Making Sense of the Global: Anthropological Perspectives on Interconnections and Processes

Product Description Anthropology is more relevant than ever before to making sense of the constant intercultural encounters taking place around the world. Even though the discipline was born out of the need to understand the way humans interact, it had for decades been trapped in a counter-cultural stance that effectively disarmed it of any direct influence on public affairs. Recent global trends, however, have brought this academic discipline to the attention of governments, agencies, and social entrepreneurs, because of its capacity to create bridges of understanding between people of contrasting cultures. This ability is today more necessary than ever before in facing the challenges posed by the shrinking of our world. This volume provides reflections on what anthropological research can offer through its 'thick' analyses. We are convinced that ethnographic research can contribute to a better understanding of social phenomena in our global times. Review It was once thought that the discipline of anthropology would fade away with the 'end of empire'. But in recent decades the subject has survived, grown, and attracted increasing attention. British anthropologists, for example, first 'came home' in some numbers to study villages and towns in England, Scotland, France to be joined by a new generation of researchers especially from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe whose work again, at first, focused on home areas as such. But in today s interconnected world, 'home' has changed whether one comes from Aberystwyth or Azerbaijan, Zurich or Zambia. And anthropologists now find themselves alongside historians, political scientists, economists, investors, NGO managers and activists, investigating the links between such places, their projects, and the lives of their people. My own reading of these chapters certainly suggests there is perhaps as much disconnection happening as 'linking up' in the new hi-tech global system; anthropologists, alert as always to the ambiguity of the games that people play, are well placed to spot what may lie behind the promises of global integration. --Wendy James, Institute of Social & Cultural Anthropology, University of OxfordThis book brings together established scholars and researchers at the start of their careers in a volume that is argumentative, engaging and innovative from cover to cover and deserves to be widely read inside and outside anthropology ... the way that the young scholars who have edited this book have provoked such insightful and challenging critical debate on the part of all the contributors certainly bodes well for the future. --John Gledhill, Max Gluckman Professor of Social Anthropology, The University of ManchesterThis book brings together established scholars and researchers at the start of their careers in a volume that is argumentative, engaging and innovative from cover to cover and deserves to be widely read inside and outside anthropology ... the way that the young scholars who have edited this book have provoked such insightful and challenging critical debate on the part of all the contributors certainly bodes well for the future. --John Gledhill, Max Gluckman Professor of Social Anthropology, The University of Manchester About the Author civil society organizations and networks, and socioenvironmentalism. Sadaf Rizvi is a research officer at the Institute of Education, University of London, UK. Her specific areas of interest are the anthropology of education, childhood ethnography, multiculturalism, and social cohesion. Ana Santos is a doctoral student at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA) at the University of Oxford and a teaching fellow in the Ethnography of East Africa at SOAS. Her research focuses on issues of memory, displacement, and social constructions of place and space at an international border.