Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
'May you live in interesting times’ was made famous by Sir Austen Chamberlain. The premise is that ‘interesting times’ are times of upheaval, conflict and insecurity - troubled times. With the growing numbers of displaced populations and the rise in the politics of fear and hate, we are facing challenges to our very ‘species-being’. Papers in the volume include ethnographic studies on the ‘refugee crisis’, the ‘financial crisis’ and the ‘rule of law crisis' in the Mediterranean as well as the crisis of violence and hunger in South America.
“The edited volume raises important questions on methodology, morality, ethics and timeliness of anthropology. Each chapter is written to unmask seemingly obvious cultural representations. Nothing is as it seems at first glance… It could be interesting to students who want to do academic research, but also to students who would like to work in ‘public anthropology’. Moreover, it will be useful to readers interested in the moral economy of capitalism.” • Australian Journal of European Cultures
“This is a high-quality volume… Without exception its chapters are interesting, original, and thought-provoking. Each examines different dimensions of the book’s main themes.” • Christopher Houston, Macquarie University
Jean-Paul Baldacchino is Professor and currently Head of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Malta and the Director of its Mediterranean Institute. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Mediterranean Studies, which he formerly edited, and is on the board of the Australian Journal of Anthropology.
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Anthropology and its Crises
Jean-Paul Baldacchino and Jon P. Mitchell
Chapter 1. Moralities, Engagement, Capitalism: Current Challenges for Critical Anthropology
John Gledhill
Chapter 2. Between Conspiracy and Catastrophe: The Political Unconscious in Malta
Paul Sant Cassia
Chapter 3. Crisis State of Mind: Spaces for Self-Determination in Permanently Troubled Times
Daniel M. Knight
Chapter 4. The Moria Catastrophe in Greece: An Anthropologically Informed Disaster Analysis of Refugee Reception in Europe
Jutta Lauth Bacas
Chapter 5. Relevance, Ethics and the ‘Good’ in Anthropology: Moving beyond the Anthropology of Crisis to the Ethical Crises in Anthropology
Jean-Paul Baldacchino
Chapter 6. Higher Education Crisis, Academic Personhood and Moral Labour
Matthew Doyle and James McMurray
Chapter 7. Dilemmas of Sexuality in Malta: Reconciling Catholic and LGBTQ+ Identities
Jon P. Mitchell
Chapter 8. The Will to Risk: Why the Moral Economy Is Not What You Think
A. David Napier
Index