Making Sense of the Global

Reviews / Votes

"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 Oxford"This 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