A World Beyond Difference
Cultural Identity in the Age of Globalization
Format:Paperback
Publisher:John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Published:20th Oct '04
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
A World Beyond Difference unpacks the globalization literature and offers a valuable critique: one that is forthright, yet balanced, and draws on the local work of ethnographers to counter relativist and globalist discourses.
- Presents a lively conceptual and historical map of how we think about the emerging socio-political world, and above all how we think politically about human cultural differences
- Interprets, criticizes, and frames responses to world culture
- Draws from the work of recent major social theorists, comparing them to classical social theorists in an instructive manner
- Grounds critique of theory in years of ethnographic research
“Debates about globalization have become stereotyped. Universalists hope for one world united under rational law; postmodernists and their postcolonial and neo-Marxist allies dream of a heterotopia of autonomous free agents. In this book, Ronald Niezen steps outside this sterile dualism to show how each side subscribes to the same Western utopian ideals, which are then imposed on the facts. Case material from his wide experience illustrates the failings of ideologically generated theories and offers a more realistic approach to the actual experience of globalization. Elegantly written, free of cant, empirically grounded, theoretically sophisticated, and passionately argued, this brilliant book is required reading.”
Charles Lindholm, Boston University
"This volume is a thought-provoking, intellectually exciting analysis of the quest for a global borderless society ... The author presents many inspired and thought-provoking challenges to the reader and one cannot but be impressed by the logic of his arguments." Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781405126908
Dimensions: 230mm x 153mm x 18mm
Weight: 372g
240 pages