose of the pundits themselves, these contributors reveal the hollowness of what often passes as prevailing wisdom and passionately demonstrate the need for a humanistically complex and democratic understanding of the contemporary world.

Contains papers presented at a conference, entitled 'Cutting Edge Theories and Recent Developments in Conflict Resolution'. This work explores some of the major themes of conflict analysis, including how dominant discourses can soothe and exacerbate conflict, and the importance of a structural understanding of ethnocentrism and racism.

This edited collection addresses a growing concern in Europe and the United States about the future of the European Union, democratic institutions, and democracy itself. The current success of right-wing parties—marked by the adoption of extremist nationalistic rhetoric aimed to incite fear of the “other” and the use of authoritarian policies when attaining the majority—is putting pressure on basic human rights and the rule of law. Eight sociocultural anthropologists, working in England, Northern Ireland, Italy, France, Poland, Germany, Hungary and the United States use varying methodological and theoretical approaches to inspect a number of such parties and their supporters, while assessing the underpinnings of current right-wing successes in what has heretofore been a recurring post-war cycle. The research collected in Cycles of Hatred and Rage supports the validity of the above concerns, and it ultimately suggests that in the current battle between democratic globalists and authoritarian nationalists, the outcome is far from clear.

This book explores the aporias of liberal democracy, freedom, care, and justice--with the seemingly at-odds ideas of neoliberal fascism, racism, sexism, and other forms of violence. As Derrick Bell and others have argued that racism is inherent in US democracy, I examine the intertwined concepts of justice and freedom with fascist ideas that unsettle democratic practices of freedom and political equality. There is ongoing tension that uproots democratic practices driven by the very ideals of democracy itself. Freedom is acquired for one group while circumscribing it for others. In analyzing the troubling neoliberal fascist leanings of our times, I explore the origins of US liberalism to diagnose our current state of politico-theological abyss. In that regard, our own field of pastoral care needs to address its complicity in the current devolving situation of the neoliberal fascist ideologies in US society. Fascist and nationalist ideologies rely foremost on perpetuating mythic ideologies, masking reality, and controlling our epistemologies. In charting a new genealogy for spiritual care, I argue that the image of care as articulated by W. E. B. DuBois--one of Third World liberation that addresses the decoloniality of the entombed soul--should be the primary genealogy of spiritual care for our field today.

This book is a compilation from various sources and, is An experimental approach to list the Anthropologists in this world, by reading this book readers may get awareness on field of anthropology and the scope and the limits, however its just a small part .i.e.ONLY VOLUME - 01 of the book. 2nd volume is under editing.

Today's world is shaped by an obsession with cultural difference that penetrates everyday life and matters of state in unprecedented ways. Culture and cultural difference are commonly used to explain everything that's in the news - from wars to economic development and consumer behavior. This fuels the belief that our world is shaped by clashing cultures, a view that is counterproductive when it assumes falsely that culture is a timeless container that traps nations and ethnic groups. Seeing Culture Everywhere challenges the misguided and dangerous global obsession with cultural difference and directly critiques the popular notion that world affairs are determined by essential civilizations with immutable and conflicting cultures. The book offers an alternative view of a world in which cultural mixing, not isolation, is the norm, but where several historical trends have come together at the beginning of the twenty-first century to produce the current wave of "culture think." Brimming with concrete examples that move from genocide in Rwanda to schools in Berlin, from the Chrysler boardroom to the war in Iraq, it contemplates how ethnic identity can be mobilized in the service of all kinds of goals - violent or nonviolent, laudable or despicable - and the unintended effects such mobilization invariably produces. The authors suggest ways to remain sensitive to the cultural impacts of policies and decisions without falling into the traps of determinism, essentialism, and misrepresentation. Seeing Culture Everywhere will be useful in the fields of anthropology, law, intercultural communication, and international relations, as well as for general readers interested in ethnicity and travel.

A number of the greatest classics (both old and modern) of English literature, extending from Antony and Cleopatra to A Passage to India, contain a sympathetic portrayal of the East, which connects them to each other in a way that justifies the term «literary orientalism». Literary Orientalism, Postcolonialism, and Universalism describes this clearly discernable tradition and examines certain key texts of oriental literature for the strong impact that they have had on English literature and for the striking manner in which they have been absorbed and appropriated into British culture. The Arabian Nights stands foremost among these works, which include the Maqamat, Ibn Tufayl's Hayy Bin Yaqdhan, as well as the oriental sources of courtly love. Literary Orientalism, Postcolonialism, and Universalism then moves from literary orientalism to a discussion of postcolonialism and postcolonial discourse. It argues, principally, that the time has come to go beyond orientalism and postcolonialism to a more universalist approach. The inadequacies of the term «postcolonial», in particular, and the Eurocentric and Westernist perspective it implies, affirm the need for a renewed, modern form of humanism, a new humanist universalism.