Words and Worlds

Veena Das is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. She is the author of several books, including Textures of the Ordinary: Doing Anthropology after Wittgenstein.Didier Fassin is James D. Wolfensohn Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Professor to the Annual Chair in Public Health at the CollÈge de France. He is the author of various books, including Life: A Critical User's Manual.

• Acknowledgments  viiIntroduction: From Words to Worlds / Didier Fassin and Veena Das  11. Knowledge / Veena Das  192. Democracy / Jan-Werner MÜller  393. Authority / Banu Bargu  614. Belonging / Peter Geschiere  835. Toleration / Uday S. Mehta  1036. Power / Alex De Waal  1237. War / Julieta Lemaitre  1438. Revolution / Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi  1669. Corruption / Caroline Humphery  18510. Openness / Todd Sanders and Elizabeth F. Sanders  20511. Resilience / Jonathan Pugh  22512. Inequality / Ravi Kanbur  24313. Crisis / Didier Fassin  261Bibliography  277Contributors  299Index  303

“Emphasizing that words rest within social actions and social worlds and are woven into the fabric of the conceptual backdrop of contemporary politics, economics, and social worlds, this volume will have a major impact on our thinking about the fate of liberalisms and democracy.” - Elizabeth A. Povinelli, author of (The Inheritance) “Veena Das and Didier Fassin have assembled an arresting, methodologically innovative, and utterly relevant political lexicon. They have brought together a world-class group of authors who-with great sensitivity and insight-illuminate some of the concepts most urgently required for political understanding.” - Alice Crary, author of (Inside Ethics: On the Demands of Moral Thought) “Dark times require that, rather than reasserting fixed conceptual meanings and understandings, we follow Theodor Adorno in focusing upon the concept as both enabling and preventing access to the world. In this respect, [Words and Worlds] is an erudite reminder of the power of critical theory to put words to work while appreciating their ambiguous relation to reality.” - David Chandler (Journal of Anthropological Research)