Ethnography And The Historical Imagination - Hardcover

Comaroff, John; Comaroff, Jean

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0367004011 ISBN 13: 9780367004019

Publisher: Routledge, 2019

Synopsis

Over the years John and Jean Comaroff have broadened the study of culture and society with their reflections on power and meaning. In their work on Africa and colonialism they have explored some of the fundamental questions of social science, delving into the nature of history and human agency, culture and consciousness, ritual and representation. How are human differences constructed and institutionalized, transformed and (sometimes) effaced, empowered and (sometimes) resisted? How do local cultures articulate with global forms? How is the power of some people over others built, sustained, eroded, and negated? How does the social imagination take shape in novel yet collectively meaningful ways? Addressing these questions, the essays in this volume–several never before published–work toward an "imaginative sociology," demonstrating the techniques by which social science may capture the contexts that human beings construct and inhabit. In the introduction, the authors offer their most complete statement to date on the nature of historical anthropology. Standing apart from the traditional disciplines of social history and modernist social science, their work is dedicated to discovering how human worlds are made and signified, forgotten and remade.

About this title

About the Author

Comaroff, John; Comaroff, Jean

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0367004011
• ISBN 13: 9780367004019
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352