Anthropology and Social Theory
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Anthropology and Social Theory

Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject

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eBook - PDF

Anthropology and Social Theory

Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject

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About This Book

In Anthropology and Social Theory the award-winning anthropologist Sherry B. Ortner draws on her longstanding interest in theories of cultural practice to rethink key concepts of culture, agency, and subjectivity for the social sciences of the twenty-first century. The seven theoretical and interpretive essays in this volume each advocate reconfiguring, rather than abandoning, the concept of culture. Similarly, they all suggest that a theory which depends on the interested action of social beings—specifically practice theory, associated especially with the work of Pierre Bourdieu—requires a more developed notion of human agency and a richer conception of human subjectivity. Ortner shows how social theory must both build upon and move beyond classic practice theory in order to understand the contemporary world.

Some of the essays reflect explicitly on theoretical concerns: the relationship between agency and power, the problematic quality of ethnographic studies of resistance, and the possibility of producing an anthropology of subjectivity. Others are ethnographic studies that apply Ortner's theoretical framework. In these, she investigates aspects of social class, looking at the relationship between race and middle-class identity in the United States, the often invisible nature of class as a cultural identity and as an analytical category in social inquiry, and the role that public culture and media play in the creation of the class anxieties of Generation X. Written with Ortner's characteristic lucidity, these essays constitute a major statement about the future of social theory from one of the leading anthropologists of our time.

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Information

Publisher
Duke University Press Books
Year
2006
ISBN
9780822388456
Topic
Social Sciences
Subtopic
Cultural & Social Anthropology
Index
Social Sciences
106
Generation 
X
Theories 
of 
representation, 
in 
turn, 
compel 
us 
to 
think 
not 
only 
about 
the
relationship 
between 
a 
signifier 
and 
its 
referent, 
but 
about 
representations 
as
produced 
and 
consumed 
within 
a 
field 
of 
inequality 
and 
power, 
and 
shaped 
as
much 
by 
those 
relations 
of 
production 
and 
consumption 
as 
by 
the 
nature 
of
the 
supposed 
referent. 
Thus 
I 
have 
suggested, 
if 
only 
briefly, 
that 
the 
idea 
of
Generation 
X 
tells 
us 
as 
much 
about 
the 
anxieties 
of 
upper-middle-class
parents 
as 
it 
does 
about 
some 
set 
of 
young 
people 
out 
there 
in 
the 
world. 
We
may 
think 
of 
the 
public 
culture 
on 
Generation 
X 
in 
part 
as 
the 
product 
of 
a
cultural 
scouting 
expedition 
on 
behalf 
of 
these 
people, 
a 
trip 
to 
what 
to 
them
is 
the 
edge 
of 
social 
space, 
and 
a 
set 
of 
postcards 
from 
that 
edge.

Table of contents

  1. CONTENTS
  2. INTRODUCTION Updating Practice Theory
  3. CHAPTER ONE Reading America: Preliminary Notes on Class and Culture
  4. CHAPTER TWO Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal
  5. CHAPTER THREE Identities: The Hidden Life of Class
  6. CHAPTER FOUR Generation X: Anthropology in a Media-Saturated World
  7. CHAPTER FIVE Subjectivity and Cultural Critique
  8. CHAPTER SIX Power and Projects: Reflections on Agency
  9. NOTES
  10. REFERENCES CITED
  11. INDEX