Cultural Mobility is a blueprint and a model for understanding the patterns of meaning that human societies create. Drawn from a wide range of disciplines, the essays collected here under the distinguished editorial guidance of Stephen Greenblatt share the conviction that cultures, even traditional cultures, are rarely stable or fixed. Radical mobility is not a phenomenon of the twenty-first century alone, but is a key constituent element of human life in virtually all periods. Yet academic accounts of culture tend to operate on exactly the opposite assumption and to celebrate what they imagine to be rooted or whole or undamaged. To grasp the shaping power of colonization, exile, emigration, wandering, contamination, and unexpected, random events, along with the fierce compulsions of greed, longing, and restlessness, cultural analysis needs to operate with a new set of principles. An international group of authors spells out these principles and puts them into practice.

This book offers a model for understanding the patterns of meaning that human societies create.

About the Author
Stephen Greenblatt is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. The author most recently of Will in the World (2004), Professor Greenblatt is one of the most distinguished and influential literary and cultural critics at work today, and a co-general editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature.


Book Information
ISBN 9780521682206
Author Stephen Greenblatt
Format Paperback
Page Count 282
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 400g
Dimensions(mm) 217mm * 138mm * 14mm