Two decades after the publication of Clifford and Marcus’ volume Writing Culture, this collection provides a fresh and diverse reassessment of the debates that this pioneering volume unleashed. At the same time, Beyond Writing Culture moves the debate on by embracing the more fundamental challenge as to how to conceptualise the intricate relationship between epistemology and representational practices rather than maintaining the original narrow focus on textual analysis. It thus offers a thought-provoking tapestry of new ideas relevant for scholars not only concerned with ‘the ethnographic Other’, but with representation in general.

Olaf Zenker is Ambizione Research Fellow (SNSF) at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern, Switzerland. He received his PhD from the Martin Luther University and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, Germany, and was also a postdoctoral researcher in the Max Planck Fellow Group Law, Organization, Science, & Technology. His publications include the book Irish/ness Is All Around Us: Language Revivalism and the Culture of Ethnic Identity in Northern Ireland (Berghahn Books, 2013).

Karsten Kumoll is Programme Manager at the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat), advising the Federal and State (Länder) governments on the system of higher education and research. He obtained his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Freiburg. Its subject was Marshall Sahlins’ complete works and it was subsequently published as: Kultur, Geschichte und die Indigenisierung der Moderne: Eine Analyse des Gesamtwerks von Marshall Sahlins (Bielefeld, 2007).