This book reflects on the author’s distinguished scholarly career over half a century, linking personal biography to changes in the discipline of anthropology. Ulf Hannerz presents a number of important essays and a brand new chapter that allow readers to track developments in his own thinking and interests as well as broader changes in the field. In doing so he provides students with valuable insight into the research process and the building of an anthropological career. Featuring work conducted in the United States, Africa, Sweden, Hong Kong, and the Cayman Islands, the book spans a period in which anthropology adapted to new global circumstances and challenges. Hannerz covers the emergence of the fields of urban anthropology, transnational anthropology, and media anthropology in which he has played a significant role. The chapters demonstrate interdisciplinary openings toward other fields and bear witness to anthropology’s connections to world history and to public debates.
Table of Contents:
Prospectus: stops along the way 1. The notion of ghetto culture 2. Washington and Kafanchan: a view of urban anthropology 3. The management of danger 4. Marginal entrepreneurship and economic change in the Cayman Islands 5. Tools of identity and imagination 6. The world in creolization 7. Flows, boundaries and hybrids: keywords in transnational anthropology 8. Other transnationals: perspectives gained from studying sideways 9. Being there...and there...and there! Reflections on multi-site ethnography 10. Foreign correspondents and the varieties of cosmopolitanism 11. Touring Soweto: culture and memory in urban South Africa 12. Reflections on varieties of culturespeak 13. A detective story writer: exploring Stockholm as it once was 14. Neighbors in a south Swedish village: globalization, small-scale and unexpected
About the Author :
Ulf Hannerz is Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University, Sweden.
Review :
"Ulf Hannerz has long been one of anthropology’s most subtle, prescient thinkers. A scholar unusually at home in the world, his work is testimony to the creative interplay of different cultures, methods, theoretical traditions. These essays, spanning almost fifty years, offer us a brilliant mini-history of the unfolding of the late modern anthropological imagination." - Jean Comaroff, Harvard University, USA
"This is a superb introduction to the oeuvre of one of the world’s leading anthropologists. In more than fifty years of fieldwork in a host of locations all over the world, Hannerz has tackled complex social problems with sly humor and an inimitably wry voice. In these pages, anthropology emerges as a cosmopolitan discipline studying other cosmopolitans." - Akhil Gupta, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
"For over fifty years Ulf Hannerz has been pioneering anthropological research and challenging disciplinary boundaries. Part-autobiographical, part-critical commentary, these writings chart his personal journey through a changing world, from postcolonial Nigeria, the Caribbean and ghetto culture in Washington to the lifeworlds of foreign correspondents and Swedish detective writers. Readers will relish the wit, insight and originality of these essays." - Cris Shore, The University of Auckland, New Zealand
