Suchergebnisse

OVER THE LAST FEW YEARS A NUMBER OF BOOKS HAVE APPEARED PROFESSING TO HAVE BEEN INSPIRED IN THEIR METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WRITINGS OF QUENTIN SKINNER.1 THE PURPOSE OF THIS ESSAY IS TO OFFER SOME DELIBERATIONS UPON TWO IMPORTANT AND CONNECTED QUESTIONS. FIRST, IN WHAT WAY ARE THE NEW HISTORIES RELATED TO THE HISTORY OF HISTORIES OF POLITICAL THOUGHT? AND, SECONDLY, HOW FAR ARE WE ON THE ROAD TO ACHIEVING A CONSENSUS ON THE APPROPRIATE METHODS FOR STUDYING THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT?2 BEFORE THESE QUESTIONS CAN BE CONSIDERED THE AUTHOR AM OBLIGED TO OFFER A CHARACTERIZATION, WHICH IN THE FORM GIVEN HERE IS LITTLE MORE THAN A CARICATURE, OF THE WHOLE OF THE HISTORY OF HISTORIES OF POLITICAL THOUGHT WITHOUT ENTERING INTO THE DETAIL. WHAT THE AUTHOR OFFER IS AN ATTEMPT TO CAPTURE ITS UNITY WITHOUT IGNORING ITS DIVERSITY.

"In Unmaking Waste, Sarah Newman asks what happens when there are disagreements about what constitutes waste and what one should do with it, both at singular moments in time (for example, when ideas about waste collide in emerging colonial contexts) and across time (such as between those who left things behind in the past and the archaeologists who recover them). Newman examines ancient Mesoamerican understandings of waste, Euro-American perceptions of waste in New Spain, and early modern European ideals of civility and Christian understandings of good and bad, expressed metaphorically through cleanliness and filth. These differing perceptions, Newman argues, demands that we rethink centuries of assumptions imposed on other places, times, and peoples: so long as "waste" remains a category misunderstood to be common-sensical and stable, archaeological methods will prove unequal to their task. Newman instead proposes "anamorphic archaeology," an approach that emphasizes the possibility that archaeological objects have multiple physical and conceptual lives"--