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Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique
Cargo cults have long exerted a remarkable attraction on Westerners, and the last decade has seen the publication of much new work on the subject. This collection of original essays is based on fieldwork in Melanesia, Fiji, Australia, and Indonesia by scholars who are influential in the contemporary debate on cargo. Conceived as a reader for undergraduate and graduate courses, the volume offers an up-to-date view of the subject and the debates it arouses among contemporary anthropologists. Some contributors plead for the abolition of "cargo" because of its troublesome implications, but also because, in the authors’ view, cargo cults do not exist as identifiable objects of study. Others arg...
Becoming Sinners
A study of cultural change through the study of the Christianization of the Urapmin, a Melanesian society in Papua New Guinea.
The Limits of Meaning
Too often, anthropological accounts of ritual leave readers with the impression that everything goes smoothly, that rituals are "meaningful events." But what happens when rituals fail, or when they seem "meaningless"? Drawing on research in the anthropology of Christianity from around the globe, the authors in this volume suggest that in order to analyze meaning productively, we need to consider its limits. This collection is a welcome new addition to the anthropology of religion, offering fresh debates on a classic topic and drawing attention to meaning in a way that other volumes have for key terms like "culture" and "fieldwork.
Writing in the Field
This festschrift is situated within the contexts of the 'Writing Culture' debate, the 'Rhetoric Culture' project, and the legacy of anthropologist Stephen Tyler's work on language and representation. While Writing Culture (1986) alerted readers to the power of ethnographers over their field, Writing in the Field alerts readers to the power of the field over its ethnographers. Rather than reprise familiar debates about writing and representation, the book's individual chapters elucidate how anthropological fieldwork is a highly fraught, provisional, and incomplete practice enmeshed in the gaps between self and the other. The book's emphasis on the concepts of pathos, epiphany, and dissociation is developed through essays that are personal, yet not merely subjective, for they draw on and contribute to deep traditions of thinking about culture and rhetoric. (Series: Ethnologie: Forschung und Wissenschaft - Vol. 24) *** "This fine collection of essays is a fitting tribute to the positive influence of Stephen Tyler, an original and influential anthropologist of protean gifts." - E. Douglas Lewis, School of Social and Political Sciences, U. of MelbourneÃ?Â?
Introducing Religion
The study of religion encompasses ordinary human social practice and is not limited to the extraordinary or divine. 'Introducing Religion' brings together leading international scholars in the field of religious studies to examine religion as integral to everyday social practice. The book establishes a theoretical framework for the study of religion to analyse prayer, ritual, science, morality and politics in relation to the world's major religions. It will be of interest to students of theory and method in religious studies seeking a clear introduction to the multifaceted nature of religion.
Philosophy and Anthropology
Philosophy and anthropology have many, but largely unexplored, links and interrelationships. Historically, they have informed each other in subtle ways. This volume of original essays explores and enhances this relationship through anthropological engagement with philosophy and vice versa, the nature, sources and history of philosophical anthropology, phenomenology, and the practical, methodological and theoretical implications of a dialogue between the two subjects. ‘Philosophy and Anthropology: Border Crossings and Transformations’ seeks to enrich both the humanities and the social sciences through its informative and stimulating essays.
Heaven on Earth
Millennialists through the ages have looked forward to the apocalyptic moment that will radically transform society into heaven on Earth. Here, Landes offers a lucid and ground-breaking analysis of this widely misunderstood phenomenon.
The Death of the Big Men and the Rise of the Big Shots
In 1994, the Pacific island village of Matupit was partially destroyed by a volcanic eruption. This study focuses on the subsequent reconstruction and contests over the morality of exchanges that are generative of new forms of social stratification. Such new dynamics of stratification are central to contemporary processes of globalization in the Pacific, and more widely. Through detailed ethnography of the transactions that a displaced people entered into in seeking to rebuild their lives, this book analyses how people re-make sociality in an era of post-colonial neoliberalism without taking either the transformative power of globalization or the resilience of indigenous culture as its starting point. It also contributes to the understanding of the problems of post-disaster reconstruction and development projects.
We Stay the Same
Written in a clear and relatable style for students, We Stay the Same combines ethnographic and ecological research to show how the people of New Hanover, Papua New Guinea, continue to survive and make meaningful lives in a situation where their own hopes for economic development via logging and commercial agriculture have often been used against them as a mechanism of a more distantly profitable dispossession.
After the Crisis
After the Crisis: Anthropological Thought, Neoliberalism and the Aftermath offers a thought-provoking examination of the state of contemporary anthropology, identifying key issues that have confronted the discipline in recent years and linking them to neoliberalism, and suggesting how we might do things differently in the future. The first part of the volume considers how anthropology has come to resemble, as a result of the rise of postmodern and poststructural approaches in the field, key elements of neoliberalism and neoclassical economics by rejecting the idea of system in favour of individuals. It also investigates the effect of the economic crisis on funding and support for higher education and addresses the sense that anthropology has ‘lost its way’, with uncertainty over the purpose and future of the discipline. The second part of the book explores how the discipline can overcome its difficulties and place itself on a firmer foundation, suggesting ways that we can productively combine the debates of the late twentieth century with a renewed sense that people live their lives not as individuals, but as enmeshed in webs of relationship and obligation.
