Existential Anthropology: Events, Exigencies, and EffectsInspired by existential thought, but using ethnographic methods, Jackson explores a variety of compelling topics, including 9/11, episodes from the war in Sierra Leone and its aftermath, the marginalization of indigenous Australians, the application of new technologies, mundane forms of ritualization, the magical use of language, the sociality of violence, the prose of suffering, and the discourse of human rights. Throughout this compelling work, Jackson demonstrates that existentialism, far from being a philosophy of individual being, enables us to explore issues of social existence and coexistence in new ways, and to theorise events as the sites of a dynamic interplay between the finite possibilities of the situations in which human beings find themselves and the capacities they yet possess for creating viable forms of social life. |
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... people in contemporary Australia; cases of organ transplantation, and the interface between humans and machines; instances of ritualisation and the magical use of language in everyday life; episodes of violence and human rights ...
... people find in having a cultural or national identity, or in being themselves, or in doing their duty – for such notions are what life is ostensively about for many people. Rather, my argument is against our tendency to ontologise such ...
... people accomplish with limited means in a world of scarcity and inequality, and by the ingenuity with which people reimagine and surpass the situations in which they find themselves. At the same time, one is stunned by how easily a life ...
... people call their own and with which they identify. What one has objectifies who one is. The Kuranko notion of miran makes this clear. Mirannu (pl.) refer both to material possessions–particularly those that contain and protect, such as ...
... people's notions of what constitutes their due, and Kuranko folktales, like folktales throughout the world, with ... people to explore vengeful, occult and spiritual avenues to wealth and power (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999, Devisch 1995 ...
Contents
1 | |
15 | |
Chapter 3 VIOLENCE AND INTERSUBJECTIVE REASON | 35 |
AN ESSAY ON ANARCHY | 53 |
Chapter 5 WHATS IN A NAME? AN ESSAY ON THE POWER OF WORDS | 75 |
Chapter 6 MUNDANE RITUAL | 93 |
Chapter 7 BIOTECHNOLOGY AND THE CRITIQUE OF GLOBALISATION | 111 |
Chapter 8 FAMILIAR AND FOREIGN BODIES | 127 |
Chapter 9 THE PROSE OF SUFFERING | 143 |
Chapter 10 WHOSE HUMAN RIGHTS? | 159 |
Chapter 11 EXISTENTIAL IMPERATIVES | 181 |
BIBLIOGRAPHY | 195 |
INDEX | 211 |
Other editions - View all
The Body of the Queen: Gender and Rule in the Courtly World from the 15th to ... Regina Schulte No preview available - 2005 |