Geontologies
Geontologies

Author: Elizabeth A. Povinelli

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2016-09-15

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0822373815

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In Geontologies Elizabeth A. Povinelli continues her project of mapping the current conditions of late liberalism by offering a bold retheorization of power. Finding Foucauldian biopolitics unable to adequately reveal contemporary mechanisms of power and governance, Povinelli describes a mode of power she calls geontopower, which operates through the regulation of the distinction between Life and Nonlife and the figures of the Desert, the Animist, and the Virus. Geontologies examines this formation of power from the perspective of Indigenous Australian maneuvers against the settler state. And it probes how our contemporary critical languages—anthropogenic climate change, plasticity, new materialism, antinormativity—often unwittingly transform their struggles against geontopower into a deeper entwinement within it. A woman who became a river, a snakelike entity who spawns the fog, plesiosaurus fossils and vast networks of rock weirs: in asking how these different forms of existence refuse incorporation into the vocabularies of Western theory Povinelli provides a revelatory new way to understand a form of power long self-evident in certain regimes of settler late liberalism but now becoming visible much further beyond.

Theory from the South
Theory from the South

Author: Jean Comaroff

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-11-17

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1317250621

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As nation-states in the Northern Hemisphere experience economic crisis, political corruption and racial tension, it seems as though they might be 'evolving' into the kind of societies normally associated with the 'Global South'. Anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff draw on their long experience of living in Africa to address a range of familiar themes - democracy, national borders, labour and capital and multiculturalism. They consider how we might understand these issues by using theory developed in the Global South. Challenging our ideas about 'developed' and 'developing' nations, Theory from the South provides new insights into key problems of our time.

Shakespeare and Social Theory
Shakespeare and Social Theory

Author: BRADD. SHORE

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-08-23

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9781032017174

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This book provides a bridge between Shakespeare Studies and classical social theory, opening up readings of Shakespeare to a new audience outside of literary studies and the humanities. Shakespeare has long been known as a 'great thinker' and this book reads his plays through the lens of an anthropologist, revealing new connections between Shakespeare's plays and the lives we now lead. Close readings of a selection of frequently studied plays - Hamlet, The Winter's Tale, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Julius Caesar and King Lear - engage with the plays in detail while connecting them with some of the biggest questions we all ask ourselves, about love, friendship, ritual, language, human interactions and the world around us. The plays are examined through various social theories including performance theory, cognitive theory, semiotics, exchange theory and structuralism. The book concludes with a consideration of how "the new astronomy" of his day and developments in optics changed the very idea of "perspective," and shaped Shakespeare's approach to embedding social theory in his dramatic texts. This accessible and engaging book will appeal to those approaching Shakespeare from outside literary studies, but will also be valuable to literature students approaching Shakespeare for the first time, or looking for a new angle on the plays.

Anthropological Theory for the Twenty-First Century
Anthropological Theory for the Twenty-First Century

Author: A. Lynn Bolles

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2022-03-01

Total Pages: 477

ISBN-13: 148753907X

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Anthropological Theory for the Twenty-First Century presents a critical approach to the study of anthropological theory for the next generation of aspiring anthropologists. Through a carefully curated selection of readings, this collection reflects the diversity of scholars who have long contributed to the development of anthropological theory, incorporating writings by scholars of color, non-Western scholars, and others whose contributions have historically been under-acknowledged. The volume puts writings from established canonical thinkers, such as Marx, Boas, and Foucault, into productive conversations with Du Bois, Ortiz, Medicine, Trouillot, Said, and many others. The editors also engage in critical conversations surrounding the "canon" itself, including its colonial history and decolonial potential. Updating the canon with late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century scholarship, this reader includes discussions of contemporary theories such as queer theory, decolonial theory, ontology, and anti-racism. Each section is framed by clear and concise editorial introductions that place the readings in context and conversation with each other, as well as questions and glossaries to guide reader comprehension. A dynamic companion website features additional resources, including links to videos, podcasts, articles, and more.

Women as Unseen Characters
Women as Unseen Characters

Author: Pascale Bonnemère

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2013-03-26

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 081220137X

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Rituals have always been a focus of ethnographies of Melanesia, providing a ground for important theorizing in anthropology. This is especially true of the male initiation rituals that until recently were held in Papua New Guinea. For the most part, these rituals have been understood as all-male institutions, intended to maintain and legitimate male domination. Women's exclusion from the forest space where men conducted most such rites has been taken as a sign of their exclusion from the entire ritual process. Women as Unseen Characters is the first book to examine the role of females in Papua New Guinea male rituals, and the first systematic treatment of this issue for any part of the world. In this volume, leading Melanesian scholars build on recent ethnographies that show how female kin had roles in male rituals that had previously gone unseen. Female seclusion and the enforcement of taboos were crucial elements of the ritual process: forms of presence in their own right. Contributors here provide detailed accounts of the different kinds of female presence in various Papua New Guinea male rituals. When these are restored to the picture, the rituals can no longer be interpreted merely as an institution for reproducing male domination but must also be understood as a moment when the whole system of relations binding a male person to his kin is reorganized. By dealing with the participation of women, a totally neglected dimension of male rituals is added to our understanding.

Introducing Cultural Anthropology
Introducing Cultural Anthropology

Author: Brian M. Howell

Publisher: Baker Academic

Published: 2019-06-18

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1493418068

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What is the role of culture in human experience? This concise yet solid introduction to cultural anthropology helps readers explore and understand this crucial issue from a Christian perspective. Now revised and updated throughout, this new edition of a successful textbook covers standard cultural anthropology topics with special attention given to cultural relativism, evolution, and missions. It also includes a new chapter on medical anthropology. Plentiful figures, photos, and sidebars are sprinkled throughout the text, and updated ancillary support materials and teaching aids are available through Baker Academic's Textbook eSources.

With Respect to Sex
With Respect to Sex

Author: Gayatri Reddy

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-05-15

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 0226707547

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With Respect to Sex is an intimate ethnography that offers a provocative account of sexual and social difference in India. The subjects of this study are hijras or the "third sex" of India—individuals who occupy a unique, liminal space between male and female, sacred and profane. Hijras are men who sacrifice their genitalia to a goddess in return for the power to confer fertility on newlyweds and newborn children, a ritual role they are respected for, at the same time as they are stigmatized for their ambiguous sexuality. By focusing on the hijra community, Gayatri Reddy sheds new light on Indian society and the intricate negotiations of identity across various domains of everyday life. Further, by reframing hijra identity through the local economy of respect, this ethnography highlights the complex relationships among local and global, sexual and moral, economies. This book will be regarded as the definitive work on hijras, one that will be of enormous interest to anthropologists, students of South Asian culture, and specialists in the study of gender and sexuality.

Globalizing Education, Educating the Local
Globalizing Education, Educating the Local

Author: Ian Stronach

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-12-16

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1135179573

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Provides a critical account of how contemporary educational knowledge is put together and presented in the global knowledge economy, redefining the actors in the education process, including principally the child, pupil, and learner, but also the teacher, parent, inspector and policy-maker.

In and Out of the West
In and Out of the West

Author: Maurice Godelier

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13:

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Is anthropology simply a continuation of colonial domination and cultural imperialism by other means, or has it--since its nineteenth-century rebirth as a purportedly scientific discipline--produced reliable knowledge about the cultures it studies? Is anthropology a mirror--which reflects only the preoccupations of the (Western) anthropologist--or a window, through which it is possible to see, though not with the same eyes as their members, other cultures? Deriving from the 2002 Page-Barbour Lectures delivered by the French anthropologist Maurice Godelier at the University of Virginia, and supplemented by additional lectures and articles by the author, In and Out of the West addresses a series of fundamental topics and issues in social anthropology--including family, kinship, and the construction of the self. He particularly emphasizes the strategic role of political-religious relations in the construction of societies and social life. Godelier places social anthropology in its historical perspective, with its origins in the West and, more particularly, colonialism, while also arguing that it has to some extent transcended its origins, achieving a measure of scientific objectivity and validity that cannot be reduced to a continuation of the colonial project. A final chapter, reflecting his experience as the first head of the science department of the new Quai Branly anthropological museum in Paris, discusses issues surrounding the presentation of nonwestern cultural artifacts to a Western general public.