Ethnography And The Historical ImaginationOver the years John and Jean Comaroff have broadened the study of culture and society with their reflections on power and meaning. In their work on Africa and colonialism they have explored some of the fundamental questions of social science, delving into the nature of history and human agency, culture and consciousness, ritual and representation. How are human differences constructed and institutionalized, transformed and (sometimes) effaced, empowered and (sometimes) resisted? How do local cultures articulate with global forms? How is the power of some people over others built, sustained, eroded, and negated? How does the social imagination take shape in novel yet collectively meaningful ways?Addressing these questions, the essays in this volume—several never before published—work toward an “imaginative sociology,” demonstrating the techniques by which social science may capture the contexts that human beings construct and inhabit. In the introduction, the authors offer their most complete statement to date on the nature of historical anthropology. Standing apart from the traditional disciplines of social history and modernist social science, their work is dedicated to discovering how human worlds are made and signified, forgotten and remade. |
Contents
Dialectical Systems Imaginative Sociologies | 93 |
95 | 155 |
Images of Empire Contests of Conscience | 181 |
Copyright | |
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Ethnography and the Historical Imagination JOHN. COMAROFF COMAROFF (JEAN.),Jean Comaroff No preview available - 2020 |
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Afrikaner agnatic agriculture beasts Bechuana body Boers bourgeois British Burchell Cape Town cattle chiefdoms Christian churchmen civilizing mission colonial Comaroff and Comaroff commodity communities consciousness context contradictions contrast cultivation cultural David Livingstone discourse division of labor domestic dominant early ethnic ethnography European evangelism evangelists everyday fact female forces forms global groups historical anthropology household human identities ideology images imagination imperial individual J. L. Comaroff kgotla Kuruman living Livingstone LMS Incoming Letters London London Missionary Society Mackenzie Mafeking Mafikeng male marriage material matrilateral means metonym migrant missionaries mmèrèkò mode modern Moffat moral movement narrative native nature nineteenth century Nonconformist Palapye persons physical political economy practices precolonial processes production relations ritual rural Schapera sekgoa setswana settlers signs social order social world society South Africa Southern Tswana structure symbolic things tion transformation Tshidi world University Press WMMS women Zionist