20th century
A01=Charles Piot
african
africana
america
anthropology
area
Author_Charles Piot
belief
Category=NHH
Category=NHTB
cultural
culture
department of state
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
faith
green card
immigration
lottery
neoliberal
ngo
pentecostal
pentecostalism
phenomena
political
politics
postcolonial
poverty
privatization
privatized
regional
religion
religious
scams
sovereign
united states
usa
war
wartime
witchcraft
Product details
- ISBN 9780226669656
- Weight: 340g
- Dimensions: 15 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jul 2010
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Since the end of the cold war, Africa has seen a dramatic rise in new political and religious phenomena, including an eviscerated privatized state, neoliberal NGOs, Pentecostalism, a resurgence in accusations of witchcraft, a culture of scamming and fraud, and, in some countries, a nearly universal wish to emigrate. Drawing on fieldwork in Togo, Charles Piot argues that a novel cultural politics is remaking one of the world's poorest regions and new critical tools are required to make sense of this moment. In a country where playing the U.S. State Department's green card lottery is a national pastime and the preponderance of cybercafes and Western Union branches signals a widespread desire to connect to the rest of the world, "Nostalgia for the Future" makes clear that the cultural and political terrain that underlies postcolonial theory has shifted. In order to map out this new terrain, Piot enters into critical dialogue with a host of important theorists, including Agamben, Hardt and Negri, Deleuze, and Mbembe. The result is a deft interweaving of rich observations of Togolese life with profound insights into the new, globalized world in which that life takes place.
Charles Piot is professor in the departments of cultural anthropology and African and African American studies at Duke University. He is the author of Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
