1st Edition

Theory from the South Or, How Euro-America is Evolving Toward Africa

By Jean Comaroff, John L. Comaroff Copyright 2012
272 Pages
by Routledge

280 Pages
by Routledge

272 Pages
by Routledge

As nation-states in the Northern Hemisphere experience economic crisis, political corruption and racial tension, it seems as though they might be 'evolving' into the kind of societies normally associated with the 'Global South'. Anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff draw on their long experience of living in Africa to address a range of familiar themes - democracy, national borders, labour and... Read more
Chapter 1 Theory from the South; Chapter 2 On Personhood; Chapter 3 Liberalism, Policulturalism, and ID-ology; Chapter 4 Nations With/Out Borders; Chapter 5 Figuring Democracy; Chapter 6 History On Trial; Chapter 7 Alien-Nation; Chapter 8 Beyond Bare Life;

Biography

Jean Comaroff

“In this major transdisciplinary work, the Comaroffs (both anthropologists, Univ. of Chicago) have produced a well-crafted, nuanced, and sophisticated intervention in the meanings, limits, and Eurocentric underpinnings of modernity…The book is a welcome addition in debunking the Eurocentric binary between the ‘rational’ West and not so rational ‘non-West’ and provides a refreshing insight into what the ‘South’ has to offer in framing the future of the global human community. Theory from the South is not only ‘from the South’ but also ‘of’ and ‘about the South.’ The book further enhances the reputation of the Comaroffs as formidable critical intellectuals of the first order. Beautifully done. Essential.”
-–CHOICE December 2011 Vol. 49 No. 04

"Jean and John Comaroff put forward their case in the strongest possible terms, and they do so with flair, eloquence, and brilliance: that Africa in particular and the Global South more broadly are in the vanguard of world history, generative of global futures and theory to match. This is a book that will be read and debated with vigor and profit."
--Charles Piot, Duke University