What do we mean when we talk about "the economy" and "economic activity"? How we answer that question and the tools we reach for to analyse it, shape how we study it and how we are defined as practitioners. Conventional economic thought and talk see the economy as the sum of market transactions carried out by rational individuals deciding how to allocate their resources among the various things on offer that would satisfy their desires. Economic anthropologists...

In this book, the author's most philosophical work to date, he examines what makes human beings supremely different from all other species and posits that we, as a species, now know enough about the universe and ourselves that we can begin to approach questions about our place in the cosmos and the meaning of intelligent life in a systematic, indeed, in a testable way.

Study the science of all of us Anthropology is the organized study of what makes humans human. It takes an objective step back to view homo sapiens as a species and ask questions like: Given our common characteristics, why aren't all of us exactly the same? Why do people across the world have variable skin and hair color and so many inventive ways to say hello? And how can knowing the reasons behind our differences-as well as our similarities-teach...

How might we speak of human life amid violence, deprivation, or disease so intrusive as to put the idea of the human into question? How can scholarship and advocacy address new forms of war or the slow, corrosive violence that belie democracy's promise to mitigate human suffering? To Veena Das, the answers to these question lie not in foundational ideas about human nature but in a close attention to the diverse ways in which the natural and the social...

This major new study by one of the most penetrating and persistent critics of philosophical and scientific orthodoxy, returns to Aristotle in order to examine the salient categories in terms of which we think about ourselves and our nature, and the distinctive forms of explanation we invoke to render ourselves intelligible to ourselves. • The culmination of 40 years of thought on the philosophy of mind and the nature of the mankind • Written...

Revolutionary France of 1789 was the world's first post-Christian society. Leftism is an ersatz religion, and France became the world's first Leftist nation. Leftism is faux Christianity. America is today becoming a post-Christian society under a similar imitation of Christianity. One of the truisms of such a society is that one can now hide behind the pretense of "openness." Shame, which would have previously kept certain things hidden, is now the...

Anthropological Witness tells the story of Alexander Laban Hinton's encounter with an accused architect of genocide and, more broadly, Hinton's attempt to navigate the promises and perils of expert testimony. In March 2016, Hinton served as an expert witness at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, an international tribunal established to try senior Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes committed during the 1975–79 Cambodian genocide. His...

Paul Rabinow is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. His recent books include French DNA: Trouble in Purgatory, Essays on the Anthropology of Reason (Princeton), and Making PCR, A Story of Biotechnology. The discipline of anthropology is, at its best, characterized by turbulence, self-examination, and inventiveness. In recent decades, new thinking and practice within the field has certainly reflected this pattern,...

Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer was one of the seminal works of political philosophy in recent decades. It was also the beginning of a series of interconnected investigations of staggering ambition and scope, investigating the deepest foundations of Western politics and thought. The Use of Bodies represents the ninth and final volume in this twenty-year undertaking, breaking considerable new ground while clarifying the stakes and implications of the...

This detailed survey of the evolution of anthropology in Britain is also a spirited defence of the public as well as professional role of the discipline. The author argues for a broader vision of the value of anthropological knowledge that allows for the creative contributions of popular scientists and literary figures who often capture the public imagination and add much to our knowledge of human social relations. Informed by original archival research...