Why America's top pundits are wrong : anthropologists talk back / edited by Catherine Besteman and Hugh Gusterson.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Besteman, Catherine Lowe.

Gusterson, Hugh.

Series:

California series in public anthropology ; 13.

California series in public anthropology ; 13

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mass media and anthropology.

Communication and society.

Communication in anthropology.

Communication--Political aspects.

Communication.

Specialists.

Common fallacies.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (292 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, Calif. : University of California Press, c2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In this fresh, literate, and biting critique of current thinking on some of today's most important and controversial topics, leading anthropologists take on some of America's top pundits. This absorbing collection of essays subjects such popular commentators as Thomas Friedman, Samuel Huntington, Robert Kaplan, and Dinesh D'Souza to cold, hard scrutiny and finds that their writing is often misleadingly simplistic, culturally ill-informed, and politically dangerous. Mixing critical reflection with insights from their own fieldwork, twelve distinguished anthropologists respond by offering fresh perspectives on globalization, ethnic violence, social justice, and the biological roots of behavior. They take on such topics as the collapse of Yugoslavia, the consumer practices of the American poor, American foreign policy in the Balkans, and contemporary debates over race, welfare, and violence against women. In the clear, vigorous prose of the pundits themselves, these contributors reveal the hollowness of what often passes as prevailing wisdom and passionately demonstrate the need for a humanistically complex and democratic understanding of the contemporary world. Available: November 2004Pub Date: January 2005

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

1. Introduction

2. The Seven Deadly Sins Of Samuel Huntington

3. Samuel Huntington, Meet The Nuer: Kinship, Local Knowledge, And The Clash Of Civilizations

4. Haunted By The Imaginations Of The Past: Robert Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts

5. Why I Disagree With Robert Kaplan

6. Globalization And Thomas Friedman

7. On The Lexus And The Olive Tree, By Thomas L. Friedman

8. Extrastate Globalization Of The Illicit

9. Class Politics And Scavenger Anthropology In Dinesh D'Souza's Virtue Of Prosperity

10. Sex On The Brain: A Natural History Of Rape And The Dubious Doctrines Of Evolutionary Psychology

11. Anthropology And The Bell Curve

Notes

Suggested Further Reading

Contributors

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN:

9786612763168

9781417573684

1417573686

9781282763166

1282763164

9781598750089

1598750089

9780520938489

0520938488

OCLC:

475933958