Thomas Hylland Eriksen

The Big Here and the Long Now (eBook, ePUB)

From Global Uniformity to the New Diversities

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

For thousands of years, humanity's story was one of diversification. Across centuries and continents our species proliferated new approaches to family and community life; to agriculture, economics, religion, artistic expression and self-understanding. Today, this process is in reverse.

Culturally and ecologically, we are witnessing an almost universal drive towards homogeneity and the loss of diversity. The global forces of capitalism have created a world riddled with overlapping crises, with any alternatives pushed into the margins, narrowing the scope for action just when we need it most. And yet its logic is never totalising: contrary to Margaret Thatcher's famous mantra, there are many alternatives.

The Big Here and the Long Now begins with the story of how our world of efficiency, standardisation and development optimism first came into being; and how promises of progress, growth and prosperity have, in recent years, acquired a nasty aftertaste. The book concludes with hope, and an exploration of creolisation and hybridity. With biocultural diversity already being revived by activists and indigenous communities, from Manhattan to Micronesia, there are plenty of green shoots. Now they must be cultivated and nurtured.

---

Dieser Download kann aus rechtlichen Gründen nur mit Rechnungsadresse in A, D ausgeliefert werden.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Pluto Press
• Erscheinungstermin: 20. April 2026
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780745352237
• Artikelnr.: 75417631

Autorenporträt

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962 - 2024) was Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and former President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). He was among the most highly cited anthropologists of his generation, and his classic and accessible textbook Small Places, Large Issues remains a cornerstone in anthropology courses. His later books, including Overheating, tackled the important issue of climate change within the discipline.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction: The big here and the long now
Part I. A global history of standardisation
1. Narratives of loss
2. Everything was not better before
3. The world after 1492
4. The global bulldozers: State and market
5. Global capitalism and flexibility loss
Part II. Overheating in the 21st century
6. The world after 1991
7. The Homogenocene
8. The smartphone and the container ship
9. The botanical garden - and the zoological one
10. Concrete
11. Soil
12. Invasions
13. Language
14. Food
15. The sensory system
16. Modules in an appified world
17. The good homogenisation
Part III. Miracles of creolisation
18. David and Goliath
19. Cracks in the concrete
20. Biocultural reconciliation
21. Crossing boundaries
22. Unclean diversity
23. The miracle of creolisation
24. TAMA