|
Showing 1 - 3 of
3 matches in All Departments
This multidisciplinary collection of essays provides a critical and
comprehensive understanding of how knowledge has been made, moved
and used, by whom and for what purpose. To explain how new
knowledge emerges, this volume offers a two-fold conceptual move:
challenging both the premise of insurmountable differences between
confined, autarkic cultures and the linear, nation-centered
approach to the spread of immutable stocks of knowledge. Rather,
the conceptual focus of the book is on the circulation,
amalgamation and reconfiguration of locally shaped bodies of
knowledge on a broader, global scale. The authors emphasize that
the histories of interaction have been made less transparent
through the study of cultural representations thus distorting the
view of how knowledge is actually produced. Leading scholars from a
range of fields, including history, philosophy, social anthropology
and comparative culture research, have contributed chapters which
cover the period from the early modern age to the present day and
investigate settings in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Their particular
focus is on areas that have largely been neglected until now. In
this work, readers from many disciplines will find new approaches
to writing the global history of knowledge-making, especially
historians, scholars of the history and philosophy of science, and
those in culture studies.
This multidisciplinary collection of essays provides a critical and
comprehensive understanding of how knowledge has been made, moved
and used, by whom and for what purpose. To explain how new
knowledge emerges, this volume offers a two-fold conceptual move:
challenging both the premise of insurmountable differences between
confined, autarkic cultures and the linear, nation-centered
approach to the spread of immutable stocks of knowledge. Rather,
the conceptual focus of the book is on the circulation,
amalgamation and reconfiguration of locally shaped bodies of
knowledge on a broader, global scale. The authors emphasize that
the histories of interaction have been made less transparent
through the study of cultural representations thus distorting the
view of how knowledge is actually produced. Leading scholars from a
range of fields, including history, philosophy, social anthropology
and comparative culture research, have contributed chapters which
cover the period from the early modern age to the present day and
investigate settings in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Their particular
focus is on areas that have largely been neglected until now. In
this work, readers from many disciplines will find new approaches
to writing the global history of knowledge-making, especially
historians, scholars of the history and philosophy of science, and
those in culture studies.
This volume is a collection of papers based on the idea that the
concept of similarity could offer a new, alternative approach in
culture studies, as compared to the hitherto dominant paradigm of
difference. The concepts of identity and otherness are both
becoming ever more questionable, not least due to global political
events of the last few decades. The assumption of distinct cultural
identities in the era of postmodern migratory flows seems
increasingly inadequate. Though the postcolonial critique of
identity has emphasized alterity and hybridity, this has remained
within the paradigm of difference as an overall perspective. For
these reasons, it is important not only to discuss, but also to
reflect upon whether a concept of similarity can be developed
alongside the concept of difference which has hitherto dominated
culture studies. The category of similarity offers an alternative
for examining our complex cultural world. This book seeks to
introduce and explore important and exemplary interpretations of
similarity for research in culture studies. The essays presented
here come from literary and cultural studies, from philosophy,
political science, sociology, ethnology, and history. The essays
are arranged according to their systematic perspectives: the first
part of the book deals with conceptual attempts to establish the
relevance of similarity for culture studies, while the second part
is devoted to testing different areas and models of application.
The book explores the theoretical range of the concept of
similarity in historical and systematic terms. Similarity is seen
not only as a heuristic concept, but also as an argument and an
alternative option in cultural practice. That is why it was
discredited by suggesting that it supported an assimilationist
position leading to a forceful adjustment of cultures, gender, or
religion. In addition, similarity and thinking in similarity were
supposedly part of a premodern way of thinking belonging to other
times and places, part of primitive stages of culture or a
premodern epoch, and therefore part of a different order of things
which was distinct from a rationalist modern epoch in which only
exact concepts are valid. Thinking in similarity does in fact
oppose the desire to draw precise borders and exact definitions.
But this supposed drawback can be an advantage when dealing with
complex phenomena of culture where fluid transitions, multiple
overlappings, and broad spatial borders are given. The specific
epistemological achievement of the category of similarity consists
in offering new ways of seeing the diffuse dynamics and fuzzy
relations characteristic of our contemporary complex and entangled
world. Thinking about similarity opens different possibilities for
dealing with the problems of complex societies than do
methodologies focused on differences. Thinking about similarity
should not be (mis-)understood as a false form of harmonization or
leveling of differences. Rather, considerations of similarity
contain a subversive potential to expose the claimed antagonisms
and radical incompatibilities of opposition, differences, as
nothing more than ideology.
|
You may like...
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
|