Excursions in Realist Anthropology

Excursions in Realist Anthropology PDF Author: David Zeitlyn
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443869163
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Realism has become a dirty word in some social sciences, yet, despite fashionable new approaches involving multiple ontologies and the like, when anthropologists actually produce ethnographic accounts they are, still, indulging in realism in some form. Perhaps this is why ethnography, too, is unfashionable. Given the authors’ background as anthropologists committed to fieldwork, this book provides a theoretical grounding to justify and explain the sorts of accounts that anthropologists produce as the result of ethnographic research. The book’s approach starts from an acceptance that understanding is always incomplete, always improvable. This sort of partiality is viewed throughout the book as a strength. The challenge of anthropology is that it involves forms of translation: often across languages, but always between the unstated and the explicit. Accepting provisionality and incompleteness in the resulting translations provides ways of finding a middle ground between extreme versions of positivism and relativism. As such, this book argues for moderate realisms in a dappled world.

Excursions in Realist Anthropology

Excursions in Realist Anthropology PDF Author: David Zeitlyn
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443869163
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Get Book Here

Book Description
Realism has become a dirty word in some social sciences, yet, despite fashionable new approaches involving multiple ontologies and the like, when anthropologists actually produce ethnographic accounts they are, still, indulging in realism in some form. Perhaps this is why ethnography, too, is unfashionable. Given the authors’ background as anthropologists committed to fieldwork, this book provides a theoretical grounding to justify and explain the sorts of accounts that anthropologists produce as the result of ethnographic research. The book’s approach starts from an acceptance that understanding is always incomplete, always improvable. This sort of partiality is viewed throughout the book as a strength. The challenge of anthropology is that it involves forms of translation: often across languages, but always between the unstated and the explicit. Accepting provisionality and incompleteness in the resulting translations provides ways of finding a middle ground between extreme versions of positivism and relativism. As such, this book argues for moderate realisms in a dappled world.

Reclaiming a Scientific Anthropology

Reclaiming a Scientific Anthropology PDF Author: Lawrence A. Kuznar
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780759111097
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Lawrence Kuznar makes a compelling case that it is even more important today, a decade after the publication of the first edition of Reclaiming a Scientific Anthropology, for anthropology to return to its roots in empirical science.

Anthropology and Dialectical Naturalism

Anthropology and Dialectical Naturalism PDF Author: Brian Morris
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781551647425
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Is the world just a cultural construct where people create their own realities? In this illuminating and wide-ranging philosophical treatise, Brian Morris critiques broad swathes of recent theory as he seeks to reclaim anthropology as a historical social science. He achieves this by grounding it within a metaphysic of "dialectical naturalism" or "evolutionary realism"--a tradition long ignored by academic philosophy. After reviewing the anthropological background of this worldview--the Greeks and the Enlightenment--Morris explores two essential themes. First, he critically assesses the main forms of dialectical naturalism, including Darwin's evolutionary theory, Marx's historical materialism, and the hylo-realism of the philosopher-scientist Mario Bunge. Second, he offers a strong plea to retain the dual heritage of anthropology as a historical science that combines both humanism and naturalism. A powerful philosophical manifesto, the book cogently upholds dialectical naturalism as the most grounding philosophy for anthropology and the social sciences.

An Anthropological Toolkit

An Anthropological Toolkit PDF Author: David Zeitlyn
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1800734719
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
Presenting sixty theoretical ideas, David Zeitlyn asks ‘How to write about anthropological theory without making a specific theoretical argument.’ “David Zeitlyn has written a wryly engaging, short book on, essentially, why we should not become theoretical partisans—that, indeed, being a serious theorist means accepting precisely that principle.”—Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University To answer, he offers a series of mini essays about an eclectic collection of theoretical concepts that he has found helpful over the years. The book celebrates the muddled inconsistencies in the ways that humans live their messy lives. There are, however, still patterns discernible: the actors can understand what is going on, they see an event unfolding in ways that are familiar, as belonging to a certain type and therefore, Zeitlyn suggests, so can researchers. From the introduction: This book promotes an eclectic, multi-faceted anthropology in which multiple approaches are applied in pursuit of the limited insights which each can afford.... I do not endorse any one of these idea as supplying an exclusive path to enlightenment: I absolutely do not advocate any single position. As a devout nonconformist, I hope that the following sections provide material, ammunition and succour to those undertaking nuanced anthropological analysis (and their kin in related disciplines).... Mixing up or combining different ideas and approaches can produce results that, in their breadth and richness, are productive for anthropology and other social sciences, reflecting the endless complexities of real life. ...This is my response to the death of grand theory. I see our task as learning how to deal with that bereavement and how to resist the siren lures of those promising synoptic overviews. This book is relevant to anthropology, communication studies, cultural studies and sociology.

Handbook of Global Media Ethics

Handbook of Global Media Ethics PDF Author: Stephen J.A. Ward
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 331932103X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 1450

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Book Description
This handbook is one of the first comprehensive research and teaching tools for the developing area of global media ethics. The advent of new media that is global in reach and impact has created the need for a journalism ethics that is global in principles and aims. For many scholars, teachers and journalists, the existing journalism ethics, e.g. existing codes of ethics, is too parochial and national. It fails to provide adequate normative guidance for a media that is digital, global and practiced by professional and citizen. A global media ethics is being constructed to define what responsible public journalism means for a new global media era. Currently, scholars write texts and codes for global media, teach global media ethics, analyse how global issues should be covered, and gather together at conferences, round tables and meetings. However, the field lacks an authoritative handbook that presents the views of leading thinkers on the most important issues for global media ethics. This handbook is a milestone in the field, and a major contribution to media ethics.

Literary Anthropology

Literary Anthropology PDF Author: Fernando Poyatos
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027275084
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
The traditional gulf between the theory and practice of literature and the various areas subjoined under anthropology has hindered the development of some very fruitful perspectives in the realm of poetics and the general theory of literature (particularly in its narrative forms). Poyatos' initial idea of literary anthropology as the study of people and their cultural manifestations through their national literatures - without doubt the richest source of documentation of human life-styles and the most advanced form of our projection in time and space and of communicating with contemporary and future generations - has been enriched by the thoughts of a multi-cultural group of scholars from both anthropology and literature who at a first symposium on the subject attempted to define this area leaving the way open to many more research possibilities.

Ethics of Media

Ethics of Media PDF Author: N. Couldry
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137317515
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Ethics of Media reopens the question of media ethics. Taking an exploratory rather than prescriptive approach, an esteemed collection of contributors tackle the diverse areas of moral questioning at work within various broadcasting practices, accommodating the plurality and complexity of present-day ethical challenges posed by the world of media.

The Emprise of Poetry

The Emprise of Poetry PDF Author: Michael Eskin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
The Emprise of Poetry analyzes the insidious entwinement of anti-Americanism and antisemitism in modern and contemporary German culture through the writings of one of its most acclaimed literary figures: Dresden native Durs Grünbein (1962-). Michael Eskin offers an unprecedented view of the American-cum-Jewish discontents at the heart of modern and present-day German culture through the exemplary lens of the work of Durs Grünbein, the most widely translated and globally honored living German poet, and the only one to have been hailed as the Berlin Republic's “most qualified contemporary candidate for the office of German national poet.” Yet as Eskin outlines, Grünbein's work contains a paradoxical and tension-filled twofold self-construction: as an idiosyncratically 'American' poet and Ezra Pound's vociferously philosemitic heir, who merely happens to be writing in German, as it were, conjoined with an avidly anti-American German poet who writes emphatically, and not always savorily, as a German and a self-proclaimed heir to the legacies of Celan and Kafka – most notably, on matters American and Jewish. Against the foil of these tensions, Eskin traces and documents postwar German high culture's persisting inability to purge itself of ideological toxins that leach into the mainstream from centuries-old prejudices and antagonisms revolving around Germany's love-hate bond with America as well as its ostensibly enduring suspicion and antipathy toward Jews. Eskin's deep dive into the 'American' Grünbein's apparent philosemitism coupled with the German Grünbein's antisemitically-inflected anti-Americanism reveals the fault lines underlying the complex and contradictory legacies and contexts of postwar German culture.

Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts

Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts PDF Author: Nigel Rapport
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131766082X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
Social and Cultural Anthropology: the Key Concepts is an easy to use A-Z guide to the central concepts that students are likely to encounter in this field. Now fully updated, this third edition includes entries on: Material Culture Environment Human Rights Hybridity Alterity Cosmopolitanism Ethnography Applied Anthropology Gender Cybernetics With full cross-referencing and revised further reading to point students towards the latest writings in Social and Cultural Anthropology, this is a superb reference resource for anyone studying or teaching in this area.

Philosophy and Ideology

Philosophy and Ideology PDF Author: Z.A. Jordan
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401036365
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 778

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Book Description
The purpose of this study is to describe the development of philosophy in Poland since the end of the Second World War and the development of Marxist-Leninist philosophy which, owing to international political events, has assumed an impor tant role in the intellectual life of contemporary Poland. This task could not have been accomplished without relating post-war developments to those of the inter war period. Consequently, the period studied covers the years 1918-1958. Yet another extension was necessary. Marxism-Leninism regards sociology as a part of philosophy. Moreover, Marxism-Leninism often resorts to sociology to support or justify some of its philosophical views. Finally, its criticism of 'bourgeois philosophy' is often concerned with social philosophy and socio logical theories which supposedly are implicit or explicit in 'bourgeois philoso phy'. For this reason it was desirable to consider in this study some theoretical and methodological problems of the social sciences. They are taken into ac count when they illuminate philosophical controversies or the evolution of Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Marxism-Leninism is not only a new line of development but also a new point of departure in Polish philosophy. It provides a striking contrast with the established philosophical tradition which originated roughly at the time when G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell initiated the analytical trend in English philosophy. The contrast can be epitomised by the contradistinction of philoso phy and ideology, chosen as the title of this study.