Description
Book Synopsis Combining rich personal accounts from twelve veteran anthropologists with reflexive analyses of the state of anthropology today, this book is a treatise on theory and method offering fresh insights into the production of anthropological knowledge, from the creation of key concepts to major paradigm shifts. Particular focus is given to how ‘peripheral perspectives’ can help re-shape the discipline and the ways that anthropologists think about contemporary culture and society. From urban Maori communities in Aotearoa/New Zealand to the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, from Arnhem Land in Australia to the villages of Yorkshire, these accounts take us to the heart of the anthropological endeavour, decentring mainstream perspectives, and revealing the intimate relationships and processes that create anthropological knowledge.
Trade Review “The book offers both unsettling and highly inspirational reading material, especially forvacademics emerging from the world’s metropolises. It raises issues that are frequently overlooked and which represent unavoidable starting points for those doing anthropology today in the Antipodes and elsewhere.” · Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale
“This book is a good and lively read, constructed so as to draw the readers into the discussion, to make us reach our own conclusions and also to do what most of us like best: to listen carefully and to draw conclusions from the stories told to us and for us.” · Sites
“A stimulating collection of interviews.…Its value is in the biographical glimpses, intellectual perspectives and methodological insights each offer into their work. The dialogical approach works well….[T]he volume illustrates the dynamic relationship between anthropological theorizing and political practice. Rather than celebrate anthropology, the book’s role is perhaps to champion iconoclasm and the unorthodox approaches that seem to characterize many anthropological careers.” · David Mills, Oxford University
Table of Contents Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Observing Anthropologists: Professional Knowledge, Practice and Lives
Cris Shore and Susanna Trnka
Chapter 1. Suffering, Selfhood and Anthropological Encounters
Michael Jackson
Chapter 2. Anthropology, Ontology and the Maori World
Anne Salmond
Chapter 3. Building Bridges: Maori and Pakeha Relations
Joan Metge
Chapter 4. 'Culture’, ‘Race’ and ‘Me’: living the anthropology of Indigenous Australians
Gillian Cowlishaw
Chapter 5. Finding One’s Way in Arnhem Land
Nicolas Peterson
Chapter 6. Art as Action: The Yolngu
Howard Morphy
Chapter 7. Rethinking Nature and Nativeness
David Trigger
Chapter 8. More than Local, Less than Global: Anthropology in the Contemporary World
Christopher Pinney
Chapter 9. Beyond Selling Out: Art, Tourism and Indigenous Self-Representation
Nelson Graburn
Chapter 10. Sovereign Individuals and the Ontology of Selfhood
Nigel Rapport
Chapter 11. Hidden Histories and Political Transformations
Susan Wright
Chapter 12. Gender Ideology, Property Relations and Melanesia: The Field of “M”
Marilyn Strathern
Conclusion: Looking Ahead: Anthropology, Past Connections, Future Directions
Cris Shore and Susanna Trnka
