Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems

by Aihwa Ong (Editor), Aihwa Ong (Editor)

New
Illustrated
2004
$39.37

This title provides an exciting approach to some of the most contentious issues in discussions around globalization - bioscientific research, neoliberalism, governance - from the perspective of the anthropological problems they pose; in other words, in terms of their implications for how individual and collective life is subject to technological, political, and ethical reflection and intervention. It offers a ground-breaking approach to central debates about globalization with chapters written by leading scholars from across the social sciences.It examines a range of phenomena that articulate broad structural transformations: technoscience, circuits of exchange, systems of governance, and regimes of ethics or values. It investigates these phenomena from the perspective of the 'anthropologica' problems they pose. It covers a broad range of geographical areas: Africa, the Middle East, East and South Asia, North America, South America, and Europe. It grapples with a number of empirical problems of popular and academic interest - from the organ trade, to accountancy, to pharmaceutical research, to neoliberal reform.

Synopsis

This title provides an exciting approach to some of the most contentious issues in discussions around globalization - bioscientific research, neoliberalism, governance - from the perspective of the "anthropological" problems they pose; in other words, in terms of their implications for how individual and collective life is subject to technological, political, and ethical reflection and intervention. It offers a ground-breaking approach to central debates about globalization with chapters written by leading scholars from across the social sciences.It examines a range of phenomena that articulate broad structural transformations: technoscience, circuits of exchange, systems of governance, and regimes of ethics or values. It investigates these phenomena from the perspective of the 'anthropologica' problems they pose. It covers a broad range of geographical areas: Africa, the Middle East, East and South Asia, North America, South America, and Europe. It grapples with a number of empirical problems of popular and academic interest - from the organ trade, to accountancy, to pharmaceutical research, to neoliberal reform.

$39.37

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More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 512
Edition: 1
Publisher: WB
Published: 31 Aug 2004
ISBN 10: 1405123583
ISBN 13: 9781405123587

Media Reviews

This compelling book demonstrates how a very sophisticated anthropological perspective can transform 'globalization' into a useful tool for investigating emerging social forms and ways of ruling and living. Certainly this non-structural approach is needed-one that attends to the specificity of combinations, interactions, sites, and effects associated with the spread of technology and risk. Ulrich Beck, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen Global Assemblages provides excellent and rich insight into a developing anthropology of the contemporary world. The intertwining of violence, capital flows, political fragmentation, and regimes of social and moral control are investigated here in what must be recognized as a major contribution to anthropological scholarship. Jonathan Friedman, L' Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris and Lund University, Sweden This volume will give assemblages of many types a good name-the authors are astute, varied, and at the top of their game; the geographies do justice to the notion of global; and the book has a core intellectual inquiry about reflexive practices that holds together its wide-ranging essays. From transplanted kidneys to research audit protocols, the uneasy interrelationships of global assemblages emerge in the fleshy details of a knotted world. Donna Haraway, University of California, Santa Cruz

Author Bio

Aihwa Ong is Professor of Anthropology and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Stephen J. Collier is a faculty member at the Graduate Program in International Affairs, The New School University.