Description: Conversations between two top anthropologists about the intellectual trends in contemporary anthropology and about the discipline's future as it continues to intersect with fields such as science studies.
Review Quotes: "[T]he book exemplifies another 'aesthetic' approach, a noble response if hardly a solution, to the problem of how to think today. Very serious scholars might simply speak candidly, on the record, with one another about matters they have considered for years. It is such a simple genre, one we should all try. Right. Designs is a bravura performance."--David A. Westbrook, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
"Rees does a great job in summing up what is the result of a fascinating dialogue among intellectuals. . . . There are also those who started with Writing Culture and reached positions from where they can rethink and renew the structure of dissertation projects and start conversations on the anthropology of the contemporary with a new generation of anthropology students. This small collaborative and dialogic book will serve them well as a permanent inspiration."--Werner Krauss, American Ethnologist "This series of thought-provoking exchanges between senior anthropologists Paul Rabinow, George Marcus, and James Faubion address the past, present, and future of the discipline and the challenges involved in designing anthropologies of the contemporary. . . . [R]ecommended reading for anthropology students, especially those feeling lost in the forest of anthropological approaches, and for all those curious what several of the discipline's most influential theorists have to say about the past, present, and future of anthropology."--Noel Salazar, Anthropology Review Database