Anthropology and Global History From Tribes to the Modern World-System [Paperback]

Anthropologist Carmack provides an overview of global history intertwined with a discussion of scholarly attempts to conceptualize historical change. He employs what he calls a 'global-oriented world-system and civilization framework.' Summarizing the work of scholars including Immanuel Wallerstein (especially), Eric Wolf, Samuel Huntington, Benjamin Barber, and others, he explores how a 'world-systems' framework enhances understanding of historical change in 'civilizations' across the world; in particular, understanding why actors within them pursue liberal developmentalist or radical revolutionary agendas . . . [T]he book provides a helpful introduction to many critical ideas. . . .[T]hose trying to grapple with and conceptualize the 'big picture' will find much of value in the book's theoretical summaries, definitions, and vignettes. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.Anthropology and World History is a cross-disciplinary work that may be of interest to historians, political scientists, economists, and geographers, as well as anthropologists&. There are very few anthropologists who have the ability (or the desire) to do this kind of work, and the breadth of knowledge required is formidable&. Anthropology and World History is, by turns, ambitious, engaging, and challenging. Carmack raises many important issues, resolving some while allowing others to percolate. This kind of global comparative history is not in vogue in much of cultural anthropology today. Many cultural anthropologists prefer micro-analytic ethnographic approaches to macro-historical comparative approaches. Carmack sees these two approaches as compatible rather than mutually exclusive. In arguing for global history, he reminds anthropologists of the larger questions that have animated the discipline from its beginnings. Who are we? Where did we come from? And where are we going?Anthropology and Global History is a grand overview of human history and prehistory and a wel“¡