Words in Motion

Toward a Global Lexicon

Nonfiction, Reference & Language, Language Arts, Translating & Interpreting, History, World History, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Anthropology
Cover of the book Words in Motion by Itty Abraham, Duke University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Itty Abraham ISBN: 9780822391104
Publisher: Duke University Press Publication: December 4, 2009
Imprint: Duke University Press Books Language: English
Author: Itty Abraham
ISBN: 9780822391104
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publication: December 4, 2009
Imprint: Duke University Press Books
Language: English

On the premise that words have the power to make worlds, each essay in this book follows a word as it travels around the globe and across time. Scholars from five disciplines address thirteen societies to highlight the social and political life of words in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The approach is consciously experimental, in that rigorously tracking specific words in specific settings frequently leads in unexpected directions and alters conventional depictions of global modernity.

Such words as security in Brazil, responsibility in Japan, community in Thailand, and hijāb in France changed the societies in which they moved even as the words were changed by them. Some words threatened to launch wars, as injury did in imperial Britain’s relations with China in the nineteenth century. Others, such as secularism, worked in silence to agitate for political change in twentieth-century Morocco. Words imposed or imported from abroad could be transformed by those who wielded them to oppose the very powers that first introduced them, as happened in Turkey, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Taken together, this selection of fourteen essays reveals commonality as well as distinctiveness across modern societies, making the world look different from the interdisciplinary and transnational perspective of “words in motion.”

Contributors. Mona Abaza, Itty Abraham, Partha Chatterjee, Carol Gluck, Huri Islamoglu, Claudia Koonz, Lydia H. Liu, Driss Maghraoui, Vicente L. Rafael, Craig J. Reynolds, Seteney Shami, Alan Tansman, Kasian Tejapira, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

On the premise that words have the power to make worlds, each essay in this book follows a word as it travels around the globe and across time. Scholars from five disciplines address thirteen societies to highlight the social and political life of words in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The approach is consciously experimental, in that rigorously tracking specific words in specific settings frequently leads in unexpected directions and alters conventional depictions of global modernity.

Such words as security in Brazil, responsibility in Japan, community in Thailand, and hijāb in France changed the societies in which they moved even as the words were changed by them. Some words threatened to launch wars, as injury did in imperial Britain’s relations with China in the nineteenth century. Others, such as secularism, worked in silence to agitate for political change in twentieth-century Morocco. Words imposed or imported from abroad could be transformed by those who wielded them to oppose the very powers that first introduced them, as happened in Turkey, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Taken together, this selection of fourteen essays reveals commonality as well as distinctiveness across modern societies, making the world look different from the interdisciplinary and transnational perspective of “words in motion.”

Contributors. Mona Abaza, Itty Abraham, Partha Chatterjee, Carol Gluck, Huri Islamoglu, Claudia Koonz, Lydia H. Liu, Driss Maghraoui, Vicente L. Rafael, Craig J. Reynolds, Seteney Shami, Alan Tansman, Kasian Tejapira, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

More books from Duke University Press

Cover of the book Indigenous Struggle at the Heart of Brazil by Itty Abraham
Cover of the book Soviet Jewry in the 1980s by Itty Abraham
Cover of the book The Noé Jitrik Reader by Itty Abraham
Cover of the book Communication and Empire by Itty Abraham
Cover of the book Culture of Class by Itty Abraham
Cover of the book Counter-History of the Present by Itty Abraham
Cover of the book Public Reactions to Nuclear Waste by Itty Abraham
Cover of the book The Korean Popular Culture Reader by Itty Abraham
Cover of the book Congress and the Constitution by Itty Abraham
Cover of the book Orientalism's Interlocutors by Itty Abraham
Cover of the book The Aesthetics of Shadow by Itty Abraham
Cover of the book Staging the World by Itty Abraham
Cover of the book Foucault's Discipline by Itty Abraham
Cover of the book Global Pharmaceuticals by Itty Abraham
Cover of the book Las hijas de Juan by Itty Abraham
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy