The Location of Culture (Routledge Classics)

Book Description

Terry Eagleton once wrote in the Guardian, 'Few post-colonial writers can rival Homi Bhabha in his exhilarated sense of alternative possibilities'. In rethinking questions of identity, social agency and national affiliation, Bhabha provides a working, if controversial, theory of cultural hybridity, one that goes far beyond previous attempts by others. A scholar who writes and teaches about South Asian literature and contemporary art with incredible virtuosity, he discusses writers as diverse as Morrison, Gordimer, and Conrad. In The Location of Culture, Bhabha uses concepts such as mimicry, interstice, hybridity, and liminality to argue that cultural production is always most productive where it is most ambivalent. Speaking in a voice that combines intellectual ease with the belief that theory itself can contribute to practical political change, Bhabha has become one of the leading post-colonial theorists of this era.

Customer Reviews:

Even The Little People Are Free .......2007-06-04

Bhabha writes dense, pretentious prose, which is commonplace now among the humanists who feel inferior to scientists, but he does have something to say. This little book does two things: it is in the end a celebration of literature (and not of theory for its own sake) and it defends the little brown people, such as Indians, against the claim of others, such as Edward Said, that whites oppressed them by denying them a voice. Bhabha argues in effect that the oppression created a new voice that subverted the oppressors. Bhabha has little patience for the sob-sister school of academic discourse which seeks out victims of racism. This is a sustained critique of liberal academic bad faith.

The enunciatory present.......2006-02-16

In The Location of Culture, Bhabha argues for a fundamental realignment of the methodology of cultural analysis away from ontology toward the "performative" and "enunciatory present" (p.178). Such a shift, he claims, provides a basis for the negotiation of cultural difference rather than its automatic repression or negation in the face of irreconcilable oppositions. Bhabha's emphasis on the enunciative production of meaning places the emphasis of critical inquiry on issues of representation or signification, thereby producing "a temporality that makes it possible to conceive of the articulation of antagonistic or contradictory elements" (p.25).

This argument represents a critical attack on the Western production of binary oppositions, traditionally defined in terms of centre and margin, civilised and savage, enlightened and ignorant. Bhabha questions the easy recourse to consolidated dualisms by repudiating fixed and authentic centres of truth, suggesting that cultures interact, transgress and transform each other in a much more complex manner than typical binary oppositions allow.

According to him, hybridity and linguistic multivocality have the potential to intervene and dislocate the process of domination through the re-interpretation and re-deployment of received discourse, thus re-focusing critical attention towards the "agonistic space" (181) which exists on the borders of difference, along the edges of alterity, where cultures meet. Bhabha celebrates cultural heterogeneity and the subversive effects of hybridisation.

I'd rather stick my hand in a blender than read this again.......2004-05-26

The fact that this book is influential is generally beyond argument. What astonishes me, however, is that so many people had the endurance to sit through the horrific writing; the author's style is obnoxious in the extreme. The first paragraph, for example, notes that the question of culture is the "trope of our times," characterized by "a tenebrous sense of survival." These concepts are not mind-bending. An everday, or as Homi would say, "colloquial" vocabularly would sufficiently articulate his thesis, yet he seems hellbent on packing his work with obscure language like he needs show off or prove something. Again, his ideas are influential, but he makes reading them as painful as possible.

Mimicry, Mockery, Menace.......2003-01-21

Ambivalence is a key term in Bhabha's Location of Culture. Accordingly, Bhabha's prose might be considered poetry or gibberish, but certainly not scholarship. There is no thesis, no argument, no evidence. That is not to say that Bhabha wouldn't be capable of such writing. Every once in a while, the reader can catch a glimpse of Bhabha's Other: the lucid thinker of post-colonialism. In order to compensate for the lack of clarity, structure and, yes, basic congruity between subjects, verbs and objects, Bhabha enacts the thoughts he fails to express. Indeed, his text is a performance of itself. Take, for instance, his chapter on mimicry. Whatever intelligent thoughts other scholars have derived from this concept, you will not find them in Bhabha's book. But he indeed shows you what he means, as he goes through the motions of scholarship. First, he makes a number of general statements that sound like a thesis. Then he puts a in a few convoluted sentence structures that make no sense-grammatically or otherwise. And finally he slams in a quote or two to prove a point-what point doesn't matter, for he did not make one in the first place. As a reader you will have to decide whether his work is a mimicry (in his definition "almost but not quite") of scholarship or its menace (according to Bhabha, 'not at all but still a little'). About one thing, though, he leaves no ambivalence: he "quite simply mocks its power to be a model." Harvard volunteered to be the evidence.

Even though this is one of the most highly regarded ..........2003-01-11

...theory books of the 1990s, its fame and reputation seem overblown. None of the other reviews posted here have really stated what Bhabha tries to accomplish in "The Location of Culture," so I'll give it a crack, even though I'm no expert on postcolonial theory.

To save you all some time, many of Bhabha's key points are made in the first two pages of his book. For instance: "In-between spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood--singular or communal--that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society" (p. 1-2). Elsewhere, in-betweenness is easily the key concept in the book, as well as the notion of HYBRIDITY. The reason the modernist model of Colonialism is doomed to fail is not only because it needs the Other (the colonized) to validate its own supremacy (and to fulfill its desires), but also because it engages in what Bhabha refers to as "contra-modernity": modernity in "colonial conditions where its imposition is itself the denial of historical freedom, civic autonomy and the 'ethical' choice of refashioning" (p. 241). Bhabha finds that by examining the borderlines between Colonial power and Colonial oppression, a truer history of global populations can be obtained. In one of the finer passages in the book, Bhabha examines a scene from Salman Rushdie's controversial 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses" and descibes how the postcolonial body--shaped by an outside nationalist culture--is representative of the colonizer, yet the colonizers "can never let the national history look at itself narcissistically in the eye" (p. 168).

Now let me preface my explanation by saying this is what I THINK Bhabha is getting at. It's not that his prose is "confusing," as other reviewers have stated here--although it is exceedingly "academic" (and there is nothing wrong with that, in and of itself)--but it is mired in the theoryspeak of the West that Bhabha seems so insistent upon de-centralizing. Bhabha uses the theories of the European male elite with so much blind faith that it easily undermines much of what he is trying to accomplish. Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud and Jacques Derrida are all over this book. These "founders of discourse" (as Foucault called Marx and Freud--and could posthumously call himself given his exhaltation in the academy after his death in 1984) represent an alternate (i.e. "left") critical practice, yet completely dominate Western discussions of theory in literary circles. Is not Bhabha, an Indian scholar, colonized by these minds?

Also, Bhabha's insistence upon in-betweenness at times really seems to undermine his (apparent) intentions. He seems, on the one hand, to claim that it is precisely through in-betweenness that the oppressors dominate the oppressed. Yet, it also seems that this in-betweenness gives the oppressed the opportunity to resist the oppressors. We seem to be back at step zero. Is anything really being said here?

He should have followed better the example of Frantz Fanon, who appears early and often as a primary source in "The Location of Culture." Fanon was surely no stranger to the Western tradition, but was able to write in a critical-poetical-personal style that was accessible to non-academics, a style that had real fire. Bhabha, with all his emphasis on the work of postcolonial theory--which, in his words, seeks to "revise those nationalist or 'nativist' pedagogies that set up the relation of Third World and First World in a binary structure of opposition" (p. 173)--continually relies on the concept of "doubling" (likely a Lacanian theory) as well as his notion of in-betweenness (or liminality, as he calls it) in such a manner that no distinct point of view really emerges. The theoryspeak seems to subsume any important observations he might be willing to make.

Book Description

The comprehensive introduction to the art and science of locating facilities to make your organization more efficient, effective, and profitable. For the professional siting facilities, the task of translating organizational goals and objectives into concrete facilities requires a working familiarity with the theoretical and practical fundamentals of facility location planning and modeling. The first hands-on guide to using and developing facility location models, Network and Discrete Location offers a practiceoriented introduction to model-building methods and solution algorithms, complete with software to solve classical problems of realistic size and end-of-chapter exercises to enhance the reader's understanding. The text introduces the reader to the key classical location problems (covering, center, median, and fixed charge) which form the nucleus of facility location modeling. It also discusses real-life extensions of the basic models used in locating: production and distribution facilities, interacting services and facilities, and undesirable facilities. The book outlines a host of methodological tools for solving location models and provides insights into when each approach is useful and what information it provides. Designed to give readers a working familiarity with the basic facility location model types as well as an intuitive knowledge of the uses and limits of modeling techniques, Network and Discrete Location brings students and professionals alike swiftly from basic theory to technical fluency.

Customer Reviews:

A must for Location Models.......2004-08-07

I am a PhD student in Operations Management and this is one of the best books in Location Management. Very clear and very precise, I did not need a class to understand the material. Its definitely a must for any body who wants a background on Location Models

Comprehensive math model of location and network.......2000-09-04

This is the 2nd best book after Ahuja et.al. book (Network Flows : Theory, Algorithms, and Applications, 1993). As I said, it's the 2nd best book -so don't be surprised if you found Ahuja's book more useful. However, Daskin did good job to compile both location and network analysis in a single text book. We can see many issues in these areas in this book. I'd love to see more integration both math model and algorithm in this book though. If you don't have Ahuja's book, you may wanna grasp one (it's out-of-stock) before getting this book. However, if you are new to do research in location and network, grasp Daskin's book. You won't be disappointed with this book!

Economics of Agglomeration: Cities, Industrial Location, and Regional Growth

Average customer rating:

Economics of Agglomeration: Cities, Industrial Location, and Regional Growth
Masahisa Fujita , and Jacques-Francois Thisse
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Economic Conditions | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Economic History | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Human Geography | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Urban Planning & Development | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Business Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Business & Investing | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0521805244

Book Description

This book provides the first unifying analysis of the range of economic reasons for the clustering of firms and households. Its goal is to explain further the trade-off between various forms of increasing returns and different types of mobility costs. The main focus of the analysis is on cities, but it also explores the formation of other agglomerations, such as commercial districts within cities, industrial clusters at the regional level, and the existence of imbalance between regions.

Ecological Thinking: The Politics of Epistemic Location (Studies in Feminist Philosophy)

Average customer rating:

Ecological Thinking: The Politics of Epistemic Location (Studies in Feminist Philosophy)
Lorraine Code
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Popular Culture | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Epistemology | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0195159446

Book Description

How could ecological thinking animate an epistemology capable of addressing feminist, multicultural, and other post-colonial concerns? Starting from an epistemological approach implicit in Rachel Carson's scientific practice, Lorraine Code elaborates the creative, restructuring resources of ecology for a theory of knowledge. She critiques the instrumental rationality, abstract individualism, and exploitation of people and places that western epistemologies of mastery have legitimated, to propose a politics of epistemic location, sensitive to the interplay of particularity and diversity, and focused on responsible epistemic practice. Drawing on ecological theory and practice, on naturalized epistemology, and on feminist and post-colonial theories, Code analyzes extended examples from developmental psychology, and from two "natural" institutions of knowledge production--medicine and law. These institutions lend themselves well to a reconfigured naturalism. They are, in practice, empirically-scientifically informed, specifically situated, and locally interpretive. With human subjects as their "objects" of knowledge, they invoke the responsibility requirements central to Code's larger project. This book discusses a wide range of literature in philosophy, social science, and ethico-political thought. Highly innovative, it will generate productive conversations in feminist theory, and in the ethics and politics of knowledge more broadly conceived.

Facility Location: Applications and Theory

Average customer rating:

Facility Location: Applications and Theory

Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Operations Research | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Quality Control | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Total Quality Management | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Entrepreneurship | Small Business & Entrepreneurship | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Business Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Computer Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All Amazon Upgrade | Amazon Upgrade | Stores | Books

Business & Investing | Amazon Upgrade | Stores | Books

Computers & Internet | Amazon Upgrade | Stores | Books

Engineering | Amazon Upgrade | Stores | Books

Professional & Technical | Amazon Upgrade | Stores | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Business & Investing | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Computers & Internet | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Professional | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Logic of Logistics: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications for Logistics and Supply Chain Management (Springer Series in Operations Research and Financial Engineering)

ASIN: 3540421726

Book Description

The book covers both theory and applications of locational analysis (LocAn). The reader will see the power of LocAn models in various real-world contexts varying from communication design, robotics, mail delivery, etc. As such it is a valuable source for practitioners, lecturers and students. The book is divided into two parts: The first part contains chapters in which an overview of some of the LocAn methodologies is given. The second part describes in more detail some selected applications. The book is well-suited as source for a graduate course, but also for students, lecturers and practitioners who want to learn about LocAn through self-study. It gives researchers a state of the art review of available location models.

Sovereignty Matters: Locations of Contestation and Possibility in Indigenous Struggles for Self-Determination (Contemporary Indigenous Issues)

Average customer rating:

Finally, an collection of Indigenous writings on sovereignty

Sovereignty Matters: Locations of Contestation and Possibility in Indigenous Struggles for Self-Determination (Contemporary Indigenous Issues)

Manufacturer: University of Nebraska Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside History Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0803262515

Book Description

Sovereignty Matters investigates the multiple perspectives that exist within indigenous communities regarding the significance of sovereignty as a category of intellectual, political, and cultural work. Much scholarship to date has treated sovereignty in geographical and political matters solely in terms of relationships between indigenous groups and their colonial states or with a bias toward American contexts. This groundbreaking anthology of essays by indigenous peoples from the Americas and the Pacific offers multiple perspectives on the significance of sovereignty.

The noted Mohawk scholar Taiaiake Alfred provides a landmark essay on the philosophical foundations of sovereignty and the need for the decolonization of indigenous thinking about governance. Other essays explore the role of sovereignty in fueling cultural memory, theories of history and change, spiritual connections to the land, language revitalization, and repatriation efforts. These topics are examined in varied yet related contexts of indigenous struggles for self-determination, including those of the Chamorro of Guam, the Taíno of Puerto Rico, the Quechua of the Andes, the Mäori of New Zealand (Aotearoa), the Samoan Islanders, and the Kanaka Maoli and the Makah of the United States. Several essays also consider the politics of identity and identification.

Sovereignty Matters emphasizes the relatedness of indigenous peoples' experiences of genocide, dispossession, and assimilation as well as the multiplicity of indigenous political and cultural agendas and perspectives regarding sovereignty.

Customer Reviews:

Finally, an collection of Indigenous writings on sovereignty.......2006-01-15

Evo Morales is elected the first Ingigenous president of Bolivia and the Indigenous people's movement of Mexico is on the march. Around the world activists and movement intellectuals have been making history by moving Indigenous peoples' struggles to the forefront of grass-roots politics. Accompanying these developments has been a lively and challenging discussion about Sovereignty in relationship to the Nationstate, global capital, cultural production, feminism and sexuality, eco-politics and so on. English-speaking activists and movement intellectuals can now access the currents of those discussions thanks to this anthology. Bringing together writings from North America, New Zealand/Aotearoa, Puerto Rico. Samoa, etc, this book is an excellent crash course in the terms of the debates around Sovereignty. Given the recent currency Sovereignty has received thanks to struggles in Latin America as well as recent writings by philosophers like Virno, Negri and Balibar, here's a book that offers an approach to Sovereignty from the perspective of Indigenous activists and scholars themselves. This book couldn't have come at a better time!

Average customer rating:

Landscape And Film (Afi Film Readers)

Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

History & Criticism | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

Popular Culture | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Entertainment Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0415975557

Book Description

Landscape is everywhere in film, but it has been largely overlooked in theory and criticism. This volume of new work will address fundamental questions: What kind of landscape is cinematic landscape? How is cinematic landscape different from landscape painting? How is landscape deployed in the work of such filmmakers as Greenaway, Rossellini, or Antonioni, to name just three? What are differences between the use of landscape in Western filmmaking and in the work of Middle Eastern and Asian filmmakers? How is cinematic landscape related to the idea of a national cinema and
questions of identity.

The first collection on the idea of landscape and film, this volume will present an impressive international cast of contributors, among them Jacques Aumont, Tom Conley, David B. Clarke, Marcus A. Doel, Peter Rist, and Antonio Costa.

Rhetorical Spaces: Essays on Gendered Locations

Average customer rating:

Rhetorical Spaces: Essays on Gendered Locations
Lorraine Code
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Ethics & Morality | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Feminist Theory | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0415909376

Book Description

The essays in Rhetorical Spaces grow out of Lorraine Code's ongoing commitment to engaging philosophical issues as they figure in people's everyday lives. The arguements in this book are informed at once by the moral-political implications of how knowledge is produced and circulated and by issues of gendered subjectivity.

In their critical dimension, these lucid essays engage with the incapacity of the philosophical mainstream's dominant epistemologies to offer regulative principles that guide people in the epistemic projects that figure centrally in their lives. In its constructive dimension, Rhetorical Spaces focuses on developing productive, case-by-case analyses of knowing other people in situations where social-political inequalities create asymmetrical patterns of epistemic power and privilege. Framing all of the essays is the conception of rhetorical spaces which shows that prevailing intellectual-political climates can work to enhance or to thwart possibilities of establishing cognitive authority for the members of a society who belong to groups other than the dominant ones. Finally, bridging the gap between theory and practice, Lorraine Code shows how the issue of reconfiguring structures of authority and expertise are not just matters of individual responsibility, but require a radical restructuring of the communities and social orders in which people know and act.

Average customer rating:

Discrete Location Theory

Manufacturer: Wiley-Interscience
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Production & Operations | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Mathematics | Science | Subjects | Books

General & Reference | Technology | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Finance | New & Used Textbooks | Stores | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Business & Investing | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Science | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 0471892335

Book Description

This invaluable resource presents the state of the art in discrete location theory. Among the topics covered are: locations with spatial interactions such as the quadratic assignment problem and competitive locations and games; duality and decomposition methods for facility location problems; the uncapacitated facility location problem; the p-median problem; location of mobile units in a stochastic environment; covering problems; and the p-center problem. Leading experts in the field of discrete location theory contributed to each chapter. In addition, there are numerous exercises, references, notes and further discussions which serve as aids for understanding theoretical and algorithmic concepts.

Location Theory (Fundamentals of Pure and Applied Economics, Volume 5)

Average customer rating:

Location Theory (Fundamentals of Pure and Applied Economics, Volume 5)
F J Gabszewicz-Thisse
Manufacturer: CRC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Microeconomics | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Production & Operations | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Physics | Science | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 3718602970

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books