Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2010. “Can the Subaltern Speak?”

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2010. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In, Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea. Rosalind Morris (ed.) Pp. 21-78. NY: Columbia University Press. Spivak writes that while Foucault and Deleuze were “great intellectuals,” their unmediated conversation (Intellectuals and Power 1972) revealed “certain kinds of convictions” – for instance, their …

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Annotation: Foucault, Michel. (1997). Society Must Be Defended.

Foucault, Michel. (1997). Society Must Be Defended. New York: Picador. (Chapter 11) Foucault demonstrates that "the theme of race does not disappear," but that "it becomes part of something very different, namely State racism" (239). Foucault proceeds to illustrate the transformation of the power of the sovereign by looking at the "level of mechanisms, techniques …

Annotation: Kearney, Michael. 1986. From the Invisible Hand to Visible Feet

Kearney, Michael. 1986. From the Invisible Hand to Visible Feet: Anthropological Studies of Migration and Development. Annual Review of Anthropology,15:331-361. Most anthropological work on migration, Kearney writes, takes the form of “migration and _____” (331). In the case of this article, Kearney pairs migration with development, and provides a comprehensive review of how anthropologists have …

Annotation: MacDougall, David. 2006. The Corporeal Image

MacDougall, David. 2006. The Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography, and the Senses. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. MacDougall writes that meaning is created by the whole body, and contests the idea that thought contains only words. He proposes to “reexamine the relation between seeing, thinking, and knowing, and the complex nature of thought itself” (2). Film …

Annotation: Roach, Joseph. 1996. Cities of the Dead

Roach, Joseph. 1996. Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance. Roach uses the term “circum-Atlantic world" to denote a vast “behavioral vortex” (30), in which various spectacles of cultural surrogation can be observed. More specifically, he studies London and New Orleans as spaces for both encounter and exchange, and is interested in the “restless migrations” (xii) …

Annotation: Carsten, Janet. 2004. After Kinship.

Carsten, Janet. 2004. After Kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Using a comparative approach, and paying attention to the "close, intimate, and emotional work of kinship beside the larger projects of state and nation," Carsten takes a "long way round" to investigate the many new guises of kinship. The house, gender, personhood, substance, and idioms, include …

Annotation: Vance, Carol S. 1982. Pleasure and Danger: Toward a Politics of Sexuality

Vance, Carol S. 1982. Pleasure and Danger: Toward a Politics of Sexuality. In Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality. Carole S. Vance, ed. Pp.1-27. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Carol S. Vance uses an example the development of discourse in the feminist movement from the 19th century until the present – which has seen the …

Annotation: Kondo, Dorinne K. 1990. Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace

Kondo, Dorinne K. 1990. Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. As Kondo writes, “What and how I write is no mere academic exercise; for me it matters, and matters deeply” (302). Using a first-person account, what she refers to as “inevitable locatedness” (303), Kondo …

Annotation: Barth, Frederik. 1966. Models of Social Organization.

Barth, Frederik. 1966. Models of Social Organization. Glasgow: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Barth critiques anthropology's focus on the static concept of status, and instead suggests the "need to understand the nature of the interconnection between the statuses," and to look into the "transactional nature of interpersonal relations" (3). Drawing form the …

Annotation: Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of A Theory of Practice

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of A Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Drawing from his field research in the Kabyle society, Bourdieu's theory of practice presents habitus as a core concept, the system of dispositions that operates within a field.As structured structures, and as “systems of durable, transposable dispositions” (72), the habitus is framed, …