Word, Work and the World begins with the assumption that people are
interested in the world around them. The book is written with the intent
of drawing in lay and specialised readers into the interdisciplinary
world of Sociology/Social Anthropology. The methods of both, since the
1960s, has been seen as combined for the reasons that the dichotomy of
tribal/ peasant in relation to urban conglomerations is thought to be
immensely interesting to the reading public. Migration for work is so
significant, whether within the country or outside, that the dilemmas
and concerns of the diaspora are always interesting data. Put simply,
the book tries to bring forward the living practices of communities
which are interlocked in time and space, where work and their cultures
become intermeshed in different ways. Of course cyberspace becomes the
common denominator in understanding that people are interested in one
another, families and friends become interactive over spans of time
which allow a certain intimacy of acknowledgement. Economic practices
are also embedded in the hinterland of communication. As the world
becomes increasingly vulnerable to climate change, organic farming, the
search for water, the protection of lands and people from floods, are
all real indexes of how urgent the task of recording people's life
worlds has become. Narrative production, and its interpretation draws us
into the complexities of the ethnographic present, which as a type of
documentation provides resource materials to historians. Since the world
is now so encompassable, the book explores how human being remember the
past, while creating new niches for the survival of their families and
communities. Hybridization of cultures also involves familiarity with
world literature, because people enjoy the expanse of imagination into
which they are released by reading time honoured texts, whether of the
ancient past, or of contemporary time. The time of legend, of fable, of
coercive patterns of existence arising out of natural or political
calamities, makes them ever more respectful of traditions and the hope
for survival. Out of war and loss arise both science and poetry, not
necessarily opposed to one another.
This book tries to bring to the reader the pleasures of many cultures in
conversation with one another, where dissonances may be accommodated.
