An Anthropological Trompe L'Oeil for a Common World

An Essay on the Economy of Knowledge
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-0-85745-911-4
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, Band 1, 192 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 448 g

Reihe: Ethnography, Theory, Experiment

Our political age is characterized by forms of description as ‘big’ as the world itself: talk of ‘public knowledge’ and ‘public goods,’ ‘the commons’ or ‘global justice’ create an exigency for modes of governance that leave little room for smallness itself. Rather than question the politics of adjudication between the big and the small, this book inquires instead into the cultural epistemology fueling the aggrandizement and miniaturization of description itself. Incorporating analytical frameworks from science studies, ethnography, and political and economic theory, this book charts an itinerary for an internal anthropology of theorizing. It suggests that many of the effects that social theory uses today to produce insights are the legacy of baroque epistemological tricks. In particular, the book undertakes its own trompe l’oeil as it places description at perpendicular angles to emerging forms of global public knowledge. The aesthetic ‘trap’ of the trompe l’oeil aims to capture knowledge, for only when knowledge is captured can it be properly released.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jiménez, Alberto Corsín

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Theorie und Methoden der Ethnologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Wissenschaftstheorie, Wissenschaftsphilosophie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Wissenschaften: Theorie, Epistemologie, Methodik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Figures

Preface

ZOOM IN

Introduction

PART I: TROMPE L’OEIL

A Myth of Origins

Chapter 1. Surviving Comparison

Chapter 2. The Strabismic Eye

Chapter 3. Reversibility / Proportionality

ZOOM OUT

PART II: COMMON WORLD

Chapter 4. Political / Phantasmagoria

Chapter 5. Predation / Production

Chapter 6. Exteriority / Interiority

AT PERPENDICULAR ANGLES

References

Über Autor(innen)

Jiménez, Alberto Corsín
Alberto Corsín Jiménez is an Associate Professor at the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid. He is the editor of Culture and Well-Being: Anthropological Approaches to Freedom and Political Ethics (Pluto, 2008) and The Anthropology of Organisations (Ashgate, 2007). His current work examines the rise of an urban commons movement and the development of open-source urban hardware projects by architects, artists and academics.

Alberto Corsín Jiménez is an Associate Professor at the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid. He is the editor of Culture and Well-Being: Anthropological Approaches to Freedom and Political Ethics (Pluto, 2008) and The Anthropology of Organisations (Ashgate, 2007). His current work examines the rise of an urban commons movement and the development of open-source urban hardware projects by architects, artists and academics.