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Immanent anthropology: a comparative study of ‘process’ in contemporary France

Matthew, Hodges (2014) Immanent anthropology: a comparative study of ‘process’ in contemporary France. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 20 (S1). pp. 33-51. E-ISSN 1467-9655. (doi:10.1111/1467-9655.12092) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:86944)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12092

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative critique of the ‘processual temporalities’ which infuse both social‐scientific theorizing and selected Western cultural practices. Through study of a public‐private partnership which emerged from a biotechnology project devised for producing ‘self‐cloning’ maize for resource‐poor farmers, I analyse how processual temporalities were central to re‐gearing knowledge practices towards market‐orientated solutions. In a study of characterizations of the ‘state of flux’ which affects life in a French peri‐urban village, I explore how processualism is identified as a component of a metropolitan hegemony which villagers ‘resist’ through idealizing ‘enduring temporalities’ of cultural practice. Drawing on Arendt and Deleuze, I analyse processualism as a dominant contemporary chronotope, mediating and disciplining conflictive temporalities and practices, underwriting economic projects of deterritorialization and restructuring – whose idiom is also prominent in social‐scientific paradigms. I substitute an ‘immanent anthropology’, which advocates a non‐transcendental ontology of cultural practice and analysis – displacing anthropological analysis onto a polychronic temporal foundation.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1111/1467-9655.12092
Subjects: G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GN Anthropology
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Anthropology and Conservation
Depositing User: Alexandra Leduc-Pagel
Date Deposited: 04 Mar 2021 17:20 UTC
Last Modified: 17 Aug 2022 11:02 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/86944 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)
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