The Ontological Turn

The Ontological Turn PDF Author: Martin Holbraad
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107103886
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 355

Book Description
This book provides the first systematic presentation of anthropology's 'ontological turn', placing it in the landscape of contemporary social theory.

The Ontological Turn

The Ontological Turn PDF Author: Martin Holbraad
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781107503946
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
A new and often controversial theoretical orientation that resonates strongly with wider developments in contemporary philosophy and social theory, the so-called 'ontological turn' is receiving a great deal of attention in anthropology and cognate disciplines at present. This book provides the first anthropological exposition of this recent intellectual development. It traces the roots of the ontological turn in the history of anthropology and elucidates its emergence as a distinct theoretical orientation over the past few decades, showing how it has emerged in the work of Roy Wagner, Marilyn Strathern and Viveiros de Castro, as well a number of younger scholars. Distinguishing this trajectory of thinking from related attempts to put questions of ontology at the heart of anthropological research, the book articulates critically the key methodological and theoretical tenets of the ontological turn, its prime epistemological and political implications, and locates it in the broader intellectual landscape of contemporary social theory.

Diffractive Ethnography

Diffractive Ethnography PDF Author: Jessica Smartt Gullion
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351044974
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
Across intellectual disciplines, the ontological turn is restructuring how we think about our relationships with the natural world. Influenced by the seemingly disparate realms of indigenous philosophy and quantum physics, the turn invites us to think about intra-actions and assemblages of human and nonhuman entities. This raises epistemological questions about how we know about the world, and spotlights some of the problems with how we currently do conventional social science research. Diffractive Ethnography invites social scientists to consider alternate methodologies that account for the complexity of human behavior situated in larger environmental contexts. For both novice and experienced researchers, this thought-provoking book opens new ways of thinking about methodology and raises questions about the ethical and justice orientations of our work.

Critical Anthropological Engagements in Human Alterity and Difference

Critical Anthropological Engagements in Human Alterity and Difference PDF Author: Bjørn Enge Bertelsen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331940475X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Book Description
This book explores how one measures and analyzes human alterity and difference in an interconnected and ever-globalizing world. This book critically assesses the impact of what has often been dubbed ‘the ontological turn’ within anthropology in order to provide some answers to these questions. In doing so, the book explores the turn’s empirical and theoretical limits, accomplishments, and potential. The book distinguishes between three central strands of the ontological turn, namely worldviews, materialities, and politics. It presents empirically rich case studies, which help to elaborate on the potentiality and challenges which the ontological turn’s perspectives and approaches may have to offer.

Truth in Motion

Truth in Motion PDF Author: Martin Holbraad
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226349225
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Book Description
Embarking on an ethnographic journey to the inner barrios of Havana among practitioners of Ifá, a prestigious Afro-Cuban tradition of divination, Truth in Motion reevaluates Western ideas about truth in light of the practices and ideas of a wildly different, and highly respected, model. Acutely focusing on Ifá, Martin Holbraad takes the reader inside consultations, initiations, and lively public debates to show how Ifá practitioners see truth as something to be not so much represented, as transformed. Bringing his findings to bear on the discipline of anthropology itself, he recasts the very idea of truth as a matter not only of epistemological divergence but also of ontological difference—the question of truth, he argues, is not simply about how things may appear differently to people, but also about the different ways of imagining what those things are. By delving so deeply into Ifá practices, Truth in Motion offers cogent new ways of thinking about otherness and how anthropology can navigate it.

Nature Wars

Nature Wars PDF Author: Roy Ellen
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 178920898X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Book Description
Organized around issues, debates and discussions concerning the various ways in which the concept of nature has been used, this book looks at how the term has been endlessly deconstructed and reclaimed, as reflected in anthropological, scientific, and similar writing over the last several decades. Made up of ten of Roy Ellen’s finest articles, this book looks back at his ideas about nature and includes a new introduction that contextualizes the arguments and takes them forward. Many of the chapters focus on research the author has conducted amongst the Nuaulu people of eastern Indonesia.

How Forests Think

How Forests Think PDF Author: Eduardo Kohn
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520276108
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
Can forests think? Do dogs dream? In this astonishing book, Eduardo Kohn challenges the very foundations of anthropology, calling into question our central assumptions about what it means to be humanÑand thus distinct from all other life forms. Based on four years of fieldwork among the Runa of EcuadorÕs Upper Amazon, Eduardo Kohn draws on his rich ethnography to explore how Amazonians interact with the many creatures that inhabit one of the worldÕs most complex ecosystems. Whether or not we recognize it, our anthropological tools hinge on those capacities that make us distinctly human. However, when we turn our ethnographic attention to how we relate to other kinds of beings, these tools (which have the effect of divorcing us from the rest of the world) break down. How Forests Think seizes on this breakdown as an opportunity. Avoiding reductionistic solutions, and without losing sight of how our lives and those of others are caught up in the moral webs we humans spin, this book skillfully fashions new kinds of conceptual tools from the strange and unexpected properties of the living world itself. In this groundbreaking work, Kohn takes anthropology in a new and exciting directionÐone that offers a more capacious way to think about the world we share with other kinds of beings.

Thinking Through Things

Thinking Through Things PDF Author: Amiria Henare
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135392722
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
Drawing upon the work of some of the most influential theorists in the field, Thinking Through Things demonstrates the quiet revolution growing in anthropology and its related disciplines, shifting its philosophical foundations. The first text to offer a direct and provocative challenge to disciplinary fragmentation - arguing for the futility of segregating the study of artefacts and society - this collection expands on the concerns about the place of objects and materiality in analytical strategies, and the obligation of ethnographers to question their assumptions and approaches. The team of leading contributors put forward a positive programme for future research in this highly original and invaluable guide to recent developments in mainstream anthropological theory.

 PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190886641
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description

Not Quite Shamans

Not Quite Shamans PDF Author: Morten Axel Pedersen
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801461413
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
The forms of contemporary society and politics are often understood to be diametrically opposed to any expression of the supernatural; what happens when those forms are themselves regarded as manifestations of spirits and other occult phenomena? In Not Quite Shamans, Morten Axel Pedersen explores how the Darhad people of Northern Mongolia's remote Shishged Valley have understood and responded to the disruptive transition to postsocialism by engaging with shamanic beliefs and practices associated with the past.For much of the twentieth century, Mongolia's communist rulers attempted to eradicate shamanism and the shamans who once served as spiritual guides and community leaders. With the transition from a collectivized economy and a one-party state to a global capitalist market and liberal democracy in the 1990s, the people of the Shishged were plunged into a new and harsh world that seemed beyond their control. "Not-quite-shamans"—young, unemployed men whose undirected energies erupted in unpredictable, frightening bouts of violence and drunkenness that seemed occult in their excess— became a serious threat to the fabric of community life. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in Northern Mongolia, Pedersen details how, for many Darhads, the postsocialist state itself has become shamanic in nature.In the ideal version of traditional Darhad shamanism, shamans can control when and for what purpose their souls travel, whether to other bodies, landscapes, or worlds. Conversely, caught between uncontrollable spiritual powers and an excessive display of physical force, the "not-quite-shamans" embody the chaotic forms—the free market, neoliberal reform, and government corruption—that have created such upheaval in peoples' lives. As an experimental ethnography of recent political and economic transformations in Mongolia through the defamiliarizing prism of shamans and their lack, Not Quite Shamans is an attempt to write about as well as theorize postsocialism, and shamanism, in a new way.
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