Radical Egalitarianism

Local Realities, Global Relations

Felicity Aulino, Miriam Goheen and Stanley J. Tambiah

Pages: 336

Fordham University Press
Fordham University Press

This book can be opened with

Glassboxx eBooks and audiobooks can be opened on phones, tablets, iOS and Android devices

Paperback / softback
ISBN: 9780823241903
Published: 04 March 2013
$35.00
Hardback
ISBN: 9780823241897
Published: 04 March 2013
$80.00

In this volume, leading scholars in anthropology, religion, and area studies engage global and local perspectives dialectically to develop a historically grounded, ethnographically driven social science.

The book’s chapters, drawing on research in East and Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, are also in conversation with the extensive work of editor and contributor Stanley J. Tambiah: They all investigate some aspect of what Tambiah has called “multiple orientations to the world.” The implicit focus throughout is on human cultural differences and the historically constituted nature of the political potentialities (both positive and negative) that stem from these. As a whole, then, the volume promotes an approach to scholarship that actively avoids privileging any one conceptual framework or cultural form at the expense of recognizing another—a style of inquiry that the editors call “radical egalitarianism.”

Together, these scholars encourage a comparative examination of contemporary societies, provide insights into the historical development of social scientific and sociopolitical categories, and raise vital questions about the possibilities for achieving equality and justice in the presence of competing realities in the global world today. Michael M.J. Fischer’s Afterword provides a brilliant exegesis of Tambiah’s multifaceted oeuvre, outlining the primary themes that inform his scholarship and, by extension, all the chapters in this book.

Essays that reflect Stanley Tambiah's approach to historically grounded anthropology.---—The Chronicle of Higher Education

“Strives for thick description, close reading, and comparative agility.”---—Jim Boon, Princeton University

“The scholarship embodied in the collection is consistently high quality and the contributions combine theoretical rigor with rich empirical detail. The volume both reflects and extends Stanley J. Tambiah’s contributions to anthropology.”---—Elizabeth Traube, Wesleyan University

Michael M.J. Fischer is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and Professor of Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies at MIT. Among his most recent books is Dispersed Knowledges: Persian Poesis in the Transnational Circuitry.