Zum Hauptinhalt springen
Nicht aus der Schweiz? Besuchen Sie lehmanns.de
Theory from the South - Jean Comaroff, John L. Comaroff

Theory from the South

Or, How Euro-America is evolving toward Africa
Buch | Softcover
272 Seiten
2012
Paradigm (Verlag)
978-1-59451-765-5 (ISBN)
CHF 66,30 inkl. MwSt
Zu diesem Artikel existiert eine Nachauflage
As nation-states in the Northern Hemisphere experience economic crisis, political corruption and racial tension, it seems as though they might be 'evolving' into the kind of societies normally associated with the 'Global South'. Anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff draw on their long experience of living in Africa to address a range of familiar themes - democracy, national borders, labour and capital and multiculturalism. They consider how we might understand these issues by using theory developed in the Global South. Challenging our ideas about 'developed' and 'developing' nations, Theory from the South provides new insights into key problems of our time.
The “Global South” has become shorthand for the world of non-European, postcolonial peoples. Synonymous with uncertain development, unorthodox economies, failed states, and nations fraught with corruption, poverty, incivility, and strife, it is that half of the world about which the “Global North” spins theories. Rarely the “Global South” is seen as a source of theory and explanation for world historical events. Yet, as many nation-states of the Northern Hemisphere experience increasing fiscal meltdown, state privatization, corruption, ethnic conflict, and other crises, it seems as though they are evolving southward, so to speak, in both positive and problematic ways. Is this so? How? In what measure?

Anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff take on these questions, reversing the usual order of things. Drawing on their long experience of living in Africa and teaching in Europe and the U.S., they address a range of familiar themes—democracy, law, national borders, labor and capital, religion and the occult, liberalism and multiculturalism—with the imagination and agile prose for which they are well known. They ask how we might understand these things anew with theory developed in the South. Their ethnographic eye stresses the salience of the local without losing sight of the large-scale processes in everyday lives that are everywhere enmeshed. This view from the South renders key problems of our time at once strange and familiar, giving an ironic twist to the evolutionary pathways long assumed by social scientists.

Jean Comaroff is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, Fellow of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, and Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town. She is co-editor of Law and Disorder in the Postcolony (2006).

John L. Comaroff is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, Fellow of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, and Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town. He is co-editor of Law and Disorder in the Postcolony (2006).

Chapter 1 Theory from the South; Chapter 2 On Personhood; Chapter 3 Liberalism, Policulturalism, and ID-ology; Chapter 4 Nations With/Out Borders; Chapter 5 Figuring Democracy; Chapter 6 History On Trial; Chapter 7 Alien-Nation; Chapter 8 Beyond Bare Life;

“In this major transdisciplinary work, the Comaroffs (both anthropologists, Univ. of Chicago) have produced a well-crafted, nuanced, and sophisticated intervention in the meanings, limits, and Eurocentric underpinnings of modernity…The book is a welcome addition in debunking the Eurocentric binary between the ‘rational’ West and not so rational ‘non-West’ and provides a refreshing insight into what the ‘South’ has to offer in framing the future of the global human community. Theory from the South is not only ‘from the South’ but also ‘of’ and ‘about the South.’ The book further enhances the reputation of the Comaroffs as formidable critical intellectuals of the first order. Beautifully done. Essential.”
-–CHOICE December 2011 Vol. 49 No. 04

"Jean and John Comaroff put forward their case in the strongest possible terms, and they do so with flair, eloquence, and brilliance: that Africa in particular and the Global South more broadly are in the vanguard of world history, generative of global futures and theory to match. This is a book that will be read and debated with vigor and profit."
--Charles Piot, Duke University

Reihe/Serie The Radical Imagination
Verlagsort London
Sprache englisch
Maße 152 x 229 mm
Gewicht 363 g
Themenwelt Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Philosophie der Neuzeit
Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie
Sozialwissenschaften Politik / Verwaltung Politische Theorie
Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie
ISBN-10 1-59451-765-7 / 1594517657
ISBN-13 978-1-59451-765-5 / 9781594517655
Zustand Neuware
Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR)
Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt?
Mehr entdecken
aus dem Bereich
ein Dialog mit Simone Weil

von Byung-Chul Han

Buch | Softcover (2025)
Matthes & Seitz Berlin (Verlag)
CHF 19,55