Inalienable Possessions

Inalienable Possessions

Author: Annette B. Weiner

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1992-05-13

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780520911802

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Inalienable Possessions tests anthropology's traditional assumptions about kinship, economics, power, and gender in an exciting challenge to accepted theories of reciprocity and marriage exchange. Focusing on Oceania societies from Polynesia to Papua New Guinea and including Australian Aborigine groups, Annette Weiner investigates the category of possessions that must not be given or, if they are circulated, must return finally to the giver. Reciprocity, she says, is only the superficial aspect of exchange, which overlays much more politically powerful strategies of "keeping-while-giving." The idea of keeping-while-giving places women at the heart of the political process, however much that process may vary in different societies, for women possess a wealth of their own that gives them power. Power is intimately involved in cultural reproduction, and Weiner describes the location of power in each society, showing how the degree of control over the production and distribution of cloth wealth coincides with women's rank and the development of hierarchy in the community. Other inalienable possessions, whether material objects, landed property, ancestral myths, or sacred knowledge, bestow social identity and rank as well. Calling attention to their presence in Western history, Weiner points out that her formulations are not limited to Oceania. The paradox of keeping-while-giving is a concept certain to influence future developments in ethnography and the theoretical study of gender and exchange.


Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture

Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture

Author: Dale Southerton

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2011-09-15

Total Pages: 1665

ISBN-13: 0872896013

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture is the first reference work to outline the parameters of consumer culture and provide a critical, scholarly resource on consumption and consumerism.


Women and Personal Property in the Victorian Novel

Women and Personal Property in the Victorian Novel

Author: Deborah Wynne

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-17

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1134772408

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How key changes to the married women's property laws contributed to new ways of viewing women in society are revealed in Deborah Wynne's study of literary representations of women and portable property during the period 1850 to 1900. While critical explorations of Victorian women's connections to the material world have tended to focus on their relationships to commodity culture, Wynne argues that modern paradigms of consumerism cannot be applied across the board to the Victorian period. Until the passing of the 1882 Married Women's Property Act, many women lacked full property rights; evidence suggests that, for women, objects often functioned not as disposable consumer products but as cherished personal property. Focusing particularly on representations of women and material culture in Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Henry James, Wynne shows how novelists engaged with the vexed question of women's relationships to property. Suggesting that many of the apparently insignificant items that 'clutter' the Victorian realist novel take on new meaning when viewed through the lens of women's access to material culture and the vagaries of property law, her study opens up new possibilities for interpreting female characters in Victorian fiction and reveals the complex work of 'thing culture' in literary texts.


Language, Culture, and Mind

Language, Culture, and Mind

Author: Paul Kockelman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-02-18

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1139486268

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Based on fieldwork carried out in a Mayan village in Guatemala, this book examines local understandings of mind through the lens of language and culture. It focuses on a variety of grammatical structures and discursive practices through which mental states are encoded and social relations are expressed: inalienable possessions, such as body parts and kinship terms; interjections, such as 'ouch' and 'yuck'; complement-taking predicates, such as 'believe' and 'desire'; and grammatical categories such as mood, status and evidentiality. And, more generally, it develops a theoretical framework through which both community-specific and human-general features of mind may be contrasted and compared. It will be of interest to researchers and students working within the disciplines of anthropology, linguistics, psychology, and philosophy.


Property in Question

Property in Question

Author: Caroline Humphrey

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-06-08

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1000180603

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How has it come about that indigenous cultures, body parts, and sequences of musical notes are considered property? How has the movement from collective to privatized systems affected notions of property? At what point in transaction chains do native cultures, indigenous medicines, or cyberdata become objects and therefore propertized, and what are the social, economic, and ethical considerations for such transformations? Addressing these hotly contested issues and many more, Property in Question interrogates the very concept of property and what is happening to it in the contemporary world, in case studies ranging from Romania to Kazakhstan, Africa to North America. The book examines not only the changing character of the property concept, but also its ideological foundations and political usages. Authors address bio-transactions, music copyright, cyberspace, oil prospecting, debates over privatization of land and factories, and dilemmas arising with new forms of ownership of businesses. Offering a fresh perspective on contemporary economic transformation, this volume is a long overdue investigation of the power of the private property concept, as well as an exploration of how the global economy may be subtly, even invisibly, changing what property means and how we relate to it.


Not Ours Alone

Not Ours Alone

Author: Elizabeth Emma Ferry

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780231132398

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Elizabeth Ferry explores how members of the Santa Fe Cooperative, a silver mine in Mexico, give meaning to their labor in an era of rampant globalization. She analyzes the cooperative's practices and the importance of patrimonio (patrimony) in their understanding of work, tradition, and community. More specifically, she argues that patrimonio, a belief that certain resources are inalienable possessions of a local collective passed down to subsequent generations, has shaped and sustained the cooperative's sense of identity.


Exchanging Words

Exchanging Words

Author: Christopher Ball

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press

Published: 2018-11-01

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0826358543

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Like human groups everywhere, Wauja people construct their identity in relation to others. This book tells the story of the Wauja group from the Xingu Indigenous Park in central Brazil and its relation to powerful new interlocutors. Tracing Wauja interactions with others, Ball depicts expanding scales of social action from the village to the wider field of the park and finally abroad. Throughout, the author analyzes language use in ritual settings to show how Wauja people construct relationships with powerful spirit-monsters, ancestors, and ethnic trading partners. Ball’s use of ritual as an analytic category helps show how Wauja interactions with spirits and Indian neighbors, for example, are connected to interactions with the Brazilian government, international NGOs, and museums in projects of development. Showing ritual as a contributing factor to relationships of development and the politics of indigeneity, Exchanging Words asks how discourse, ritual, and exchange come together to mediate social relations close to home and on a global scale.


Values and Valuables

Values and Valuables

Author: Cynthia Ann Werner

Publisher: Rowman Altamira

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 9780759105454

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A group of distinguished anthropologists and economists discuss the value attached to material objects by different cultures. The authors consider the sacred nature of objects that are exchanged between individuals, the value and power of markets, money, and credit, and the ways in which contemporary people bestow symbolic value on objects or individuals. With its emphasis on the interplay of cultural and economic values, this volume will be a great resource for economists and economic anthropologists.


The Languages of Native North America

The Languages of Native North America

Author: Marianne Mithun

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2001-06-07

Total Pages: 800

ISBN-13: 9780521298759

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book provides an authoritative survey of the several hundred languages indigenous to North America. These languages show tremendous genetic and typological diversity, and offer numerous challenges to current linguistic theory. Part I of the book provides an overview of structural features of particular interest, concentrating on those that are cross-linguistically unusual or unusually well developed. These include syllable structure, vowel and consonant harmony, tone, and sound symbolism; polysynthesis, the nature of roots and affixes, incorporation, and morpheme order; case; grammatical distinctions of number, gender, shape, control, location, means, manner, time, empathy, and evidence; and distinctions between nouns and verbs, predicates and arguments, and simple and complex sentences; and special speech styles. Part II catalogues the languages by family, listing the location of each language, its genetic affiliation, number of speakers, major published literature, and structural highlights. Finally, there is a catalogue of languages that have evolved in contact situations.


Linguistics: An Introduction

Linguistics: An Introduction

Author: William B. McGregor

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-02-22

Total Pages: 613

ISBN-13: 1350164275

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What is Linguistics? How do languages work? Why is this important? Answering these questions and more, Linguistics: An Introduction covers all the key topics that you will need in your study of language and linguistics. Over 17 chapters, William McGregor outlines the core ideas and approaches in the field, tracing their development and discussing the most recent trends. Using examples from a wide range of languages and contexts from around the world, this book assumes no prior knowledge of linguistics and contains a host of pedagogic features, including key terms, discussion questions, and exercises, to fully support your learning. Fully revised and updated, this third edition now includes: - A new chapter on corpus linguistics - New topics, including theories of syntax, text typology and the evolution of languages - New 'Research Methods' sections at the end of each chapter - Updated examples drawn from a variety of global perspectives and contexts, ranging from North America to East Asia With a comprehensive companion website featuring additional questions, reading materials, and videos, alongside an online instructor guide, which includes lecture slides, suggested course outlines and structures, and an answer key, this is your essential introduction to the study of linguistics.