The Fate of Culture - (Representations Books) by Sherry B Ortner (Paperback)

About the Book

This book grapples with the work and legacy of Clifford Geertz, one of the noted anthropologists of this century. Including a list of top-notch contributors, this book provides a range of writings about the meanings of culture today.

Book Synopsis

Clifford Geertz is one of the foremost figures in the reconfiguration of the boundary between the social sciences and the humanities in the second half of the twentieth century. Expanding the power and complexity of the anthropological concept of culture, his work is both foundational to, and in critical counterpoint with, that vast interdisciplinary spectrum of scholarship known today as "cultural studies." This book brings together seven leading scholars from four disciplines to take a fresh look at Geertz's work, and to consider the continuing implications of his work in the contemporary context.

Framed by an important introduction by anthropologist Sherry B. Ortner, the articles cover such topics as seventeenth-century English ghosts, Jewish merchants in early capitalism, Egyptian women in the age of television, and the role of Sherpas in Himalayan mountaineering, as well as such methodological issues as the place of emotional empathy and "complicity" in ethnographic fieldwork, and the mutual illumination of culture and history.

From the Back Cover

Clifford Geertz is one of the foremost figures in the reconfiguration of the boundary between the social sciences and the humanities in the second half of the twentieth century. Expanding the power and complexity of the anthropological concept of culture, his work is both foundational to, and in critical counterpoint with, that vast interdisciplinary spectrum of scholarship known today as "cultural studies." This book brings together seven leading scholars from four disciplines to take a fresh look at Geertz's work and to consider the continuing implications of his work in the contemporary context.

Framed by an important introduction by anthropologist Sherry B. Ortner, the volume includes contributions by Stephen Greenblatt, Renato I. Rosaldo, Jr., William H. Sewell, Jr., Natalie Zemon Davis, George E. Marcus, and Lila Abu-Lughod. The articles cover such topics as seventeenth-century English ghosts, Jewish merchants in early capitalism, Egyptian women in the age of television, and the role of Sherpas in Himalayan mountaineering, as well as such methodological issues as the place of emotional empathy and "complicity" in ethnographic fieldwork, and the mutual illumination of culture and history.

About the Author

Sherry B. Ortner is Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University and is currently completing her third book on the Sherpas of Nepal, Life and Death on Mount Everest: Sherpas and Himalayan Mountaineering.