Description
Book Synopsis In various ways, the essays presented in this volume explore the structures and aesthetic possibilities of music, dance and dramatic representation in ritual and theatrical situations in a diversity of ethnographic contexts in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. Each essay enters into a discussion of the “logic” of aesthetic processes exploring their social and political and symbolic import. The aim is above all to explore the way artistic and aesthetic practices in performance produce and structure experience.
Trade Review “There is much to recommend in this volume…a fascinating array of cases …an excellent job [by the editors] of introducing the main issues…many of the essays are accompanied by illustrations and photographs that enhance and exemplify the arguments.” · Eyal Ben-Ari in JRAI
Table of Contents List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Aesthetics of Symbolic Construction and Experience
Bruce Kapferer and Angela Hobart
Chapter 1. Making Grown Men Weep
William O. Beeman
Chapter 2. The Buzz of God and the Click of Delight
David Shulman
Chapter 3. Songs of Love, Images of Memory
Saskia Kersenboom
Chapter 4. The Hindu Temple and the Aesthetics of the Imaginary
Rohan Bastin
Chapter 5. Where Divine Horsemen Ride: Trance Dancing in West Africa
Steven M. Friedson
Chapter 6. Sorcery and the Beautiful: A Discourse on the Aesthetics of Ritual
Bruce Kapferer
Chapter 7. Transformation and Aesthetics in Balinese Masked Performances—Rangda and Barong
Angela Hobart
Chapter 8. A Concise Reflection on the Brazilian Carnival
Roberto DaMatta
Chapter 9. Bureaucratic Logic, Bureaucratic Aesthetics: The Opening Event of Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day in Israel
Don Handelman
Chapter 10. Compassion for Animals, Indifference to Humans: Non- and Misperceptions among Circus Audiences in 1970s Britain
Yoram S. Carmeli
Notes on Contributors
Index
