The history of anthropology is, to a large extent, the history of differing modes of interpretation.As anthropologists have long known, examining, analyzing and recording cultures in the quest to understand humankind as a whole is a vastly complex task, in which nothing can be achieved without careful and incisive interpretative work. Edward Evans-Pritchard’s seminal 1937 Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande is a model contribution to anthropology’s grand interpretative ...

Based on 20 months of fieldwork among the Azande people of South Sudan, Evans-Pritchard’s work became the founding text in the anthropology of witchcraft. Although the book had little impact when it first appeared in 1937, its popularity grew after World War II and its influence on anthropology is still strong nearly 80 years later. Evans-Pritchard wholeheartedly supported an emerging belief in the importance of first-person fieldwork rather than the library-bound anthropology favored by p...

Claude Lévi-Strauss is probably the most complex anthropological theorist of all time. His work continues to influence present-day thinkers in his field, but he is perhaps even more influential beyond it. As one of the key figures in the development of what is known today as ‘French theory,’ Lévi-Strauss was one of the most important thinkers of the 20th-century. His theories of interpretation, meaning and culture have helped shape the ideas and methodologies of a range of disciplines, abo...

Now in a fully updated second edition The Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory is an indispensible guide for anyone approaching the field for the first time. Exploring ideas from a diverse range of disciplines through a series of 11 critical essays and a dictionary of key names and terms, this book examines some of the most complex and fundamental theories in modern scholarship including:MarxismTrauma Theory...

The modern university can trace its roots to Kant's call for enlightened self-determination, with education aiming to produce an informed and responsible body of citizens. As the university evolved, specialized areas of investigation emerged, enabling ever more precise research and increasingly nuanced arguments. In recent decades, however, challenges to the hegemony of disciplines have arisen, partly in response to a perceived need for the university to focus greater energy on its public ...

The publication of Cultural Studies 1983 is a touchstone event in the history of Cultural Studies and a testament to Stuart Hall's unparalleled contributions. The eight foundational lectures Hall delivered at the University of Illinois in 1983 introduced North American audiences to a thinker and discipline that would shift the course of critical scholarship. Unavailable until now, these lectures present Hall's original engagements with the theoretical positions that contributed to...

Michel Foucault is recognized as one of the twentieth century's most influential thinkers, however the authors in this volume contend that more use can be made of Foucault than has yet been done and that some of the uses to which Foucault has so far been put run the risk of and occasionally simply amount to misuse.This interdisciplinary volume brings together a group of esteemed scholars, recognized for their command of and insights into Foucault's oeuvre. They demonstrate the many...

Borrowed Tongues is the first consistent attempt to apply the theoretical framework of translation studies in the analysis of self-representation in life writing by women in transnational, diasporic, and immigrant communities. It focuses on linguistic and philosophical dimensions of translation, showing how the dominant language serves to articulate and reinforce social, cultural, political, and gender hierarchies.Drawing on feminist, poststructuralist, and postcolonial sc...

Now thoroughly updated and revised, this new edition of the highly acclaimed dictionary provides an authoritative and accessible guide to modern ideas in the broad interdisciplinary fields of cultural and critical theoryUpdated to feature over 40 new entries including pieces on Alain Badiou, Ecocriticism, Comparative Racialization , Ordinary Language Philosophy and Criticism, and Graphic NarrativeIncludes reflective, broad-ranging articles...

Western political philosophers since Plato have used the family as a model for harmonious political and social relations. Yet, far from being an uncontentious domain for shared interests and common values, the family is often the scene of intense interpersonal conflict and disagreement. In All in the Family, the political theorist Kennan Ferguson reconsiders the family, in its varied forms, as an exemplar of democratic politics and suggests how real rather than idealized family dy...

Michel Foucault was a twentieth-century philosopher of extraordinary talent, a political activist, social theorist, cultural critic and creative historian. He shaped the ways we think today about such controversial issues as power, sexuality, madness and criminality. Johanna Oksala explores the conceptual tools that Foucault gave us for constructing new forms of thinking as well as for smashing old certainties. She offers a lucid account of him as a thinker whose persistent aim was to chal...

In Anthropology and Social Theory the award-winning anthropologist Sherry B. Ortner draws on her longstanding interest in theories of cultural practice to rethink key concepts of culture, agency, and subjectivity for the social sciences of the twenty-first century. The seven theoretical and interpretive essays in this volume each advocate reconfiguring, rather than abandoning, the concept of culture. Similarly, they all suggest that a theory which depends on the interested action ...