Returns

Abstract

Returns explores homecomings--the ways people recover and renew their roots. Engaging with indigenous histories of survival and transformation, James Clifford opens fundamental questions about where we are going, separately and together, in a globalizing, but not homogenizing, world. It was once widely assumed that native, or tribal, societies were destined to disappear. Sooner or later, irresistible economic political forces would complete the work of destruction set in motion by culture contact and colonialism. But many aboriginal groups persist,a reality that complicates familiar narratives of modernization and progress. History, Clifford invites us to observe, is a multi directional process, and the word "indigenous," long associated with primitivism and localism, is taking on new, unexpected meanings.