Public Books
Webb Keane
Public Books
a magazine of ideas, arts, and scholarship
  • Essays
  • Interviews
  • Sections
    • View All
    • Anthropology & Religion
    • Antiquities
    • Art
    • Borderlands
    • Capitalism
    • Digital Humanities
    • Film
    • Global Black History
    • Higher Education
    • Literary Fiction
    • Literature in Translation
    • Poetry
    • Politics
    • Print/Screen
    • Sociology
    • Sports
    • Systems and Futures
    • Technology
    • TV
    • Urbanism
    • Videogames
  • Series
    • View All
    • B-Sides
    • The Book That Made Me
    • Crisis Cities
    • An Engineer Reads a Novel
    • Migrant Futures
    • On Our Nightstands
    • Public Streets
    • Public Thinker
    • Quizzical
    • Shoptalk
    • Syllabi
    • Virtual Roundtables
    • @X
  • Podcasts
    • Public Books 101
    • Novel Dialogue
    • Primary Sources
  • Donate
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
Webb Keane

Webb Keane

Webb Keane is the George Herbert Mead Collegiate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories (Princeton University Press, 2016), Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter (University of California Press, 2007), and Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society (University of California Press, 1997). icon

  • Visit website

For the Slow Work of Critique in Critical Times

By Webb Keane

With so many crises—environmental, humanitarian, racial, viral, and economic—the work of “critique” can seem to be a luxury. But is it?

Saba Mahmood and the Paradoxes of Self-Parochialization

By Webb Keane

Saba Mahmood died on March 10, 2018, at the age of 57. Born in Pakistan, she ...

Get Our Weekly Newsletter

Most Viewed

  • The World Continues to Need Octavia E. Butler
  • B-Sides: Agatha Christie’s “At Bertram’s Hotel”
  • MAGA: Margaret Atwood’s Gilead Again
  • Xenophobia Powers the United States
  • B-Sides: Bessie Head’s “The Collector of Treasures”

LISTEN TO THE LATEST EPISODE OF PRIMARY SOURCES

  • Rick Perlstein on Garry Wills
    Eyal Press 5.30.2022

Subscribe to RSS

Support Public Books

Editors’ Pick

  • (A)I, Rapper: Who Voices Hip-Hop’s Future?
    Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo 4.21.2022
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Submissions
  • Partners
  • Events
  • Contact
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

Public Books Logo
© 2022 Public Books.TM All Rights Reserved