Overview

The Anthropology of Power presents case studies from a wide range of societies and discusses what is actually happening when people talk about 'empowering' others. The contributors question whether power is actually being transferred to the powerless, or whether this is a delusion. This collection draws on ethnographic material from Europe, the Middle East, Austalasia, Africa and the Americas exploring how traditionally disempowered groups gain influence in postcolonial and multicultural settings, from civil war to new communication technologies, from religious imperialism to transnational mining investments. It surveys the relationships between empowerment and economic development, gender and environmentalism. The contributors confront post-Foucauldian theoretical issues on the nature, distribution and balance of power, and ask whether the rhetoric of 'empowerment' actually masks a lack of change in established power relations. Madawi Al-Rasheed, King's College, London, Colin Filer, National Research Institute, Papua New Guinea, Rudo Gaidzanwa, University of Zimbabwe, Ngapare Hopa, University of A

Full Product Details

Author:   Angela Cheater
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Volume:   No.36
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 1.60cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.453kg
ISBN:  

9780415193887

ISBN 10:   0415193885
Pages:   224
Publication Date:   18 February 1999
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

1 Power in the postmodern era 2 Empowering ambiguities 3 The discursive space of schooling: on the theories of power and empowerment in multiculturalism and anti-racism 4 ‘Father did not answer that question’: power, gender and globalisation in Europe 5 The reach of the postcolonial state: development, empowerment/disempowerment and technocracy 6 The guardians of power: biodiversity and multiculturality in Colombia 7 The dialectics of negation and negotiation in the anthropology of mineral resource development in Papua New Guinea 8 Land and re-empowerment: ‘The Waikato case’ 9 Indigenisation as empowerment? Gender and race in the empowerment discourse in Zimbabwe 10 Exploitation after Marx 11 Evading state control: political protest and technology in Saudi Arabia 12 Authority versus power: a view from social anthropology 13 Speaking truth to power? Some problems using ethnographic methods to influence the formulation of housing policy in South Africa 14 Machiavellian empowerment and disempowerment: the violent political changes in early seventeenth-century Ethiopia

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Author Information

Angela Cheater is the author of a number of influential books in social anthropology, including Social Anthropology: An Alternative Introduction (1986). She has taught social anthropology at the universities of Natal, Zimbabwe, Cape Town and Waikato.

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