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World
What do we mean when we refer to the world? How does the world relate to the human person? Are the two interdependent and, if so, in what way? What does the world mean for the ethnographer and the anthropologist? Much has been said of worlds and worldviews, but are we really certain we know what we mean when we use these words? Asking these questions and many more, this book explores the conditions of possibility for the ethnographic gesture and how those possibilities can shed light on the relationship between humans and the world in which they are found. As Joao de Pina-Cabral shows, important changes have occurred over the past decades concerning the way in which we relate the way we think to the way we are as a humanity embodied. Exploring new confrontations with a new conceptualization of the human condition, Cabral sketches a new anthropology, one that contributes to an ongoing separation from the socio-centric and representationalist constraints that have plagued the social sciences over the past century.
Between China and Europe
From the mid-1500s to December 1999, Macao was the longest-standing site of economic, religious and political contact between the Chinese and European worlds. Yet this surprising capacity for survival has resulted, ironically, form the very weakness of the Portuguese presence. In particular, since the foundation of Hong Kong (in 1840), Macao had depended on a creative use of its marginality - as a centre for gambling, for the coolie trade, the opium trade, the semi-clandestine gold trade and so on. As a rear window on China, Macao provides us with fascinating examples of marginality that allow us to study the limits of the systems that characterize the Chinese world.
After Society
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.
Death in Portugal
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Elites
Wealth and power characterize elites, yet despite the strong cultural influences they exert, their study remains underdeveloped. Partly because of complications resulting from access, scholars have tended to focus on groups affected by elite governance rather than on elites themselves. It is often overlooked that, in order to continue through time, elites have toempower new members. Choice has to be exercised over who achieves leadership, both by reference to the elite group itself and to the wider group over which it holds power. This book fills a gap in the current literature by providing the first rigorous interrogation of the choice and succession strategies of elites in various cultural...
The Challenge of Epistemology
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.
Europe Observed
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On the Margins of Religion
Focusing on places, objects, bodies, narratives and ritual spaces where religion may be found or inscribed, the authors reveal the role of religion in contesting rights to places, to knowledge and to property, as well as access to resources. Through analyses of specific historical processes in terms of responses to socio-economic and political change, the chapters consider implicitly or explicitly the problematic relation between science (including social sciences and anthropology in particular) and religion, and how this connects to the new religious globalisation of the twenty-first century. Their ethnographies highlight the embodiment of religion and its location in landscapes, built spaces and religious sites which may be contested, physically or ideologically, or encased in memory and often in silence. Taken together, they show the importance of religion as a resource to the believers: a source of solace, spiritual comfort and self-willed submission.
After Society
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.
World
"What do we mean when we refer to the world? How does the world relate to the human person? Are the two interdependent and, if so, in what way? What does world mean for an ethnographer or an anthropologist? Much has been said of worlds and worldviews, but do we really know what we mean by these words? Asking these questions and many more, this book explores the conditions of possibility of the ethnographic gesture, and how these shed light on the relationship between humans and the world in the midst of which they find themselves. As Pina-Cabral shows, recent decades have seen important shifts in the way we relate human thought to human embodiment--the relation between how we think and what we are. The book proposes a novel approach to the human condition: an anthropological outlook that is centered around the notions of personhood and sociality. Through a rich confrontation with ethnographic and historical material, this work contributes to the ongoing task of overcoming the theoretical constraints that have hindered anthropological thinking over the past century."--Page 4 of cover.
