Historical Transformations: The Anthropology of Global Systems - Hardcover

Friedman, Kajsa Ekholm; Friedman, Jonathan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0759111103 ISBN 13: 9780759111103

Publisher: Altamira Press, 2008

Synopsis

Historical Transformations Historical Transformations takes a comprehensive look at global systemic anthropology, presenting the authors' three decades of research in the social sciences. Full description

About this title

Review:

Historical Transformations includes appraisals of Marxist, cultural materialist, and neo-evolutionary approaches to understanding modern and postmodern realms. It offers especially trenchant criticisms of most globalization theories, suggesting that they are largely biased ruminations of global elites. Yet out of the ruins of such questionable theory, Ekholm Friedman and Friedman formulate their own global systems theory. Drawing on only a few concepts--of which logic, social reproduction, and transformational analysis are most prominent--they craft an understanding of the world in which Bronze Age empires, Oceanic Big Man politics, Congolese kinship and witchcraft culture, and the postmodern West are explained by transformational analysis. In the end, the authors suggest that the postmodern world in which we live is one at the 'end of empire' when history has taken on a 'Kafkaesque quality.'--Stephen Reyna, University of Manchester

In these essays, the authors critique materialist, evolutionary, elitist, and development theoretical approaches in archaeology and anthropology. It is most relevant for professional readers interested in the history of systems theory and Marxist discussions of capital and social reproduction.--CHOICE, August 2009

About the Author:

Kajsa Ekholm Friedman is professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at Lund University, Sweden. Jonathan Friedman is directeur d'etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, in Paris, and professor of social anthropology at Lund University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Altamira Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0759111103
• ISBN 13: 9780759111103
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 376