The Copy Generic
How the Nonspecific Makes Our Social Worlds
9780226822778
9780226822754
9780226822761
The Copy Generic
How the Nonspecific Makes Our Social Worlds
An illuminating look at how the “generic” is key to how we make meaning in the world.
From off-brand products to elevator music, the “generic” is discarded as the copy, the knock-off, and the old. In The Copy Generic, anthropologist Scott MacLochlainn insists that more than the waste from the culture machine, the generic is a universal social tool, allowing us to move through the world with necessary frames of reference. It is the baseline and background, a category that includes and orders different types of specificity yet remains non-specific in itself. Across arenas as diverse as city planning, social media, ethnonationalism, and religion, the generic points to spaces in which knowledge is both over-produced and desperately lacking. Moving through ethnographic and historical settings in the Philippines, Europe, and the United States, MacLochlainn reveals ways the “generic” is crucial to how things repeat, circulate, and are classified in the world.
From off-brand products to elevator music, the “generic” is discarded as the copy, the knock-off, and the old. In The Copy Generic, anthropologist Scott MacLochlainn insists that more than the waste from the culture machine, the generic is a universal social tool, allowing us to move through the world with necessary frames of reference. It is the baseline and background, a category that includes and orders different types of specificity yet remains non-specific in itself. Across arenas as diverse as city planning, social media, ethnonationalism, and religion, the generic points to spaces in which knowledge is both over-produced and desperately lacking. Moving through ethnographic and historical settings in the Philippines, Europe, and the United States, MacLochlainn reveals ways the “generic” is crucial to how things repeat, circulate, and are classified in the world.
232 pages | 22 halftones | 6 x 9 | © 2022
Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology
Asian Studies: Southeast Asia and Australia
Religion: Christianity, Religion and Society
Table of Contents
Part I: The Copy Generic
Introduction: Copies Generic, Templates, and [Insert Text Here]
1. Roses Are Red: The Seduction of Order and the Covertness of Category
2. Generic Goes to Hollywood: Trademarking, Unmarking, and the Brand Displaced
3. Source Mimesis: How We Think about the Unauthored and Collectively Owned
Part II: Christian Plurals and a Generic Religious
Introduction
4. Formatting the Religious: “Non-Christians” and the Naturalness of Language
5. Divine/Generic | Olive/Mango
6. Big Faith: Christian Plurals and the Ambience of Catholicism
Epilogue: House of Generics Pro Forma
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Introduction: Copies Generic, Templates, and [Insert Text Here]
1. Roses Are Red: The Seduction of Order and the Covertness of Category
2. Generic Goes to Hollywood: Trademarking, Unmarking, and the Brand Displaced
3. Source Mimesis: How We Think about the Unauthored and Collectively Owned
Part II: Christian Plurals and a Generic Religious
Introduction
4. Formatting the Religious: “Non-Christians” and the Naturalness of Language
5. Divine/Generic | Olive/Mango
6. Big Faith: Christian Plurals and the Ambience of Catholicism
Epilogue: House of Generics Pro Forma
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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