Critically Modern: alternatives, alterities, anthropologies.

Critically Modern: alternatives, alterities, anthropologies. Critically Modern: alternatives, alterities, anthropologies Editedby Bruce Knauft Bloomington: Indiana University Press Indiana University Press, also known as IU Press, is a publishing house at Indiana University that engages in academic publishing, specializing in the humanities and social sciences. It was founded in 1950. Its headquarters are located in Bloomington, Indiana. , 2002. Pp. 344Price: US4 54.95 (Cloth); US$21.95 (Paper) Modernity is the quality or condition of being modern (just aspurity is the condition of being pure). But what is this quality?According to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. conceptual and intellectual historians of Westernsocieties, such as Koselleck and Blumenberg, the post-Enlightenmentmodern entails an unique temporality tem��po��ral��i��ty?n. pl. tem��po��ral��i��ties1. The condition of being temporal or bounded in time.2. temporalities Temporal possessions, especially of the Church or clergy.Noun 1. , where the future is one ofindeterminate progress. One is modern when progress-orientated change istaken as a given. This ideology of progress cannot be divorced from theexpansive colonization of Western societies into all parts of the globe.What are the implications of this history for the analytical uses ofmodernity beyond the West? Such considerations have lead to apluralization plu��ral��ize?v. plu��ral��ized, plu��ral��iz��ing, plu��ral��iz��esv.tr.1. To make plural.2. Grammar To express in the plural.v.intr.1. of the notion. There are now 'alternativemodernities', 'multiple modernities', 'vernacularmodernities', and so on. Anthropologists, for good reason, havecontributed much to this latest trend; either advocating, or criticizingthese tendencies. Knauft has assembled anthropologists representingthese different perspectives. One of the virtues of his editedcollection is the critical dialogue it sustains: there is no 'threeline whip' on the part of the editor. Contributors disagree and thediverse views this generates, most grounded in ethnographic casestudies, are refreshing and insightful. Knauft's introduction provides an overview of some of themajor debates in the social sciences that have informed the study ofmodernity. He advocates a perspective glossed as 'alternativelymodern': if becoming modern entails a core articulation betweenregional or global forces of so-called progress and the specifics oflocal sensibility and response, the alternatively modern 'engagesthe global with the local and the impact of political economy withcultural orientations and subjective dispositions' (p. 24). Itwould seem, then, that a major difference between the modern and'alternatively modern' is one where the notion of progressacts as conventional, if problematic, and the alternatively modern,where progress cannot be taken as a given: it is more exceptional. The authors assembled in Part I (Foster, Karp, Knauft, and Wardlow)are generally favourable to the anthropological deployment of modernity. Foster suggests 'objective' conditions can be isolatedwith respect to modernity, which, in turn, alter 'subjective'experience. His exemplar of this is trust. Foster takes as readGidden's concept of time-space distanciation;'objectively' this creates problems of trust with the abstractsystem that affects Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea(păp`ə, –y (PNG (Portable Network Graphics) A bitmapped graphics file format endorsed by the World Wide Web Consortium. It is expected to eventually replace the GIF format, because there are lingering legal problems with GIFs. ) villagers' everydaylives--such as the national money they use in ceremonial contexts. Hisanalysis assumes that the 'objective' conditions ofmoney--where "economic relations are "lifted out" fromthe time-space determinations of physical locales' (p. 70)--thuscreating problems of trust, is what motivates the 'subjective'experience of villagers in their use of national currencies. Friedmanalso critically highlights this assumption by Foster in his concludingchapter to the volume (p. 289-290). Karp's chapter highlights issues of progress, development andlocal Kenyan notions of being 'behind' and needing to go'forward'. He argues that development discourse as exemplifiedin this context presupposes ideas of personhood per��son��hood?n.The state or condition of being a person, especially having those qualities that confer distinct individuality: "finding her own personhood as a campus activist" as the cause for thefailure to advance. Knauft describes 'trials of the oxymodern': a schism, hesuggests, experienced between traditional actions and beliefs, and thoseviewed as newly progressive among the Gebusi (Western Province, PNG). Asevidence, he presents brief case studies (and accompanying photographs)of performances at the government station on Independence Day,initiation feasts, and Church related images and drawings by schoolchildren. The images, in particular, seem to suggest such a schismbetween the traditional and the progressive. However, like Foster'schapter, we are given little sense of whether the Gebusi view matters inthis way. The analysis is guided more by the trope trope?n.1. A figure of speech using words in nonliteral ways, such as a metaphor.2. A word or phrase interpolated as an embellishment in the sung parts of certain medieval liturgies. of the oxymodern (andthe striking effect of the images on the reader) than with an analysisof the views of villagers. Wardlow examines gender difference in the way Huli of the SouthernHighlands (PNG) have come to form their 'modernity'. Heranalysis focuses on commodity appropriation: men's appropriation isevaluated as proper and powerful only where women are prevented fromsuch acts. Huli men can only be 'modern' and thus'men', if women are not and act as 'women' shouldwhich is evaluated as 'traditional'. Huli modernity, Wardhiwargues, is informed by Huli gender thinking. The chapters of Part II (Rofel, Spitulnik, Trouillot) assume a morecritical take on the modernity concept. Rofel unravels the gender imagery at the core of Hardt andNegri's influential book Empire. Their analysis of contemporaryglobal predicaments, she notes, lacks a consideration of kinship andfamily. This is due to their gender blindness. The nineteenth and earlytwentieth century masculine hero of industrial labour, in their account,has now been displaced to non-Western settings where labour is performedlargely by women. This radical transformation is not seriouslyconsidered in their analysis. Rather, Rofel argues, a new masculine herois located firmly in the Western setting: the male information worker ofmedia and finance. The language of modernity is the focus of Spitulnik's chapter.She examines, in the Zambian context of Bemba speakers, linguisticexpressions that refer to modernity and language used when performing asa modern person. An interesting example of the former is the use of theBemba verb 'to dawn'. Before the colonial era the verb had anarrow meaning, such as 'the day is dawning'. During thecolonial period Colonial Period may generally refer to any period in a country's history when it was subject to administration by a colonial power. Korea under Japanese rule Colonial America See alsoColonialism this was extended to human qualities, connoting a senseof being modern. An example of performing as a modern person is codeswitching, e.g. the use of Bemba and English loan words. But shecautions: such code switches do not always mean the same thing or thatthe relation between the two languages is the same on every occasion.The use of English words does not necessarily signify modernity. Trouillot's chapter highlights distinctly spatial issues. Heargues that modernity (or in his terms modernization) is a geography ofmanagement that creats places for political and economic purposes. It isalso, simultaneously, a particular mode of imagination, which privilegeschronological primacy. His exemplar is the Caribbean: he suggests it wasmodern from the start of European incursions. The region was founded onprofound spatial and temporal rapture (i.e. slavery, displacement,etc.). His conclusion, though, is opaque: he argues that future analysisneeds to focus on the ways modernity can never be what people haveclaimed for it. But, of course, this is true of anything imagined, asthe work of myth recurrently demonstrates. The final three chapters, Part III (Donham, Kelly and Friedman),are the most critical of the volume. Donham suggests that the current proliferation of studies focusedon modernity is, ironically, a way of affirming one's ownmodernity. At the same time, the tendency to pluralize plu��ral��ize?v. plu��ral��ized, plu��ral��iz��ing, plu��ral��iz��esv.tr.1. To make plural.2. Grammar To express in the plural.v.intr.1. modernity, suchas 'alternative modernities' (Appadurai), puts each'copy' on 'equal footing'; each is thus potentiallycommensurable com��men��su��ra��ble?adj.1. Measurable by a common standard.2. Commensurate; proportionate.3. Mathematics Exactly divisible by the same unit an integral number of times. Used of two quantities. with the others, while simultaneously maintaining theproblem of their incommensurability in��com��men��su��ra��ble?adj.1. a. Impossible to measure or compare.b. Lacking a common quality on which to make a comparison.2. Mathematicsa. . Donham's move is tointerrogate the very process of copying itself. He observes thatmodernist revolutions often occur in the most 'backward'regions as local elites sense the need to 'catch up'--to copy.The Ethopian case is noteworthy in this regard. Here was a politicallyindependent state with immense economic backwardness. It was theconjunction of these factors that engendered a Marxist modernrevolution. Why Marxist? Because the old political regime was tied toAmerican-funded imperialism, while the new way forward was itsalternative: a Marxist vision of the future. Again, why were most of therevolutionaries from evangelical Christian backgrounds? To account forthis Donham analyses the history of missionization and how therevolutionaries imbibed notions of 'progress' from theWestern-trained missionaries. What was holding them back were their owntraditions. He uses this analysis to critique Comaroff's study ofSouth Africa South Africa,Afrikaans Suid-Afrika, officially Republic of South Africa, republic (2005 est. pop. 44,344,000), 471,442 sq mi (1,221,037 sq km), S Africa. . Donham argues, convincingly, I think, that themissionaries exemplified notions of the modern and did not necessarilyinstill in��stillv.To pour in drop by drop.instil��lation n. capitalist hegemony. Kelly's chapter asks whether we should find an alternativenotion to that of modernity. He argues that when Baudelaire coined theterm 'modern-ity' to characterize the current moment 'heunderstood the deliberate sublime paradox of describing an era acceptingof ineluctable change' (p. 269). But this paradoxical quality hasbeen lost in its social science usage. Instead, social science now takesas given the commensurate quality of all modern nation states, in theirhistorical specificity. But where did this convention originate? Kellyargues this is an outgrowth of the Truman Doctrine, the project of USforeign policy after 1945--all nation-states are equal, if alternativevisions, of the same thing. Modernity and the nation-state have spreadwidely since this period. 'To celebrate, and especially toanticipate, symmetrical alternative modernities is to ratify the TrumanDoctrine translated into a new social scientific sublime' (p. 277). The concluding chapter by Friedman focuses on the parameters, hesuggests, that give rise to modernity. He argues that modernity isinextricably in��ex��tri��ca��ble?adj.1. a. So intricate or entangled as to make escape impossible: an inextricable maze; an inextricable web of deceit.b. linked to the cultural field of commercial capitalism:'the fact that one desires Western goods does not have anything todo with modernity as such' (p. 299). This is to conflate con��flate?tr.v. con��flat��ed, con��flat��ing, con��flates1. To bring together; meld or fuse: "The problems [with the biopic]include . . contemporaneity with modernity; it is a projection of Western obsessionswhere they are not relevant. Friedman makes the important distinctionbetween 'being modern' and having a 'different way ofconnecting to a larger world' (as in the case of potlatching sewingmachines) (p.306). His argument about modernity, then, turns upon theimportance of capitalist reproduction: modernity--as an identity andcultural space (in his terms)--only arises where capitalism is dominant. As my brief summaries of the chapters indicate, this is a volumewith plenty to offer those interested in the anthropological study ofmodernity: whether one is critical or positive about the deployment ofthe notion, here is much to stimulate reflection and debate. Eric Hirsch Brunel University.