Phenomenology in Anthropology

Phenomenology in Anthropology PDF Author: Kalpana Ram
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253017807
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
This volume explores what phenomenology adds to the enterprise of anthropology, drawing on and contributing to a burgeoning field of social science research inspired by the phenomenological tradition in philosophy. Essays by leading scholars ground their discussions of theory and method in richly detailed ethnographic case studies. The contributors broaden the application of phenomenology in anthropology beyond the areas in which it has been most influential—studies of sensory perception, emotion, bodiliness, and intersubjectivity—into new areas of inquiry such as martial arts, sports, dance, music, and political discourse.

Phenomenology in Anthropology

Phenomenology in Anthropology PDF Author: Kalpana Ram
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253017807
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Get Book

Book Description
This volume explores what phenomenology adds to the enterprise of anthropology, drawing on and contributing to a burgeoning field of social science research inspired by the phenomenological tradition in philosophy. Essays by leading scholars ground their discussions of theory and method in richly detailed ethnographic case studies. The contributors broaden the application of phenomenology in anthropology beyond the areas in which it has been most influential—studies of sensory perception, emotion, bodiliness, and intersubjectivity—into new areas of inquiry such as martial arts, sports, dance, music, and political discourse.

Things As They Are

Things As They Are PDF Author: Michael Jackson
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 9780253210500
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
"The real beauty of this book is that the thinking does not stop . . . deep in the thickets of philosophic references. Instead, true to the spirit of phenomoenology, we are provided with provocative accounts of how such thinking flows in contemporary anthropological practice." —XCP - Cross Cultural Poetics In this timely collection, thirteen contemporary ethnographers demonstrate the importance of phenomenological and existential ideas for anthropology. In emphasizing the link between the empirical and the experiential, these ethnographers also explore the relationship between phenomenology and other theories of the lifeworld, such as existentialism, radical empiricism, and critical theory.

Anthropology and Philosophy

Anthropology and Philosophy PDF Author: Sune Liisberg
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782385576
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
The present book is no ordinary anthology, but rather a workroom in which anthropologists and philosophers initiate a dialogue on trust and hope, two important topics for both fields of study. The book combines work between scholars from different universities in the U.S. and Denmark. Thus, besides bringing the two disciplines in dialogue, it also cuts across differences in national contexts and academic style. The interdisciplinary efforts of the contributors demonstrate how such a collaboration can result in new and challenging ways of thinking about trust and hope. Reading the dialogues may, therefore, also inspire others to work in the productive intersection between anthropology and philosophy.

Fertile Disorder

Fertile Disorder PDF Author: Kalpana Ram
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824837789
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
In her innovative new book, Kalpana Ram reflects on the way spirit possession unsettles some of the foundational assumptions of modernity. What is a human subject under the varied conditions commonly associated with possession? What kind of subjectivity must already be in place to allow such a transformation to occur? How does it alter our understanding of memory and emotion if these assail us in the form of ghosts rather than as attributes of subjective experience? What does it mean to worship deities who are afflictive and capricious, yet bear an intimate relationship to justice? What is a "human" body if it can be taken over by a whole array of entities? What is agency if people can be "claimed" in this manner? What is gender if, while possessed, a woman is a woman no longer? Drawing on spirit possession among women and the rich traditions of subaltern religion in Tamil Nadu, South India, Ram concludes that the basis for constructing an alternative understanding of human agency need not rest on the usual requirements of a fully present consciousness or on the exercise of choice and planning. Instead of relegating possession, ghosts, and demons to the domain of the exotic, Ram uses spirit possession to illuminate ordinary experiences and relationships. In doing so, she uncovers fundamental instabilities that continue to haunt modern formulations of gender, human agency, and political emancipation. Fertile Disorder interrogates the modern assumptions about gender, agency, and subjectivity that underlie the social improvement projects circulating in Tamil Nadu, assumptions that directly shape people’s lives. The book pays particular attention to projects of family planning, development, reform, and emancipation. Combining ethnography with philosophical argument, Ram fashions alternatives to standard post-modernist and post-structuralist formulations. Grounded in decades of fieldwork, ambitious and wide ranging, her work is conceived as a journey that makes incursions into the unfamiliar, then returns us to the familiar. She argues that magic is not a monopoly of any one culture, historical period, or social formation but inhabits modernity—not only in the places, such as cinema and sound recording, where it is commonly looked for, but in "habit" and in aspects of everyday life that have been largely overlooked and shunned. Fertile Disorder will be of interest to a wide range of scholars in anthropology, religion, gender studies, subaltern studies, and post colonial theory.

The Role of Phenomenology in Existential Anthropology

The Role of Phenomenology in Existential Anthropology PDF Author: Omar Ibrahim
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3346180166
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description
Academic Paper from the year 2020 in the subject Pedagogy - Theory of Science, Anthropology, grade: 6, University of Bern (Institut für Sozialanthropologie), language: English, abstract: The present essay explores the question of how philosophical phenomenology can be integrated into anthropology and especially into existential anthropology. Phenomenology will be analyzed in terms of its methods and demands in order to apply them to the field of Existential Anthropology. In doing so, some points have to be changed, which are necessary for the philosophical as well as for the anthropological perspective. Philosophical phenomenology is a discipline which can be examined in terms of its tradition, its method, and its demands. There is little point in dealing with the tradition here. This is due to two reasons: First, some positions of the phenomenological thinkers will be introduced in the following chapters anyway. An overview of the entire tradition, however, would lead too far away from the topic. Secondly, philosophical phenomenology must be distinguished from existentialism. Not all phenomenologists, such as Scheler or Merleau-Ponty, for example, have dealt with existentialism. And not all existentialists, such as De Beauvoir or Camus, have dealt with phenomenology.

Levels of Organic Life and the Human

Levels of Organic Life and the Human PDF Author: Helmuth Plessner
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 082328400X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
The groundbreaking classic of twentieth-century German philosophy now available in English—with an introduction by J.M. Bernstein. Helmuth Plessner’s Levels of Organic Life and the Human, draws on phenomenological, biological, and social scientific sources to offer a systematic account of nature, life, and human existence. The book considers non-living nature, plants, non-human animals, and human beings a sequence of increasingly complex modes of boundary dynamics—simply put, interactions between a thing’s insides and the surrounding world. Living things are classed and analyzed by their “positionality,” or orientation to and within an environment. According to Plessner’s radical view, the human form of life is excentric—that is, the relation between body and environment is something to which humans themselves are positioned and can take a position. This “excentric positionality” enables human beings to take a stand outside the boundaries of their own body, a possibility with significant implications for knowledge, culture, religion, and technology. A powerful and sophisticated account of embodiment, the Levels shows, with reference both to science and to philosophy, how life can be seen on its own terms to establish its own boundaries, and how, from the standpoint of life, the human establishes itself in relation to the nonhuman. As such, the book is not merely a historical monument but a source for invigorating a range of vital current conversations around the animal, posthumanism, the material turn, and the biology and sociology of cognition.

Phenomenology, Architecture and the Built World

Phenomenology, Architecture and the Built World PDF Author: James Dodd
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004340017
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Phenomenology, Architecture and the Built World is an introduction to phenomenological philosophy through an analysis of the phenomenon of the built world as an embodiment of human understanding. It aims to establish the value of phenomenological description in establishing the philosophical importance of architecture.

A Phenomenology of Landscape

A Phenomenology of Landscape PDF Author: Christopher Tilley
Publisher: Berg Publishers
ISBN: 9781859730768
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Offers a new approach to landscape perception.This book is an extended photographic essay about topographic features of the landscape. It integrates philosophical approaches to landscape perception with anthropological studies of the significance of the landscape in small-scale societies. This perspective is used to examine the relationship between prehistoric sites and their topographic settings. The author argues that the architecture of Neolithic stone tombs acts as a kind of camera lens focussing attention on landscape features such as rock outcrops, river valleys, mountain spurs in their immediate surroundings. These monuments played an active role in socializing the landscape and creating meaning in it.A Phenomenology of Landscape is unusual in that it links two types of publishing which have remained distinct in archaeology: books with atmospheric photographs of monuments with a minimum of text and no interpretation; and the academic text in which words provide a substitute for visual imagery. Attractively illustrated with many photographs and diagrams, it will appeal to anyone interested in prehistoric monuments and landscape as well as students and specialists in archaeology, anthropology and human geography.

Being There

Being There PDF Author: Jonas Frykman
Publisher: Nordic Academic Press
ISBN: 918712114X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
In this anthology a group of ethnologists and anthropologists demonstrate creative ways of relating phenomenology to the study of culture. A detailed overview of how perspectives like being and life-world can be applied to studies of everyday life as well as a historical background of phenomenology are presented, showing how culture can be understood more from how it happens than what it is.

Lifeworlds

Lifeworlds PDF Author: Michael Jackson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226923649
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
4e de couv.: Michael Jackson's Lifeworlds is a masterful collection of essays, the culmination of a career of exploring the relationship between anthropology and philosophy. Drawing inspiration from James, Dewey, Arendt, Husserl, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, and from ethnographic fieldwork among the Kuranko of Sierra Leone, the Warlpiri of Central Australia, and the Maori of Aotearoa (New Zealand), Jackson outlines an existential anthropology grounded in the dynamics and quandaries of everyday life. He offers a pragmatic understanding of how people act to make their lives more viable, to bridge the gap between self and other, to grasp the elusive, and to transform abstract possibilities into embodied truths.