The contemporary fields of the study of culture, the humanities and the social sciences are unfolding in a dynamic constellation of cultural turns. This book provides a comprehensive overview of these theoretically and methodologically groundbreaking reorientations. It discusses the value of the new focuses and their analytical categories for the work of a wide range of disciplines. In addition to chapters on the interpretive, performative, reflexive, postcolonial, translational, spatial and iconic turns, it discusses emerging directions of research. Drawing on a wealth of international research, this book maps central topics and approaches in the study of culture and thus provides systematic impetus for changed disciplinary and transdisciplinary research in the humanities and beyond – e.g., in the fields of sociology, economics and the study of religion. This work is the English translation by Adam Blauhut of an influential German book that has now been completely revised. It is a stimulating example of a cross-cultural translation between different theoretical cultures and also the first critical synthesis of cultural turns in the English-speaking world.

This innovative book is a forward-looking reflection on mental decolonisation and the postcolonial turn in Africanist scholarship. As a whole, it provides five decennia-long lucid and empathetic research involvements by seasoned scholars who came to live, in local peoples own ways, significant daily events experienced by communities, professional networks and local experts in various African contexts. The book covers materials drawn from Botswana, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania. Themes include the Whelan Research Academy, rap musicians, political leaders, wise men and women, healers, Sacred Spirit churches, diviners, bards and weavers who are deemed proficient in the classical African geometrical knowledge. As a tribute to late Archie Mafeje who showed real commitment to decolonise social sciences from western-centred modernist development theories, commentators of his work pinpoint how these theories sought to dismiss the active role played by African people in their quest for self-emancipation. One of the central questions addressed by the book concerns the role of an anthropologist and this issue is debated against the background of the academic lecture delivered by Ren Devisch when receiving an honorary doctoral degree at the University of Kinshasa. The lecture triggered critical but constructive comments from such seasoned experts as Valentin Mudimbe and Wim van Binsbergen. They excoriate anthropological knowledge on account that the anthropologist, notwithstanding his or her social and cognitive empathy and intense communication with the host community, too often fails to also question her own world and intellectual habitus from the standpoint of her hosts. Leading anthropologists carry further into great depth the bifocal anthropological endeavour focussing on local peoples re-imagining and re-connecting the local and global. The book is of interest to a wide readership in the humanities, social sciences, philosophy and the history of the African continent and its relation with the North.

This innovative book is a forward-looking reflection on mental decolonisation and the postcolonial turn in Africanist scholarship. As a whole, it provides five decennia-long lucid and empathetic research involvements by seasoned scholars who came to live, in local people's own ways, significant daily events experienced by communities, professional networks and local experts in various African contexts. The book covers materials drawn from Botswana, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania. Themes include the Whelan Research Academy, rap musicians, political leaders, wise men and women, healers, Sacred Spirit churches, diviners, bards and weavers who are deemed proficient in the classical African geometrical knowledge. As a tribute to late Archie Mafeje who showed real commitment to decolonise social sciences from western-centred modernist development theories, commentators of his work pinpoint how these theories sought to dismiss the active role played by African people in their quest for self-emancipation. One of the central questions addressed by the book concerns the role of an anthropologist and this issue is debated against the background of the academic lecture delivered by René Devisch when receiving an honorary doctoral degree at the University of Kinshasa. The lecture triggered critical but constructive comments from such seasoned experts as Valentin Mudimbe and Wim van Binsbergen. They excoriate anthropological knowledge on account that the anthropologist, notwithstanding his or her social and cognitive empathy and intense communication with the host community, too often fails to also question her own world and intellectual habitus from the standpoint of her hosts. Leading anthropologists carry further into great depth the bifocal anthropological endeavour focussing on local people's re-imagining and re-connecting the local and global. The book is of interest to a wide readership in the humanities, social sciences, philosophy and the history of the African continent and its relation with the North.

Published twenty years ago, Leela Gandhi’s Postcolonial Theory was a landmark description of the field of postcolonial studies in theoretical terms that set its intellectual context alongside poststructuralism, postmodernism, Marxism, and feminism. Gandhi examined the contributions of major thinkers such as Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and the subaltern historians. The book pointed to postcolonialism’s relationship with earlier anticolonial thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and M. K. Gandhi and explained pertinent concepts and schools of thought—hybridity, Orientalism, humanism, Marxist dialectics, diaspora, nationalism, gendered subalternity, globalization, and postcolonial feminism. The revised edition of this classic work reaffirms its status as a useful starting point for readers new to the field and as a provocative account that opens up possibilities for debate. It includes substantial additions: A new preface and epilogue reposition postcolonial studies within evolving intellectual contexts and take stock of important critical developments. Gandhi examines recent alliances with critical race theory and Africanist postcolonialism, considers challenges from postsecular and postcritical perspectives, and takes into account the ontological, environmental, affective, and ethical turns in the changed landscape of critical theory. She describes what is enduring in postcolonial thinking—as a critical perspective within the academy and as an attitude to the world that extends beyond the discipline of postcolonial studies.

Social scientists have long resisted the radical ideas known as postcolonial thought, while postcolonial scholars have critiqued the social sciences for their Euro-centric focus. However, in Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory, Julian Go attempts to reconcile the two seemingly contradictory fields by crafting a postcolonial social science. Contrary to claims that social science is incompatible with postcolonial thought, this book argues that the two are mutually beneficial, drawing upon the works of thinkers such as Franz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak. Go concludes with a call for a "third wave" of postcolonial thought emerging from social science and surmounting the narrow confines of disciplinary boundaries.

From a variety of historically grounded perspectives, After the Imperial Turn assesses the fate of the nation as a subject of disciplinary inquiry. In light of the turn toward scholarship focused on imperialism and postcolonialism, this provocative collection investigates whether the nation remains central, adequate, or even possible as an analytical category for studying history. These twenty essays, primarily by historians, exemplify cultural approaches to histories of nationalism and imperialism even as they critically examine the implications of such approaches. While most of the contributors discuss British imperialism and its repercussions, the volume also includes, as counterpoints, essays on the history and historiography of France, Germany, Spain, and the United States. Whether looking at the history of the passport or the teaching of history from a postnational perspective, this collection explores such vexed issues as how historians might resist the seduction of national narratives, what—if anything—might replace the nation’s hegemony, and how even history-writing that interrogates the idea of the nation remains ideologically and methodologically indebted to national narratives. Placing nation-based studies in international and interdisciplinary contexts, After the Imperial Turn points toward ways of writing history and analyzing culture attentive both to the inadequacies and endurance of the nation as an organizing rubric. Contributors. Tony Ballantyne, Antoinette Burton, Ann Curthoys, Augusto Espiritu, Karen Fang, Ian Christopher Fletcher, Robert Gregg, Terri Hasseler, Clement Hawes, Douglas M. Haynes, Kristin Hoganson, Paula Krebs, Lara Kriegel, Radhika Viyas Mongia, Susan Pennybacker, John Plotz, Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Heather Streets, Hsu-Ming Teo, Stuart Ward, Lora Wildenthal, Gary Wilder

Offers a lucid introduction to postcolonial studies, one of the most important strands in recent literary theory and cultural studies.