1st Edition
Theory from the South Or, How Euro-America is Evolving Toward Africa
272 Pages
by
Routledge
272 Pages
by
Routledge
272 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
As nation-states in the Northern Hemisphere experience economic crisis, political corruption and racial tension, it seems as though they might be 'evolving' into the kind of societies normally associated with the 'Global South'. Anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff draw on their long experience of living in Africa to address a range of familiar themes - democracy, national borders, labour and capital and multiculturalism. They consider how we might understand these issues by using theory developed in the Global South. Challenging our ideas about 'developed' and 'developing' nations, Theory from the South provides new insights into key problems of our time.
Chapter 1 Theory from the South; Chapter 2 On Personhood; Chapter 3 Liberalism, Policulturalism, and ID-ology; Chapter 4 Nations With/Out Borders; Chapter 5 Figuring Democracy; Chapter 6 History On Trial; Chapter 7 Alien-Nation; Chapter 8 Beyond Bare Life;
Biography
Jean Comaroff
“In this major transdisciplinary work, the Comaroffs (both anthropologists, Univ. of Chicago) have produced a well-crafted, nuanced, and sophisticated intervention in the meanings, limits, and Eurocentric underpinnings of modernity…The book is a welcome addition in debunking the Eurocentric binary between the ‘rational’ West and not so rational ‘non-West’ and provides a refreshing insight into what the ‘South’ has to offer in framing the future of the global human community. Theory from the South is not only ‘from the South’ but also ‘of’ and ‘about the South.’ The book further enhances the reputation of the Comaroffs as formidable critical intellectuals of the first order. Beautifully done. Essential.”
-–CHOICE December 2011 Vol. 49 No. 04
"Jean and John Comaroff put forward their case in the strongest possible terms, and they do so with flair, eloquence, and brilliance: that Africa in particular and the Global South more broadly are in the vanguard of world history, generative of global futures and theory to match. This is a book that will be read and debated with vigor and profit."
--Charles Piot, Duke University
