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This innovative text reinvigorates argumentation studies by exploring the experience of argument across cultures, introducing an anthropological perspective into the domains of rhetoric, communication, and philosophy. The Anthropology of Argument fills an important gap in contemporary argumentation theory by shifting the focus away from the purely propositional element of arguments and onto how they emerge from the experiences of peoples with diverse backgrounds, demonstrating how argumentation can be understood as a means of expression and a gathering place of ideas and styles. Confronting the limitations of the Western tradition of logic and searching out the argumentative roles of place, ...
Wisdom transcends knowledge but is only meaningful and relevant in context. This book explores the tensions and paradoxes associated with the ineffability of wisdom in a range of social and cultural contexts.
From the laughing clubs of India and robotic granny minders of Japan to the "Flexsecurity" system of Denmark and the elderscapes of Florida, experts in this collection bring readers cutting-edge and future-focused approaches to our aging population worldwide. In this fourth edition of an award-winning text on the consequences of global aging, a team of expert anthropologists and other social scientists presents the issues and possible solutions as our population over age 60 rises to double that of the year 2000. Chapters describe how the consequences of global aging will influence life in the 21st century in relation to biological limits on the human life span, cultural construction of the l...
The first in-depth ethnographic monograph on the New Right in Central and Eastern Europe, The Revolt of the Provinces explores the making of right-wing hegemony in Hungary over the last decade. It explains the spread of racist sensibilities in depressed rural areas, shows how activists, intellectuals and politicians took advantage of popular racism to empower right-wing agendas and examines the new ruling party's success in stabilizing an 'illiberal regime'. To illuminate these important dynamics, the author proposes an innovative multi-scalar and relational framework, focusing on interaction between social antagonisms emerging on the local level and struggles waged within the political public sphere.
From the best-selling author of These Truths, an “exhilarating” (New York Times Book Review) account of the Cold War origins of our data-mad era. The Simulmatics Corporation, founded in 1959, mined data, targeted voters, accelerated news, manipulated consumers, destabilized politics, and disordered knowledge—decades before Facebook, Amazon, and Cambridge Analytica. Although Silicon Valley likes to imagine that it has no past, the scientists of Simulmatics are almost undoubtedly the long-dead ancestors of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk—or so argues Jill Lepore, distinguished Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer, in this “hilarious, scathing, and sobering” (David Runciman) account of the origins of predictive analytics and behavioral data science.
Radio 4's Book of the Week A Financial Times Book of the Year Shortlisted for the 2020 Financial Times / McKinsey Business Book of the Year Longlisted for the National Book Award 'The story of the original data science hucksters of the 1960s is hilarious, scathing and sobering - what you might get if you crossed Mad Men with Theranos' David Runciman The Simulmatics Corporation, founded in 1959, mined data, targeted voters, accelerated news, manipulated consumers, destabilized politics, and disordered knowledge--decades before Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Cambridge Analytica. Silicon Valley likes to imagine it has no past but the scientists of Simulmatics are the long-dead grandfathers of Ma...
One of the foremost intellectuals of his generation, French philosopher of science Michel Serres (1930–2019) broke free from disciplinary dogmas. His reflections on science, culture, technology, art, and religion have proved foundational to scholars across the humanities. The contributors to Porous Becomings bring the inspirational and enigmatic world of Serres to the attention of anthropology. Through ethnographic encounters as diverse as angels and religious conversion in Ethiopia, the percolation of war in Bosnia, and incarcerated bodies crossing the Atlantic, the contributors showcase how Serres’s interrogation of the fundamentals of human existence opens new pathways for anthropolog...
In Serbia, as elsewhere in postsocialist Europe, the rise of “civil society” was expected to support a smooth transformation to Western models of liberal democracy and capitalism. More than twenty years after the Yugoslav wars, these expectations appear largely unmet. Frontiers of Civil Society asks why, exploring the roles of multiple civil society forces in a set of government “reforms” of society and individuals in the early 2010s, and examining them in the broader context of social struggles over neoliberal restructuring and transnational integration.