Available Light - Couverture souple

Geertz, Clifford

 
9780691089560: Available Light

Synopsis

Clifford Geertz, one of the most influential thinkers of our time, here discusses some of the most urgent issues facing intellectuals today. In this collection of personal and revealing essays, he explores the nature of his anthropological work in relation to a broader public, serving as the foremost spokesperson of his generation of scholars, those who came of age after World War II. His reflections are written in a style that both entertains and disconcerts, as they engage us in topics ranging from moral relativism to the relationship between cultural and psychological differences, from the diversity and tension among activist faiths to "ethnic conflict" in today's politics. Geertz, who once considered a career in philosophy, begins by explaining how he got swept into the revolutionary movement of symbolic anthropology. At that point, his work began to encompass not only the ethnography of groups in Southeast Asia and North Africa, but also the study of how meaning is made in all cultures-or, to use his phrase, to explore the "frames of meaning" in which people everywhere live out their lives. His philosophical orientation helped him to establish the role of anthropology within broader intellectual circles and led him to address the work of such leading thinkers as Charles Taylor, Thomas Kuhn, William James, and Jerome Bruner. In this volume, Geertz comments on their work as he explores questions in political philosophy, psychology, and religion that have intrigued him throughout his career but that now hold particular relevance in light of postmodernist thinking and multiculturalism. Available Light offers insightful discussions of concepts such as nation, identity, country, and self, with a reminder that like symbols in general, their meanings are not categorically fixed but grow and change

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À propos de l'auteur

Clifford Geertz published his famous work, The Interpretation of Cultures, in 1973. It influenced a generation of not only anthropologists but also other scholars and intellectuals. His most recent book is After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist. He is currently a faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Autres éditions populaires du même titre

9780691049748: Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics

Edition présentée

ISBN 10 :  0691049742 ISBN 13 :  9780691049748
Editeur : Princeton University Press, 2000
Couverture rigide