Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood and the Life Course

Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood and the Life Course PDF Author: Cathrine Degnen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137566426
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Exploring notions of the person through a wide range of anthropological literature, Cathrine Degnen analyses how personhood is built, affirmed, and maintained during various life stages and via multiple cultural forms and practices. In discussing the life course, she investigates personhood as a concept at the beginning of life, throughout life as lived, at the edges of being, and ultimately at life’s end. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood and the Life Course moves beyond the human person in isolation to consider how personhood is fashioned with regard to place and how non-humans can also be recognised as persons. Through multiple ethnographic accounts, Degnen shows that personhood emerges as a relational and processual entity, brought into being via reciprocal fields of social relations.

Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood and the Life Course

Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood and the Life Course PDF Author: Cathrine Degnen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137566426
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Get Book Here

Book Description
Exploring notions of the person through a wide range of anthropological literature, Cathrine Degnen analyses how personhood is built, affirmed, and maintained during various life stages and via multiple cultural forms and practices. In discussing the life course, she investigates personhood as a concept at the beginning of life, throughout life as lived, at the edges of being, and ultimately at life’s end. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood and the Life Course moves beyond the human person in isolation to consider how personhood is fashioned with regard to place and how non-humans can also be recognised as persons. Through multiple ethnographic accounts, Degnen shows that personhood emerges as a relational and processual entity, brought into being via reciprocal fields of social relations.

Being Scioto Hopewell: Ritual Drama and Personhood in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Being Scioto Hopewell: Ritual Drama and Personhood in Cross-Cultural Perspective PDF Author: Christopher Carr
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030449173
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1564

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Book Description
This book, in two volumes, breathes fresh air empirically, methodologically, and theoretically into understanding the rich ceremonial lives, the philosophical-religious knowledge, and the impressive material feats and labor organization that distinguish Hopewell Indians of central Ohio and neighboring regions during the first centuries CE. The first volume defines cross-culturally, for the first time, the “ritual drama” as a genre of social performance. It reconstructs and compares parts of 14 such dramas that Hopewellian and other Woodland-period peoples performed in their ceremonial centers to help the soul-like essences of their deceased make the journey to an afterlife. The second volume builds and critiques ten formal cross-cultural models of “personhood” and the “self” and infers the nature of Scioto Hopewell people’s ontology. Two facets of their ontology are found to have been instrumental in their creating the intercommunity alliances and cooperation and gathering the labor required to construct their huge, multicommunity ceremonial centers: a relational, collective concept of the self defined by the ethical quality of the relationships one has with other beings, and a concept of multiple soul-like essences that compose a human being and can be harnessed strategically to create familial-like ethical bonds of cooperation among individuals and communities. The archaeological reconstructions of Hopewellian ritual dramas and concepts of personhood and the self, and of Hopewell people’s strategic uses of these, are informed by three large surveys of historic Woodland and Plains Indians’ narratives, ideas, and rites about journeys to afterlives, the creatures who inhabit the cosmos, and the nature and functions of soul-like essences, coupled with rich contextual archaeological and bioarchaeological-taphonomic analyses. The bioarchaeological-taphonomic method of l’anthropologie de terrain, new to North American archaeology, is introduced and applied. In all, the research in this book vitalizes a vision of an anthropology committed to native logic and motivation and skeptical of the imposition of Western world views and categories onto native peoples.

Individually Ourselves

Individually Ourselves PDF Author: Sarah Winkler-Reid
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 180539102X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a London high school, Individually Ourselves demonstrates how young people elaborate notions of individual personhood through their friendships, and pervasive peer ethics, shaped in and through relations of power and inequality. By examining the interplay between ourselves and others during such a formative time of life, the book addresses how individuality is produced in everyday life and how our interactions help create the person we become.

(Inter)Facing Death

(Inter)Facing Death PDF Author: Sam Han
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131544674X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
In modern times, death is understood to have undergone a transformation not unlike religion. Whereas in the past it was out in the open, it now resides mostly in specialized spaces of sequestration—funeral homes, hospitals and other medical facilities. A mainstay in so-called traditional societies in the form of ritual practices, death was usually messy but meaningful, with the questions of what happens to the dead or where they go lying at the heart of traditional culture and religion. In modernity, however, we are said to have effectively sanitized it, embalmed it and packaged it—but it seems that death is back. In the current era marked by economic, political and social uncertainty, we see it on television, on the Internet; we see it almost everywhere. (Inter)Facing Death analyzes the nexus of death and digital culture in the contemporary moment in the context of recent developments in social, cultural and political theory. It argues that death today can be thought of as "interfaced," that is mediated and expressed, in various aspects of contemporary life rather than put to the side or overcome, as many narratives of modernity have suggested. Employing concepts from anthropology, sociology, media studies and communications, (Inter)Facing Death examines diverse phenomena where death and digital culture meet, including art, online suicide pacts, the mourning of celebrity deaths, terrorist beheadings and selfies. Providing new lines of thinking about one of the oldest questions facing the human and social sciences, this book will appeal to scholars and students of social and political theory, anthropology, sociology and cultural and media studies with interests in death.

Ethics and Nationalist Populism at the British Seaside

Ethics and Nationalist Populism at the British Seaside PDF Author: Ana Carolina Balthazar
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000379698
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
Drawing on ethnographic research at the British seaside, this book offers an original and insightful anthropological contribution to the study of contemporary Britain and nationalism. The volume focuses on people who have retired from different parts of the UK to the seaside town of Margate and nearby areas, exploring their ethical negotiations and relationship with things that ‘have history’. It considers how residents engage daily with objects, houses and places ‘with character’ and how such ordinary engagements underlie nationalist sentiments and the Brexit vote. Ana Carolina Balthazar demonstrates that those who have reached a comfortable financial position often look for ways to reconnect with their working-class upbringing and, while doing so, engage with the national past in a very tangible manner. Contributing to social scientific debates on class dynamics and ethics, the book provides a different perspective on nationalist populism, one which moves beyond media stereotypes and arguments made about the ‘left behind’ and ‘longing for empire’ in ‘post-industrial’ Britain.

The Everyday Lives of Gay Men in Hainan

The Everyday Lives of Gay Men in Hainan PDF Author: James Cummings
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030922537
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
“This book explores the everyday lives of gay men in Hainan, an island province of the People’s Republic of China. Taking an ethnographic and phenomenological approach, it asks how these men construct and experience ways of ‘sexual being’ – as gay, homosexual, tongzhi and/or in the scene – and what these mean for the ways of living they see as possible within a socio-cultural, political and material context characterised by pervasive heteronormativity. It explores what it means for gay men in Hainan to ‘come into the scene’, how internet and mobile technologies figure in their everyday processes of sexual categorisation and how these men negotiate orientations and disorientations towards the future in relation to dominant heterosexual life scripts of marriage and reproduction. This book offers vital insights into the production and restriction of non-heterosexual lives in diverse settings, while addressing universal questions of how certain ways of living are enabled and curtailed in living together with others through powerful conditions of uncertainty and precarity. This book will be of interest to scholars in LGBTQ studies, particularly those with a focus on same-sex intimacies and identities in China.”

Invisible Labours

Invisible Labours PDF Author: Aimee Louise Middlemiss
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1805392115
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Tracing women’s experiences of miscarriage and termination for foetal anomaly in the second trimester, before legal viability, shows how such events are positioned as less ‘real’ or significant when the foetal being does not, or will not, survive. Invisible Labours describes the reproductive politics of this category of pregnancy loss in England. It shows how second trimester pregnancy loss produces specific medical and social experiences, revealing an underlying teleological ontology of pregnancy. Some women then use an alternative understanding of pregnancy based on kinship with the second trimester foetal being or baby to resist the erasure of their experience.

Proceedings of 2021 Chinese Intelligent Automation Conference

Proceedings of 2021 Chinese Intelligent Automation Conference PDF Author: Zhidong Deng
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811663726
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 735

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Book Description
The proceedings present selected research papers from the CIAC2021, held in Zhanjiang, China on Nov 5-7, 2021. It covers a wide range of topics including intelligent control, robotics, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, unmanned systems, IoT and machine learning. It includes original research and the latest advances in the field of intelligent automation. Engineers and researchers from academia, industry, and government can gain valuable insights into solutions combining ideas from multiple disciplines in this field.

Introducing Anthropology

Introducing Anthropology PDF Author: Laura Pountney
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509544151
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 587

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Book Description
The perfect starting point for any student new to this fascinating subject, offering a serious yet accessible introduction to anthropology. Across a series of fourteen chapters, Introducing Anthropology addresses the different fields and approaches within anthropology, covers an extensive range of themes and emphasizes the active role and promise of anthropology in the world today. The new edition foregrounds in particular the need for anthropology in understanding and addressing today's environmental crisis, as well as the exciting developments of digital anthropology. This book has been designed by two authors with a passion for teaching and a commitment to communicating the excitement of anthropology to newcomers. Each chapter includes clear explanations of classic and contemporary anthropological research and connects anthropological theories to real-life issues at the local and global levels. The vibrancy and importance of anthropology is a core focus of the book, with numerous interviews with key anthropologists about their work and the discipline as a whole, and plenty of ethnographic studies to consider and use as inspiration for readers' own personal investigations. A clear glossary, a range of activities and discussion points, and carefully selected further reading and suggested ethnographic films further support and extend students' learning. Introducing Anthropology aims to inspire and enthuse a new generation of anthropologists. It is suitable for a range of different readers, from students studying the subject at school-level to university students looking for a clear and engaging entry point into anthropology.

Transitions and Transformations

Transitions and Transformations PDF Author: Caitrin Lynch
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857457799
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Rapid population aging, once associated with only a select group of modern industrialized nations, has now become a topic of increasing global concern. This volume reframes aging on a global scale by illustrating the multiple ways it is embedded within individual, social, and cultural life courses. It presents a broad range of ethnographic work, introducing a variety of conceptual and methodological approaches to studying life-course transitions in conjunction with broader sociocultural transformations. Through detailed accounts, in such diverse settings as nursing homes in Sri Lanka, a factory in Massachusetts, cemeteries in Japan and clinics in Mexico, the authors explore not simply our understandings of growing older, but the interweaving of individual maturity and intergenerational relationships, social and economic institutions, and intimate experiences of gender, identity, and the body.