Author: James A. Boon
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069123115X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 383
Book Description
In this book, James Boon ranges through history and around the globe in a series of provocative reflections on the limitations, attractions, and ambiguities of cultural interpretation. The book reflects the unusual keyword of its title, extra-vagance, a term Thoreau used to refer to thought that skirts traditional boundaries. Boon follows Thoreau's lead by broaching subjects as diverse as Balinese ritual, Montaigne, Chaucer, Tarzan, Perry Mason, opera, and the ideas of Jacques Derrida, Ruth Benedict, Kenneth Burke, and Mary Douglas. He makes creative and often playful leaps among eclectic texts and rituals that do not hold single, fixed meanings, but numerous, changing, and exceedingly specific ones. Boon opens by exploring links between ritual and reading, focusing on commentaries about the seclusion of menstruating women in Native American culture, trance dances in Bali, and circumcision (or lack of it) in contrasting religions. He considers the ironies of "first-person ethnography" by telling stories from his own fieldwork, reflecting on ethnological museums, and making seriocomic connections between Mark Twain and Marcel Mauss. In expansive discussions that touch on Manhattan and Sri Lanka, the Louvre and the "World of Coca-Cola" museum, willfully obscure academic theory and shamelessly commercial show business, Boon underlines the inadequacies of simple ideologies and pat generalizations. The book is a profound and eloquent exploration of cultural comparison by one of America's most original and innovative anthropologists.
Verging on Extra-Vagance
Author: James A. Boon
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069123115X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 383
Book Description
In this book, James Boon ranges through history and around the globe in a series of provocative reflections on the limitations, attractions, and ambiguities of cultural interpretation. The book reflects the unusual keyword of its title, extra-vagance, a term Thoreau used to refer to thought that skirts traditional boundaries. Boon follows Thoreau's lead by broaching subjects as diverse as Balinese ritual, Montaigne, Chaucer, Tarzan, Perry Mason, opera, and the ideas of Jacques Derrida, Ruth Benedict, Kenneth Burke, and Mary Douglas. He makes creative and often playful leaps among eclectic texts and rituals that do not hold single, fixed meanings, but numerous, changing, and exceedingly specific ones. Boon opens by exploring links between ritual and reading, focusing on commentaries about the seclusion of menstruating women in Native American culture, trance dances in Bali, and circumcision (or lack of it) in contrasting religions. He considers the ironies of "first-person ethnography" by telling stories from his own fieldwork, reflecting on ethnological museums, and making seriocomic connections between Mark Twain and Marcel Mauss. In expansive discussions that touch on Manhattan and Sri Lanka, the Louvre and the "World of Coca-Cola" museum, willfully obscure academic theory and shamelessly commercial show business, Boon underlines the inadequacies of simple ideologies and pat generalizations. The book is a profound and eloquent exploration of cultural comparison by one of America's most original and innovative anthropologists.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069123115X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 383
Book Description
In this book, James Boon ranges through history and around the globe in a series of provocative reflections on the limitations, attractions, and ambiguities of cultural interpretation. The book reflects the unusual keyword of its title, extra-vagance, a term Thoreau used to refer to thought that skirts traditional boundaries. Boon follows Thoreau's lead by broaching subjects as diverse as Balinese ritual, Montaigne, Chaucer, Tarzan, Perry Mason, opera, and the ideas of Jacques Derrida, Ruth Benedict, Kenneth Burke, and Mary Douglas. He makes creative and often playful leaps among eclectic texts and rituals that do not hold single, fixed meanings, but numerous, changing, and exceedingly specific ones. Boon opens by exploring links between ritual and reading, focusing on commentaries about the seclusion of menstruating women in Native American culture, trance dances in Bali, and circumcision (or lack of it) in contrasting religions. He considers the ironies of "first-person ethnography" by telling stories from his own fieldwork, reflecting on ethnological museums, and making seriocomic connections between Mark Twain and Marcel Mauss. In expansive discussions that touch on Manhattan and Sri Lanka, the Louvre and the "World of Coca-Cola" museum, willfully obscure academic theory and shamelessly commercial show business, Boon underlines the inadequacies of simple ideologies and pat generalizations. The book is a profound and eloquent exploration of cultural comparison by one of America's most original and innovative anthropologists.
Fanaticism
Author: Gilbert Vale
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Adultery
Languages : en
Pages : 218
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Adultery
Languages : en
Pages : 218
Book Description
Elementary History of Art
Author: N. D'Anvers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 684
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 684
Book Description
The Living Age
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 878
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 878
Book Description
Greater Britain
Author: Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Australia
Languages : en
Pages : 620
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Australia
Languages : en
Pages : 620
Book Description
The Survey
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Charities
Languages : en
Pages : 1278
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Charities
Languages : en
Pages : 1278
Book Description
History of the Handel and Haydn Society, of Boston, Massachusetts ...
Author: Handel and Haydn Society (Boston, Mass.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 700
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 700
Book Description
The Club Woman's Magazine
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cincinnati (Ohio)
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cincinnati (Ohio)
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
Elementary history of art, by N. D'Anvers
Author: Nancy R E. Bell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 686
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 686
Book Description
The Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of Representative Men of Chicago, Minnesota Cities and the World's Columbian Exposition
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Chicago (Ill.)
Languages : en
Pages : 516
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Chicago (Ill.)
Languages : en
Pages : 516
Book Description