BiblioVault - Books about Eriksen, Thomas Hylland

Boomtown

Runaway Globalisation on the Queensland Coast

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Pluto Press, 2018

Sitting next to the Great Barrier Reef, steeped in coal and gas, the industrial boomtown of Gladstone, Australia embodies many of the contradictions of the “overheated” world: prosperous yet polluted, growing and developing, yet always on the precipice of crisis.
Capturing Gladstone at the peak of its accelerated growth in 2013–14, Thomas Hylland Eriksen dissects here the boomtown phenomenon in all its profound ambivalence. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the book examines local identity, family life, infrastructure, and local services and explores the tensions and resentments surrounding migrant workers.
Writ large in Boomtown are the clashes of scale at the heart of the town’s contradictions, where the logic of big industry and the state compete with those of the individual and the local community and ecology, crystallizing the current crisis of political legitimacy that is unfurling all over the world.

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Climate, Capitalism and Communities

An Anthropology of Environmental Overheating

Astrid B. Stensrud

Pluto Press, 2019

Until now, the growing body of work on environmental anthropology has largely ignored the unavoidable impact of global capitalism on the environment and the extent to which capital itself is a key driver of climate change. Climate, Capitalism and Communities focuses explicitly on that nexus, examining the injustices and inequalities - as well as the activist responses - that have arisen as a result, and the contradictions between the imperatives of exponential economic growth, and those of environmental sustainability, and society as a whole. Bringing an innovative, ethnographic toolkit to bear on a crisis that is at once global and highly localised, the authors shift attention away from the consequences of climate change, to a focus on the social relations and power structures that continue to prevent effective action.

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Ethnicity and Nationalism

Anthropological Perspectives

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Pluto Press, 2010

Ethnicity and nationalism are pervasive features of the contemporary world, but how far is ethnicity a result of cultural differences, and how much is it in fact dependent on the practical use of, and belief in, such differences? In this book, Thomas Hylland Eriksen demonstrates that far from being an immutable property of groups, ethnicity is a dynamic and shifting aspect of social relationships. Drawing on a wide range of classic and recent studies in anthropology and sociology, Eriksen examines the relationship between ethnicity, class, gender and nationhood and more in a lucid and comprehensive manner.

A core text for all students of social anthropology and related subjects, Ethnicity and Nationalism has been a leading introduction to the field since its original publication in 1993. This new edition - expanded and thoroughly revised - is indispensable to anyone seriously interested in understanding ethnic phenomena. New topics covered include cultural property rights, the role of genetics in the public understanding of identification, commercialisation of identity, and the significance of the internet.

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Fredrik Barth

An Intellectual Biography

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Pluto Press, 2015

Fredrik Barth, editor of the influential Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, is one of the towering figures of twentieth-century anthropology. In this accessible but penetrating intellectual biography, Thomas Hylland Eriksen explores Barth’s six-decade career, following Barth from his early ecological studies in Pakistan to political studies in Iran, to groundbreaking fieldwork in Norway, New Guinea, Bali, and Bhutan. Along the way, Eriksen raises many of the questions that emerge from Barth’s own work: questions of unity and diversity, of culture and relativism, and of art and science. This will surely be the definitive biography of Barth for many years to come.

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Globalisation

Studies in Anthropology

Edited by Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Pluto Press, 2003

A History of Anthropology

Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Finn Sivert Nielsen

Pluto Press, 2013

This is a thoroughly updated and revised edition of a popular classic of modern anthropology. The authors provide summaries of ‘Enlightenment’, ‘Romantic’ and ‘Victorian’ anthropology, from the cultural theories of Morgan and Taylor to the often neglected contributions of German scholars. The ambiguous relationship between anthropology and national cultures is also considered.

The book provides an unparalleled account of theoretical developments in anthropology from the 1920s to the present, including functionalism, structuralism, hermeneutics, neo-Marxism and discourse analysis. There are brief biographies of major anthropologists and coverage of key debates including totemism, kinship and globalisation.

This essential text on anthropology is highly engaging, authoritative and suitable for students at all levels.

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Mining Encounters

Extractive Industries in an Overheated World

Edited by Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Robert J. Pijpers

Pluto Press, 2018

We live in a fast-changing world, where the extraction of natural resources is both the key to development and at the same times is a source of environmental and social disasters. Understanding how landscapes, people, and politics are shaped by the mining industries in today’s world is crucial.
Mining Encounters paints a broad picture, looking at resource extraction in numerous locations at different stages of development—covering coal, natural gas, gold, and cement mining in North, West, and South Africa, as well as in India, Kazakhstan, and Australia. The chapters answer key questions: How does mining transform the physical landscape? What are the value systems underlying the world’s mining industries? And how does the process of extracting resources determine which stakeholders become dominant and which marginalized?
Uncovering the tensions, negotiations, and disparities among different actors in the extractive industries, Mining Encounters will make a vital contribution to policy debates moving forward.

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Overheating

An Anthropology of Accelerated Change

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Pluto Press, 2016

We live in a time of global crisis—or, more appropriately, crises: overlapping, interlocking global problems that are inextricably tied to modernity. Overheating offers a groundbreaking new way of looking at the problems of the Anthropocene, exploring crises of the environment, economy, and identity through an anthropological lens. Thomas Hylland Eriksen argues that while each of these crises is global in scope, they are nonetheless perceived and responded to locally—and that once we realize that, we begin to see the contradictions that abound between the standardizing forces of global capitalism and the socially embedded nature of people and local practices. Only by acknowledging the primacy of the local, Eriksen shows, can we begin to even properly understand, let alone address, these problems on a global scale.

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Small Places, Large Issues

An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Pluto Press, 2015

This concise introduction to social and cultural anthropology has become a modern classic, introducing countless students to the field and the tools it offers for exploring some of the most complicated questions of human life and interaction. This fourth edition is fully updated, incorporating recent debates and controversies in the field, ranging from globalization and migration research to problems of cultural translation and the challenges of interdisciplinarity. Effortlessly bridging the gap between classic and contemporary anthropology, Small Places, Large Issues remains an essential text for undergraduates embarking on the study of this field.

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Tyranny of the Moment

Fast and Slow Time in the Information Age

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Pluto Press, 2001

What Is Anthropology?

Second Edition

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Pluto Press, 2017

When it was first published, What Is Anthropology? immediately ignited the discipline, proving how anthropology can be a revolutionary way of thinking about the modern human world. In this fully updated second edition, Thomas Hylland Eriksen brings together examples from current events as well as within anthropological research in order to explain how to see the world from below and from within—emphasizing the importance of adopting an insider's perspective.

The first section of the book presents the history of anthropology, and the second discusses core issues in greater detail, covering economics, morals, human nature, ecology, cultural relativism, and much more. Throughout, he reveals how seemingly enormous cultural differences actually conceal the deep unity of humanity. Perfect not only for students, but also for those who have never encountered anthropology before, What is Anthropology? presents the discipline in an exciting and innovative way.

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