Cultural Practices, Political Possibilities

Book excerpt: Culture has long been regarded as one of the most complicated concepts in the social sciences, possibly over theorized. Its ubiquity, tangled senses of particularity and the almost universal recognition of that assumed particularity require an extended vocabulary for framing the politics embedded in it. Cultural Practices, Political Possibilities attempts to explain the political significance and overlaps of cultural constructions as witnessed in global-local clashes, convergences of texts and contexts, within the state and community, identity and the self. Through various case-studies, concepts and interdisciplinary perspectives, the multinational group of authors from diverse academic backgrounds interprets cultural constructions of politics as factionalizing, identitarian, situational and particularistic in their links, affirmations and consequential divides. Each contribution, in its unique way explores the performative asymmetries and contradictions witnessed in diverse cultural interactions that shape new areas of political investigation. The book will be welcomed by students of international relations, environmental politics, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.