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Ulf Hannerz

Bio: Ulf Hannerz is an academic researcher from Stockholm University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Social anthropology & Globalization. The author has an hindex of 26, co-authored 94 publications receiving 8091 citations. Previous affiliations of Ulf Hannerz include Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences.


Papers
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Book
15 Oct 1991
TL;DR: Hannerz as mentioned in this paper presents the globalization of culture as a process of cultural diffusion, polycentralism, and local innovation, focusing on periods of intensive cultural productivity in Vienna, Calcutta, and San Francisco.
Abstract: A rich, witty, and accessible introduction to the anthropology of contemporary cultures,Cultural Complexity emphasizes that culture is organized in terms of states, markets, and movements. Hannerz pays special attention to the interplay between the centralizing agencies of culture, such as schools and media, and the decentering diversity of subcultures, and considers the special role of cities as the centers of cultural growth. Hannerz discusses cultural process in small-scale societies, the concept of subcultures, and the economics and politics of culture. Finally, he presents the twentieth-century globalization of culture as a process of cultural diffusion, polycentralism, and local innovation, focusing on periods of intensive cultural productivity in Vienna, Calcutta, and San Francisco.

1,399 citations

Book
01 Jan 1996
TL;DR: Hannerz as mentioned in this paper argues that national understandings of culture have become insufficient and explores the implications of boundary-crossings and long-distance cultural flows for established notions of "the local", "community", "nation" and "modernity".
Abstract: This work provides an account of culture in an age of globalization. Ulf Hannerz argues that, in an ever-more interconnected world, national understandings of culture have become insufficient. He explores the implications of boundary-crossings and long-distance cultural flows for established notions of "the local", "community", "nation" and "modernity" Hannerz not only engages with theoretical debates about culture and globalization but raises issues of how we think and live today. His account of the experience of global culture encompasses a shouting match in a New York street about Salman Rushdie, a papal visit to the Maya Indians; kung-fu dancers in Nigeria and Rastafarians in Amsterdam; the nostalgia of foreign correspondents; and the surprising experiences of tourists in a world city or on a Borneo photo safari.

1,307 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Ulf Hannerz1
TL;DR: In this article, the authors identify differences in practices and assumptions between multisite field work and the classic model of single-site field work as enunciated in the mid-20th century and discuss the construction of multi-site fields, including the selection of sites, the quality of relationships with informants in such fields, the temporal aspects of field work, and the dominant types of data in multisite studies.
Abstract: Multi-site, or multilocal, field work has become increasingly practiced and acknowledged in anthropology since the 1980s Drawing on several field studies by anthropologists at Stockholm University but particularly on the author's study of the work of news media foreign correspondents, this article identifies differences in practices and assumptions between such work and the classic model of single-site field work as enunciated in the mid-20th century It discusses the construction of multi-site fields, including the selection of sites; the quality of relationships with informants in such fields; the temporal aspects of field work and of the sites themselves; the dominant types of data in multi-site studies; and the fit between field work and organizational and career circumstances; as well as particular topics dealt with in the foreign correspondent study

621 citations


Cited by
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TL;DR: For example, the authors argues that culture influences action not by providing the ultimate values toward which action is oriented, but by shaping a repertoire or "tool kit" of habits, skills, and styles from which people construct "strategies of action."
Abstract: Culture influences action not by providing the ultimate values toward which action is oriented, but by shaping a repertoire or "tool kit" of habits, skills, and styles from which people construct "strategies of action." Two models of cultural influence are developed, for settled and unsettled cultural periods. In settled periods, culture independently influences action, but only by providing resources from which people can construct diverse lines of action. In unsettled cultural periods, explicit ideologies directly govern action, but structural opportunities for action determine which among competing ideologies survive in the long run. This alternative view of culture offers new opportunities for systematic, differentiated arguments about culture's causal role in shaping action. The reigning model used to understand culture's effects on action is fundamentally misleading. It assumes that culture shapes action by supplying ultimate ends or values toward which action is directed, thus making values the central causal element of culture. This paper analyzes the conceptual difficulties into which this traditional view of culture leads and offers an alternative model. Among sociologists and anthropologists, debate has raged for several academic generations over defining the term "culture." Since the seminal work of Clifford Geertz (1973a), the older definition of culture as the entire way of life of a people, including their technology and material artifacts, or that (associated with the name of Ward Goodenough) as everything one would need to know to become a functioning member of a society, have been displaced in favor of defining culture as the publicly available symbolic forms through which people experience and express meaning (see Keesing, 1974). For purposes of this paper, culture consists of such symbolic vehicles of meaning, including beliefs, ritual practices, art forms, and ceremonies, as well as informal cultural practices such as language, gossip, stories, and rituals of daily life. These symbolic forms are the means through which "social processes of sharing modes of behavior and outlook within [a] community" (Hannerz, 1969:184) take place.

6,869 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, an emergent methodological trend in anthropological research that concerns the adaptation of long-standing modes of ethnographic practices to more complex objects of study is surveyed, in terms of testing the limits of ethnography, attenuating the power of fieldwork, and losing the perspective of the subaltern.
Abstract: This review surveys an emergent methodological trend in anthropological research that concerns the adaptation of long-standing modes of ethnographic practices to more complex objects of study. Ethnography moves from its conventional single-site location, contextualized by macro-constructions of a larger social order, such as the capitalist world system, to multiple sites of observation and participation that cross-cut dichotomies such as the “local” and the “global,” the “lifeworld” and the “system.” Resulting ethnographies are therefore both in and out of the world system. The anxieties to which this methodological shift gives rise are considered in terms of testing the limits of ethnography, attenuating the power of fieldwork, and losing the perspective of the subaltern. The emergence of multi-sited ethnography is located within new spheres of interdisciplinary work, including media studies, science and technology studies, and cultural studies broadly. Several “tracking” strategies that shape multi-site...

4,905 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors consider how identity, a person's sense of self, affects economic outcomes and incorporate the psychology and sociology of identity into an economic model of behavior, and construct a simple game-theoretic model showing how identity can affect individual interactions.
Abstract: This paper considers how identity, a person's sense of self, affects economic outcomes. We incorporate the psychology and sociology of identity into an economic model of behavior. In the utility function we propose, identity is associated with different social categories and how people in these categories should behave. We then construct a simple game-theoretic model showing how identity can affect individual interactions. The paper adapts these models to gender discrimination in the workplace, the economics of poverty and social exclusion, and the household division of labor. In each case, the inclusion of identity substantively changes conclusions of previous economic analysis.

4,825 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Most often, the homogenization argument subspeciates into either an argument about Americanization, or anargument about "commoditization", and very often the two arguments are closely linked as discussed by the authors. But these arguments fail to consider that at least as rapidly as forces from various metropolises are brought into new societies they tend to become indigenized in one or other way.
Abstract: Most often, the homogenization argument subspeciates into either an argument about Americanization, or an argument about 'commoditization', and very often the two arguments are closely linked. What these arguments fail to consider is that at least as rapidly as forces from various metropolises are brought into new societies they tend to become indigenized in one or other way: this is true of music and housing styles as much as it is true of science and terrorism, spectacles and constitutions. The dynamics of such indigenization have just begun to be explored in a sophisticated manner

3,939 citations