
The Battle over Zomia (2011) - benbreen
https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Battle-Over-Zomia/128845/
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kiliantics
Interesting that this was published right before Occupy kicked off

~~~
AlotOfReading
There's a broader recognition in academia the last few years that most of the
academic effort the past century has been to understand people from an urban,
centralized core perspective. That's where the funding dollars, the cool
architecture, and the big stories are. It's very difficult to discuss non
traditional peoples in that sort of worldview though. Things like occupy,
Mexican/European border refugees, and Asian (semi-)nomads all fall outside
that category, so there have been a number of attempts by academics to
construct theories that put these people back at the center of their lives
where they can be analyzed/discussed, rather than trying to discuss them as
the products of some other events off somewhere else.

A lot of people take issue with this sort of framing though because it smells
of postmodernism.

~~~
sophacles

        ... there have been a number of attempts by academics to construct theories that put these 
        people back at the center of their lives where they can be analyzed/discussed... 
        A lot of people take issue with this sort of framing though because it smells of 
        postmodernism.
    

This makes me sad - Why would someone take issue with "lets pretend these
actual humans are actually human, and think about their lives in that
context"?

