Search results for ""Author Terence Turner""

Not since Clifford Geertz's "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" has the publication of an anthropological analysis been as eagerly awaited as this book, Terence S. Turner's The Fire of the Jaguar. His reanalysis of the famous myth from the Kayapo people of Brazil was anticipated as an exemplar of a new, dynamic, materialist, action-oriented structuralism, one very different from the kind made famous by Claude Levi-Strauss. But the study never fully materialized. Now, with this volume, it has arrived, bringing with it powerful new insights that challenge the way we think about structuralism, its legacy, and the reasons we have moved away from it. In these chapters, Turner carries out one of the richest and most sustained analysis of a single myth ever conducted. Turner places the "Fire of the Jaguar" myth in the full context of Kayapo society and culture and shows how it became both an origin tale and model for the work of socialization, which is the primary form of productive labor in Kayapo society. A posthumous tribute to Turner's theoretical erudition, ethnographic rigor, and respect for Amazonian indigenous lifeworlds, this book brings this fascinating Kayapo myth alive for new generations of anthropologists. Accompanied with some of Turner's related pieces on Kayapo cosmology, this book is at once a richly literary work and an illuminating meditation on the process of creativity itself.

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Many anthropologists return to their original fieldwork sites a number of times during their careers, but this experience has seldom been subjected to analytic and theoretical scrutiny. The contributors to Returns to the Field have all undertaken multitemporal fieldwork—repeated visits to the same place—over periods ranging from 20 to 40 years among minority groups in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Melanesia. Over the years of contact, these anthropologists have witnessed dramatic changes, but also the perseverance of the people they have worked with. In vivid and personal essays, the authors examine the ramifications of this type of fieldwork practice—the kind of knowledge it produces, what methodological tools are appropriate, and how relationships with people in the field site change over time.

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Many anthropologists return to their original fieldwork sites a number of times during their careers, but this experience has seldom been subjected to analytic and theoretical scrutiny. The contributors to Returns to the Field have all undertaken multitemporal fieldwork—repeated visits to the same place—over periods ranging from 20 to 40 years among minority groups in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Melanesia. Over the years of contact, these anthropologists have witnessed dramatic changes, but also the perseverance of the people they have worked with. In vivid and personal essays, the authors examine the ramifications of this type of fieldwork practice—the kind of knowledge it produces, what methodological tools are appropriate, and how relationships with people in the field site change over time.

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Friedman and a distinguished group of contributors offer a compelling analysis of globalization and the lethal explosiveness that characterizes the current world order. In particular, they investigate global processes and political forces that determine networks of crime, commerce and terror, and reveal the economic, social and cultural fragmentation of transnational networks. In a critical introduction, Friedman evaluates how transnational capital represents a truly global force, but geographical decentralization of accumulation still leads to declining state hegemony in some areas and increasing hegemony in others. The authors examine the growth and increasing autonomy of indigenous populations, and the massively destabililizing effect of migration processes. They describe the rapid increase in criminalization of ethnic and immigrant groups as well as an increase in class stratification, creating new forms of social confrontation and violence. In addition to ethnic, identity-based conflict there are analyses of transnational criminal networks, which also represents disintegration of larger homogeneous territories or hierarchical orders. The authors ask us to reevaluate the dynamics of globalization—the contradictions of centralization and fragmentation around the world—as we discover how best to transform these conditions for the future. This research was originally funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. Globalization, the State and Violence will be a valuable reference in anthropology, social theory, international politics and economics, ethnic conflict, immigration, and economic history.

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