Marking Time: On the Anthropology of the Contemporary

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 176 pages
• Published by: Princeton University Press October 29, 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0691133638
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0691133638
• Book Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Weighs: 8 ounces

Product Review
Paul Rabinow has proved again that he is one of our most incisive commentators on the vital question of our time-what it means to be human today. The reflections gathered in this book engage with the question from a remarkable array of starting points-from speculative philosophical histories through the artisanship of painting to the creative labor that sequenced the genome of the fruit fly. In the process, he shows a methodology for the anthropology of the contemporary that is productive and provocative in equal measure.
(Nikolas Rose, London School of Economics and Political Science )

Product Description


In Marking Time, Paul Rabinow presents his most recent reflections on the anthropology of the contemporary. Drawing richly on the work of Michel Foucault, John Dewey, Niklas Luhmann, and, most interestingly, German painter Gerhard Richter, Rabinow offers a set of conceptual tools for scholars looking at cutting-edge practices in the life sciences, security, new media and art practices, and other emergent phenomena. Taking up topics that include bioethics, anger and competition among molecular biologists, the lessons of the Drosophila genome, the nature of ethnographic observation in radically new settings, and the moral landscape shared by scientists and anthropologists, Rabinow shows how anthropology remains relevant to contemporary debates. By turning abstract philosophical problems into real-world explorations and offering original insights, Marking Time is a landmark contribution to the continuing re-invention of anthropology and the human sciences.