In the Realm of the Diamond Queen:
Marginality in an Out-of-the-Way Place
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

Winner of the 1994 Harry J. Benda Prize of the Southeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies
Honorable Mention, 1994 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing
One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Books of 1994

Paper | 1993 | $37.50 / £26.95 | ISBN: 9780691000510
368 pp. | 6 x 9

Shopping Cart | Endorsements | Table of Contents

In this highly original and much-anticipated ethnography, Anna Tsing challenges not only anthropologists and feminists but all those who study culture to reconsider some of their dearest assumptions. By choosing to locate her study among Meratus Dayaks, a marginal and marginalized group in the deep rainforest of South Kalimantan, Indonesia, Tsing deliberately sets into motion the familiar and stubborn urban fantasies of self and other. Unusual encounters with her remarkably creative and unconventional Meratus friends and teachers, however, provide the opportunity to rethink notions of tradition, community, culture, power, and gender--and the doing of anthropology. Tsing's masterful weaving of ethnography and theory, as well as her humor and lucidity, allow for an extraordinary reading experience for students, scholars, and anyone interested in the complexities of culture.

Engaging Meratus in wider conversations involving Indonesian bureaucrats, family planners, experts in international development, Javanese soldiers, American and French feminists, Asian-Americans, right-to-life advocates, and Western intellectuals, Tsing looks not for consensus and coherence in Meratus culture but rather allows individual Meratus men and women to return our gaze. Bearing the fruit from the lively contemporary conversations between anthropology and cultural studies, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen will prove to be a model for thinking and writing about gender, power, and the politics of identity.

Endorsement:

"A loosely organized group of mountain people in southeastern Kalimantan ... [is the topic of Tsing's fieldwork in what is] perhaps the most detailed and certainly the most self-conscious examination of marginalization yet to appear."--New York Review of Books

"This is a book that is as rich in human warmth as it is technically innovative."--Amitav Ghosh

Table of Contents

Another Princeton book authored or coauthored by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing:

• Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection.

Subject Areas:

• Asian and Asian American Studies
• Anthropology
• Gender Studies
• Postcolonial Studies

Shopping Cart:

For customers in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Asia, and Australia
Paper: $37.50 ISBN: 9780691000510

For customers in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and India
Paper: £26.95 ISBN: 9780691000510

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