Thomas Yarrow

Duncan Garrow

This book focuses on the relationship between the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology. Both disciplines arose from a common project: a desire to understand human social and cultural diversity. However, in recent years, archaeologys interest in anthropology has remained largely unreciprocated. To date, the causes and consequences of this imbalance have received little attention, particularly within anthropology. Including papers by eminent thinkers within both disciplines, this book sheds new light on issues of disciplinary identity. The contributors show how a lack of collaboration has resulted in a narrowing of horizons within both disciplines and explore the grounds upon which these might be opened up. The papers draw on a range of theoretical perspectives and empirical case-studies, but are unified in their concern to explore the ideological, practical and methodological commitments that mark each discipline as distinct. Ultimately, the volume arrives at the startling conclusion that archaeologys apparent absence of data may actually be a positive attribute, leading to a distinctive approach from which anthropology can learn.

Archaeology and Anthropology

Soumhya Venkatesan

Over the last two decades, anthropological studies have highlighted the problems of 'development' as a discursive regime, arguing that such initiatives are paradoxically used to consolidate inequality and perpetuate poverty. This volume constitutes a timely intervention in anthropological debates about development, moving beyond the critical stance to focus on development as a mode of engagement that, like anthropology, attempts to understand, represent and work within a complex world. By setting out to elucidate both the similarities and differences between these epistemological endeavors, the book demonstrates how the ethnographic study of development challenges anthropology to rethink its own assumptions and methods. In particular, contributors focus on the important but often overlooked relationship between acting and understanding, in ways that speak to debates about the role of anthropologists and academics in the wider world. The case studies presented are from a diverse range of geographical and ethnographic contexts, from Melanesia to Africa and Latin America, and ethnographic research is combined with commentary and reflection from the foremost scholars in the field.

Beyond an Anthropology of Critique

Differentiating Development

What is creativity? What is the relationship between work life and personal life? How is it possible to live truthfully in a world of contradiction and compromise? These deep and deeply personal questions spring to the fore in Thomas Yarrow's vivid exploration of the life of architects. Yarrow takes us inside the world of architects, showing us the anxiety, exhilaration, hope, idealism, friendship, conflict, and the personal commitments that feed these acts of creativity. Architects rethinks "creativity," demonstrating how it happens in everyday practice. It highlights how the pursuit of good architecture, relates to the pursuit of a good life in intimate and individually specific ways. And it reveals the surprising and routine social negotiations through which designs and buildings are actually made.

Portraits of a Practice

Architects

Simone Abram

Brit Ross Winthereik

What kinds of expertise and knowledge relate to electricity, and where is the space for alternative voices? How can the new roles for electricity in social and cultural life be acknowledged? How can we speak about ‘it’ in its own right while acknowledging that electricity is not one thing? This book re-describes electricity and its infrastructures using insights from anthropology and science and technology studies, raising fascinating questions about the contemporary world and its future. Through ethnographic studies of bulbs, bicycles, dams, power grids and much more, the contributors shed light on practices that are often overlooked, showing how electricity is enacted in multiple ways. Electrifying Anthropology moves beyond the idea of electricity as an immovable force, and instead offers a set of potential trajectories for thinking about electricity and its effects in contemporary society. With new contributions on an emerging area of research, this timely collection will be of value to students and scholars of anthropology, science and technology studies, geography and engineering.

Thomas Yarrow

Books

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