Perilous States: Conversations on Culture, Politics, and Nation (Volume 1) (Late Editions: Cultural Studies for the End of the Century) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226504476 ISBN 13: 9780226504476

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1994

Synopsis

Encompassing a range of disciplines—notably anthropology,
politics, history, comparative literature, and
philosophy—the unprecedented annual publication Late
Editions exposes unsettling dilemmas and unprecedented
challenges facing cultural studies on the brink of the
twenty-first century. Successive volumes will appear
annually until the year 2000, each engaging the predicaments
of particular institutions, nations, and persons at this
point of social, cultural, and political change. The
project will test the limits of scholarly conventions by
finding new ways to expose cultural formations emerging from
the maturation or exhaustion of once-powerful ideas whose
validity is now deeply in question.

Perilous States, the first volume of Late
Editions, presents conversations between American
scholars, most of whom are anthropologists, and individuals
situated amidst political and social upheaval. Pimarily but
not exclusively from Eastern Europe, the cast includes
Russian writers, Hungarian scientists and academics, Armenian
politicians, Siberian religious and medical leaders, a Gypsy
leader, a Polish poet, a French politician, and a white South
African musician who is a self-styled Zulu. Their voices
unite around themes of democracy, market economy, individual
rights, and the reawakened force of suppressed ethnic and
racial identities.

To obtain fresh perspectives on these cultural and social
transformations, the volumes will consist of in-depth
conversations, relayed in essay form, between scholars and
individuals in other cultures with whom they share
affinities. This novel approach blends the immediacy of
interviews, the objectivity of journalism, and the
intellectual rigor of scholarship.

Contributors to this volume are Marjorie Balzer, Sam
Beck, David B. Coplan, Michael M. J. Fischer, Nia Georges,
Bruce Grant, Douglas R. Holmes, Stella Gregorian, George E.
Marcus, Kathryn Milun, Eleni Papagaroufali, Paul Rabinow,
Julie Taylor, and Tom White.

About this title

About the Author

George E. Marcus is professor of political science at Williams College and the author, coauthor, or coeditor of seven books, including, most recently, Political Psychology: Neuroscience, Genetics, and Politics.

Reviews

The first in an annual series that aims to examine the fin-de-siecle challenges facing institutions and people, this book probes thoughtfully into questions of nationalism through dialogues between American scholars and residents of other countries. Interviewing six Russian writers, Bruce Grant finds deep pessimism about the survival of local culture and the prospects for democracy. Sam Beck weaves interview and narrative to portray a Romanian sociologist exploring his Romanian gypsy origins and leading an unusual attempt at ethnic solidarity. Some of the most interesting entries show the scholar's design: in a conversation with Polish philosopher Leszek Koczanowicz, Michael M.J. Fischer creates a "dialogic collage" to show the conflicts and complexities of Polish nationalism; traversing the touchy questions of culture and nation in South Africa, David Coplan juxtaposes the voices of "white Zulu" musician Johnny Clegg, Zulu professor of music Bongani Mthethwa, mixed-race professor of Afrikaans Hein Willemse and African National Congress official Barbara Masakela. Marcus co-edited Writing Culture . Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226504476
• ISBN 13: 9780226504476
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400
• Editor: Marcus George E.