Suchergebnisse

"In the early 1980s, when the contributors to this volume completed their graduate training at Oxford, the conditions of practice in anthropology were undergoing profound change. Professionally, the immediate postcolonial period was over and neoliberal reforms were marginalizing the social sciences. Analytically, the poststructuralist critique of the notion of 'society' challenged a discipline that dubbed itself as 'social'. Here self-ethnography is used to portray the contributors' anthropological trajectories, showing how analytical and academic engagements interacted creatively over time"--

On the margins: an introduction / João Pina-Cabral and Frances Pine -- Homeless spirits: modern spiritualism, psychical research and the anthropology of religion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries / João Vasconcelos -- The abominations of anthropology: Christianity, ethnographic taboos, and the meanings of "science" / Simon Coleman -- Religious logistics: African Christians, spirituality, and transportation / Thomas Kirsch -- Contested spaces: temple building and the re-creation of religious boundaries in contemporary urban India / Ursula Rao -- Bosnian neighborhoods revisited: tolerance, commitment, and Komšiluk in Sarajevo / Cornelia Sorabji -- Revival of Buddhist royal family commemorative ritual in Laos / Grant Evans -- Centres and margins: the organisation of extravagance as self-government in China / Stephan Feuchtwang -- Allies and subordinates: religious practice on the margins between Buddhistm and shamanism in southern Siberia / Galina Lindquist -- On celibate marriages: conversion to the Brahma Kumaris in Poland / Agnieszka Kościańska -- Elders' cathedrals and childrens' marbles: dynamics of religious transmission among the Baga of Guinea / Ramon Sarró -- Geomancy, politics, and colonial encounters in rural Hong Kong / Rubie S. Watson and James L. Watson -- The sacrifices of modernity in a Soviet-built steel town in Central India / Jonathan P. Parry

Epistemology poses particular problems for anthropologists whose task it is to understand manifold ways of being human. Through their work, anthropologists often encounter people whose ideas concerning the nature and foundations of knowledge are at odds with their own. Going right to the heart of anthropological theory and method, this volume discusses issues that have vexed practicing anthropologists for a long time. The authors are by no means in agreement with one another as to where the answers might lie. Some are primarily concerned with the clarity and theoretical utility of analytical categories across disciplines; others are more inclined to push ethnographic analysis to its limits in an effort to demonstrate what kind of sense it can make. All are aware of the much-wanted differences that good ethnography can make in explaining the human sciences and philosophy. The contributors show a continued commitment to ethnography as a profoundly radical intellectual endeavor that goes to the very roots of inquiry into what it is to be human, and, to anthropology as a comparative project that should be central to any attempt to understand who we are

Who do "we" anthropologists think "we" are? And how do forms and notions of collective disciplinary identity shape the way we think, write, and do anthropology? This volume explores how the anthropological "we" has been construed, transformed, and deployed across history and the global anthropological landscape. Drawing together both reflections and ethnographic case studies, it interrogates the critical-yet poorly studied-roles played by myriad anthropological "we" ss in generating and influencing anthropological theory, method, and analysis. In the process, new spaces are opened for reimagining who "we" are - and what "we," and indeed anthropology, could become

The relationship between anthropologists' ethnographic investigations and the lived social worlds in which these originate is a fundamental issue for anthropology. Where some claim that only native voices may offer authentic accounts of culture and hence that ethnographers are only ever interpreters of it, others point out that anthropologists are, themselves, implanted within specific cultural contexts which generate particular kinds of theoretical discussions. The contributors to this volume reject the premise that ethnographer and informant occupy different and incommensurable "cultural worlds." Instead they investigate the relationship between culture, context, and anthropologists' models and accounts in new ways. In doing so, they offer fresh insights into this key area of anthropological research

The scholarship of Ulf Hannerz is characterized by its extraordinary breadth and visionary nature. He has contributed to the understanding of urban life and transnational networks, and the role of media, paradoxes of identity and new forms of community, suggesting to see culture in terms of flows rather than as bounded entities. Contributions honor Hannerz' legacy by addressing theoretical, epistemological, ethical and methodological challenges facing anthropological inquiry on topics from cultural diversity policies in Europe to transnational networks in Yemen, and from pottery and literature to multinational corporations

In what ways did Europeans interact with the diversity of people they encountered on other continents in the context of colonial expansion, and with the peasant or ethnic 'Other' at home? How did anthropologists and ethnologists make sense of the mosaic of people and societies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when their disciplines were progressively being established in academia? By assessing the diversity of European intellectual histories within sociocultural anthropology, this volume aims to sketch its intellectual and institutional portrait. It will be a useful reading for the students of anthropology, ethnology, history and philosophy of science, research and science policy makers