Content area
Full text
Exotic No More: Anthropology on the Front Lines. Jeremy MacClancy, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2002. 456 pp.
With 23 contributions discussing topics ranging from innercity poverty to gender and sexuality, to human rights, science, media, and music, Exotic No More "sets out to demonstrate exactly how today's social anthropology can make a large contribution towards the understanding of a wide range of practical social issues" (p. 2). This is a very big project, indeed. The problem with the volume is that very little editorial guidance is given to the reader. It is not made clear why this particular set of topics or authors have been chosen. The overall success of an edited collection stands or falls on the capacity of the editor to provide an organizing framework and theoretical rationale.
The introduction by Jeremy MacClancy starts with a bold statement, "for far too long, social anthropology has been seen as an academic discipline dedicated to the study of abstruse customs of out-of-the-way tribes." He proceeds to complain that "it is the more eye-catching studies that have gained more of the public's attention, skewing popular perception of the discipline in the process" (p. 1). The only...