If the end of exoticism is one of the characteristics of our time, and if classical anthropology based its study of alterity on this exotic distance from the other, is anthropology still possible, and if so, to what end? The author uses these questions as a point of departure for a probing interrogation of ethnological practice, starting with Levi-Strauss.

For several years, the author has advocated an anthropology of "proximity" in place of the usual anthropology of distance. He has studied such emblematic places of Western modernity as the Parisian Metro, and such emblematic "non-places" as airports and freeways, treating as valid anthropological objects phenomena that others might judge less "pure" or "significant" than systems of filiation or matrimonial alliance. The proper place of the ethnographer, he argues, is sufficiently distanced to comprehend a system as a system, yet participatory enough to live it as an individual. How can one best arrive at such a place?

This book answers by outlining an approach to anthropology that focuses on negotiating the social meanings we and others use in making sense of the world, and on the processes of identification that create the difference between same and other. Why trace a line of demarcation between societies thought to warrant and require anthropological observation and others (namely, our own) thought to demand a different type of study? Once anthropology, through its study of rites, takes social meaning as its principal object, the necessity for a "generalized anthropology" that includes the entire planet seems obvious, especially in view of the rapid proliferation of new networks of communication and the integration ofindividuals into those networks.

Creative work has been celebrated as the highest form of achievement since at least Aristotle. But our understanding of the dynamics and market for creative work--artistic work in particular--often relies on unexamined cliches about individual genius, industrial engineering of talent, and the fickleness of fashion. Pierre-Michel Menger approaches the subject with new rigor, drawing on sociology, economics, and philosophy to build on the central insight that, unlike the work most of us do most of the time, creative work is governed by uncertainty. Without uncertainty, neither self-realization nor creative innovation is possible. And without techniques for managing uncertainty, neither careers nor profitable ventures would surface. In the absence of clear paths to success, an oversupply of artists and artworks generates boundless differentiation and competition. How can artists, customers, entrepreneurs, and critics judge merit? Menger disputes the notion that artistic success depends solely on good connections or influential managers and patrons. Talent matters. But the disparity between superstardom and obscurity may hinge initially on minor gaps in intrinsic ability. The benefits of early promise in competition and the tendency of elite professionals to team up with one another amplify and disproportionately reward even small differences. Menger applies his temporal and causal analysis of behavior under uncertainty to the careers and oeuvres of Beethoven and Rodin. The result is a thought-provoking book that brings clarity to our understanding of a world widely seen as either irrational or so free of standards that only power and manipulation count.

Luther and Calvin applied the term "fanatic" to those who sought to destroy civil society in order to establish the Kingdom of God, the "false prophets" and their followers who, early on in the Reformation, began smashing images in churches and rebelling against princes. "Civil Society and Fanaticism" is organized around this seminal moment of religious and political iconoclasm, an outburst of hatred against mediations and representation.
The author shows that civil society and fanaticism have been consistently present as conjoined notions in Western political thought since the sixteenth century, underlining the link between two principles that are constitutive of that thought: dualism--between the City of God and the earthly city, between civil society and the state--and the validity of representation.
In what is both a study of the evolution of the two interrelated concepts and a critique of critiques of representation, the author draws upon an impressive range of works, including texts by Aristotle and Baudelaire, the medieval theology of Giles of Rome and the humanist thought of the Reformer Philipp Melanchthon, the political philosophies of Spinoza, Leibniz, and Rousseau, Kant's reflections on the sublime, and Marx's critique of Hegel. At the same time, he discusses a varied group of fanatics or people stigmatized as such: the first Anabaptists, the Shiite sect of the Assassins, the French Protestant Camisards, the Bolsheviks. An original analysis of Lenin's political theory and practice sheds new light on the antagonism between totalitarianism and the law-governed state identified with civil society.
The author's approach is multidisciplinary, proceeding at different moments from lexicographical, sociological, psychoanalytic, and philosophical methods and analysis. The book also makes vivid use of iconology by reproducing and interpreting a series of works by Albrecht Durer, whose art and theory of representation, it is argued, were opposed to the destruction not only of images but of civil society.

At farmers' markets, we expect to see fruit bursting with juicy sweetness and vegetables greener than a golf course. For Michele de La Pradelle these expectations are mostly the result of a show performed by merchants and sustained by our propensity to see what we want to see there. Hailed upon its release in France, the award-winning "Market Day in Provence" lays bare the mechanisms of the contemporary outdoor market by providing a definitive account of the centuries-old institution at Carpentras, a city near Avignon in the south of France famous for its quintessential public street market.
The renewal and celebration of the outdoor market culture in recent years, argues de La Pradelle, artfully masks a fierce commitment to modern-day free-market economics. Responding to consumer desire for an experience that recalls a time before impersonal supermarket chains and mass-produced products, buyers and sellers alike create an atmosphere built on various fictions. Vendors at the market at Carpentras, for example, oblige patrons by acting like lifelong acquaintances of those whom they've only just met as they dispense free samples and lively, witty banter. Likewise, going to the market to look for "freshness" becomes a way for the consumer to signify the product's relation to nature--a denial of the workaday reality of growing melons under plastic sheets, then machine-sorting, crating, and transporting them.
Offering captivating descriptions of goods and the friendly and occasionally piquant exchanges between buyers and sellers, "Market Day in Provence" will be devoured by any reader with an interest in areas as diverse as food, ethnography, globalization, modernity, and Frenchculture.