Writing Future Worlds

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Prologue: Atlantis and 1984

   • Ulf Hannerz

   Pages 1-9

3. Chapter 1 The “One Big Thing” Quintet & Co

   • Ulf Hannerz

   Pages 11-29

4. Chapter 2 When Pundits Go Global

   • Ulf Hannerz

   Pages 31-48

5. Chapter 3 Playing with Maps

   • Ulf Hannerz

   Pages 49-80

6. Chapter 4 Side Shows: Eurabia, MexAmerica

   • Ulf Hannerz

   Pages 81-111

7. Chapter 5 Reporting from the Future

   • Ulf Hannerz

   Pages 113-133

8. Chapter 6 Contemporary Habitats of Meaning

   • Ulf Hannerz

   Pages 135-160

9. Chapter 7 Culture: Between XL and S

   • Ulf Hannerz

   Pages 161-191

10. Chapter 8 Soft Power

    • Ulf Hannerz

    Pages 193-207

11. Chapter 9 Scenarios from Everywhere

    • Ulf Hannerz

    Pages 209-262

12. Back Matter

    Pages 263-295

    PDF

This volume presents a comprehensive analysis of global future scenarios and their impact on a growing, shared culture. Ever since the end of the Cold War, a diverse range of future concepts has emerged in various areas of academia—and even in popular journalism. A number of these key concepts—‘the end of history,’ ‘the clash of civilizations,’ ‘the coming anarchy,’ ‘the world is flat,’ ‘soft power,’ ‘the post-American century’—suggest what could become characteristic of this new, interconnected world. Ulf Hannerz scrutinizes these ideas, considers their legacy, and suggests further dialogue between authors of the ‘American scenario’ and commentators elsewhere.  

• Literary anthropology
• Social anthropology
• Publishing theory
• Public policy
• Literary critique
• Cultural theory

“From the ‘end of history’ to the ‘clash of civilizations’, popular scenarios conceived by scholars and journalists have in the past decades stimulated the imagination of contemporary societies as much as they have revealed their anxieties. With his uniquely elegant style and subtle irony, Ulf Hannerz offers a penetrating anthropological reflection on this singular anticipatory genre that simplifies and dramatizes the representation of global tensions. Multiplying examples and crossing perspectives, he proposes an indispensable critical analysis of the way in which our worldviews are shaped.” (Didier Fassin, Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, USA)

“With characteristically laconic but amiable barbs, Ulf Hannerz probes and dissects the generalizations about culture emanating from the ‘pundits’ – those self-appointed, often academically respectable experts on the cultural and political future of the globe, many of them American or focused on America’s role, who variously pontificate about the imminent dissolution of the-world-as-we-know-it.  Hannerz, a seasoned ethnographer with a pragmatic global vision grounded in the direct experience that many of the pundits lack, both recognizes their skill at dominating public debate and provides an effective antidote to the dangerous moral and cultural panic that their anthropologically naïve thinking represents (and often triggers).  This book deserves greater and longer-lasting prominence than those with which it engages.” (Michael Herzfeld, Ernest E. Monrad Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University, USA)

• Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

  Ulf Hannerz

Ulf Hannerz is Professor Emeritus of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University, Sweden, and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. A former Chair of the European Association of Social Anthropologists, he has taught at American, European, Asian, and Australian universities, and has carried out field studies in West Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States, as well as a multi-site study of the work of news media foreign correspondents. 

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