In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-Of-The-Way Place

by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

Book Overview

In this highly original and much-anticipated ethnography, Anna Tsing challenges not only anthropologists and feminists but all those who study culture to reconsider some of their dearest assumptions. By choosing to locate her study among Meratus Dayaks, a marginal and marginalized group in the deep rainforest of South Kalimantan, Indonesia, Tsing deliberately sets into motion the familiar and stubborn urban fantasies of self and other. Unusual...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691000514
• ISBN13: 9780691000510
• Release Date: November 1993
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Manages to hook together several ethnographic schools.

I found Tsing's book to be very informative about the Meratus culture of Indonesia, as well as very pertinent to the recent battling between the postmodernist and femminist thought schools within ethnographic literature. She manages to use a combination of more traditional Enlightment techniques (statistics, generalizations, strong authoratative voice) as well as postmodernist techniques (polyvocality, poetry, socio-historical context for the culture, relativism to its surroundings). The reading is easy, and fun, because she puts a bit of emotion in her book too. Overall, I think it is an important contribution to the ethnographic literary circle.