van der Veer Peter van der Veer

Value of Comparison (eBook, PDF)

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

In The Value of Comparison Peter van der Veer makes a compelling case for using comparative approaches in the study of society and for the need to resist the simplified civilization narratives popular in public discourse and some social theory. He takes the quantitative social sciences and the broad social theories they rely on to task for their inability to question Western cultural presuppositions, demonstrating that anthropology's comparative approach provides a better means to understand societies. This capacity stems from anthropology's engagement with diversity, its fragmentary approach to studying social life, and its ability to translate difference between cultures. Through essays on topics as varied as iconoclasm, urban poverty, Muslim immigration, and social exclusion van der Veer highlights the ways that studying the particular and the unique allows for gaining a deeper knowledge of the whole without resorting to simple generalizations that elide and marginalize difference.

---

Dieser Download kann aus rechtlichen Gründen nur mit Rechnungsadresse in A, B, BG, CY, CZ, D, DK, EW, E, FIN, F, GR, HR, H, IRL, I, LT, L, LR, M, NL, PL, P, R, S, SLO, SK ausgeliefert werden.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Duke University Press
• Seitenzahl: 208
• Erscheinungstermin: 19. Mai 2016
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780822374220
• Artikelnr.: 54665368

Autorenporträt

Peter van der Veer is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity at Göttingen, Germany and Distinguished University Professor at Utrecht University. He is the author of several books, including The Modern Spirit of Asia: The Spiritual and the Secular in China and India.

Inhaltsangabe

Foreword / Thomas Gibson  vii
Acknowledgments  xi
Introduction  1
Part I. The Fragment and the Whole
1. The Comparative Advantage of Anthropology  25
2. Market and Money: A Critique of Rational Choice Theory  48
Part II. Civilization and Comparison
3. Keeping the Muslims Out: Concepts of Civilization, Civility, and Civil
Society in India, China, and Western Europe  61
4. The Afterlife of Images  80
Part III. Comparing Exclusion
5. Lost in the Mountains: Notes on Diversity in the Southeast Asian
Mainland Massif  107
6. Who Cares? Care Arrangements and Sanitation for the Poor in India and
Elsewhere  130
A Short Conclusion  147
Notes  155
Bibliography  171
Index  183