Prologue: In Medias Res TRAVELS Traveling Cultures A Ghost among Melanesians Spatial Practices: Fieldwork, Travel, and the Disciplining of Anthropology CONTACTS Four Northwest Coast Museums: Travel Reflections Paradise Museums as Contact Zones Palenque Log FUTURES Year of the Ram: Honolulu, February 2, 1991 Diasporas Immigrant Fort Ross Meditation Notes References Sources Acknowledgments Index
James Clifford is Professor Emeritus in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
[An] interesting situation can occur, suggests cultural
anthropologist James Clifford, when the issue is not who should
have custody of the objects [in museums] but rather what they mean.
As he explores the subject in the essays collected in Routes, he
compels the reader to look at these matters in a totally new
way...As Clifford puts it, the museum [has] had to become 'a
contact zone,' in which the collection would 'become part of an
ongoing historical, political, moral relationship' between the
culture that produced the objects and the members of another
culture who would come to view them. The idea of a 'contact zone'
relationship becomes even more startling when the objects are not
in a museum, but are located at a cultural site...[G]uided by
Clifford's view of museums and cultural and historical sites, the
observant tourist will never be able to see them in the same way
again.
*Boston Globe*
The path Clifford clears for himself is amply justified; his
scholarship is always careful, his questions honest and probing,
his use of the first person discreet. One could not ask for a
better informed, more intelligent or probing advance guard. Routes
is a beautifully produced book with plentiful illustrations, an
intelligent index, and almost no misprints.
*New Formations*
It is a measure of Clifford's nonchalant erudition that Routes
gives rise to so many diverse ideas.
*Times Literary Supplement*
As his use of essay form might suggest, Clifford tends to be a
scout or advance guard, a surveyor of terrain, a reporter of
difficulties ahead, a clearer of ground; not himself a colonist or
settler...Very much a cultural theorist for our times, Clifford's
emphasis is on conceptual repertory that can be used in ways
dialogic, contingent, and tactical...As Routes leaves us to think
through the questions posed in its pages, Clifford will already be
opening up new paths, formulating new terminologies, asking new
questions...Ultimately, however, the path Clifford clears for
himself is amply justified: his scholarship is always careful, his
questions honest and probing, his use of the first person discreet.
One could not ask for a better informed, more intelligent or
probing advance guard. Routes is a beautifully produced book with
plentiful illustrations [and] an intelligent index.
*New Formations: A Journal of Culture/Theory/Politics*
Whether discussing immigrants, diasporas, or museums, Clifford
looks at the intercultural border as a place of encounter,
collision, and communication between groups. This is a scholarly
yet accessible work that asks us to rethink the cultural dimensions
of human existence.
*Booklist*
A noted anthropologist examines the complexities of human
interaction across cultures and continents in a...revelatory
collection of essays. 'How do groups negotiate themselves in
external relationships, and how is a culture also a site of travel
for others?' These are two of the broad questions raised by
Clifford in pursuit of his admonition that 'new representational
strategies are needed, and are, under pressure, emerging.' Thus
does Clifford discuss diasporic and migratory peoples, unexplored
Western influences on indigenous peoples, and the effects of new
communication technologies on the global movement of people...[A]
fresh and well-documented perspective on human global movement.
*Kirkus Reviews*
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