"To read the book is to appreciate the highly contingent, provisional, oblique, open-ended way in which people try to make "sense" of another culture."—Resil B. Mojares, Philippine Graphic "This book is an interestingly complex ethnography that approaches the self-critical dialectical ethnography called for two decades ago....It is a welcome contribution to postmodernist theory and to the ethnography of the Visayas."—Ronald Provencher, Journal of Asian Studies
The development of a phenomenological approach to religion and the rise of perspectivism are challenging anthropology’s exclusive rootedness in the ontology of secularism. When considered with the increased interest in the anthropology of religion as an area of study, it is clear that there is a growing need for non-reductionist representations of Christian thought and experience in ethnography. This volume is intended as a critique of anthropology’s epistemological and ontological assumptions and a demonstration of the value added by an expanded set of parameters for the field. The book’s core argument is that while ethnographers have allowed their own perspectives to be positively influenced by the perspectives of their informants, until recently anthropology has done little in the way of adopting these other viewpoints as critical tools for analysis precisely because it has represented those viewpoints from a limited epistemological perspective. With chapters organized around topics in epistemology and ontology written by scholars of anthropology, theology and history, and an afterword by Joel Robbins, the book is essential reading for scholars of the anthropology of religion as well as other philosophically-oriented social scientists, theologians and those who are interested in gaining further insight into the human condition.
The Moving City is a rich and intimate account of urban transformation told through the story of Delhi's Metro, a massive infrastructure project that is reshaping the city's social and urban landscapes. Ethnographic vignettes introduce the feel and form of the Metro and let readers experience the city, scene by scene, stop by stop, as if they, too, have come along for the ride. Laying bare the radical possibilities and concretized inequalities of the Metro, and how people live with and through its built environment, this is a story of women and men on the move, the nature of Indian aspiration, and what it takes morally and materially to sustain urban life. Through exquisite prose, Rashmi Sadana transports the reader to a city shaped by both its Metro and those who depend on it, revealing a perspective on Delhi unlike any other.
This comprehensive guide to the Pacific and South Asia provides detailed and enlightening information about the many ethnic groups of this increasingly important region of the world. Ideally suited for high school and undergraduate students studying subjects such as anthropology, geography, and social studies, Ethnic Groups of South Asia and the Pacific: An Encyclopedia provides clear, detailed, and up-to-date information on each major group in South Asian and Pacific Island countries, including India, Nepal, Indonesia, Pakistan, Singapore, Australia, Tonga, Samoa, and the Solomon Islands. Organized alphabetically by ethnic group, each entry provides an introduction followed by accessible descriptions of the origins, early history, cultural life, political life, and modern history of the ethnicity. Alternate names, major population centers, primary languages and religions, and other important characteristics of each group are also covered. Beyond being a valuable resource for student research, this book will be enlightening and entertaining for general readers interested in South Asia and the Pacific.
This new collection of essays surveys the history of dance in an innovative and wide-ranging fashion. Editors Dils and Albright address the current dearth of comprehensive teaching material in the dance history field through the creation of a multifaceted, non-linear, yet well-structured and comprehensive survey of select moments in the development of both American and World dance. This book is illustrated with over 50 photographs, and would make an ideal text for undergraduate classes in dance ethnography, criticism or appreciation, as well as dance history—particularly those with a cross-cultural, contemporary, or an American focus. The reader is organized into four thematic sections which allow for varied and individualized course use: Thinking about Dance History: Theories and Practices, World Dance Traditions, America Dancing, and Contemporary Dance: Global Contexts. The editors have structured the readings with the understanding that contemporary theory has thoroughly questioned the discursive construction of history and the resultant canonization of certain dances, texts and points of view. The historical readings are presented in a way that encourages thoughtful analysis and allows the opportunity for critical engagement with the text. Ebook Edition Note: Ebook edition note: Five essays have been redacted, including “The Belly Dance: Ancient Ritual to Cabaret Performance,” by Shawna Helland; “Epitome of Korean Folk Dance”, by Lee Kyong-Hee; “Juba and American Minstrelsy,” by Marian Hannah Winter; “The Natural Body,” by Ann Daly; and “Butoh: ‘Twenty Years Ago We Were Crazy, Dirty, and Mad’,”by Bonnie Sue Stein. Eleven of the 41 illustrations in the book have also been redacted.
How are meta-narratives of development entangled in people’s identities and life trajectories? How do they inhabit people’s histories, their understandings of their place in the world, and their dreams for the future? The idea of development has been deconstructed and scrutinized as a “Western” metaphor ordering global difference and as a banner under which diverse schemes for societal improvement find legitimacy and common purpose. But how is development assimilated into the worldviews of development’s subjects? How does it reshape identities and in what ways is it reshaped in the process? Drawing on a decade of ethnographic research on the Philippine island of Siquijor, In Pursuit of Progress explores myths, meanings, and practices of development and its counterparts, progress and modernization. It does so not only by considering development as planned, community-wide interventions aimed at society-wide improvements in living standards, but by recognizing that, as a cognitive tool for organizing relationships between people, development is personal. For Siquijodnon, development, or kalamboan, is also a process of self-transformation concerning changes in knowledge, body, roles, and cultural orientation. Emblems as diverse as skin color, Christianity, infant formula, and infrastructure make statements about development on Siquijor. Kalamboan is bound up with social mobility, consumption, and status, but so too is it imbued with ideals of the “simple life,” a life of austerity and attention to social relationships, and with other assumptions about how people should live. Author Hannah Bulloch analyzes development not only as a prescription for material aspiration but also for moral endeavor. In Pursuit of Progress, offers rich, ethnographic insights into contemporary Visayan culture, engaging with questions of enduring significance in Philippines studies, including livelihood change, “colonial mentality,” everyday politics, and moral economy. It will contribute to debates in anthropology, sociology, and development studies regarding the ways in which discourses of development act upon local and global power relations.
Fairies have been revered and feared, sometimes simultaneously, throughout recorded history. This encyclopedia of concise entries, from the A-senee-ki-waku of northeastern North America to the Zips of Central America and Mexico, includes more than 2,500 individual beings and species of fairy and nature spirits from a wide range of mythologies and religions from all over the globe.
FISHING FOR FAIRNESS develops an explicitly cultural perspective on environmental politics in the Philippines by analysing the responses of fishers to marine resource regulations. In the resource frontier of the Calamianes Islands, fishing, conservation and tourism provide the context where competing visions of how to engage with marine resources are played out. The book draws on data from ethnographic fieldwork with fishers, government and NGO officials, fish traders and tourism operators to show how the strategic responses of fishers to management initiatives are couched within particular cultural idioms. Tapping into broader notions of morality in the Philippines, fishers express a discourse that emphasises their poverty and the obligations of the wealthy to treat them with fairness. By deploying this discourse, fishers are able to reframe what are--on the surface--questions of environmental management into issues about poverty within particular social relationships. By using a cultural political ecology framework to analyse fishers' responses to regulation, the book emphasises the distinctive ways in which marginalised people in the Philippines resist and reframe resource management initiatives. FISHING FOR FAIRNESS will appeal to both academics and policy makers interested in marine resource management, political ecology, anthropology and development studies particularly throughout the Asia-Pacific.
