In his introduction to Writing Culture, James Clifford remarked with respect to the historical and conceptual shifts that have made it so hard to represent those thought of as others: “There is no longer any place of overview (mountaintop) from which to map human ways of life, no Archimedian point from which to represent the world. Mountains are in constant motion. So are islands: for one cannot occupy, unambiguously, a bounded cultural world from which to journey out and analyze other cultures. Human ways of life increasingly influence, dominate, parody, translate, and subvert one another.”
(Quoted from Complementary Methods for Research in Education 2nd Edition. Edited by Richard M. Jaeger. p.203-204)
Oh, good. Give me another book to add to my list, will you? Maria, as I looked this up on Amazon (25th anniversary edition is featured), I saw their list of related book includes, "Women Writing Culture" edited by Ruth Behar and Deborah Gordon. The lone customer review called it a "must read for feminist anthropologists." Wherever you land on the spectrum of feminism, I still suspect it would be a good read for you. Ok, how's that for a quid pro quo?
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