Cultural Identity and Global Process

`Friedman has produced a book of importance.... It features many tantalizing insights and observations in the author's attempt to comprehend the global constitution of the world and the "positional identities" - not least the identities of social scientists - within the global arena' - Theory, Culture & Society `Reading Friedman's work may require a recalibration of scale for some anthropologists. He writes with the historical scope of a Wallerstein, even a Braudel, and with the theoretical assurance reminiscent of the French structural Marxist school which his own early work critiqued so thoroughly. it was as a part of that extended critique that Friedman cut his analytic eyeteeth, attempting to mediate the Heisenberg-like uncertainties of constructing approaches that analyze both history and structure, Friedman's work can be thoroughly self-referential, and his theoretical universe seems all-encompassing, capable of digesting a vast panorama of historical data and cultural diversity and delivering it all to the reader in an analytically finished form.... these are the side effects of a profound and thoroughly convincing set of theses concerned with subjects of near obsession to many. In Cultural Identity and Global Process, Friedman's concerns are cultural globalization, global economic structures and local identities, and the significance of postmodernism in a modernist world.... strongest recommendation... really a must-read for graduate students - as an example of what one of the strongest minds in contemporary anthropology is writing about central issues in social science' - American Anthropologist