Title
Civilisation recast : theoretical and historical perspectives / Stephen Feuchtwang, Michael Rowlands.
ISBN
9781108594875 (ebook)
9781108484343 (hardback)
9781108706186 (paperback)
Publication
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Physical Description
1 online resource (vi, 218 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).
Local Notes
Access is available to the Yale community.
Notes
Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 15 Jul 2019).
Access and use
Access restricted by licensing agreement.
Summary
Civilisation is a debated concept and is often associated with the prerogatives of the 'West', colonial histories, and even emerging global politics. In this book, Stephen Feuchtwang and Michael Rowlands use the examples of Africa and China to provide a new conceptualisation that challenges traditional notions of 'civilisation'. They explain how to understand duration and continuity as long-term processes of transformation. Civilisations are best seen as practices of feeding and hospitality, of rituals and manners of living and dying, of entering the portals into the invisible world that surrounds and encompasses us, of healing and the knowledge of the encompassing universe and its powers, including its ghosts and demons. Civilisations furnish the moral ideals for people to live by and aspire to and they are changed more by the actions of disappointed grassroots and their little traditions than by their ruling authorities. Just as they revitalise and change their civilisations, this book revitalises and changes the way to think about civilisations in the humanities, the historical and the social sciences.
Variant and related titles
Cambridge University Press eBook Backlist 2018-2019.
Other formats
Print version:
Added to Catalog
June 05, 2020