Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change - Softcover

"Beyond being topical, this groundbreaking collection represents precisely the kind of inquiry that contemporary anthropology should be dedicating itself to-one brave enough to abide, ethnographically and theoretically, in the interstices of knowledge-based and experiential models, in the gaps between individual and collective agency, in realms of historical and cultural contingency."-Debbora Battaglia, Mount Holyoke College "Ethnography in Unstable Places is a profound exercise in ethnographic reflexivity. It seeks to consider new possibilities, new challenges, new horizons-at once conceptual, political, ethical-for an old anthropological method by taking it precisely where it was not designed to go: into everyday worlds radically transformed by hitherto unimagined social conditions, unimaginable political circumstances, altered states, economies, subjectivities. Expansive in their scope, provocative in their theoretical implications, even poetic in their treatment of human lives, the essays in this volume show `where past has gone, where the future will come from';the past and future, that is, of both anthropology and the worlds with which it concerns itself."-John Comaroff, University of Chicago

Ethnography in Unstable Places is a collection of ethnographic accounts of everyday situations in places undergoing dramatic political transformation. Offering vivid case studies that range from the Middle East and Africa to Europe, Russia, and Southeast Asia, the contributing anthropologists narrate particular circumstances of social and political transformation-in contexts of colonialism, war and its aftermath, social movements, and post-Cold War climates-from the standpoints of ordinary people caught up in and having to cope with the collapse or reconfiguration of the states in which they live. Using grounded ethnographic detail to explore the challenges to the anthropological imagination that are posed by modern uncertainties, the contributors confront the ambiguities and paradoxes that exist across the spectrum of human cultures and geographies. The collection is framed by introductory and concluding chapters that highlight different dimensions of the book's interrelated themes-agency and ethnographic reflexivity, identity and ethics, and the inseparability of political economy and interpretivism. Ethnography in Unstable Places will interest students and specialists in social anthropology, sociology, political science, international relations, and cultural studies.Contributors. Eve Darian-Smith, Howard J. De Nike, Elizabeth Faier, James M. Freeman, Robert T. Gordon, Carol J. Greenhouse, Nguyen Dinh Huu, Carroll McC. Lewin, Elizabeth Mertz, Philip C. Parnell, Nancy Ries, Judy Rosenthal, Kay B. Warren, Stacia E. Zabusky