Combining ethnography, history, and social theory, Dominic Boyer's "Spirit and System" exposes how the shifting fortunes and social perceptions of German intellectuals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries influenced Germans' conceptions of modernity and national culture. Boyer analyzes the creation and mediation of the social knowledge of "German-ness" from nineteenth-century university culture and its philosophies of history, to the media systems and redemptive public cultures of the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic, to the present-day experiences of former East German...
Combining ethnography, history, and social theory, Dominic Boyer's "Spirit and System" exposes how the shifting fortunes and social perceptions of Ger...
Why do we understand media the way we do?In their simplest forms, media are means of communication and instruments of human creativity. But on another level, media are powerful technologies that govern how we think and act in the world, and they can even take on a sinister character, with media conglomerates working in opposition to freedom of information. Dominic Boyer grapples with these complexities in "Understanding Media," where he questions what our different ways of engaging media actually tell us about media, how we relate to information, and about ourselves. "Understanding Media"...
Why do we understand media the way we do?In their simplest forms, media are means of communication and instruments of human creativity. But on another...
News journalism is in the midst of radical transformation brought about by the spread of digital information and communication technology and the rise of neoliberalism. What does it look like, however, from the inside of a news organization? In The Life Informatic, Dominic Boyer offers the first anthropological ethnography of contemporary office-based news journalism. The result is a fascinating account of journalists struggling to maintain their expertise and authority, even as they find their principles and skills profoundly challenged by ever more complex and fast-moving...
News journalism is in the midst of radical transformation brought about by the spread of digital information and communication technology and the r...
News journalism is in the midst of radical transformation brought about by the spread of digital information and communication technology and the rise of neoliberalism. What does it look like, however, from the inside of a news organization? In The Life Informatic, Dominic Boyer offers the first anthropological ethnography of contemporary office-based news journalism. The result is a fascinating account of journalists struggling to maintain their expertise and authority, even as they find their principles and skills profoundly challenged by ever more complex and fast-moving...
News journalism is in the midst of radical transformation brought about by the spread of digital information and communication technology and the r...
What did it mean to be a Soviet citizen in the 1970s and 1980s? How can we explain the liberalization that preceded the collapse of the USSR? This period in Soviet history is often depicted as stagnant with stultified institutions and the oppression of socialist citizens. However, the socialist state was not simply an oppressive institution that dictated how to live and what to think--it also responded to and was shaped by individuals' needs. In Soviet Society in the Era of Late Socialism, 1964-85, Neringa Klumbyte and Gulnaz Sharafutdinova bring together scholarship examining the social and...
What did it mean to be a Soviet citizen in the 1970s and 1980s? How can we explain the liberalization that preceded the collapse of the USSR? This per...
TABLE OF CONTENTS: "Editors' Introduction to 30.1: Circles Not Pyramids," DOMINIC BOYER, JAMES FAUBION, AND CYMENE HOWE; "Editorial Curation and the Durability of Anthropological Ideas in a Time of Ambient Innovation: A Comment on the Thirtieth Year of Cultural Anthropology," GEORGE E. MARCUS; "Wild Goose Chase: The Displacement of Influenza Research in the Fields of Poyang Lake, China," LYLE FEARNLEY; "The Thing in a Jar: Mushrooms and Ontological Speculations in Post-Yugoslavia," LARISA JASAREVIC; "'The Taste No Chef Can Give': Processing Street Food in Mumbai," HARRIS SOLOMON;...
TABLE OF CONTENTS: "Editors' Introduction to 30.1: Circles Not Pyramids," DOMINIC BOYER, JAMES FAUBION, AND CYMENE HOWE; "Editorial Curation and the D...
Within anthropology, as elsewhere in the human sciences, there is a tendency to divide knowledge making into two separate poles: conceptual (theory) vs. empirical (ethnography). In Theory Can Be More than It Used to Be, Dominic Boyer, James D. Faubion, and George E. Marcus argue that we need to take a step back from the assumption that we know what theory is to investigate how theory a matter of concepts, of analytic practice, of medium of value, of professional ideology operates in anthropology and related fields today. They have assembled a distinguished group...
Within anthropology, as elsewhere in the human sciences, there is a tendency to divide knowledge making into two separate poles: conceptual (theory...
Within anthropology, as elsewhere in the human sciences, there is a tendency to divide knowledge making into two separate poles: conceptual (theory) vs. empirical (ethnography). In Theory Can Be More than It Used to Be, Dominic Boyer, James D. Faubion, and George E. Marcus argue that we need to take a step back from the assumption that we know what theory is to investigate how theory a matter of concepts, of analytic practice, of medium of value, of professional ideology operates in anthropology and related fields today. They have assembled a distinguished group...
Within anthropology, as elsewhere in the human sciences, there is a tendency to divide knowledge making into two separate poles: conceptual (theory...
TABLE OF CONTENTS: "An Infrastructural Moment in the Human Sciences," KIM FORTUN and MIKE FORTUN; "Attuning to the Chemosphere: Domestic Formaldehyde, Bodily Reasoning, and the Chemical Sublime," NICHOLAS SHAPIRO; "'Where there is fire, there is politics': Ungovernability and Material Life in Urban South Africa," KERRY RYAN CHANCE; "Export-Quality Martyrs: Roman Catholicism and Transnational Labor in the Philippines," JULIUS BAUTISTA; "The Sociopolitical Lives of Dead Bodies: Tibetan Self-Immolation Protest as Mass Media," CHARLENE MAKLEY; "The Work of Waiting: Love and Money in Korean...
TABLE OF CONTENTS: "An Infrastructural Moment in the Human Sciences," KIM FORTUN and MIKE FORTUN; "Attuning to the Chemosphere: Domestic Formaldehyde,...
