Description
Book SynopsisIn 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 t
Trade Review"The punditocracy are our modern day mythmakers. The anthropologists assembled in this collection deftly debunk their myths and make a passionate case for the importance of anthropology to public debate. The authors present sustained, intelligent, and often biting and humorous criticisms of some of the most influential recent popular writings on social science and international relations. This is a very important book." - Bill Maurer, author of Recharting the Caribbean; "From an anthropological standpoint, the world increasingly looks as if it is led by glib, but uninformed, insensitive dolts. In this volume, the authors fight back against the pundits whose influential publications presume the same expertise as anthropologists. They underscore the overgeneralizations, prejudices, false reasoning, and inaccuracies of these popular authors and in doing so provide a useful corrective." - William Beeman, author of The Study of Culture at a Distance"
Table of Contents1. Introduction Hugh Gusterson and Catherine Besteman 2. The Seven Deadly Sins of Samuel Huntington Hugh Gusterson 3. Samuel Huntington, Meet the Nuer: Kinship, Local Knowledge, and the Clash of Civilizations Keith Brown 4. Haunted by the Imaginations of the Past: Robert Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts Tone Bringa 5. Why I Disagree with Robert Kaplan Catherine Besteman 6. Globalization and Thomas Friedman Angelique Haugerud 7. On The Lexus and the Olive Tree, by Thomas L. Friedman Ellen Hertz and Laura Nader 8. Extrastate Globalization of the Illicit Carolyn Nordstrom 9. Class Politics and Scavenger Anthropology in Dinesh D'Souza's Virtue of Prosperity Kath Weston 10. Sex on the Brain: A Natural History of Rape and the Dubious Doctrines of Evolutionary Psychology Stefan Helmreich and Heather Paxson 11. Anthropology and The Bell Curve Jonathan Marks Notes Suggested Further Reading List of Contributors Acknowledgments Index
