Description:
- Uncovers the complicity of postcolonial criticism with what it criticizes
- Shows that Enlightenment ideas such as thinking for oneself and becoming autonomous are untenable
- Expands the notion of 'the cost of living' to include a cost of thinking and doing
Brief description:
Vassos Argyrou is Professor of Social Anthropology and Cultural Theory in the School of Social Sciences, University of Hull. His publications include Tradition and Modernity in the Mediterranean: The Wedding as Symbolic Struggle (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Anthropology and the Will to Meaning: A Postcolonial Critique (Pluto Press, 2002), and The Logic of Environmentalism: Anthropology, Ecology and Postcoloniality (Berghahn Books, 2005).
Review Quotes:
"...an extremely well thought out, interesting and timely piece of work... Its scope and concerns are simply exemplary: this is a book of social theory written by an anthropologist who fully uses the perspective given by his own disciplinary background to question deeply ingrained commonplaces of European thought, in particular the 'critical tradition, ' without simply being dismissive of any use of critical thinking." - Arpad Szakolczai, University College Cork