Postmodernism :: essays papers

PostmodernismWith the end of colonialism and the emergence of a seemingly new field order, at that place raised a demand that research be effectual and relevant, indicating that knowledge for its own sake was insufficient. As a result of this, what emerged was a new focus on development and modernization in the form of postmodernism. In these changing times, anthropology has come into contact with a variety of evolving concepts, including hybridity, montage, fluidity, and deconstruction. The question remains, how these concepts reflect the social, pagan and political changes that are occurring in study of anthropology forthwith.Postmodernism is an intellectual movement that promotes itself as the antithesis of modernism, resulting from the intensification, radicalization, or transformation of the processes of modernity. (Barfield, 368) The term was introduced in the late 1940s, however, the turn towards, if not the origin of postmodernism in an thropology, can be traced to a single issuance Writing Culture (1986). It consisted of contributions from nine scholars, edited by Clifford and Marcus, and attempted to skeleton out the basic premise of the postmodern perspective. (Harris, 153) Anthropologist are forced to pick out with the changes created by postmodernism in a variety of ways, beginning with the challenge to anthropological authority. It is felt by many that it is incredibly arrogant for anthropologists to assume that they sacrifice both the capacity and mandate to dissect, interpret and describe the prevails of people in other cultures, given the power and wealth imbalance of the colonial past, leave the other unable to speak for him/herself. This argument finds itself in the whole West vs. Rest spectrum, claiming that because of the nature in which traditional ethnologist where carried out, ex. Colonial, anglo- whites, ect.., that today, despite the multicultural and ethnically awar e world that we live in, that anthropologists are not capable of unbiasedly and accurately producing ethnographic work. In part, there concern is founded. To my knowledge, there rests no undocumented peoples on the planet, as such, ethnologies today focus on sub-group structure and societal dynamics.