Abstracts
|
|
Abstracts |
The binary figure, "Modernity/Tradition", has long been a foundational interpretive concept both in the humanities as also the social sciences. It can also be conceived of as a (literary) trope. In the history of disciplinary thought (as manifest, for example, in the historical conditions in which anthropology and sociology developed as separate, but related "disciplines") its functionality has depended on 1) a relatively fixed understanding of time and space and 2) a neglect of attention to the relations of culture and power in the production of knowledge.
Apart from these themes, I shall also address issues prompted by recent work in postcolonial theory and criticism and critical studies of globalisation. Analytical tools developed in transnational urban and spatial research (e.g. notions of "colonial", "indigenous" and "global mo-dernities") will also be discussed as well as the transformative socio-political, spatial and cultural conditions in which these new interpretive categories have emerged. How relevant are these ideas to contemporary concerns with multiculturalism and identity?