Webb Keane is the George Herbert Mead Collegiate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories (Princeton University Press, 2016), Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter (University of California Press, 2007), and Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society (University of California Press, 1997).
Webb Keane
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Writing on Public Books
Marshall Sahlins’s “Original Affluent Society” 50 Years Later
Capitalism seeks wealth to meet desires. But foraging societies follow “the Zen road to affluence”: not by getting more, but wanting less.
For the Slow Work of Critique in Critical Times
With so many crises—environmental, humanitarian, racial, viral, and economic—the work of “critique” can seem to be a luxury. But is it?
Saba Mahmood and the Paradoxes of Self-Parochialization
Saba Mahmood died on March 10, 2018, at the age of 57. Born in Pakistan, she …
