Perilous States

Auteur

George E. Marcus is a professor and the chair of the Department of Anthropology at Rice University. He is the coauthor of "Anthropology as Cultural Critique," among other books, and was the inaugural editor of the journal Cultural Anthropology.

Texte du rabat

Encompassing a range of disciplines--notably anthropology,
politics, history, comparative literature, and
philosophy--the unprecedented annual publication "Late
"Editions exposes unsettling dilemmas and unprecedented
challenges facing cultural studies on the brink of the
twenty-first century. Successive volumes will appear
annually until the year 2000, each engaging the predicaments
of particular institutions, nations, and persons at this
point of social, cultural, and political change. The
project will test the limits of scholarly conventions by
finding new ways to expose cultural formations emerging from
the maturation or exhaustion of once-powerful ideas whose
validity is now deeply in question.
"Perilous States, the first volume of "Late
"Editions, presents conversations between American
scholars, most of whom are anthropologists, and individuals
situated amidst political and social upheaval. Pimarily but
not exclusively from Eastern Europe, the cast includes
Russian writers, Hungarian scientists and academics, Armenian
politicians, Siberian religious and medical leaders, a Gypsy
leader, a Polish poet, a French politician, and a white South
African musician who is a self-styled Zulu. Their voices
unite around themes of democracy, market economy, individual
rights, and the reawakened force of suppressed ethnic and
racial identities.
To obtain fresh perspectives on these cultural and social
transformations, the volumes will consist of in-depth
conversations, relayed in essay form, between scholars and
individuals in other cultures with whom they share
affinities. Thisnovel approach blends the immediacy of
interviews, the objectivity of journalism, and the
intellectual rigor of scholarship.
Contributors to this volume are Marjorie Balzer, Sam
Beck, David B. Coplan, Michael M. J. Fischer, Nia Georges,
Bruce Grant, Dougla

Résumé
The first volume of "Late Editions" presents conversations between American scholars, most of whom are anthropologists, and individuals situated amidst political and social upheaval with whom they share affinities. The cast is primarily but not exclusively from Eastern Europe.

Contenu
1 Introduction to the Series and to Volume 1, George E. Marcus 2 Dirges for Soviets Passed, Bruce Grant 3 Returning to Eastern Europe, Kathryn Milun 4 Six to Eight Characters in Search of Armenian Society amidst the Carnivalization of History, Michael M. J. Fischer and Stella Grigorian 5 Two Urban Shamans: Unmasking Leadership in Fin-de-Soviet Siberia, Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer 6 Racism and the Formation of a Romani Ethnic Leader, Sam Beck 7 Working through the Other: The Jewish, Spanish, Turkish, Iranian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and German Unconscious of Polish Culture; or, One Hand Clapping: Dialogue, Silences, and the Mourning of Polish Romanticism, Michael M. J. Fischer and Leszek Koczanowicz 8 Greek Woman in the Europe of 1992: Brokers of European Cargoes and the Logic of the West, Eleni Papagaroufali and Nia Georges 9 Illicit Discourse, Douglas R. Holmes 10 The Outlaw State and the Lone Rangers, Julie Taylor 11 A Terrible Commitment: Balancing the Tribes in South African National Culture, David B. Coplan 12 A Preview of Volume 2 (1994): Reflections on Fieldwork in Alameda, Paul Rabinow