Postmodernity's Histories: The Past as Legacy and Project

(Paperback)

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Challenges to the conventional study of history have been raised by the recent paradigm of globalization and by new intellectual transformations linked to postmodernism and postcolonialism. In this book the noted historian Arif Dirlik argues for a new approach to the practice of historical research. Moving beyond mere critique, he synthesizes traditional historical methods with new approaches that emphasize historical memory, indigenous writing, place based history, and the dual processes of integration and fragmentation in a globalized world.

Reviews

This is a feisty and extremely intelligent book. It is urgent reading for anyone committed to understanding and improving the world. -- Immanuel Wallerstein, Fernand Braudel Center, Yale University
A critical analysis of postmodernist and postcolonial thought and theories of globalization. Dirlik makes a powerful argument against both older social-science functionalism and current culturalism and stresses to what extent Eurocentrism is not just a discourse but is embedded in structures of economic, political, and social power. Without capitalism, Eurocentrism would have been just another ethnocentrism. Dirliks essays constitute an important corrective to aspects of recent postmodernist and postcolonialist literature. -- Georg Iggers, SUNY, Buffalo

Author Bio

Arif Dirlik is professor of history at University of Oregon.