Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt (Perspectives on Southern Africa, 57) by James Ferguson ISBN: 0-520-21702-0 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: An eloquent, elegant, and important study
Comment: I have read many ethnographies in my day, but I can't recall another that has had me at turns astounded by the author's insight, impressed with his prose, saddened by his findings, and laughing out loud at the wry wit of his descriptive voice. I do not normally consider good anthropology "fun" to read, but "EXPECTATIONS OF MODERNITY" bucks the trend. It's well-argued, impassioned, and thoroughly readable.
Author Ferguson is concerned with the experience of "modernity" and "development" as lived by residents of Zambia's Copperbelt, who since the 1970s have experienced an unrelenting slide into social and economic marginalization. He works in case studies drawn from individual interview subjects, census data, and textual asides--boxes featuring news clippings from Zambian papers, or brief "People Watching" accounts of the author's street observations with his research assistant. The discussion ranges from meta-narratives of "progress" and "modernization" to an eye-opening analysis of the opposing styles adopted by Zambian urbanites.
His conclusion is grim: "For many Zambians... recent history has been experienced not--as the modernization plot led one to expect--as a process of moving forward or joining up with the world, but as a process that has pushed them out of the place in the world that they once occupied." The process of globalization has not connected this corner of Africa (and its inhabitants) to the currents of prosperity traversing the world economy; rather it has disconnected them, throwing them out of the garden of "development." Ferguson stresses that they have not been "left out" of world capitalism; the processes of abjection he describes are integral parts of the system.
Even amid the gathering gloom of this analysis, I found myself heartened by the author's occasional humor and by his sympathetic (and self-effacing) accounts of casual encounters in the field. I had not previously had much time for anti-globalization arguments, but Ferguson's disarming approach lowered my skepticism, forcing me to confront the ugly truths of the new world order in a way I had never done before. My hat is off to this man for crafting such a great book.
 |
Title: Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa by Charles Piot ISBN: 0226669696 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
 |
Title: The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho by James Ferguson ISBN: 0816624372 Publisher: University of Minnesota Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1994 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
 |
Title: Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity by Timothy Mitchell ISBN: 0520232623 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: November, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
 |
Title: Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology Among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania by Liisa H. Malkki ISBN: 0226502724 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1995 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
 |
Title: Marxist Modern: An Ethnographic History of the Ethiopian Revolution by Donald L. Donham ISBN: 0520213297 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
