Social theory Books

Book SynopsisA Balanced Epistemological Orientation for the Social Sciences challenges social researchers to rethink the epistemological assumptions grounding their work. It reviews the strengths and weaknesses of four salient epistemological orientations in the field – positivism, relativism, interpretivism, and intersubjectivism – to identify the characteristics of a theoretically-informed epistemology for social science. Relying on such an epistemology means seeking a deeper understanding of the social world without losing sight of the constructed nature of one’s conceptual frames. It involves adopting a reflexive position with regard to the norms and traditions in one’s area of specialization and in the field as a whole. Epistemologically-balanced social research is neither the dispassionate gathering of factual information, nor the elaboration of universal assessments formed on the basis of armchair speculation. It involves engaging in inquiry in an independent manner and being aware of the perspectival character of the claims being made in the attempt to shed new light on social phenomena. The caliber of social science can be elevated when researchers recognize the symbolic nature of their work and the significance of their conclusions in the larger social order.Trade ReviewThis book is a remarkable project and contains a body of excellent critique and argument, constituting a concise and accurate analysis of the topic. The book draws on the epistemological tradition of modernity, but introduces a novel argument making it a strong competitor among any book dealing with the epistemology of the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries. The book makes a significant contribution to the literature because it draws a comparison between dominant epistemological trends. -- Anastasia Marinopoulou, Hellenic Open UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction1: Positivism: Cutting Through the Myths2: Relativism: Truth in the Eye of the Beholder3: Interpretivism: Finding Meaning in Everyday Life4: Intersubjectivism: The Quest for Common Ground5: A Balanced Epistemological Orientation for the Social Sciences Bibliography

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Book SynopsisA Balanced Epistemological Orientation for the Social Sciences challenges social researchers to rethink the epistemological assumptions grounding their work. It reviews the strengths and weaknesses of four salient epistemological orientations in the field positivism, relativism, interpretivism, and intersubjectivism to identify the characteristics of a theoretically-informed epistemology for social science. Relying on such an epistemology means seeking a deeper understanding of the social world without losing sight of the constructed nature of one's conceptual frames. It involves adopting a reflexive position with regard to the norms and traditions in one's area of specialization and in the field as a whole. Epistemologically-balanced social research is neither the dispassionate gathering of factual information, nor the elaboration of universal assessments formed on the basis of armchair speculation. It involves engaging in inquiry in an independent manner and being aware of the perspectival character of the claims being made in the attempt to shed new light on social phenomena. The caliber of social science can be elevated when researchers recognize the symbolic nature of their work and the significance of their conclusions in the larger social order.

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Book SynopsisAn essential read for activists, community organizers, justice scholars, and academic administrators, Critical Animal Studies and Social Justice: Critical Theory, Dismantling Speciesism, and Total Liberation is a collection that combines scholarship and activism in nine ground-breaking and provocative chapters. The book includes contributions from around the world influenced by critical theory, feminism, social justice, political theory, media studies, environmental justice, food justice, disability studies, and Black liberation. By promoting total liberation and liberatory politics, these essays challenge the reader to think about new approaches to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion . The contributors also examine and disrupt many of the exclusionary assumptions and behaviors by those working toward justice and liberation, encouraging the reader to reflect on their own thoughts and actions. They emphasize the direct links between exploitation of animals, the planet, and people, the significance of which we can no longer afford to ignore. Trade ReviewThis book draws from and continues to push forward the aphorism that diversity is an absolutely crucial concept for ecological, biolocal, and social flourishing which should be celebrated. While contributors center on connections between disability, nonhuman animals, and the environment, no form of oppression or social justice is left out, setting an example for social justice advocates who are not fully inclusive. -- Nathan PoirierPowerful, provocative, challenging. Anyone interested in contemporary critical theory and radical social change will benefit from reading this book. Kudos to all the contributors! -- Jason Del Gandio, Temple UniversityIf you want to exist as a liberated soul on the edge of life-worlds, where animals, minerals, clouds, elements and people all coexist as sacred, read this book. Its intersections take us to another dimension. It’s a force to be reckoned with, wielding a transdisciplinary disruptive energy that gets to the heart of true liberation for all. -- Lea Lani Kinikini, Salt Lake Community CollegeNocella's and George's latest anthology with a diverse group of critical theory scholars around the world provide a liberating pathway forward for abilities liberation, animal liberation, earth liberation and every other form of liberation possible. This is accomplished through employing Nocella's and George's life-affirming methodology of lifting up the voices, ideas and methodologies of grassroots scholar-teacher-activists on the peripheries, on our own terms toward win-win recommendations. I especially appreciate Nocella's and George's full-hearted rejection of stigma, repression, othering and cancel culture which has been devastating to abilities liberation. An exciting, life-affirming and liberating anthology! -- Daniel Salomon, Portland State UniversityThis powerful and accessible book is a must-have for any scholar, activist, or animal-lover interested in animal liberation and multispecies justice. Anthony Nocella II and Amber George have collected a stunning set of essays which offer global perspectives on critical animal studies in both theory and praxis. Read it and then read it again. -- S. Marek MullerAs one traumatized by the cruelty to animals I was forced to experience as a child growing up on a “family farm” in the 1940s and 50s, I know from painful personal experience how animal exploitation harms not only our animal cousins, but all of us. We need to understand how and why, and this book is a great help. It needs to be read by all who are concerned about the living world and the human-made conflicts in which we are all embroiled, or I should say victimized. -- Jim MasonA Critical Animal Studies Reader makes an impressive contribution to the literature. The content is excellent: Nocella and George deserve great credit for successfully bringing together the ideas and lived experiences of some of the most important global scholar-activists writing at this time. -- Richard J. White, Sheffield Hallam University, Reader in Economic Geography, Former Editor of the Journal for Critical Animal StudiesA must read book for working toward ending speciesism and for social justice for all. This scholarly text is a radical critique of oppression and domination of the ecological world. This profound total liberation book is one of the most important books within the animal rights movement, edited by Anthony J. Nocella II and Amber E. George. -- Alisha Page, Save the KidsTable of ContentsIntroduction: From Fascism to Total Liberation: Getting to Know What You Think You Know Amber E. George and Anthony J. Nocella IIChapter One: Towards the Footsteps of Nimrod: Positive Animal Representation in Saki’s Short Fiction by Samantha Orsulak Chapter Two: Making No Appeal to the State: Ending Animal Abuse through Total Liberation and Direct Action by Will BoisseauChapter Three: The Lamb with Ear Tag #8710: Suffering as “Good Welfare” in Animal Science by Nathan PoirierChapter Four: On the Dharma of Critical Animal Studies: Animal Spirituality and Total Liberation by Michael Allen and Erica Von EssenChapter Five: Teaching Public Activism in the Humanities: Navigating a Classroom Climate in Crisis by Jessica HolmesChapter Six: The Preservation of Injustice: Human Supremacy, Domination, and Privilegeby Paislee House and Amanda R. WilliamsChapter Seven: Manufacturing the Line Between Brutality and Best Practice in the Animal-Industrial Complex by Ellyse WinterChapter Eight: Animal Rescue on Facebook: About the Rescuer or the Rescued? by Tatjana MarjanovicChapter Nine: Women, Nonhuman Animals, and the Notion of Marginalization in Bengali Literature by Swatilekha Maity

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Book SynopsisThere are many answers to the question of why life is worth living, but they all presuppose that good lives are sensuously enjoyable. Time seems to stand still in the moment when we enjoy food and drink, peaceful, laughing relationships with friends, or lay quietly, allowing the beauty of nature and human creations to unfold before us. Embodied Humanism: Toward Solidarity and Sensuous Enjoyment explores ways that enjoyment is also political. The history of political struggle is a history of fighting back against silencing, hunger, and violent domination, but also fighting for social peace, need-satisfaction, voice, and democratic power. Tracing the values of embodied humanism across history and across cultures and identities, the book finds a more comprehensive universal humanist ethic around which old and emerging struggles can be unified. Ultimately, Jeff Noonan argues, these struggles can be directed towards creating institutional structure and individual dispositions that will secure the social conditions in which our capacities for receptive openness and delight are satisfied for each and all. Trade ReviewIn this masterful book, Jeff Noonan shows how an embodied humanism, founded on universal life-values emanating from human needs enables a solidarity for both the oppressed and the planet, capable of promoting the life range of humanity as a whole. Building on a vast range of scholarship, he argues meticulously and persuasively that the sensuous enjoyment of life avoids the pitfalls of egoistic hedonism because of the dynamic relationship between the self-determining, social individual and reality. Noonan demonstrates how a renewed humanism that recognizes the body as the source of all experience can provide answers to some of the central issues of our time. For the courage and intellectual mastery realized in its pages, this book deserves to be read and studied carefully by all those interested in a philosophical outlook that provides hope for our world. -- Howard Woodhouse, University of SaskatchewanIn his characteristically clear, conversant and captivating style, Professor Noonan adds a deep- and far-reaching new chapter to his theoretically well-established and academically well-known materialist, democratic, life-asserting philosophical ethics. By so doing, Professor Noonan offers his readers yet another praiseworthy opportunity for engaging with, and reflecting upon, that ground-breaking life-value onto-axiology which he has been so instrumental in developing over the past twenty-five years, i.e., since its inception by the late Professor John McMurtry, to whom this book is dedicated. Intriguingly, while heaping epistemic, socio-historical and moral doubts on the otherworldly myths and aspirations of humankind, who suffered so much and so often because of totems and taboos, Noonan’s main argument captures one of the essential elements of the Christian prayer par excellence, which recites: “Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Without meeting people’s truly vital needs for meaningful survival, effective self-direction, collaborative sociality and peaceful growth, and chasing instead the fetishes of competitive self-affirmation and greed, no real lasting human good will ever be realised in a concrete and comprehensive way here on Earth. -- Giorgio Baruchello, University of Akureyri, IcelandTable of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Humanity, Struggle, and the Sensuous Enjoyment of LifeChapter 1: Why Posthumanism?Chapter 2: Life Under the Sun: Ancient Poetic and Philosophical Insights into the Goods of Earthly LifeChapter 3: The Renaissance and Humanity’s Place in the Order of ThingsChapter 4: The Enlightenment and the Deployment of Reason as a Critical WeaponChapter 5: The Social Conditions for the Universal Enjoyment of Life Chapter 6: Responsibility and the Pleasures of Social IndividualsBibliographyIndexAbout the Author

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Book SynopsisThe essays in Paul Ricoeur and the Hope of Higher Education: The Just University discuss diverse ways that Paul Ricoeur’s work provides hopeful insight and necessary provocation that should inform the task and mission of the modern university in the changing landscape of Higher Education. This volume gathers interdisciplinary scholars seeking to reestablish the place of justice as the central function of higher education in the 21st century. The contributors represent diverse backgrounds, including teachers, scholars, and administrators from R1 institutions, seminary and divinity schools as well as undergraduate teaching colleges. This collection, edited by Daniel Boscaljon and Jeffrey F. Keuss, offers critical and practical visions for the renewal of higher education. The first part of the book provides an internal examination of the university system and details how Ricoeur’s thinking assists on pragmatics from syllabus design to final exams to daily teaching. The second portion of the book examines the Just University’s role as a social institution within the broader cultural world and looks at how Ricoeur’s description of values informs how the university works relative to religious belief, prisons, and rural poverty.Trade Review"As the voice of John Henry Newman was to the nineteenth century university, so perhaps Paul Ricoeur will be to the university of our own time. This remarkable collection of essays speaks immediately to the immediate crisis of a world facing pandemic and potential economic and moral collapse, and within it the role of higher education to sustain human flourishing and humane, ethical, and critical thinking in an age when the liberal arts are in danger of being squeezed from the curriculum. Facing the future in hope requires a rootedness in the philosophical, hermeneutical, and ethical density of Ricoeur’s teaching, and this book, with consummate scholarship, offers a vision to research and education that lies at the very heart of what it is to be fully human in a world where that fundamental element in our society is being threatened. This is a book to be pondered deeply by all teachers and students." -- David Jasper, University of Glasgow“The barbarians are no longer at the gates; they have already entered our citadels of higher education, transforming institutions for truth-seeking, cultural memory, critical thought, character formation, and societal flourishing into over-managed factories for functionalist, techno-capitalism. Humanistic and humane literary and philosophical scholarship is one of the university’s few remaining defenses. In Paul Ricouer and the Hope of Higher Education world-class scholars creatively apply Ricouer’s thought to the crisis of the modern university, clearly challenging us to create a more just, transformational, and wise, post-covid world. These illuminating and liberating essays are bright lights of hope in a dark time.” -- Peter Hampson, University of Oxford“This book is precisely the thing we need not only to deal with the calamity in higher education but also to set a new agenda for the future of the university. I salute the editors for giving us this rich banquet of thought that can make us not only better teachers, but better thinkers as well as more astute moral agents. Even as we are plagued by our prejudices, we are called to be builders of a better and more just university. Read this book to be inspired, informed, and called forth for our students, our world and ourselves.” -- Jim Wellman, University of Washington"This exciting new volume on the thought of Paul Ricoeur opens insights into his work as well as exploring its implications for considering the modern university as a just institution. In good Ricoeurian fashion, the authors, each an important scholar in her or his own right, thinks with Ricoeur but also works to think beyond him on the meaning and purpose of the just university. Scholars interested in Ricoeur’s work, philosophers of education, and anyone interested in the place of institutions in our common life will be excited and instructed by this fine volume. The editors are to be commended for gathering fine scholars in order to address this timely topic." -- William Schweiker, The University of ChicagoTable of ContentsList of Figures and TablesPreface: Dreaming of the Just University in an Age of CrisisDaniel Boscaljon and Jeffrey F. KeussIntroduction: Paul Ricoeur and the Hope of a Just UniversityDaniel Boscaljon and Jeffrey F. KeussPart 1: The Just University as Instructional SpaceChapter 1: The Agon of the Summoned Self in Ricoeur’s Late Philosophy of ReligionMark I. WallaceChapter 2: Reading Ricoeur Together: Interpretive Work and Surplus Meaning in a Just PedagogyCharles A. GillespieChapter 3: Practical Formation: Teaching Critical Thinking via Ricoeur’s Hermeneutical ModelLaura Schmidt RobertsChapter 4: Ricoeur and Transferable SkillsGlenn WhitehouseChapter 5: Fallible Pedagogy: How to Balance Liberation and Evaluation with CompassionDaniel BoscaljonChapter 6: Oneself as Another and The Argonauts: An Attempt at Interpretive JusticeRichard A. RosengartenChapter 7: Embodied Pedagogy: Reflections on Becoming OneselfVerna Marina EhretPart 2: The Just University as a Social SpaceChapter 8: The Literary Self: Nostalgia, Kenosis, and Interpretation toward a Renewed Vision and Possibility for the Liberal ArtsJeffrey F. KeussChapter 9: Teaching and Learning in Just Institutions: A Ricoeurean Institutional Ethic of Higher EducationMichael Le ChevallierChapter 10: Should Religion-Affiliated Institutions Be Accredited? Ricoeur and the Problem of Religious InclusivityNathan Eric DickmanChapter 11: Interpreting with and for Others: Institutional Research as Hermeneutical ReasoningKenneth A. ReynhoutChapter 12: National Memory or “What is College For?”Vero Rose SmithChapter 13: Doing Time and Narrative: Teaching in (and out of) Prisons with Paul RicoeurHoward PickettChapter 14: Wounded Memory and a Pedagogy of Hope: Engaging Ricoeur Within the Context of Conflicting PastsRobert Vosloo

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Book SynopsisIn Sociology of Waiting, Paul Christopher Price investigates how people wait and analyzes what individuals do while waiting. It is a key feature within U.S. and other societies; waiting is universal. Sociologically, waiting gets at order and our ability or inability to pause. Crowds cannot rush into concert venues and supermarket clerks cannot check-out customers simultaneously. So, we must wait! In all our waiting, we've developed strategies and structures for “delays,” and such methods and structures provide order as well as understanding: we recognize why we wait. The sociology of waiting is a classic piece of everyday sociology, a timeless piece of routine behavior. Waiting is as natural as breathing, eating and drinking; indeed, mothers wait nine months before infants are brought to term, and summer will always follow spring. Waiting provides its' own lessons. That is, watching cars weave through traffic and receive citations by police, we learn that waiting may have saved time and money. Shining the light on waiting permits a far superior understanding of order and how our society organizes itself around taking turns. Waiting is a matter that takes-up much of our valuable time and resources—consequently, reducing wait-time has become big business.Table of ContentsIntroduction1Structure of Waiting2Waiting Places3Wait Utilization4Waiting for Service5Wait Explanations6Business of Waiting7Waiting with Strangers8Alternatives to Waiting9Emotion and WaitingConclusion

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Book SynopsisIn Sociology of Waiting, Paul Christopher Price investigates how people wait and analyzes what individuals do while waiting. It is a key feature within U.S. and other societies; waiting is universal. Sociologically, waiting gets at order and our ability or inability to pause. Crowds cannot rush into concert venues and supermarket clerks cannot check-out customers simultaneously. So, we must wait! In all our waiting, we've developed strategies and structures for “delays,” and such methods and structures provide order as well as understanding: we recognize why we wait. The sociology of waiting is a classic piece of everyday sociology, a timeless piece of routine behavior. Waiting is as natural as breathing, eating and drinking; indeed, mothers wait nine months before infants are brought to term, and summer will always follow spring. Waiting provides its own lessons. That is, watching cars weave through traffic and receive citations by police, we learn that waiting may have saved time and money. Shining the light on waiting permits a far superior understanding of order and how our society organizes itself around taking turns. Waiting is a matter that takes-up much of our valuable time and resources—consequently, reducing wait-time has become big business.Trade ReviewPaul Price’s The Sociology of Waiting: How Americans Wait presents a comprehensive analysis of the ubiquitous process of “waiting”: a situation we often “lament” but do not often “interrogate.” Price’s searing analysis of waiting in a host of social situations reveals “the waiting game” in ways that enable us to see waiting in a different light. After reading this book, you will never view waiting the same way. This book is a sociological delight! -- Melvin L. Oliver, President, Pitzer CollegeIn his new monograph, Price paints a revealing portrait of the culture of waiting. Readers are treated to his copious field notes and compelling observations that detail an ethnography of the queue, including the circumstances in which people are encouraged to 'hurry up and wait.' This work is illuminating, timely, and important. -- Elijah Anderson, Sterling Professor of Sociology, Yale University, author of The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life and Code of the StreetTable of ContentsIntroduction1Structure of Waiting2Waiting Places3Wait Utilization4Waiting for Service5Wait Explanations6Business of Waiting7Waiting with Strangers8Alternatives to Waiting9Emotion and WaitingConclusion

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Book SynopsisThe peace process in Northern Ireland is often posited as the poster child for successful post-conflict social and political reform. Yet the sustained cessation of violence and growth of the middle-class is paralleled by underinvestment and systemic neglect of those deprived communities most affected by the legacy of the Troubles, having stark implications on the scope of peacebuilding. Inequality, Identity, and the Politics of Northern Ireland: Challenges of Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation examines how the politics of threat and resentment, undergirded by persistent poverty and socioeconomic and gender inequalities across Catholic and Protestant communities shape political conflict, while at the same time opening up new potential sociopolitical avenues of resistance and transformation at the community level. Curtis C. Holland examines how, in the context of rising inequality, emerging intersectional class/place, gendered, and ethnonational identities have been manipulated by ethnopolitical entrepreneurs to incite conflict but can also produce subjectivities through which alternative visions of “peace” may emerge. The book documents key discourses and events which contribute to insular ethnic identity formation and interethnic conflict but also examines how the same discourses are subject to the agency of citizens, whose reflexivity on the ethnopolitical manipulation and inequalities faced by their communities may potentially provide new prospects for social and political transformation.Trade Review“Northern Ireland remains a deeply polarized, segregated, and sectarian society as intra-group inequalities harm vulnerable marginalized intra-group members while ethnopolitical entrepreneurs fluctuate between compromise and threat politics. Professor Curtis Holland used a mixed method case study to draw on data generated from forty-one in-depth interviews with Belfast community leaders and politicians and a content analysis of British and Irish newspapers. This wonderful, well written, and highly accessible book uses a constructivist and intersectional approach to analyze the impact of relational and ethno-social fields of power, resistance narratives, and class inequalities that shape local everyday people’s agencies across and within their ethnopolitical groups in post-peace-accord Northern Ireland. This excellent study deserves a broad readership from academics, community activists, peacebuilders, policymakers, politicians, students, and those interested in the top-down and bottom-up dynamics of post-peace-accord societies like Northern Ireland.” -- Sean Byrne, University of ManitobaTable of ContentsChapter 1: A Tale of Two Belfasts? Inequality, Segregation, and the Politics of Identity in a “Post-conflict” CityChapter 2: Social Immobility, Ethnopolitics, and the “Culture Wars”: Contextualizing Violence and Disorder in Belfast, 2008–2014Chapter 3: Post-conflict Masculinities, Exclusion, and Contradictions in Ex-combatant Community-based PeacebuildingChapter 4: Identity, the Politics of Policing, and Limits to LegitimacyChapter 5: Brexit: A Constitutional Moment in Unionism?Chapter 6: “Peace Fatigue,” Power Sharing, and Political Impediments to Community-based Peacebuilding

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Book Synopsis The economist Kenneth Arrow proved in 1951 that a society of diverse individual preferences could only by ordered by dictatorship. His impossibility theorem is still an axiom of contemporary welfare economics and has never been seriously challenged. The American philosopher John Dewey, who died in 1952, had claimed that voting and electoral mechanisms do not define democratic self-government. His broad conception of social conflict addresses preference diversity and resolves Arrow’s impossibility. Since the 1980s, political scientists have focused on decision through democratic “deliberation.” Dewey saw that conversation alone is inadequate for resolution of conflicts in a democracy. Conflict is accompanied by discourse, but preferences are grounded in habits. Social habits resist adjustment in response to discourse alone, but demonstrably adjust in the process of conflict resolution, Preference conflict is distinguished from Marxist and later models, as a discovery and transformation process. It advances an original, updated theory of social conflict in a democracy relevant to today's problematic situations from discrimination to climate change and political polarization. Trade ReviewIn this timely work, Kellogg unearths the flawed assumptions in Kenneth Arrow’s highly influential General Possibility Theorem using John Dewey’s concept of organic democracy. In so doing, Democracy and Conflict illustrates the role that extended conflict plays in continuously reconstructing the preferences and values of the public in the process of democratic deliberation. The book is a welcomed resource for readers concerned with the heightened polarization of our democratic processes as it replaces Arrow’s overly abstract and synchronic understanding of aggregated preferences with a diachronic and situated model of constant preference and habit reformation in public, democratic debate. -- Seth Vannatta, Morgan State UniversityTable of ContentsIntroductionChapter 1: Arrow’s Impossibility TheoremChapter 2: Dewey’s Agonistic PragmatismChapter 3: Problematic Conflict and TransformationChapter 4: Dewey’s Naturalized UtilitarianismChapter 5: Agonistic DeliberationChapter 6: Uncertainty in Legal TheoryChapter 7: Legal PrinciplesChapter 8: Empirical Naturalism in LawChapter 9: Naturalizing ObjectivityChapter 10: Dewey’s Democracy and ConflictBibliographyAbout the Author

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Book Synopsis Moving, slowing down, or watching others moving allows people to cross physical, symbolic, and temporal boundaries. Exploring the imaginative power of liminality that makes this possible, Liminal Moves looks at the (im)mobilities of three groups of people - street monkey performers in Japan, adolescents writing about migrants in Italy, and men accompanying their partners in Switzerland for work. The book explores how, for these ‘travelers’, the interplay of mobility and immobility creates a ‘liminal hotspot’: a condition of suspension and ambivalence as they find themselves caught between places, meanings and times.Trade Review “Excellent. Very timely… It makes a significant contribution to cultural psychology and to a transdisciplinary approach to the social sciences in general.” • Paul Stenner, Open University “Liminal Moves is a fascinating exploration of the entanglements between the spatial, symbolic and temporal dimension of different experiences of mobility… Drawing on anthropological theory and cultural psychology, the book advances our critical understanding of the mobility experience making it the center of a transformative process that involves those who stay as well as those who move.” • Fabiola Mancinelli, University of BarcelonaTable of Contents List of Figures Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1. (Im)Mobilities and Liminalities Chapter 2. The street as Liminal: Itinerant Monkey-training Performances in Japan Chapter 3. Writing as Liminal: Youths Talking about Migration in Italy Chapter 4. Waiting as Liminal: Male Accompanying Partners in Switzerland and Beyond Conclusion: Liminal Moves References Index

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Book Synopsis By studying how different societies understand categories such as time and causality, the Durkheimians decentered Western epistemology. With contributions from philosophy, sociology, anthropology, media studies, and sinology, this volume illustrates the interdisciplinarity and intellectual rigor of the “category project” which did not only stir controversies among contemporary scholars but paved the way for other theories exploring how the thoughts of individuals are prefigured by society and vice versa.Trade Review “It makes a clear contribution to its field by a group of scholars with a coherent nucleus in Germany, many of whom have been researching this topic for years, if not decades … it represents the culmination, at least for the time being, of work on these issues (the Durkheimians and the categories).” • Robert Parkin, University of Oxford “This is a collective book from international scholars assessing the legacy of the Durkheim school of sociology through the epistemological question of the origins of categories of thought … This is a significant contribution to the historical epistemology in France.” • Frédéric Keck, Director of Research at the Laboratory of Social Anthropology (CNRS-Collège de France-EHESS).Table of Contents List of Figures Introduction: The Durkheim School’s “Category Project”: A Collaborative Experiment Unfolds Johannes F.M. Schick, Mario Schmidt, and Martin Zillinger Part I: Silenced Influences and Hidden Texts Chapter 1. Kantian Categories and the Relativist Turn: A Comparison of Three Routes Gregory Schrempp Chapter 2. Hidden Durkheim and Hidden Mauss: An Empirical Rereading of the Hidden Analogical Work Made Necessary by the Creation of a New Science Nicolas Sembel Chapter 3. Mana in Context: From Max Müller to Marcel Mauss Nicolas Meylan Chapter 4. Durkheim, the Question of the Categories and the Concept of Labor Susan Stedman Jones Chapter 5. Inequality Is a Scientific Issue When the Technologies of Practice That Create Social Categories Become Dependent on Justice in Modernity Anne Warfield Rawls Chapter 6. Experimenting with Social Matter: Claude Bernard’s Influence on the Durkheim School’s Understanding of Categories Mario Schmidt Part II: Lateral Links and Ambivalent Antagonists Chapter 7. Freedom, Food, and the Total Social Fact. Some Terminological Details of the Category Project in “Le Don” by Marcel Mauss Erhard Schüttpelz Chapter 8. Durkheimian Thinking and the Category of Totality Nick J. Allen Chapter 9. Durkheimian Creative Effervescence, Bergson and the Ethology of Animal and Human Societies William Watts Miller Chapter 10. “It is not my time that is thus arranged…”: Bergson, the ‘Category Project’, and the Structuralist Turn Heike Delitz Chapter 11. “Let Us Dare a Little Bit of Metaphysics”: Marcel Mauss, Henri Hubert and Louis Weber on Causality, Time, and Technology Johannes F. M. Schick Part III: Forgotten Allies and Secret Students Chapter 12. The Rhythm of Space: Stefan Czarnowski’s Relational Theory of the Sacred Martin Zillinger Chapter 13. La Pensée Catégorique: Marcel Granet’s Grand Sinological Project at the Heart of the “L‘Année Sociologique” Tradition Robert André LaFleur Chapter 14. Drawing a Line: On Hertz’ Hands Ulrich van Loyen Chapter 15. Between Claude Lévi-Strauss, Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault, or: What Is the Meaning of Mauss’ “Total Social Fact”? Jean-François Bert Chapter 16. From Durkheim to Halbwachs: Rebuilding the Theory of Collective Representations Jean-Christoph Marcel Chapter 17. Durkheim’s Quest: Philosophy beyond the Classroom and the Libraries Wendy James Index

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Book Synopsis From twilight in the Himalayas to dream worlds in the Serbian state, this book provides a unique collection of anthropological and cross-cultural inquiry into the power of rhetorical tropes and their relevance to the formation and analysis of social thought and action through a series of ethnographic essays offering in-depth studies of the human imagination at work and play around the world.Trade Review “This book shows what is to be gained from thinking rhetorically about any particular problem, family of objects, or traditional discipline. It demonstrates the vitality of rhetoric in the social sciences as anything but a mere formalism or “linguistic turn”.” • Haun Saussy, University of ChicagoTable of Contents List of Figures Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: Aides Pensee: Tropology and Tropologic, An Introduction James W. Fernandez Chapter 1. Don Quixote: Icon of Rhetoric Culture Theory Ivo Strecker Chapter 2. A Trope of Time. Twilight Swings across the Central Himalayas John H. Leavitt Chapter 3. Dreams Inside-out: Some Uses of Dream in Social Theory and Ethnographic Inquiry Marko Živković Chapter 4. On Conversion: A Theory of Ruins Joseba Zulaika Chapter 5. Schiffbruch mit Zuschauer—“Witnessing a Shipwreck”: German Figurations in facing the Past to face the Future Michael Carrithers Chapter 6. An Apologia for Filthy Lucre Gustav Peebles Chapter 7. “Down the Garden Path.” On Path-ologies of Inquiry and of “Progress” in Understanding James W. Fernandez Chapter 8. “Sí Teanga na Muintire a Shlánós an Mhuintir”: Ó Cadhain, Rhetoric, and Immanence Steve Coleman Chapter 9. Parapraxis Today: The US Flag and the Mythopoesis of Self and Other in Post 9/11 New England Bernard Bate Chapter 10. Irony's Arrow: Launching Contraria in Chinese Linguaculture Mary Scoggin Chapter 11. The Tropes of Music William O. Beeman Chapter 12. Tactics For Working Anyway Dale Pesmen Chapter 13. Tropes, Frames and Powers Terence S. Turner Conclusion: Imaginative Leaps in Rhetoric Culture Jamin Pelkey and Marko Živković Index

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Book Synopsis The book Profiles of Anthropological Praxis is something of a sequel to Anthropological Praxis: Translating Knowledge into Action, published in 1987 (Westview Press). As a casebook of anthropological projects, the new version shares a fascinating breadth of award-winning projects undertaken by applied anthropologists to address the needs of an array of stakeholders and situations. Each chapter will describe a problem and how a project attempted to address it with the following structure: Problem Overview, Project Description, Anthropologist’s Role and Impact, Outcomes, and the Anthropological Difference – that is, how the unique approaches of anthropology were effectively applied to address human problems.Trade Review “This book is terrific! The reader gets to travel around the world with different anthropologists, get exposed to important issues of the day, and observe how those anthropologists try to address those issues. Each chapter sheds light on how anthropologists bring their knowledge, perspective and skills together to make the world a better place.” • Elizabeth K. Briody, Purdue University “This volume is a relevant, timely, and valuable contribution to anthropological praxis. Each case study illustrates the theoretical rigor, ethnographic expertise, and ethical principles that inform the anthropological study of human problems across regions and field sites.” • Kathryn A. Kozaitis, Georgia State UniversityTable of Contents List of Illustrations Foreword Shirley J. Fiske and Robert M. Wulff Introduction Terry M. Redding and Charles C. Cheney Part I: Economic Development Chapter 1. Applying Anthropology in Emergency Food Security Recovery: An Afghanistan Case Adam Koons Chapter 2. Ecotourism in One Amazon Community Over 25 Years: My Role as Anthropologist, Witness, Scribe, and Facilitator Amanda Stronza Chapter 3. Ethnic Minority Women-Led Routine Road Maintenance in Vietnam Mari Clarke Part II: Communities and the Environment Chapter 4. New Pathways Toward the Co-management of Natural Resources in Puerto Rico: Applied Anthropology, Public Access, and Environmental Public Policy Federico Cintrón-Moscoso Chapter 5. Deal Island Peninsula Partnership: Applying Environmental Anthropology, Ethnography, and Collaborative Learning Michael Paolisso, Elizabeth Van Dolah, Katherine J. Johnson, and Christine D. Miller Hesed Chapter 6. Marcellus Shale Public Health Study Thurka Sangaramoorthy Part III: Cultural Preservation Chapter 7. The Denver Museum of Nature & Science Repatriation Initiative Stephen E. Nash and Chip Colwell Chapter 8. Alan Boraas and Kahtnuht'ana Qenaga: Preserving and Renewing an Alaska Native Language Kerry D. Feldman and Phyllis A. Fast Chapter 9. San Diego’s Little Saigon: Using Anthropologically Informed Outreach to Create a New Public Space Stephen Weidlich Part IV: Health Promotion and Management Chapter 10. Pastors at Risk: Toward an Improved Culture of Health for United Methodist Clergy in North Carolina Cathleen E. Crain, Nathaniel Tashima, and Terry M. Redding Chapter 11. Anthropology in an Epidemic: Ebola in West Africa Olive Minor Chapter 12. Caring Together, Living Better: Anthropologists Contributions to a Caregiver Support Program in the South Suburbs of Cook County, IL Rebecca L. H. Berman and Madelyn Iris Chapter 13. A Video Ethnographic Study: Raising Healthy Children in Poverty and Examples of Excellence in Addressing Childhood Wellness Cathleen E. Crain, Nathaniel Tashima, Reiko Ishihara-Brito, and Erick Lee Cummings Part V: Sociocultural Change and Adaptation Chapter 14. Dug-well Revival: an Ethnographic Project for Drinking Water in North Bihar, India Luisa Cortesi Chapter 15. A New Model for News: Studying the Deep Structure of Young-Adult News Consumption Robbie Blinkoff Chapter 16. Learning to Live with Difference: How CEDAR Takes Anthropology Out of the Classroom and Into the World David W. Montgomery, Adam B. Seligman, and Rahel R. Wasserfall Chapter 17. Birangona: Towards Ethical Testimonies of Sexual Violence During Conflict Nayanika Mookherjee Part VI: Policy Change Chapter 18. Anthropology in Action: An Anthropologist's Role in Restoring U.S. Support to the United Nations Population Fund Barbara Pillsbury Chapter 19. Decent Care: Shifting the Health Care Paradigm Cathleen E. Crain and Nathaniel Tashima Chapter 20. Applying Anthropological Perspectives and Methods in Evaluations of Persistent Undercounts of Race and Hispanic Minorities and Young Children in U.S. Censuses Laurie Schwede Chapter 21. Using the Concept of Social Well-Being to Develop and Implement a Framework for UNICEF Planning and Evaluating Efforts to Achieve Rights and Development Goals for Children and Families Mark Edberg Conclusion Terry M. Redding and Charles C. Cheney Afterword Riall W. Nolan Index

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Book Synopsis 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.Trade Review “Reflecting this eclecticism of social science research and writing, this slim volume is a good complement to college and university programs in the social sciences. Its message and contributions will also resonate with practicing professionals in social science fields…Recommended.” • Choice “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 “I have much enjoyed reading this book. It is a rich collection of ideas and images to support empirical qualitative social science. It is phrased for anthropologists in the first instance, but is applicable as well to historians, sociologists, and anyone else trying to deliver a close and insightful account of social life.” • Michael Carrithers, Durham UniversityTable of Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction 60 Words To Think With A. Affordance; Agnosia‬; Aporia; Archaeology; Argumentation theory; Autopoiesis; Axonometric projection B. Bifocal ethnography; Blueprints, scores and maps; Boundary objects C. Cabling; Catachresis; Chronotopes and chronotypes; Collage/montage; Colligation; Commitment D. Dialetheism/paraconsistency E. Ekphrasis;Emic and etic; Epistemography; Epiphanies; Equifinality; Equivocation (controlled equivocation);. Essentially contested concepts; Exaptation;. Exemplars F. Faithfulness; Figuration; Finitism; meaning finitism; Forbearing and ‘subjective counterfactuals’ H. Hapax; Hesse Nets I. Incommensurability; Infirming; Instauration; Ironic detachment; Irrealism; Isolarion L. Life writing M. Mosaics N. Non-ergodicity O. Ostension P. Palimpsest memory; Partial views and partiality; Pattern language; Paraethnography; Positioning theory; Prosopography R. Repleteness; Representation/non-representation; Representational force S. Sgraffiti; Stochastic variation; Synaesthesia T. Teleoanalysis; Things; Translation (anthropological translation) V. Vagueness; Vignettes W. Wicked problems Coda: So What? A Worked Example of Making Sense of Ethnographic Fragment Index

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Book Synopsis 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.Trade Review “Reflecting this eclecticism of social science research and writing, this slim volume is a good complement to college and university programs in the social sciences. Its message and contributions will also resonate with practicing professionals in social science fields…Recommended.” • Choice “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 “I have much enjoyed reading this book. It is a rich collection of ideas and images to support empirical qualitative social science. It is phrased for anthropologists in the first instance, but is applicable as well to historians, sociologists, and anyone else trying to deliver a close and insightful account of social life.” • Michael Carrithers, Durham UniversityTable of Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction 60 Words To Think With A. Affordance; Agnosia‬; Aporia; Archaeology; Argumentation theory; Autopoiesis; Axonometric projection B. Bifocal ethnography; Blueprints, scores and maps; Boundary objects C. Cabling; Catachresis; Chronotopes and chronotypes; Collage/montage; Colligation; Commitment D. Dialetheism/paraconsistency E. Ekphrasis;Emic and etic; Epistemography; Epiphanies; Equifinality; Equivocation (controlled equivocation);. Essentially contested concepts; Exaptation;. Exemplars F. Faithfulness; Figuration; Finitism; meaning finitism; Forbearing and ‘subjective counterfactuals’ H. Hapax; Hesse Nets I. Incommensurability; Infirming; Instauration; Ironic detachment; Irrealism; Isolarion L. Life writing M. Mosaics N. Non-ergodicity O. Ostension P. Palimpsest memory; Partial views and partiality; Pattern language; Paraethnography; Positioning theory; Prosopography R. Repleteness; Representation/non-representation; Representational force S. Sgraffiti; Stochastic variation; Synaesthesia T. Teleoanalysis; Things; Translation (anthropological translation) V. Vagueness; Vignettes W. Wicked problems Coda: So What? A Worked Example of Making Sense of Ethnographic Fragment Index

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Book Synopsis Bringing together contributions from anthropology, sociology, religious studies, and philosophy, along with ethnographic case studies from diverse settings, this volume explores how different disciplinary perspectives on the good might engage with and enrich each other. The chapters examine how people realize the good in social life, exploring how ethics and values relate to forms of suffering, power and inequality, and, in doing so, demonstrate how focusing on the good enhances social theory. This is the first interdisciplinary engagement with what it means to study the good as a fundamental aspect of social life.Trade Review “This is a stimulating collection that generatively engages an emerging area across multiple disciplines. The volume's structure is tightly conceptualized, and the essays often provocative. The volume is well poised to earn a committed readership.” • James Bielo, Miami UniversityTable of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction: The Good between Philosophy and Social Theory: An Introduction David Henig and Anna Strhan Part I: Theoretical Perspectives Chapter 1. Where is the Good in the World? Joel Robbins Chapter 2. Nowhere and Everywhere Michael Lambek Chapter 3. Between Durkheim and Bauman: A Relational Sociology of Morality in Practice Owen Abbott Chapter 4. For the Agony of ‘the Good’ and of the Moral Courage to Do It Iain Wilkinson Chapter 5. Thinking Time, Ethics and Generations: An Auto-Ethnographic Essay on the Good between Philosophy and Social Theory Victor Jeleniewski Seidler Part I: Commentary Steven Lukes Part II:Approaching the Good in Everyday Life Chapter 6. ‘To See a Sinner Repent is a Joyful Thing’: Moral Cultures and the Sexual Abuse of Children in the Christian Church Gordon Lynch Chapter 7. Making the Good Corporate Citizen: Corporate Social Responsibility and the Ethical Projects of Management Consultancy in Contemporary China Kimberly Chong Chapter 8. ‘God isn’t a Communist’: Conservative Evangelicals, Money and Morality in London Anna Strhan Chapter 9. Doing Good: Cultivating Children’s Ethical Sensibilities in School Assemblies Rachael Shillitoe Chapter 10. Locating an Elusive Ethics: Surface and Depth in a Jewish Ethnography Ruth Sheldon Chapter 11. Radical Hope as a Practice of Possibilities: On the Fragility of Goodness and Struggles for Justice in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina David Henig Part II: Commentary Maeve Cooke Index

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Book Synopsis One of the world's top anthropologists recounts his formative experiences doing fieldwork in this accessible memoir ideal for anyone interested in anthropology. Drawing on his research in five Latin American countries, Steve Gudeman describes his anthropological fieldwork, bringing to life the excitement of gaining an understanding of the practices and ideas of others as well as the frustrations. He weaves into the text some of his findings as well as reflections on his own background that led to better fieldwork but also led him astray. This readable account, shorn of technical words, complicated concepts, and abstract ideas shows the reader what it is to be an anthropologist enquiring and responding to the unexpected. From the Preface: Growing up I learned about making do when my family was putting together a dinner from leftovers or I was constructing something with my father. In fieldwork I saw people making do as they worked in the fields, repaired a tool, assembled a meal or made something for sale. Much later, I realized that making do captures some of my fieldwork practices and their presentation in this book.Trade Review “I believe Steve Gudeman may well be the internationally most renowned economic anthropologist of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and I strongly recommend his memoir.” • Ulf Hannerz, Stockholm UniversityTable of Contents Preface Chapter 1. The Road to Anthropology Chapter 2. Two Cambridges Chapter 3. Panama and An Interlude Chapter 4. Life and Text Together Chapter 5. Colombia Chapter 6. Excursions References Index

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Book Synopsis One of the world's top anthropologists recounts his formative experiences doing fieldwork in this accessible memoir ideal for anyone interested in anthropology. Drawing on his research in five Latin American countries, Steve Gudeman describes his anthropological fieldwork, bringing to life the excitement of gaining an understanding of the practices and ideas of others as well as the frustrations. He weaves into the text some of his findings as well as reflections on his own background that led to better fieldwork but also led him astray. This readable account, shorn of technical words, complicated concepts, and abstract ideas shows the reader what it is to be an anthropologist enquiring and responding to the unexpected. From the Preface: Growing up I learned about making do when my family was putting together a dinner from leftovers or I was constructing something with my father. In fieldwork I saw people making do as they worked in the fields, repaired a tool, assembled a meal or made something for sale. Much later, I realized that making do captures some of my fieldwork practices and their presentation in this book.Trade Review “I believe Steve Gudeman may well be the internationally most renowned economic anthropologist of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and I strongly recommend his memoir.” • Ulf Hannerz, Stockholm UniversityTable of Contents Preface Chapter 1. The Road to Anthropology Chapter 2. Two Cambridges Chapter 3. Panama and An Interlude Chapter 4. Life and Text Together Chapter 5. Colombia Chapter 6. Excursions References Index

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Book Synopsis Investigating the politics of seeing and its effects, this book draws on Slavoj Žižek’s notion of fetish and Walter Benjamin’s notion of the optical unconscious to offer newer concepts: “tinted glasses”, through which we see the world; “unit-thinking”, which renders the world as consisting of discrete units; and “coherants”, which help fragmented experiences cohere into something intelligible. Examining experiences at a Japanese heritage language school, a study-abroad trip to Sierra Leone, as well as in college classrooms, this book reveals the workings of unit-thinking and fetishism in diverse contexts and explores possibilities for social change.Trade Review “This is a unique book that is both theoretically lucid and draws together a very interesting set of seemingly incommensurable ethnographic examples and renders them comparable.” • Paul Manning, Trent University “In its coherence and patience with dwelling on specific concepts and the optics of engagements with particular objects, the manuscript offers refreshing and trans-disciplinary insights into contemporary culture.” • John Borneman, Princeton UniversityTable of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Tinted Glasses, Unit Thinking, and Coherants Chapter 1. The Politics of Vision and the Fetish beyond Optical Unconscious: Towards Spectacle Pedagogy Chapter 2. Seeing Failed Ninja, Ghost Samurai, and Last Samurai: Phantom Japan at a Weekend Japanese Language School in the US Chapter 3. Seeing Angels: The Fetish of Smiling Angels in the “Poor but Happy” Discourse in Sierra Leone Chapter 4. Seeing Holy Mouth Man: Fetish of Study Abroad Transformation Talk Chapter 5. Seeing Dr Jekyll in Mr. Hyde: Political Others and Beyond Polarization of “Critical” and “Uncritical” Chapter 6. Seeing Fairies and Anti-Spectacle Pedagogy: Cottingley Photographs of Fairies and Linguistic Landscape Project Chapter 7. Seeing Santa Claus and Elves: Swinging between Fantasy-World-for-Escape and Scrutinized-World-for-Change Chapter 8. Seeing Robbers, Freaks, and Dirt: Seeing Maui’s Fishhook in Scorpio and Fetish of Us Conclusion: Continuing Dialogues References Index

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Book Synopsis Most social science studies on automobility have focused on the production, usage, identity construction and aesthetic improvements of personal means of transportation. What happens if we shift the focus to the labour, knowledge and social relations that go into the unavoidable moments of maintenance and repair? Taking motorcycling in Romania as an ethnographic entry point, this book documents how bikers handle the inevitable moments of malfunction and breakdown. Using both mobile and sedentary research methods, the book describes the joys and troubles experienced by amateur mechanics, professional mechanics and untechnical men and women when fixing bikes.Trade Review “A welcome addition to a host of areas of academic study, including, but not limited to the transformation of an analogue to a digital world and how that change has affected economies, social structures, gender relations and concepts of personal identity.” • Steven Alford, Nova Southeastern University “The book draws attention to an overlooked area of mobility studies—repair and maintenance. It inventively demonstrates the social and political dimensions of technology and is especially attentive to gender distinctions and differences.” • Suzanne Ferriss, Nova Southeastern UniversityTable of Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Fixing Motorcycles in Post-repair Societies Chapter 1. Shifting Frames of Motorcycling Maintenance and Repair in Romania Chapter 2. Maintenance and Repair Work in a Repair Society Chapter 3. The Digitization of Motorcycling, Post-repair Society and A-technical Bikers Chapter 4. Female Bikers and the Barriers to Motorcycling Chapter 5. Women Who Repair Bikes: Gender and Repair Networks Chapter 6. Post-repair Pedagogies: A-technical Bikers and Retro-repair Conclusion: From the repair society to post-repair subjectivities References Index

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Book Synopsis Fifty years after her first fieldwork with Ju/'hoan San hunter-gatherers, anthropologist Megan Biesele has written this exceptional memoir based on personal journals she wrote at the time. The treasure trove of vivid learning experiences and nightly ponderings she found has led to a memoir of rare value to anthropology students and academics as well as to general readers. Her experiences focus on the long-lived healing dance, known to many as the trance dance, and the intricate beliefs, artistry, and social system that support it. She describes her immersion in a creative community enlivened and kept healthy by that dance, which she calls "one of the great intellectual achievements of humankind." From the Preface: A few years ago I finally got around to looking back into the box of personal field journals I had not opened for over forty years. I found a treasure trove. It was an overwhelming experience. So much that I had forgotten came vividly alive: I laughed, wept, and was terrified all over again at my temerity in taking on what I had taken on. To do justice to the richness of these notebooks, I realized, I would have to do a completely different sort of writing from anything I had ever done before.Trade Review “This is the finest of ethnographic memoirs. I know the Kalahari and its people, but Megan Biesele knows them much better. An African explorer’s life, a cross-cultural whirlwind, and an intellectual adventure all between two covers. A marvelous read." • Melvin Konner, Emory University. “This book is exceptional on two counts. Firstly, it is an engaging, highly readable and disarmingly honest guide to the realities behind a style of anthropological fieldwork that is increasingly impossible … Secondly, this book represents a sophisticated and deeply informed insight into Ju/’hoan life.” • Chris Low, University of Oxford “A superbly written, masterfully crafted and well organized monograph on a central issue in anthropology: the trials and tribulations of ethnographic field work.” • Mathias Guenther, Wilfrid Laurier University “Her book illustrates how language transforms experience, but also provides a very personal history of how immersion in another culture and its language transformed her.” • Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, University of California, DavisTable of Contents List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Chapter 1. The Rabies Run Chapter 2. The Harvard Camp at Dobe Chapter 3. At "Toothbrush Tree" Chapter 4. You Had to Have Been There Chapter 5. A Road Trip Chapter 6. A Creative Community Chapter 7. Ju/'hoansi, Their Neighbors, and I Chapter 8. The Threads of the Sky Chapter 9. Bright Night of the Soul Chapter 10. Life in Death and Death in Life Epilogue References Index

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Book Synopsis Fifty years after her first fieldwork with Ju/'hoan San hunter-gatherers, anthropologist Megan Biesele has written this exceptional memoir based on personal journals she wrote at the time. The treasure trove of vivid learning experiences and nightly ponderings she found has led to a memoir of rare value to anthropology students and academics as well as to general readers. Her experiences focus on the long-lived healing dance, known to many as the trance dance, and the intricate beliefs, artistry, and social system that support it. She describes her immersion in a creative community enlivened and kept healthy by that dance, which she calls "one of the great intellectual achievements of humankind." From the Preface: A few years ago I finally got around to looking back into the box of personal field journals I had not opened for over forty years. I found a treasure trove. It was an overwhelming experience. So much that I had forgotten came vividly alive: I laughed, wept, and was terrified all over again at my temerity in taking on what I had taken on. To do justice to the richness of these notebooks, I realized, I would have to do a completely different sort of writing from anything I had ever done before.Trade Review “This is the finest of ethnographic memoirs. I know the Kalahari and its people, but Megan Biesele knows them much better. An African explorer’s life, a cross-cultural whirlwind, and an intellectual adventure all between two covers. A marvelous read." • Melvin Konner, Emory University. “This book is exceptional on two counts. Firstly, it is an engaging, highly readable and disarmingly honest guide to the realities behind a style of anthropological fieldwork that is increasingly impossible … Secondly, this book represents a sophisticated and deeply informed insight into Ju/’hoan life.” • Chris Low, University of Oxford “A superbly written, masterfully crafted and well organized monograph on a central issue in anthropology: the trials and tribulations of ethnographic field work.” • Mathias Guenther, Wilfrid Laurier University “Her book illustrates how language transforms experience, but also provides a very personal history of how immersion in another culture and its language transformed her.” • Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, University of California, DavisTable of Contents List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Chapter 1. The Rabies Run Chapter 2. The Harvard Camp at Dobe Chapter 3. At "Toothbrush Tree" Chapter 4. You Had to Have Been There Chapter 5. A Road Trip Chapter 6. A Creative Community Chapter 7. Ju/'hoansi, Their Neighbors, and I Chapter 8. The Threads of the Sky Chapter 9. Bright Night of the Soul Chapter 10. Life in Death and Death in Life Epilogue References Index

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Book Synopsis The “meantime” represents the gap between what is past and the unknown future. When considered as waiting, the meantime is defined as a period of suspension to be endured. By contrast, the contributors of this volume understand it as a space of “the possible” where calculation coexists with uncertainty, promises with disappointment, and imminence with deferral. Attending to the temporalities of emerging rather than settled facts, they put the stress on the temporal tactics, social commitments, material connections, dispositional orientations, and affective circuits that emerge in the meantime even in the most desperate times.Trade Review “[This volume] curates an extraordinary conversation about what it means to wait, seemingly without end, in a moment that is supposedly defined by instantaneity. The book’s timing and its framing could not be better.” • Bruce O'Neill, Saint Louis University “This is a superb volume, on the subject of a particular temporal mode—what the editors call “the meantime”… this book is top-notch scholarship, on a cutting-edge subject that will make a significant contribution to not only anthropology but cognate fields.” • Anne Allison, Duke UniversityTable of Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: In the Meantime Adeline Masquelier and Deborah Durham Chapter 1. “Just Waiting”: Korean Chinese Mobility and Immobility in Transnational Migration June Hee Kwon Chapter 2. In the Meanplace: Traversing Boom and Bust in China’s High Growth/Ghost Town Michael Alexander Ulfstjerne Entretemps: “A Lot of Standing Around in the Dark”: Specters of Waiting in Paranormal Research Misty L. Bastian Chapter 3. Raising Consciousness in the Costa Rican Seasonal Low Sabia McCoy-Torres Chapter 4. Stranded in Decolonization: The Attritional Temporality of Sahrawi Activism in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara Mark Drury Entretemps: Machine-Made Time: Dialysis and the Complexities of Waiting and Planning Janelle S. Taylor and Ann M. O’Hare Chapter 5. Waiting for Thieves: Nighttime Capital and the Labor of Sitting in Niger Adeline Masquelier Chapter 6. Waiting to Heal in “Crip Time”: Temporalities of Chronic Skin Wounds amongst Gunshot Survivors in New Orleans Daniella Santoro Entretemps: Urgency, Boredom and Pandemic Mean/Time(s) Martin Demant Frederiksen Chapter 7. African Time,Waiting, and Deadlines in Botswana Deborah Durham Chapter 8. Waiting Out the Rush: On the Durability of Wealth in Kenya’s Coastal Sex Economies George Paul Meiu Afterword: In Slow Time Thomas Hylland Eriksen

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Book Synopsis What are we to make of statements that jaguars see themselves as humans, or of doubts about the boundary between dreams and waking? Jointly authored by an anthropologist and a philosopher, this book investigates some of the most puzzling ideas and practices reported in modern ethnography and ancient philosophy, concerning humans, animals, persons, spirits, agency, selfhood, consciousness, nature, life, death, disease and health. The study’s twin aims are first to explore the possibility of achieving a better understanding of the materials we discuss and then to see what lessons we can draw from them to challenge and revise our own fundamental assumptions.Trade Review “This is a work of outstanding interest and originality, both in form and in content.” • Nicholas Jardine, Cambridge University “This is a rare treat: a sequence of conversations between an anthropologist and a philosopher who tease out a series of fascinating questions, notably those posed to the mind of the philosopher by the materials of the anthropologist. It is a hugely illuminating exercise, because of who they are and what they are discussing.” • Marilyn Strathern, Cambridge UniversityTable of Contents Introduction Chapter 1. Are People and Animals Separate Kinds of Beings? Chapter 2. Could Animal-Human Transformations Be Considered as Dreaming or Hallucinating? Chapter 3. Could We Think of Transformations as Metaphoric? Chapter 4. Similarities and Contrasts with Ancient Greece Chapter 5. Are There Complete and Incomplete Transformations? Chapter 6. How Do Things Become Equivalent? Chapter 7. Is Shamanism a Kind of Disease? Chapter 8. Are There Objects without Perspectives? Chapter 9. Why Are Some Animals Unable to Transform? Chapter 10. Do Transformations Need Proof? Are Shamans and Healers Ever Doubted? Chapter 11. Are Transformations Analogous to Miracles? Is It All about Believing? Chapter 12. Is Proof Linked to Literacy? Chapter 13. Could Those Transformations Be Compared to Those in Literary Fiction? Chapter 14. Should We Talk about Ontologies When Faced with a World in Flux? Chapter 15. Anthropologists and Philosophers Conclusion References Index

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Book Synopsis Examining how people alter or customize various dimensions of their temporal experience, this volume discovers how we resist external sources of temporal constraint or structure. These ethnographic studies are international in scope and look at many different countries and continents. They come to the overall conclusion that people construct their own circumstances with the intention to modify their experience of time.Trade Review “…an eclectic and enthralling collection of ethnographic studies…[that] is well structured and beautifully written. As the afterword notes, the book almost reads like a novel, with captivating ethnographic stories on themes ranging from the mundane to the spiritual. The variety of cultures covered—from Canada to Brazil to Kyrgyzstan—attests to an important aspect of time work: it’s universal. We all need time, and we all need to work on our time.” • Contemporary Sociology “This book is a highly valuable and stimulating contribution to any social scientists interested in time. As any good scholarship, it certainly opens up conductive lines of inquiry to be further addressed in social studies of time. Furthermore, the chapters are very fluently written, well-presented, and highly readable, which, among other things, testify to the excellent work of the book’s editors.” • Symbolic Interaction “Overall, the series of chapters constitutes a wide-ranging and provocative expansion of the initial framing of the concept of timework and details the bases in ethnographical evidence for its contemporary development. In the process, some highly relevant and nuanced insights emerge from this wider-scoped timework research, in terms of its relevance to and import for contemporary discourses about human agency in a wide range of settings. The editors weave these thematic sets of contributions into a compelling narrative of temporal agency as a deeply personal yet culturally situated and diverse family of activities with a universal relevance that is deserving of further social scientific inquiry.” • Kronoscope “The central theme of this book is crucial to our understanding of the present. The conceptual themes of the chapters are very complementary and detailed … an inspiration for study and for readers’ own research. Each is well written, and warmly appreciative of local wisdom.” • Jane Guyer, Johns Hopkins University “[This book] deals with issues of time, and particularly of people's attempts to manipulate temporal experience. In that way it speaks to a topic that has always been somewhat present in the social sciences, but that only relatively recently sees sustained and in-depth attention.” • Stef Jansen, University of ManchesterTable of Contents PART I: BEGINNINGS, CONCEPTS, AND QUESTIONS Introduction Michael G. Flaherty, Anne Line Dalsgård, and Lotte Meinert Chapter 1. The Lathe of Time: Some Principles of Temporal Agency Michael G. Flaherty PART II: TEMPORAL AFFLICTIONS Chapter 2. Repetition Work: Healing Spirits and Trauma in the Churches of Northern Uganda Lars Williams and Lotte Meinert Chapter 3. ADHD and Temporal Experiences: Struggling for Synchronization Mikka Nielsen PART III: THE POLITICS OF TIME Chapter 4. Hacking Time and Looping Temporalities in the Identification of the Adult “Living Disappeared” in Argentina Noa Vaisman Chapter 5. Temporal Front and Back Stages: Time Work as Resistance Lisa-Jo K. van den Scott PART IV: SPIRITUALITY AND ATHEISM AS TEMPORAL AGENCY Chapter 6. Se Deus Quiser: Catholicism as Time Work among the Xukuru of Pernambuco Clarissa Martins Lima Chapter 7. “It Is Just Doing the Motion”: Atheist Time Work in Contemporary Kyrgyzstan Maria Louw PART V: REINVENTING THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE Chapter 8. Inventing New Time: Time Work in the Grief Practices of Bereaved Parents Dorthe Refslund Christensen and Kjetil Sandvik Chapter 9. Now Is Not: Future Anteriority and a Georgian in Russia Martin Demant Frederiksen PART VI: TIME AND DEPRIVATION Chapter 10. The Work of Waiting: Boredom, Teatime, and Future-Making in Niger Adeline Masquelier Chapter 11. Balancing Blood Sugar: Fasting, Feeling, and Time Work During the Egyptian Ramadan Mille Kjærgaard Thorsen and Anne Line Dalsgård Afterword Carmen Leccardi Index

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