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The anthropology of art is a fast-developing area of intellectual debate and academic study. This beautifully illustrated volume is a unique survey of the current state of anthropological thinking on art and aesthetics. The distinguished contributors draw on contemporary anthropological theory and on classic anthropological topics such as myth and ritual to deepen our understanding of particular aesthetic traditions in their socio-cultural and historical contexts. Many of the essays present new findings based on recent field research in Australia, New Guinea, Indonesia, and Mexico; while others draw on classical anthropological accounts of the Trobriand Islanders of Melanesia and the Nuer of the Southern Sudan to form new arguments and conclusions. The introductory overview of the history of the anthropology of art, by Sir Raymond Firth, makes this volume especially useful for those interested in learning what anthropology has to contribute to our understanding of art and aesthetics in general.
Using archival material and oral testimony collected during workshops in Nunavut between 1996 and 2008, Frédéric Laugrand and Jarich Oosten provide a nuanced look at Inuit religion, offering a strong counter narrative to the idea that traditional Inuit culture declined post-contact. They show that setting up a dichotomy between a past identified with traditional culture and a present involving Christianity obscures the continuity and dynamics of Inuit society, which has long borrowed and adapted "outside" elements. They argue that both Shamanism and Christianity are continually changing in the Arctic and ideas of transformation and transition are necessary to understand both how the ideology of a hunting society shaped Inuit Christian cosmology and how Christianity changed Inuit shamanic traditions.
What happens when anthropologists lose themselves during fieldwork while attempting to understand divergent cultures? When they stray from rigorous agendas and are forced to confront radically unexpected or unexplained experiences? In Extraordinary Anthropology leading ethnographers from across the globe discuss the importance of the deeply personal and emotionally volatile ?ecstatic? side of fieldwork. ø Anthropologists who have worked in communities in Central America, North America, Australia, Africa, and Asia share their intimate experiences of tranformations in the field through details of significant dreams, haunting visions, and their own conflicting emotional tensions. Their experie...
Native Christians reflects on the modes and effects of Christianity among indigenous peoples of the Americas drawing on comparative analysis of ethnographic and historical cases. Christianity in this region has been part of the process of conquest and domination, through the association usually made between civilizing and converting. While Catholic missions have emphasized the 'civilizing' process, teaching the Indians the skills which they were expected to exercise within the context of a new societal model, the Protestants have centered their work on promoting a deep internal change, or 'conversion', based on the recognition of God's existence. Various ethnologists and scholars of indigeno...
In this timely collection, the authors examine Indigenous peoples’ negotiations with different cosmologies in a globalized world. Dussart and Poirier outline a sophisticated theory of change that accounts for the complexity of Indigenous peoples’ engagement with Christianity and other cosmologies, their own colonial experiences, as well as their ongoing relationships to place and kin. The contributors offer fine-grained ethnographic studies that highlight the complex and pragmatic ways in which Indigenous peoples enact their cosmologies and articulate their identity as forms of affirmation. This collection is a major contribution to the anthropology of religion, religious studies, and Indigenous studies worldwide. Contributors: Anne-Marie Colpron, Robert R. Crépeau, Françoise Dussart, Ingrid Hall, Laurent Jérôme, Frédéric Laugrand, C. James MacKenzie, Caroline Nepton Hotte, Ksenia Pimenova, Sylvie Poirier, Kathryn Rountree, Antonella Tassinari, Petronella Vaarzon-Morel
This structural analysis of myth, first published in 1985, focuses on social and political problems of Indo-European mythology. Dr Jarich Oosten tells how the ancient Indo-European gods competed for supreme power and the exclusive possession of the sacred potion of wisdom and immortality. In examining the social code of the wars of the gods, he reveals that there are remarkably consistent patterns in time and space: paternal relatives, equals at first, prove unable to share power, magic goods, etc; while some gods retain their divine status as an exclusive prerogative, their brothers or paternal cousins are transformed into demons; relatives by marriage, however, who are unequal at first, su...
Every passing day brings new headlines about climate change as politicians debate how to respond, scientists offer new revelations and sceptics critique the validity of the research. In Climate, Culture, Change, these many political, economic and scientific uncertainties that today inundate our collective consciousness are analyzed in a way that reveals the cultural scope of the challenge. --
Cover -- Table of contents -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Approaching shamanism -- 2 Eighteenth and nineteenth-century interpretations -- 3 Early twentieth-century American interpretations -- 4 Twentieth-century European constructions -- 5 The Bollingen connection, 1930s-1960s -- 6 Post-war American visions -- 7 The genesis of a field of shamanism, America 1960s-1990s -- 8 A Case Study: Shamanisms in the Netherlands -- 9 Struggles for power, charisma and authority: a balance -- Bibliography -- Index
Sharing Knowledge & Cultural Heritage (SK & CH), First Nations of the Americas, testifies to the growing commitment of museum professionals in the twenty-first century to share collections with the descendants of people and communities from whom the collections originated. Thanks to collection histories and the documenting of relations with particular indigenous communities, it is well known that until as recently as the 1970s, museum doors - except for a handful of cases - were shut to indigenous peoples. This volume is the result of an ""expert meeting"" held in November 2007 at the National M ...
Betty Issenman examines all aspects of winter and summer Inuit clothing, going back 4000 years, with particular emphasis on northern Canadian Inuit. She also describes the kinds of material and tools used to make the clothing. The focus is on on Inuit clothing as protection, identity, and culture bearer, roles it has played for thousands of years. No other book brings together contemporary and historical material from the circumpolar worlds with original research. Sinews of Survival is a fascinating study of Inuit clothing, past and present. It includes over 200 illustrations of various kinds of clothing. The voices of the Inuit are heard throughout the text in quotations from consultations and the literature. By describing one component of Inuit society, the author opens a pathway to understanding the culture as a whole.