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Pub Res Q (2010) 26:212213 DOI 10.1007/s12109-010-9173-4
BOOK REVIEW
Carol Gluck and Anna Tsing (eds): Words in Motion: Towards a Global Lexicon
Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2010, 360 pages, Paperback, $24.95, ISBN: 978-0-8223-4519-0
Claire Wyckoff
Published online: 17 August 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Here is a collection of essays that all students of history, especially those with an interest in its political, social, and ethnographic dimensions will nd intriguing. Its novelty lies in an approach that relies on specic words to provide windows through which the contributors view and interpret the recent histories of various societies.
In compiling this carefully researched volume, the editors have enlisted scholars from ve disciplines to provide essays on how the concepts behind these particular words have evolved in thirteen regions. The result is a book that attempts to analyze the political and social changes that have occurred in a wide range of cultures. Moving from North Africa through Europe to East and Southeast Asia, it runs the gamut, from colonial discourse through national liberation movements, and into post-colonialism and globalization. In this age...