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. |
From inside the book
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... stories alike may be seen as selective, imaginative, post festum re-workings of reality that make it appear less contingent, and ourselves less insignificant. A theory, as Michael Oakeshott reminds us, is like a recipe. It is not 'an ...
... that his father's ancestral blessings were bound to smooth his path through life. But as I remembered the various stories Noah had told me about himself, I began to realise that his entire life had been a search for a Preface xvii.
... story involves numerous Kuranko cultural motifs – the rivalry between elder and young brother, the marginality of the last-born, the influence of one's mother in mediating the blessings of patrilineal forebears – and refers constantly ...
... spells, channels and affective ties, relating to romantic love, religious faith and magical transformations that allegedly increase peoples' sense of security, agency and hope. 10. I have heard other versions of this story in Preface xxxi.
... story in which it is Kawa's aunt who is jealous of him, and uses a 'swear' to undermine his position. 11. I am indebted to Ghassan Hage's elucidation of Bourdieu's use of these terms, and allude here to the work he has done, adapting ...
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 |