John Clammer

First Published in 1995. The question of 'postmodernity' that has swept Western academic and intellectual circles raises critical comparative questions. Do societies that have not experienced the same historical development as the West pass inevitably through modernity into postmodernity, or can they skip such stages altogether? Japan, the only non-Western society to develop independently a fully-fledged capitalist-industrialist economy, poses such fundamental questions to social theory. Is Japan in fact 'unique' and as such is it a society which escapes the net of conventional sociological abstractions? The book questions how special Japanese society really is, the limitations of Western social theory in grasping the fullness of this dynamic and a complex Asian society, and inquires as to how Japan in turn may speak to social theory and deepen and broaden the principles on which social theory attempts to explore and categorize the social and cultural worlds.

Difference & Modernity

Ananta Kumar Giri

Philosophy and anthropology have many, but largely unexplored, links and interrelationships. Historically, they have informed each other in subtle ways. This volume of original essays explores and enhances this relationship through anthropological engagement with philosophy and vice versa, the nature, sources and history of philosophical anthropology, phenomenology, and the practical, methodological and theoretical implications of a dialogue between the two subjects. ‘Philosophy and Anthropology: Border Crossings and Transformations’ seeks to enrich both the humanities and the social sciences through its informative and stimulating essays.

Border Crossing and Transformations

Philosophy and Anthropology

Marcus Bussey

Meera Chakravorty

Tanmayee Banerjee

This book analyses dissent and its manifestations in movements of social and political transformation across communities and cultures. It shows how these movements create ruptures in the structures of power, and social hierarchy; expressed through songs, slogans, poetry and performances. The chapters in the book explore these sites of transgression and the imprint they leave on culture, politics, beliefs and the collective society – via music and poetry as in the Bhakti movement or through feministic theories born in post-World War Europe. It also explores how these dynamic movements generate alternate spaces within which the self, identity and collective purpose take new forms and find new meanings as they travel. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of the humanities, literature, history, sociology, politics and culture studies.

Theorizing Movements for Inclusive Futures

Dynamics of Dissent

This volume demonstrates a fresh approach to urban studies as well as a new way of looking at contemporary Japan which links economy and society in an innovative way.

A Sociology of Consumption

Contemporary Urban Japan

Eyal Ben-Ari

The Japanese impact on Southeast Asia has been profound, not only in terms of economic presence, but equally in terms of an increasingly visible cultural presence. Food, fashion, TV, film, religion, sport, popular music, ideas about management and social relationships and even local literatures have been profoundly impacted by the flows of cultural influences from Japan. This volume examines these flows and their consequences in Singapore, a Southeast Asian society in which the Japanese presence is so visible as to make it a regional paradigm for a study of cultural influence in the region.

Cultural Occurrences and Cultural Flows

Japan in Singapore

Through a unique range of theoretical and practical case studies, this collection considers the relationship between the arts (understood as the visual arts, crafts, theatre, dance, and literature) and development, creating both a bridge between them that is rarely explored and filling in concrete ways the content of the “culture” part of the equation “culture and development”. It includes manifestations of culture and the ways in which they relate to development, and in turn contribute to such pressing issues as poverty alleviation, concern for the environment, health, empowerment, and identity formation. It shows how the arts are an essential part of the concrete understanding of culture, and as such a significant part of development thinking - including the development of culture, and not only of culture as an instrumental means to promote other development goals.

Art, Culture and Social Transformation

The Aesthetics of Development

Willemijn de Jong

Eriko Aoki

'Arts in the Margins of World Encounters' presents original contributions that deal with artworks of differently marginalized people—such as ethnic minorities, refugees, immigrants, disabled people, and descendants of slaves—, a wide variety of art forms—like clay figures, textile, paintings, poems, museum exhibits and theatre performances—, and original data based on committed, long-term fieldwork and/or archival research in Brazil, Martinique, Rwanda, India, Indonesia, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. The volume develops theoretical approaches inspired by innovative theorists and is based on currently debated analytical categories including the ethnographic turn in contemporary art, polycentric aesthetics, and aesthetic cannibalization, among others. This collection also incorporates fascinating and intriguing contemporary cases, but with solid theoretical arguments and grounds. 'Arts in the Margins of World Encounters' will appeal to students at all levels, scholars, and practitioners in arts, aesthetics, anthropology, social inequality, and discrimination, as well as researchers in other fields, including post-colonialism and cultural organizations.

Arts in the Margins of World Encounters

Vision and Society is an attempt to show that it is possible to go beyond a sociology of art to the more ambitious possibility of a sociology from art. This book develops a theory of the relationship of the visual and the social and illustrates these with comparative examples from around the world.

Towards a Sociology and Anthropology from Art

Vision and Society

Culture is not simply an explanation of last resort, but is itself a rich, multifaceted and contested concept and set of practices that needs to be expanded, appreciated and applied in fresh ways if it is to be both valued in itself and to be of use in practical development. This innovative book places culture, specifically in the form of the arts, back at the centre of debates in development studies by introducing new ways of conceptualizing art in relation to development. The book shows how the arts and development are related in very practical ways – as means to achieve development goals through visual, dramatic, filmic and craft-inspired ways. It advocates not so much culture and development, but rather for the development of culture. Without a cultural content to economic and social transformation the problems found in much development – up-rooting of cultures, loss of art forms, languages and modes of expression and performance – may only accelerate. Paying attention to the development of the arts as the content of development helps to amend this culturally destructive process. Finally, the book argues for the value of the arts in attaining sustainable cultures, promoting poverty alleviation, encouraging self-empowerment, stimulating creativity and the social imagination, which in turn flow back into wider processes of social transformation. Discussion questions at the end of each chapter make this book ideal to help foster further thinking and debate. This book is an inspiring read for postgraduate students and researchers in the fields of development studies, cultural studies and sociology of development.

John Clammer

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