Synopses & Reviews
'Community' is one of social science's longest-standing concepts. The assumption, of much social science, has been that it is in communities -- and to communities -- that human individuals, as social and cultural beings, belong. Communities are said to embody that interactive environment from which individuals' identities and senses of self derive, and in which they continue to dwell. The trouble with 'community' is that this is not necessarily so; the personal social networks of individuals' actual experience crosscut collective categories, situations and institutions. Communities can prove unviable or imprisoning; the reality of community life and identity can often be very different from the ideology and the ideal.In this provocative new book, anthropologists Vered Amit and Nigel Rapport draw on their various ethnographic experiences to reappraise the concept and the reality of 'community', in the light of globalization, religious fundamentalism, identity politics, and renascent localisms. How might anthropology better apprehend social identities which are intrinsically plural, transgressive and ironic? What has anthropology to say about the way in which civil society might hope to accommodate the on-going construction and the rightful expression of such migrant identities? Nigel Rapport and Vered Amit give their own answers to these questions before entering into dialogue to assess each other's positions.Nigel Rapport is Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies at the University of St. Andrews. He is author of Transcendent Individual (1997). Vered Amit is an Associate Professor at Concordia University in Montreal. She is the editor of Realizing Community (2002).
Synopsis
This controversial and innovative book reassesses the concept of community within anthropological studies. The practice of fieldwork in anthropology has traditionally been undertaken with the assumption that places are fixed in time and space. This approach has now been extensively revised by contemporary anthropologists who are more likely to stress the mobility of modern society, which is characterized by migration, shifting identities and boundaries. Nigel Rapport and Vered Amit move on from this argument to ask--as local economies are now embedded within global systems of production, and yet migrants frequently face barriers to their own movements--how should we now conceive of the interaction between sociality and individuality? What are the political, theoretical and ethnographic implications of this interaction? The authors take as their common departure point that individuals must have the right to stop and join communities or to keep moving to other kinds of relationships and affiliations. Rapport and Amit, however, take different approaches to questions of collective identity and affiliation. Amit is concerned with the fragility of personal networks and the difficulties of establishing and maintaining collectivities in situations of heightened mobility while Rapport argues that 'true, associational communities' are rare and more normal is 'non-working communities' which constrict individual freedom of development, expression and movement.
Synopsis
The authors reappraise the concept and the reality of 'community', in the light of globalization, religious fundamentalism, identity politics, and renascent localisms.
Synopsis
A rethinking of popular political movements, this book looks at new, emerging, mass visions and analyses their impact and potential in new ways.
About the Author
C.W. Watson teaches in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kent at Canterbury. He is editor (with Roy F. Ellen) of Understanding Witchcraft and Sorcery in Southeast Asia (1994) and is the author of Kinship, Property and Inheritance in Kerinci, Central Sumatra (1994).
Table of Contents
Prologue: The Book's Questions1. An Anthropology Without Community2. The Truth of Movement, the Truth as Movement: 'Post-cultural anthropology' and Narrational Identity3. Dialogue: Movement, Identity and CollectivityReferencesIndex