No. 59 (2020): (Des)estabilidad social y diversidades
Dossier

There’s no such thing as a society: neoliberal culture and Marilyn Strathern’s radical anthropology

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  • Emiliano Zolla Márquez
Emiliano Zolla Márquez
Universidad Iberoamericana
Bio
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24275/uam/izt/dcsh/alteridades/2020v30n59/Zolla

Published 2020-06-24

Keywords

  • theory,
  • ethnography,
  • British anthropology,
  • Melanesia,
  • neoliberalism,
  • individual
    • ...More
    Less

How to Cite

Zolla Márquez, E. (2020). There’s no such thing as a society: neoliberal culture and Marilyn Strathern’s radical anthropology. Alteridades, (59). https://doi.org/10.24275/uam/izt/dcsh/alteridades/2020v30n59/Zolla
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Abstract

This article explores the relationship between ethnographic work and the culture of those societies from which anthropologists come from. Specifically, the text delves into the way in which neoliberal thinking and politics during Margaret Thatcher’s era influenced ways of thinking and practicing anthropology in Great Britain by disturbing the foundations of functionalism as well as other classic anthropological theories. At the same time, the article describes the way in which Marilyn Strathern’s thought challenges the theoretical crisis
opened by neoliberalism, by means of an ethnographic critique of central Western concepts such as society or individual.

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