Aztec Philosophy
Aztec Philosophy

Author: James Maffie

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2014-03-15

Total Pages: 609

ISBN-13: 1607322234

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In Aztec Philosophy, James Maffie shows the Aztecs advanced a highly sophisticated and internally coherent systematic philosophy worthy of consideration alongside other philosophies from around the world. Bringing together the fields of comparative world philosophy and Mesoamerican studies, Maffie excavates the distinctly philosophical aspects of Aztec thought. Aztec Philosophy focuses on the ways Aztec metaphysics—the Aztecs’ understanding of the nature, structure and constitution of reality—underpinned Aztec thinking about wisdom, ethics, politics,\ and aesthetics, and served as a backdrop for Aztec religious practices as well as everyday activities such as weaving, farming, and warfare. Aztec metaphysicians conceived reality and cosmos as a grand, ongoing process of weaving—theirs was a world in motion. Drawing upon linguistic, ethnohistorical, archaeological, historical, and contemporary ethnographic evidence, Maffie argues that Aztec metaphysics maintained a processive, transformational, and non-hierarchical view of reality, time, and existence along with a pantheistic theology. Aztec Philosophy will be of great interest to Mesoamericanists, philosophers, religionists, folklorists, and Latin Americanists as well as students of indigenous philosophy, religion, and art of the Americas.

Knots
Knots

Author: David Lipset

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-05-31

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1000840212

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Knots are well known as symbols of moral relationships. This book develops an exciting new view of this otherwise taken-for-granted image and considers their metaphoric value in and for moral order. In chapters that focus on Japan, China, Europe, South America and in several Pacific Island societies, granular ethnography depicts how knots are deployed to express unity in daily and ritual embodiment, political authority and the cosmos, as well as in social thought. The volume will be of interest to anthropologists and other scholars concerned with metaphor and symbolism, material culture and technology.

Textile Design Theory in the Making
Textile Design Theory in the Making

Author: Elaine Igoe

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-07-15

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1350061581

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Textile design inhabits a liminal space spanning art, design and craft. This book explores how textile design bridges the decorative and the functional, and takes us from handcrafting to industrial manufacture. In doing so, it distinguishes textiles as a distinctive design discipline, against the backdrop of today's emerging design issues. With commentaries from a range of international design scholars, the book demonstrates how design theory is now being employed in diverse scenarios to encourage innovation beyond the field of design itself. Positioning textiles within contemporary design research, Textile Design Theory in the Making reveals how the theory and practice of textile design exist in a synergistic, creative relationship. Drawing on qualitative research methods, including auto-ethnography and feminist critique, the book provides a theoretical underpinning for textile designers working in interdisciplinary scenarios, uniting theory and texts from the fields of anthropology, philosophy, literature and material design.

The Cosmos in Cosmopolitanism
The Cosmos in Cosmopolitanism

Author: Nikos Papastergiadis

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2023-12-08

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1509559337

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Cosmopolitanism is commonly associated today with the idea that the forces of globalization could be tempered by new forms of cosmopolitan governance, an idea that was popular among some political theorists in the late twentieth century but seems increasingly unrealistic today. Rather than discarding the idea of cosmopolitanism, Nikos Papastergiadis seeks to reinvigorate it by examining the ways in which visual artists have explored themes associated with the cosmos. Kant regarded cosmopolitanism as the goal for humanity, but he turned his attention away from the connection to the cosmos and directed it toward the practical rules for peaceful co-existence. However, these two concerns are not in conflict. Today a new vision of the cosmos is being developed by artists, among others – one that brings together the cosmos and the polis. Scholars from the South are decolonizing the mindset which divided the world and split us from our common connections, while others are using art to highlight the existential threats we now face as a species. By developing a distinctive form of aesthetic cosmopolitanism, this book shows that the idea of the cosmos is more important than ever today, and vital for our attempts to rethink our place as one species among others in a universe that extends far beyond our world.

North American Indian Anthropology
North American Indian Anthropology

Author: Raymond J. DeMallie

Publisher: VNR AG

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13: 9780806126142

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These essays explore the blending of structural and historical approaches to American Indian anthropology that characterizes the perspective developed by the late Fred Eggan and his students at the University of Chicago. They include studies of kinship and social organization, politics, religion, law, ethnicity, and art. Many reflect Eggan's method of controlled comparison, a tool for reconstructing social and cultural change over time. Together these essays make substantial descriptive contributions to American Indian anthropology, presenting contemporary interpretations of diverse groups from the Hudson Bay Inuit in the north to the Highland Maya of Chiapas in the south. The collection will serve as an introduction to Native American social and cultural anthropology for readers interested in the dynamics of Indian social life.

The Burials of Cerro Azul, Peru
The Burials of Cerro Azul, Peru

Author: JOYCE. MARCUS

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2024-02-29

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 1951538757

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Burial material from excavations at Cerro Azul in Peru's Cañete Valley, a pre-Inca fishing community.

The Mantle of the Earth
The Mantle of the Earth

Author: Veronica della Dora

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2021-01-18

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 022674132X

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The term mantle has inspired philosophers, geographers, and theologians and shaped artists’ and mapmakers’ visual vocabularies for thousands of years. According to Veronica della Dora, mantle is the “metaphor par excellence, for it unfolds between the seen and the unseen as a threshold and as a point of tension.” Featuring numerous illustrations, The Mantle of the Earth: Genealogies of a Geographical Metaphor is an intellectual history of the term mantle and its metaphorical representation in art and literature, geography and cartography. Through the history of this metaphor from antiquity to the modern day, we learn about shifting perceptions and representations of global space, about our planetary condition, and about the nature of geography itself.

Telematic Embrace
Telematic Embrace

Author: Roy Ascott

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 9780520222946

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This is a compilation of more than three decades of the philosophies of pioneering British artist and theorist Roy Ascott, on aesthetics, interactivity and the sense of self and community in the telematic world of cyberspace.

Res
Res

Author: Jaś Elsner

Publisher: Peabody Museum Press

Published: 2011-02

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0873658612

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This double volume of the renowned international journal of anthropology and comparative aesthetics includes “Aesthetics’ non-recyclable ground” by Félix Duque; “Seeing through dead eyes” by Jonathan Hay; “The hidden aesthetic of red in the painted tombs of Oaxaca” by Diana Magaloni; “A consideration of the quatrefoil motif in Preclassic Mesoamerica” by Julia Guernsey; “Hunters, Sufis, soldiers, and minstrels” by Cynthia Becker; “Figures fidjiennes” by Marc Rochette; “A sacred landscape” by Rachel Kousser; “Military architecture as a political tool in the Renaissance” by Francesco Benelli; “The icon as performer and as performative utterance” by Marie Gasper-Hulvat; “Image and site” by Jas’ Elsner; “Untimely objects” by Ara H. Merjian; “Max Ernst in Arizona” by Samantha Kavky; “Form as revolt” by Sebastian Zeidler; “Embodiments and art beliefs” by Filippo Fimiani; “The theft of the goddess Amba Mata” by Deborah Stein; and contributions to “Lectures, Documents and Discussions” by Gottfried Semper, Spyros Papapetros, Erwin Panofsky, Megan R. Luke, Francesco Paolo Adorno, and Remo Guidieri.

Weaving the Threads of Life
Weaving the Threads of Life

Author: Renaat Devisch

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1993-11

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780226143620

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For the Yaka of Southwestern Zaire, infertility is a tear in the fabric of life, and the Khita fertility ritual is a trusted way of reweaving the damaged strands. In Weaving the Threads of Life Rene Devisch offers an extended analysis of the Khita cult, which leads to an original account of the workings of ritual healing. Drawing on many years among urban and rural Yaka, Devisch analyzes their understanding of existence as a fabric of firmly but delicately interwoven threads of nature, body, and society. The fertility healing ritual calls forth forces, feelings, and meanings that allow women to rejoin themselves to the complex pattern of social and cosmic life. These elaborate rites—whether simulating mortal agony and rebirth, gestation and delivery, or flowering and decay; using music and dance, steambath or massage, dream messages or scarification—are not based on symbols of traditional beliefs. Rather, Devisch shows, the rites themselves generate forces and meaning, creating and shaping the cosmic, physical, and social world of their participants. In contrast to current theoretical methods such as postmodern or symbolical interpretation, Devisch's praxiological approach is unique in also using phenomenological insights into the intent and results of anthropological fieldwork. This innovative work will have ramifications beyond African studies, reaching into the anthropology of medicine and the body, comparative religious history, and women's studies.