{"product_id":"the-empty-seashell-9780801452956","title":"The Empty Seashell","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn a book based on more than three years of fieldwork, Nils Bubandt argues that cannibal witches for people in the coastal, and predominantly Christian, community of Buli in the Indonesian province of North Maluku are both corporeally real and fundamentally unknowable.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this intriguing study of witchcraft in a Buli community in Indonesia, [Bunandt] sets out to explore the complex nature of witchcraft in that community as something that exists but is unseen.... Overall,this well-written and welcome book adds to the understanding of witchcraft in anthropology, especially in regard to doubt and modernity.\u003c\/p\u003e * CHOICE *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eBubandt likens the witch-menace to nuclear war on terrorism: 'a threat that is both real and yet often absents itself from daily experience.' Witchcraft is, therefore, a paradox: it's everywhere and nowhere, real and impossible,hauntingly vivid yet intangible and invisible.... Bubandt describes a characteristic of the human mind that is universal yet not always obvious to those proud of their post-Enlightenment heritage. Our brains are simultaneously full of knowing and not knowing,believing and doubting, fearing and rationally dismissing fears. We know these to be incompatible opposites, but can't help having them both in play at any one time. And so we comfort ourselves with the illusion of singularity, and of secular triumph. One thing we know for sure is that we have to appear to know things, when really we may know nothing at all.\u003c\/p\u003e -- Malcolm Gaskill * Fortean Times *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Empty Seashell \u003c\/i\u003enever strays far from the scene of witchcraft, from the myths that offer historical and ontological explanations for the close knit between human life and witchcraft in Buli through accounts of individual lives rent apart by accusations or attacks to the destructive ramifications of such occurrences for the community, including how incidents may reverberate across generations as old grudges or suspicions are resurrected to animate new ones.... Bubandt is to be commended for highlighting the precariousness and forces of world-unmaking that are as much a part of social life as the assumed sturdiness that prevails in social scientific works.\u003c\/p\u003e -- Patricia Spyer * Anthropological Forum *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eIntroduction: The Shell of the Nautilus\u003cbr\u003e 1. Witchcraft, Doubt, and Aporia\u003cbr\u003e 2. The Origins of Witchcraft and the Doubts of Tradition\u003cbr\u003e 3. Hope, Conversion, and Millennial Politics\u003cbr\u003e 4. Christianity and Deception\u003cbr\u003e 5. The Viscerality of Witchcraft and the Corporeality of the World\u003cbr\u003e 6. New Order Modern\u003cbr\u003e 7. Subjectivity, Exchange, Opacity\u003cbr\u003e 8. Technology, Money, and the Futures of Witchcraft\u003cbr\u003e Conclusion: Witchcraft beyond Belief\u003ci\u003eNotes\u003cbr\u003e Bibliography\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MB - Cornell University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53515486200151,"sku":"9780801452956","price":81.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-empty-seashell-9780801452956","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}