Hybrids of Modernity considers the relationship between three western modernist institutions: anthropology, the nation state and the universal exhibition. It looks at the ways in which these institutions are linked, in how they are engaged in the objectification of culture, and in how they have themselves become objects of cultural theory, the targets of critics who claim that despite their continuing visibility these are all institutions with questionable viability in the late 20th century. Through analysis of the Universal Exhibition held in seville in 1992, the themes of culture, nationality and technology are explored. Particular attention is paid to how "culture" is produced and put to work by the national and corporate participants, and to the relationship between the emergence of culture as commodity and the way in which the concept is employed in contemporary cultural theory.

Originally published in 1992. This book discusses the possibilities of developing the research process in social science so that it benefits the subjects as well as the researcher. The authors distinguish between 'ethical', 'advocate' and 'empowering' approaches to the relationship between researcher and researched, linking these to different ideas about the nature of knowledge, action, language, and social relations. They then use a series of empirical case studies to explore the possibilities for 'empowering research'. The book is the product of dialogue between researchers from a range of disciplines (anthropology, cultural studies, sociology and linguistics) and is for those working across the social sciences. Through combination of philosophical discussion, methodological recommendation and case-study illustration, it provides guidance that is practical without being simplistic.

Contemporary forms of infrastructural development herald alternative futures through their incorporation of digital technologies, mobile capital, international politics and the promises and fears of enhanced connectivity. In tandem with increasing concerns about climate change and the anthropocene, there is further an urgency around contemporary infrastructural provision: a concern about its fragility, and an awareness that these connective, relational systems significantly shape both local and planetary futures in ways that we need to understand more clearly. Offering a rich set of empirically detailed and conceptually sophisticated studies of infrastructural systems and experiments, present and past, contributors to this volume address both the transformative potential of infrastructural systems and their stasis. Covering infrastructural figures; their ontologies, epistemologies, classifications and politics, and spanning development, urban, energy, environmental and information infrastructures, the chapters explore both the promises and failures of infrastructure. Tracing the experimental histories of a wide range of infrastructures and documenting their variable outcomes, the volume offers a unique set of analytical perspectives on contemporary infrastructural complications. These studies bring a systematic empirical and analytical attention to human worlds as they intersect with more-than-human worlds, whether technological or biological.

Roads and the powerful sense of mobility that they promise carry us back and forth between the sweeping narratives of globalisation, and the specific, tangible materialities of particular times and places. Indeed, despite the fact that roads might, by comparison with the sparkling agility of virtual technologies, appear to be grounded in twentieth century industrial political economy they could arguably be taken as the paradigmatic material infrastructure of the twenty-first century, supporting both the information society (in the ever increasing circulation of commoditized goods and labour), and the extractive economies of developing countries on which the production and reproduction of such goods and labour depends. Roads and Anthropology is the first collection of road ethnographies, edited by two pioneers in the anthropological explorations of infrastructures, the essays published in the book aim to pave the way for this rising field of anthropological research. This book was published as a special issue of Mobilities.

Originally published in 1992. This book discusses the possibilities of developing the research process in social science so that it benefits the subjects as well as the researcher. The authors distinguish between 'ethical', 'advocate' and 'empowering' approaches to the relationship between researcher and researched, linking these to different ideas about the nature of knowledge, action, language, and social relations. They then use a series of empirical case studies to explore the possibilities for 'empowering research'. The book is the product of dialogue between researchers from a range of disciplines (anthropology, cultural studies, sociology and linguistics) and is for those working across the social sciences. Through combination of philosophical discussion, methodological recommendation and case-study illustration, it provides guidance that is practical without being simplistic.

Hybrids of Modernity considers the relationship between three western modernist institutions: anthropology, the nation state and the universal exhibition. It looks at the ways in which these institutions are linked, in how they are engaged in the objectification of culture, and in how they have themselves become objects of cultural theory, the targets of critics who claim that despite their continuing visibility these are all institutions with questionable viability in the late 20th century.
Through analysis of the Universal Exhibition held in seville in 1992, the themes of culture, nationality and technology are explored. Particular attention is paid to how "culture" is produced and put to work by the national and corporate participants, and to the relationship between the emergence of culture as commodity and the way in which the concept is employed in contemporary cultural theory.

Roads and the powerful sense of mobility that they promise carry us back and forth between the sweeping narratives of globalisation, and the specific, tangible materialities of particular times and places. Indeed, despite the fact that roads might, by comparison with the sparkling agility of virtual technologies, appear to be grounded in twentieth century industrial political economy they could arguably be taken as the paradigmatic material infrastructure of the twenty-first century, supporting both the information society (in the ever increasing circulation of commoditized goods and labour), and the extractive economies of developing countries on which the production and reproduction of such goods and labour depends. "Roads and Anthropology" is the first collection of road ethnographies, edited by two pioneers in the anthropological explorations of infrastructures, the essays published in the book aim to pave the way for this rising field of anthropological research.

This book was published as a special issue of Mobilities.

This collection of articles examines the ways in which human relationships are realized and expressed through idioms which Western culture would identify as both sexual and violent. The editors and contributors address issues concerning the different perceptions of the relationships between sex and gender, difference and hierarchy. By considering a range of case studies from such places as Bolivia, Britain, Fiji, Peru, Japan and the US, anthropologists and feminists examine the politics of such studies, the objectification of the study of others, and the relationship between gender difference and gender hierarchy which lies at the heart of the relationship between anthropology and feminism.

The modern world is saturated with images. Scientific knowledge of the human body (in all its variety) is highly dependent on the technological generation of visual data - brain and body scans, x-rays, diagrams, graphs and charts. New technologies afford scientists and medical experts new possibilities for probing and revealing previously invisible and inaccessible areas of the body. The existing literature has been successful in mapping the impact and implications of new medical technologies and in marrying the visual and the body but thus far has focused only narrowly on particular kinds of technology or taken only a purely textual/visual (cultural studies) approach to images of the body. Combining approaches from three of the most dynamic and popular fields of contemporary social anthropology - the study of the visual, the study of the technological and the study of the human body - this volume draws these together and interrogates their intersection using insights from ethnographic approaches. Offering a fascinating and wide range of perspectives, the chapters in this volume bring an innovative focus that reflects the authors' shared interest in 'the body' and visualising technologies.

Jeanette Edwards is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. She is author of Born and Bred: Idioms of Kinship and New Reproductive Technologies in England (2000); co-author of Technologies of Procreation: Kinship in the Age of Assisted Conception (2nd edition, 1999); co-editor of European Kinship in the Age of Biotechnology (2009); and coeditor, with Harvey and Wade, of Anthropology and Science (2007).

Penelope Harvey is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Manchester and co-Director of CRESC (ESRC Centre for Research on Socio- Cultural Change). She has done ethnographic research in Peru, Spain and the UK, and published on engineering practice, state formation, information technologies and the politics of communication.

Peter Wade is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. His publications include Race and Ethnicity in Latin America (1997); Music, Race and Nation (2000); Race, Nature and Culture (2002); and Race and Sex in Latin America (2009).

Contemporary forms of infrastructural development herald alternative futures through their incorporation of digital technologies, mobile capital, international politics and the promises and fears of enhanced connectivity. In tandem with increasing concerns about climate change and the anthropocene, there is further an urgency around contemporary infrastructural provision: a concern about its fragility, and an awareness that these connective, relational systems significantly shape both local and planetary futures in ways that we need to understand more clearly. Offering a rich set of empirically detailed and conceptually sophisticated studies of infrastructural systems and experiments, present and past, contributors to this volume address both the transformative potential of infrastructural systems and their stasis. Covering infrastructural figures; their ontologies, epistemologies, classifications and politics, and spanning development, urban, energy, environmental and information infrastructures, the chapters explore both the promises and failures of infrastructure. Tracing the experimental histories of a wide range of infrastructures and documenting their variable outcomes, the volume offers a unique set of analytical perspectives on contemporary infrastructural complications. These studies bring a systematic empirical and analytical attention to human worlds as they intersect with more-than-human worlds, whether technological or biological.

Highways and Hierarchies: Ethnographies of Mobility from the Himalaya to the Indian Ocean explores the contemporary proliferation of roads in South Asia and the Tibet-Himalaya region, showing how new infrastructures simultaneously create fresh connections and reinforce existing inequalities. Bringing together ethnographic studies on the social politics of road development and new mobilities in twenty-first-century Asia, this edited collection demonstrates that while new roads generate new forms of hierarchy, older forms of hierarchy are remade and re-established in creative and surprising new ways. Focused on South Asia but speaking to more global phenomena, the chapters collectively reveal how road planning, construction and usage routinely yield a simultaneous reinforcement and disruption of social, political and economic relations.