Controlling Processes
Lectures and Reflections
Will be published approx. on 15. September 2026
Book
Hardback
156 pages
978-1-5017-8927-4 (ISBN)
Description
Controlling Processes offers a penetrating anthropological analysis of how power operates through cultural mechanisms in agrarian and modern industrial societies.
Drawing on decades of research and teaching, Laura Nader explores:
The multiple meanings and ideological frameworks embedded in dominant conceptions of science, technology, progress, energy, and the environment.
A compelling critique of groupthink, illuminated through George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, revealing how consensus can mask coercion.
The systemic oppression of women through body politics and the global diffusion of patriarchal norms.
Cultural relativism and the politics of representation, with incisive discussions of Orientalism, Islam, and the West's positional superiority.
A model of critical pedagogy inspired by Paulo Freire, exemplified in Nader's influential University of California, Berkeley course, Anthropology 139: Controlling Processes, whose syllabus is included as a practical guide.
Strategies for recognizing and resisting the subtle, often invisible, controlling processes embedded in education and public discourse.
This volume is essential reading for scholars of anthropology, sociology, political science, and education seeking to understand the cultural dimensions of power and the possibilities for emancipatory critique.
Drawing on decades of research and teaching, Laura Nader explores:
The multiple meanings and ideological frameworks embedded in dominant conceptions of science, technology, progress, energy, and the environment.
A compelling critique of groupthink, illuminated through George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, revealing how consensus can mask coercion.
The systemic oppression of women through body politics and the global diffusion of patriarchal norms.
Cultural relativism and the politics of representation, with incisive discussions of Orientalism, Islam, and the West's positional superiority.
A model of critical pedagogy inspired by Paulo Freire, exemplified in Nader's influential University of California, Berkeley course, Anthropology 139: Controlling Processes, whose syllabus is included as a practical guide.
Strategies for recognizing and resisting the subtle, often invisible, controlling processes embedded in education and public discourse.
This volume is essential reading for scholars of anthropology, sociology, political science, and education seeking to understand the cultural dimensions of power and the possibilities for emancipatory critique.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Ithaca
United States
Target group
US School Grade: College Graduate Student and over
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-5017-8927-4 (9781501789274)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Laura Nader is Professor Emerita in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She was the first woman to achieve tenure in Anthropology at Berkeley, and anthropologist David Price has praised her as "the embodied moral conscience of post-Boasian American anthropology."