Antropología Reflexiva

Emergent Forms of Life: Anthropologies of Late or Postmodernities Michael M. J. Fischer Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 28. (1999), pp. 455-478.
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http://www.jstor.org Tue Sep 4 12:00:45 2007Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 1999. 28:455-78 Copyright %: 1999 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved

EMERGENT FORMSOF LIFE: Anthropologies
of Late or Postmodernities
Michael M. J. Fischer
Science, Technology and Society Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139; e-mail: mfischer@mit.edu

Key Words: social theory and ethnography, science institutions, filmand
cyberspace, reconstruction after social trauma

Abstract Anthropologies of late modernity (also called postmodernity, postindustrial society, knowledge society, or information society) provide a number of stimulating challenges for all levels of social, cultural, and psychological theory, as well as for ethnographic and other genres of anthropological writing. Three key overlapping arenas ofattention are the centrality of science and technology; decolonization, postcolonialism, and the reconstruction of societies after social trauma; and the role of the new electronic and visual media. The most important challenges of contemporary ethnographic practice include more than merely ( a ) the techniques of multilocale or multisited ethnography for strategically accessing different pointsin broadly spread processes, ( b ) the techniques of multivocal or multiaudience-addressed texts for mapping and acknowledging with greater precision the situatedness of knowledge, (c) the reworking of traditional notions of comparative work for a world that is increasingly aware of difference, and (d)acknowledging that anthropological representations are interventions within a stream ofrepresentations, mediations, and unequally inflected discourses competing for hegemonic control. Of equal importance are the challenges of juxtaposing, complementing, or supplementing other genres of writing, working with historians, literary theorists, media critics, novelists, investigative or in-depth journalists, writers of insider accounts (e.g. autobiographers, scientists writing for the public),photographers and film makers, and others.

CONTENTS Introduction: Challenges for Theory and Practice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456 Three Arenas of Focus in Late or Post-Modern Socio-Cultural Formations. . . . 457 Ethnographic Challenges Posed by These Three Arenas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .458 Metanarratives: Social Theoryfor Late or Postmodernities. . . . . . . . . . ....