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Ethnographic studies in subjectivity - 7
João Biehl , Byron Good and Arthur Kleinman (eds)
University of California Press, Berkeley,California, 2007, Paperback , 464pp. , US$25.95, £17.95 ,
ISBN: 978-0520247932
There was a time not long ago when the topic of subjectivity, along with the related topic of experience, was virtually taboo in anthropological writing and theorizing. It was assumed to be either too vague conceptually, too difficult to describe empirically, too bound to the individual cogito or too irrelevant to social life to be taken seriously. A massive shift has come about in the past decade or so, and concern for subjectivity appears increasingly urgent. However, across the human sciences in general, and within anthropology in particular, there has to date been no attempt to consolidate the state of knowledge about subjectivity, or to trace the contours of argumentation through the relevant debates. Thus in some instances, the question is the nature of subjectivities, in others the existence and consequences of multiple subjectivities. In some forms of discussion, subjectivity has the political sense of referring to persons or entities who are subject to power and oppression, and in others the psychological sense of referring to persons who are subjects of their own experience and agency. Yet again, in some instances the concern is with the subjectivity of individual social actors and in others with collective subjectivity in the form of the psychic consequences of mass trauma or processes of memorialization.
This volume performs the much needed and very timely services of: (a) crystallizing anthropological thought to date on subjectivity into a manageable package for students entering this field of debate; (b) advancing that knowledge with creative analyses of critical aspects of the discussion topically well chosen and focused, and written by eminent scholars; (c) outlining four domains of discussion to which anthropologists have had the most and the most incisive things to say about subjectivity, particularly with...