One way in which different orders of knowledge are brought together is through the transformation of context. This book is concerned with contexts of a particular kind. Claims to know 'more' or see 'further' or to be able to encompass local facts by a global perspective take on a special meaning in the world-view of societies, such as those of the west, that imagine they are part of a life that is itself global in scale.

Shifting Contexts offers an original critique of current western thinking: it does not take it for granted that 'global' and 'local' indicate orders of magnitude or scales of importance. Rather, it addresses the techniques by which people shift the contexts of their knowledge and thus endow phenomena with local or global significance. This is an unusual and original collection of essays by seven leading social anthropologists, in the company of two specialists in research policy.

This book examines a range of contexts in which people (including anthropologists) make different orders of knowledge for themselves as a prelude to questioning assumptions about the 'size' of knowledge implied in the contrast between global and local perspectives. Shifting Contexts will appeal to anthropologists and all those working in areas such as the philosophy of social science, cultural studies and comparative sociology.