Author: Edward Simpson
Translator(s)/ Edito: Kai Kresse / Edward Simpson
Publisher: Foundation Books
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 377
ISBN/UPC (if available): 1-85065-869-2
Description
This volume compares and contrasts anthropological and historical approaches to the study of the Indian Ocean by focusing on the vexed nature of cosmopolitanism. The chapters contribute to current debates on the nature of cosmopolitanism, the comparative study of Muslim societies, and the study of colonial and post-colonial contexts. There are few books on the market that combine serious interdisciplinary scholarship and regional ethnographic expertise with comparable ambition.
REVIEWS:
Struggling with History is a major and very timely addition to scholarship both on a theoretical and on an empirical level. It engages with the much debated and often abused concept of cosmo0politinism, drawing on a wealth of anthropological and historical studies from the Western Indian Ocean rim.
- ULRIKE FREITAG, FREE UNIVERSITY AND ZENTRUM MODERN ORIENT, BERLIN
This volume represents the latest phase of the effort of thinking through what constituters the Indian ocean as a region and how to characterize the fluency of its inhabitants.
-MICHAEL LAMBEK, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO AND LSE
The central question is whether indeed there is such a thing as an Indian Ocean which can be studied, analyzed, used as a heuristic tool just like say a state or a village. The contributors differ agreeably on this matter. The editors vigorously contest the whole notion of cosmopolitanism which in turn questions where there is something called the Indian Ocean which has enough unity/similarities to be subject to analysis.
- MICHAEL PEARSON, UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, SYDNEY