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2 books match the query 'Dirks, Nicholas B.'
Colonialism and Culture
Nicholas B. Dirks, Editor
University of Michigan Press, 1992
Colonialism and Culture, edited by Nicholas B. Dirks, is an insightful exploration of the intricate relationship between colonialism and cultural transformation. The book features contributions that reflect how colonialism reshaped cultural identities and expressions across the globe, and how it remains a potent force defining both historical and contemporary landscapes. Drawing on cases from different historical periods and geographic locations, the essays examine how colonial powers imposed and justified their dominance through cultural means—such as transforming local cultures into rigid categories of the "other." The impact of this cultural hegemony extended beyond the local to influence metropolitan societies, altering notions of race, nationality, and power even in the colonizers’ homelands. Essays delve into various aspects such as the role of missionary work in the Philippines, peasant resistance in Southeast Asia, labor practices in colonial Kenya, and the conceptualization of time and development in colonial India. The work encourages a reconsideration of colonialism not just as a historical occurrence but as an active component in the configuration of modern cultural and social institutions. Engaging with the intersection of power and culture, the book challenges readers to rethink traditional narratives of empire and its legacy, offering new insights into the ongoing global implications of colonial structures.
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From the Margins
Historical Anthropology and Its FuturesBrian Keith Axel, ed.
Duke University Press, 2002
Historical anthropology: critical exchange between two decidedly distinct disciplines or innovative mode of knowledge production? As this volume’s title suggests, the essays Brian Keith Axel has gathered in From the Margins seek to challenge the limits of discrete disciplinary epistemologies and conventions, gesturing instead toward a transdisciplinary understanding of the emerging relations between archive and field.
In original articles encompassing a wide range of geographic and temporal locations, eminent scholars contest some of the primary preconceptions of their fields. The contributors tackle such topics as the paradoxical nature of American Civil War monuments, the figure of the “New Christian” in early seventeenth-century Peru, the implications of statistics for ethnography, and contemporary South Africa's “occult economies.” That anthropology and history have their provenance in—and have been complicit with—colonial formations is perhaps commonplace knowledge. But what is rarely examined is the specific manner in which colonial processes imbue and threaten the celebratory ideals of postcolonial reason or the enlightenment of today’s liberal practices in the social sciences and humanities.
By elaborating this critique, From the Margins offers diverse and powerful models that explore the intersections of historically specific local practices with processes of a world historical order. As such, the collection will not only prove valuable reading for anthropologists and historians, but also for scholars in colonial, postcolonial, and globalization studies.
Contributors. Talal Asad, Brian Keith Axel, Bernard S. Cohn, Jean Comaroff, John L. Comaroff, Nicholas B. Dirks, Irene Silverblatt, Paul A. Silverstein, Teri Silvio, Ann Laura Stoler, Michel-Rolph Trouillot
In original articles encompassing a wide range of geographic and temporal locations, eminent scholars contest some of the primary preconceptions of their fields. The contributors tackle such topics as the paradoxical nature of American Civil War monuments, the figure of the “New Christian” in early seventeenth-century Peru, the implications of statistics for ethnography, and contemporary South Africa's “occult economies.” That anthropology and history have their provenance in—and have been complicit with—colonial formations is perhaps commonplace knowledge. But what is rarely examined is the specific manner in which colonial processes imbue and threaten the celebratory ideals of postcolonial reason or the enlightenment of today’s liberal practices in the social sciences and humanities.
By elaborating this critique, From the Margins offers diverse and powerful models that explore the intersections of historically specific local practices with processes of a world historical order. As such, the collection will not only prove valuable reading for anthropologists and historians, but also for scholars in colonial, postcolonial, and globalization studies.
Contributors. Talal Asad, Brian Keith Axel, Bernard S. Cohn, Jean Comaroff, John L. Comaroff, Nicholas B. Dirks, Irene Silverblatt, Paul A. Silverstein, Teri Silvio, Ann Laura Stoler, Michel-Rolph Trouillot
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