by James Clifford ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1997
A noted anthropologist examines the complexities of human interaction across cultures and continents in a densely academic but revelatory collection of essays. ``How do groups negotiate themselves in external relationships, and how is a culture also a site of travel for others?'' These are two of the broad questions raised by Clifford (History of Consciousness/Univ. of Calif., Santa Clara) in pursuit of his admonition that ``new representational strategies are needed, and are, under pressure, emerging.'' Thus does Clifford discuss diasporic and migratory peoples, unexplored Western influences on indigenous peoples, and the effects of new communication technologies on the global movement of people. Writing on the changing nature of ethnographic fieldwork, Clifford notes that such work was customarily centered on a ``localization'' of natives under the erroneous belief that while Western cultures were ``restless and expansive,'' the rest of humanity was ``rooted and immobile.'' Clifford points to the ways an indigenous culture's artifacts are displayed by former colonial powers; a ``contact zone'' in the basement of the Portland Art Museum brings together Tlingit elders and museum staff while continuing ``the ongoing power imbalances of contact relation.'' Other ``contacts'' Clifford chronicles are fleeting snippets: his own recollections of traveling by subway from one New York City cultural outpost to another; his family's Barbadian cleaning woman; a day in Honolulu in 1991 encompassing impressions of the Chinese New Year and the Persian Gulf War. Elsewhere, Clifford focuses on the political and economic consequences of recent transnational movements; he warns against construing an ``ideal type'' of diasporic people, particularly in light of modern communication and travel technology and changing economies. Nearly all peoples, he maintains, are travelers in one way or another. Controversial in places, self-evident in others—and slow going for the casual reader—but overall a fresh and well- documented perspective on human global movement. (40 photos)
Pub Date: April 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-674-77960-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1997
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by Howard Zinn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1979
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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