Classical Anthropology Research Articles

Tim Ingold and Object-Oriented Anthropology

Tim Ingold, while extending the radical undertaking of vitalism, with its Nietzschean matrix, puts the decentering undertaken by this philosophical tradition on a more solid foundation, opening up a new space of interobjective relations. Instead of an epistemic plunge into human categories, the goal is to move towards a broader ontological space, including other sites of meaning, such as chairs, spirits, animals, baskets, and many others. Unlike more classical anthropology, with its well-delimited Anthropos as an inevitable transcendental horizon, Ingold suggests a world where humans are not protagonists, but rather provisional negotiators within a large mesh of subjectless experiences. The model proposed in this essay distances itself from the plane of (neo)-Kantian speculation, converting its contours into something less orthodox by making room for a possible Object-Oriented Anthropology (O.O.A).

Fashion, Thresholds, and Borders

Fashion, Thresholds, and Borders

Fractured Landscape, Flowing Culture & Fabricated Identities: Exploring and Evoking the Transnational Middle Class in Amitav Ghosh's Fiction

The transnational middle class provides us with notions about culture-areas that overlap several nation-states, or of multicultural nations. Cultural diversity, historical memory, and societal organizations are never inscribed on a neutral grid in transnational space. Amitav Ghosh invokes a crucial inquiry of transnationalism: how do we locate the hybrid middle class transnational culture? Does the transnational encounter unsettle the idea that cultures and countries are analogous, leading to a new middle-class culture? In my paper I am going to explore how transnationalism complicates the relationship between space and culture. How the question of interpreting social change and cultural transformation as occurring within interconnected areas is raised by the fractured landscape of independent nations and sovereign cultures. We can see that identity of place emerges from a specific dialogic involvement in a framework of hierarchically organized spaces with its cultured fabrication as a community in the middleclass notions of locality or community, which refer to both a demarcated physical space and clusters of interaction. Ghosh's transnational middle class has been mobile and identities less fixed than the static approaches of classical anthropology. The rapidly growing and intensifying movement of the middle class, combined with a rejection of cultural products and practices, has created a profound sense of loss of territorial roots, erosion of place cultural distinctiveness, and anthropological theory ferment. In the world of Diaspora, transnational cultural flows and mass movement of populations, old-fashioned attempts to map the globe as a set of culture regions or homelands are bewildered by a dazzling zrray of postcolonial simulacra, doublings and redoubling.

Magiczno-religijna mozaika. Źródła obrazów postaci bogów Krain Wewnętrznego Morza z „Sagi o Zbóju Twardokęsku” Anny Brzezińskiej

The aim of this article is to find the sources of images of the Inner Sea Lands gods in Anna Brzezińska’s “Saga of Twardokęsek the Brigand”. The author presents the most important features of these characters, their most recognizable actions and attributes, comparing them with possible prototypes derived from Greek, Roman, Scandinavian, Slavic, and Hindu mythology, as well as Christianity. She points out that the gods in Brzezińska’s saga, although worshipped, are not omnipotent and do not possess full creative powers. They turn out to be only slightly more powerful than their off spring, the fruit of their relationships with humans — witches. Shaping human fates, they are only able to recreate ancient patterns over and over again and are subject to a higher power (similarly to how the Greek gods were subject to Fatum). In their images, we can also find traces of inspiration from the classic mythopoetic fantasy, especially Ursula K. Le Guin’s series about the Earthsea. Thus, these images can be seen as a magical-religious mosaic, which evokes associations with the considerations of classical anthropology on the relations between magic and religion. The author also puts forward the hypothesis about treating these images as a metaphor for the process of creating literature, especially in its original, oral form.

Analysing Non-Existent and Existing Tourisms in Eastern Siberia among the Evenki, Even, Koryak and Itelmen

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Siberian indigenous villagers and nomads have often struggled to find enough income to sustain themselves. Some natives think that ethno-tourism can be a source of income, but there is currently little tourism in Siberia. In the circumpolar Arctic, tourism is presented as a source of economic development. The Russian Federation’s Official Plan for Economic Development to 2030 also includes the growth of tourism; to this end, Russia has mobilised specialised taskforces. What will be the economic, social and cultural consequences for native communities? What forms of tourism will be beneficial for them? What perceptions do Siberian natives have of tourism? This transdisciplinary paper compares non-existent tourism, as it is imagined, desired, or deplored by native townspeople, villagers, and nomadic herders of the Sakha-Yakutia Republic and Amur region, with existing ethno-tourism experiences in Kamchatka. Based on ethnographic material collected from 1994 to 2016, the paper used participatory fieldwork, hypothesising performed by indigenous co-researchers and an anthropologist, and classical anthropology. It analyses existing and non-existent tourisms on the economic, social, cultural, and administrative levels.

The Culture of ”Crossroads”: the Emergency of Blues as a Countercultural Declaration

Introduction. Apart from classical academic musicology, sociology, social anthropology and related disciplines such as sociolinguistics, philology, and cultural studies contributed to the development of research of music and its role in social, interpersonal relations, and individual experiences. The aim of this research is to investigate musical and singing traditions within the context of social relations, historical challenges, and sub-cultures by sociological and social anthropological approaches. In the last decades these research is of relevance for scholars interested in creativity and creative individuals whose impact effect is ambient in current social and political processes. The main tradition can be approached as a socio-cultural phenomenon emerging in the form of sub-culture.Methodology and sources. Methodological b ackground o f t his r esearch i s o f s tructuralfunctional character. Within this framework art and creativity can be approached by various sets of research techniques. Culture of music can be studies both as an object and as a text; hence, textual and contextual approaches are of significance. In result, we can discover reasons motivating people to influence social relations and preconceptions within certain groups and societies. This approach allows the analysis the connections between individual and collective perceptions of people regarding their identities and place in a society. Finally, not only music shapes the context of sociolultural phenomena, but it is the context itself per se. For this paper I used texts and bibliographic data of singers such as follows: Son House, Robert Johnson, Skip James, William Samuel McTell, Edward W. Clayborn.Results and discussion. The analysis of social history of blues in the end of the nineteenth and in the beginning of the twentieth centuries as well as biographies of bluesmen along with the texts of their songs clearly demonstrates poetic motifs, individual and social reflections of different communities. The images such as love and flirt, manqué love, rest from hard work, roads, railways, trains, abandoned home with simultaneous lack of home, prison, illness, death and cemetery as well as the demonstration of all the listed images by socially oriented creativity in music, represents deep forms of marginality of those who sing it out in front of respected citizens living normal lives.Conclusion. The material scrutinized in this paper clearly shoes that blues as a genre of music along with bluesmen who are representatives of a certain sub-culture, constitute a coherent social system which can be characterized a s a c ounter-culture. This social and cultural phenomenon in a way we encounter it derived from marginal status of its representatives. This marginal status becomes visible in blues as emotion and soulreflection to a large degree contradictory to the idea of respectable citizens and so-called “right way of life”.

Do Forms of Knowledge Production Circulate?

Forms of knowledge production adopted by academics in a given national space do not emerge without the right circumstances. Student circulation has a bearing on knowledge import processes. Opening with an overview of the field of Argentinian anthropology in the 1970s and 1980s, this article looks at some of the consequences of the international circulation of Argentinian students through the Social Anthropology Master’s and PhD Programs at the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (PPGAS-MN/UFRJ) from the late 1980s to the present. Based on documents in the PPGAS-MN archives, interviews with lecturers and former students and a review of PPGAS-MN and Argentinian university syllabi, this article: (i) provides a historical description of the agreement between institutions that has facilitated this flow; (ii) describes how this circulation has given these students a new perspective on the ethnographic approach and on classical anthropology; and (iii) describes how, from a student viewpoint, this shift has altered their way of thinking about social anthropology research and given them a new habitus. The results hint at a new approach to classical anthropology and the use of ethnographic data. There were three main drivers: (i) PPGAS-MN lecturers’ emphasis on the relevance of empirical data and the primacy of theory prevailing in Argentina; (ii) the renewed deep reading of classic ethnographical texts; and (iii) the development of a new habitus as a result of socialisation in the ensuing social space.

Unsung interpreters: the jumbled practice of language translation in contemporary field research – a study of anthropological field sites in the Arab League countries

ABSTRACTDespite some recent criticism, the idea of language interpreting in anthropological (among others) field research seems still firmly rooted in classical anthropology where the interpreter was an obstacle and necessary evil rather than aid. We surveyed anthropologists conducting field research in Arab League countries to describe their practices and give them voice in the matter. We found that while a share of anthropologists appreciates interpreters’ input, an equally striking number does not even recognize they used one. We discuss practices of having team members and local officials working as courtesy interpreters and its effect on ethics, safety and validity of data collection.

The Concept of Ethnography in Mafeje

In classical anthropology, the term “ethnography” refers to the scientific description of races. Yet, Archie Mafeje uses the concept of ethnography in what seems to be two ways. On the one hand, ethnography, such as he conceives of it, has socio-cultural connotations. It is his preferred substitute for the nebulous concept of “culture”. On the other hand, by ethnography he seems to refer to the idea of non-disciplinarity. In other words, the concept of ethnography becomes the substitute candidate for the social sciences, as they are conventionally known. Either the concept carries both meanings or Mafeje simply equivocates. This article discusses Mafeje's concept of ethnography. First, the article contextualises the discussion by providing a broad outline of his theoretical orientation. Second, given that his use of the concept of ethnography departs from that of an anthropological research method, the concept is explained and outlined. The remainder of the article demonstrates how Mafeje sets this concept to work by discussing his study of the tributary mode of production of the pre-colonial interlacustrine kingdoms of the Great Lakes region.

Nature and culture: blurring the borders

For many centuries, interpreting culture as something additional, constructed above nature, researchers have created the effect of their mutual alienation from one another. At present, new naturalism has undertaken the task to erase the borders between nature and culture, humans and animals. Representatives of this school oppose classical philosophical anthropology that proclaims man to be a special kind of being. The forefront of their thinking is taken by the nonhuman Other, natural world, the “thinking ocean” or the “information field of cosmic space”. The article offers a critical analysis of modern naturalistic approaches, considers the following issues: man as part of the natural kingdom or a special kind of being; the picture of the world is centered around man or develops without him; man as a product of the evolution of nature or a social creation, he is the crown of creation or a defective creature, etc. As has been shown, an attempt to avoid anthropocentrism by removing the anthropological theme as ultimately significant becomes inconsistent. The author comes to the conclusion that comprehension of man only by means of biology is impossible, and requires the expertise of the humanities as well.

V научная видеоконференция «Человек как существо природное, социальное, экзистенциальное: “болевые точки” философской антропологии» (памяти Павла Семёновича Гуревича). Москва–Нижний Новгород, 11 июня 2019 г.

11 июня 2019 г. прошла V ежегодная научная видеоконференция, организованная сектором истории антропологических учений Института философии РАН (г. Москва) и факультетом социальных наук Нижегородского государственного университета им. Н.И. Лобачевского (г. Нижний Новгород), посвящённая памяти выдающегося мыслителя Павла Семёновича Гуревича. На конференции были затронуты глобальные проблемы, перед которыми сегодня стоит человечество. Сквозной прозвучала тема влияния современных технологий на человеческую природу, мышление и эмоциональный мир человека, чрезвычайно обострившая проблему смысла человеческого существования. Были проанализированы современные естественнонаучные и философско-антропологические концепции, претендующие на описание исторических перспектив развития человечества. В процессе дискуссии участники обратили внимание на многоликость человека: его можно считать зверем или, напротив, историческим актором, к нему можно относиться как к реальному существу, но есть основание считать его фиктивным, виртуальным и галлюцинаторным. Человек стал множественным и в перспективе беспредельно разным. Было показано, что глубокого изучения требуют многие проблемы философской антропологии, в том числе затронутые в процессе обсуждения. Но в центре философских размышлений оказывается вопрос: удастся ли человеку сохранить самого себя? Ведь, как писал П.С. Гуревич в своей книге «Классическая и неклассическая антропология: сравнительный анализ», после десяти тысяч лет истории человек впервые стал целиком и полностью проблематичным. Он уже не знает, что он такое, но знает об этом незнании.

ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PROJECT OF ETHICAL TRAVEL. COLONIALISM, RESEARCH EXPEDITIONS AND MASS TOURISM IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Purpose. The aim of the article is theoretical reflection on selected aspects of anthropological, philosophical and cultural thought,as well asreflection on anthropology as a project of ethical travel and intercultural communication within the historical context of the development of the discipline. The research also regardsreflection on research methods and on the figure of the Other in cultural, ethical and communication dimensions. Method. Analysis and interpretation of cultural texts, including research in the field of anthropology. Reinterpretation of classical anthropology within the context of travel theory. Findings. The analysis allows us to conclude that anthropology is essentially a project of ethical travel and intercultural communication. The evidence isturning points in the history of the discipline, the development of its research methods and meta-reflection regarding the experience of travelling to another culture along with mythologising and demythologising the Other and the researcher in scientific discourse. The analysis of the typology of travelers, colonial and postcolonial discourse, along with the location of travel experience, co-presence and diversity of anthropology and mass tourism, have shown that the research journey has played an important, auto-defining role in the Western reflection on the meeting with the Other. Research and conclusions limitations. The research is limited in ahistorical sense, belonging to a specific epoch and the contemporary postcolonial scientific discourse prevailing and methodologically, situating itself within the paradigm of cultural and communication research on tourism. Originality. The originality of the work results from an interdisciplinary view on the issues of anthropological research travel, the location of anthropology in the context of travel perception, selected theories and philosophies of travel. The choice of quoted concepts and arguments are the author’s. Reflection on the ethical dimension of the anthropological project, which has been developed for over 100 years, is important within the context of development of postcolonial discourse and alternative “indigenous” anthropologies, as well as contemporary transformations of intercultural communication under the influence of new technologies and dynamic and mass social processes related to spatial and socio-cultural mobility, tourism and migration. Type of paper. Theoretical work.

Commonwealth, inalienable possessions, and the res publica: The anthropology of aristocratic order and the landed estate

ABSTRACTAnnette Weiner used the term ‘inalienable possessions’ to describe a category of property of fundamental importance in Oceania, and in Europe, from Roman times until the eighteenth century. The archetypal form of this inalienable wealth is the landed estate – the ‘immovable property’ of Romano-Germanic law. This type of wealth, inherently political and carrying functions we associate with the state, has been historically produced by aristocratic social orders. I argue that classical anthropology missed the opportunity to explore aristocracy as a comparative analytical category. A re-examination of classic ethnographies reveals the importance of both aristocracy and this inalienable power-wealth, even in iconic accounts of ‘egalitarian society’ such as Evans-Pritchard’s study of the Nuer. Further consideration of inalienable property shows it to be central to the early-modern state (Commonwealth) just as it was to the Roman republic (Res Publica), and suggests the possibility of a productive new comparative frame of analysis.

CLASSICAL AND NON-CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Introduction: The goals and values of human life, the search for the meaning of human existence contain the potential for a meaningful, progressive development of philosophical and anthropological ideas at any time in history. One of the tasks of philosophical anthropology is the formation of the image of man, the choice of ways to achieve the ideal, the methods of comprehension and resolution of universal problems. The increasing processes of differentiation in science led to the formation of different views on the nature of man, to the distinction between classical and non-classical philosophical anthropology. А comparative analysis of these trends is given in this article. Materials and methods: The dialectical method is preferred in the question of research methodology, the hermeneutic and phenomenological approaches are used. Results: The development of philosophical anthropology correlates with the challenges of modernity. By tracking the trends of human change, philosophical anthropology changes the approach to the consideration of its main subject of research. The whole array of disciplines that study man comes to new discoveries, new theories, and philosophical anthropology changes its view of the vision, challenging the principles of classical philosophical anthropology. Classical philosophical anthropology elevates the biological nature of man to a pedestal, non-classical philosophical anthropology actualizes questions of language, culture, thinking, understanding, actualizes the hermeneutic and phenomenological approaches. The desire to understand a person in classical philosophical anthropology is based on the desire to fully reveal the biological mechanisms in a person. The perspective of treating a person in nonclassical philosophical anthropology is polyformen: man as a text, as a dreaming self, as an eternal transition. Non-classical philosophical anthropology, goes from the idea of identity to the idea of variability, from biological concepts to questions of culture, language, thinking. Discussion and Conclusions: The global society carries a whole spectrum of changes. The fragmentation and pluralism of the era of human deconstruction transforms the thinking, imagination and needs of man. The person himself is transformed, in connection with which the development of philosophical anthropology in the modern era is actualized.

Production des statistiques sanitaires au Sénégal : entre enjeux politiques et jeux d’acteurs

Many countries have developed disease surveillance systems to deal with epidemics, but although health information systems have existed for more than two decades, constraints and biases in data collection limit the relevance of policy decisions and strategies in the field of health, as priority has been given to education and health in developing countries. Donor support has led to the development of systems for the production of statistics, designed, among other things, to more clearly target interventions in terms of educational objectives, action and credibility and enable health systems to continue to benefit from external funding. We used a classical anthropology approach based on observations and in-depth interviews with local and national health system actors. The aim of this article is to analyse the real effects of the production of health statistics in health care systems and to determine the relevance of these figures in the context in which they apply. Health priorities defined by international organizations and technical and financial partners focus on diseases considered to be ?priorities? to the detriment of neglected diseases, which are perceived as being more important at the local level due to their impact on the already limited health systems. We describe how health actors within healthcare structures adjust and adapt to public health requirements.

Global citizenship and the challenge from cultural relativism

: Do human beings live in a shared world or in several? The traditional answer from social and cultural anthropology has been that although the physical world is uniform, the world as it is perceived by humans is fundamentally and irreducibly diverse, since human worlds are culturally constructed and cultures are unique and particular in character.
 As a result of this perspective, there has always been a tense relationship between anthropology and universalist claims, as in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. This chapter charts the dialogue and tension between the cultural relativism of classic anthropology and human rights universalism, but the main focus is on the consequences of globalisation for anthropological thinking about diversity and human universals. It is argued that as a direct result of the increased interconnectedness of human societies, classic cultural relativism has become both epistemologically obsolete and normatively objectionable. Although the moral worlds inhabited by humans are still diverse, they are now connected in ways which have implications for the ethics of anthropological research. By discussing a handful of examples, the analytical and moral dilemmas are exposed, and the contrast with mid-20th century anthropology, when the world was still widely seen as ‘an archipelago of cultures’, is made abundantly clear.

Anthropology’s Origins, Christianity, and a Perspective from Africa

This article addresses the relationship between Christianity and anthropology from a perspective of the need of the church for anthropologists, and of the lack of a solid epistemological foundation for modern anthropology. Classical anthropology has been exposed as a 'broken system' by postmodern anthropologists, but buried assumptions from the classical model continue to run by faith on prior momentum. A re-integration of anthropology into a Christian theological paradigm is proposed as the means of honestly, truthfully, and genuinely, providing a rootedness and foundation for anthropology's future development. Work on the embodiment of language helps to provide means for opening a legitimate space between objectivity and subjectivity in this article.

Reterritorialization of the Body: Ethnographies of Emergent Biotechnologies

Reterritorialization of the Body:Ethnographies of Emergent Biotechnologies Alexandra Middleton, PhD Student Lesley A. Sharp, The Transplant Imaginary: Mechanical Hearts, Animal Parts, and Moral Thinking in Highly Experimental Science. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. 236 pp. Aslihan Sanal, New Organs Within Us: Transplants and the Moral Economy. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. 264 pp. Cassandra S. Crawford, Phantom Limb: Amputation, Embodiment, and Prosthetic Technology. New York: New York University Press, 2014. 314 pp. Consider this: a pig's heart pumping blood through a human's veins, after that human's heart has failed to sustain the same vital pulse. A prosthetic arm controlled by a veteran amputee's neurons, with sensory feedback enabling the sense of touch where previously nothing could be felt. A suicide victim's kidney seeking social and moral salvation, implanting itself into another's physical form. These glimpses, taken from ethnographies on biotechnological bodily interventions, speak to burgeoning realities that complicate our notion of what is—and isn't—the human body. A wave of recent critical literatures on emergent biotechnologies, which I engage here, challenge and trouble classical anthropology of the body. In The Transplant Imaginary, Lesley Sharp (2013) considers the role of moral [End Page 267] thinking in the anticipatory experimental imaginaries of xenotransplantation and bioengineering. Aslihan Sanal (2011), in New Organs Within Us, investigates castings of life, death, and the inner worlds of kidney transplantation in Turkey. Cassandra Crawford's (2014) Phantom Limb explores the phenomenon of phantom limb and the imbrication of ghosts (phantoms) with the physical form amidst prosthetization. A crucial analytical thread weaves through these works: the insufficiency of existent categories and containers (scientific, moral, social, psychical) in explaining bodies as they are extended by (and extend upon) technologies. Indeed, the body proves fickle and elusive for both the biological and social sciences. In classical anthropology, the body emerges as not only a physical being but an instrument; one might recall Marcel Mauss' (1935:75) declaration, "the body is man's first and most natural instrument." Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock (1987) offer the "three bodies"—the "individual body-self," the "social body," and the "body politic"—to conceptualize the multiple domains through which the body performs and circulates. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1988) challenge the notion of the organic body with their "body without organs," envisioning the body as multiply iterated. If Deleuze and Guattari were among the first to trouble the organic body, now we see such a challenge acquire a literal (and visceral) reality. Emerging biotechnologies and highly experimental sciences fashion bodies that defy corporeal categories. Two bodies in particular—the prosthetic body and the transplant body—raise questions to prevailing modes of anthropological thought. These bodies renegotiate their own boundaries and integrity, seemingly begging us to consider the reciprocal of Mauss' declaration: "the instrument is man's most natural body." As the ethnographies of Sharp, Sanal, and Crawford show, the instrumental increasingly reterritorializes the natural. In the liminal borderlands of the transplant and prosthetic encounters, new forms of life emerge (Fischer 2003). The lived and embodied experiences of organ transplantation and prosthetic science trouble and reframe prevailing tropes of body discourse. Several tropes in particular urge reworking: normativity and (dis)ability, the visible/invisible, the part/whole, and the mind (brain)/body. Navigating the insufficiencies of existent tropes, these ethnographies open up new ways to conceive of machines, technical objects, and their relationship with bodies. In what follows, I trace the ways in which Sharp, Shanal, and Crawford's characters probe, engage, absorb, and contend with techno-biological encounters and emergent forms of life. [End Page 268] Imagined Wholes In focusing on the lives of scientists and the ways in which "intended patients' bodies" get prefigured, Lesley Sharp's (2013:16) ethnography deals not with the concrete materiality of the body but with its (re)configuration in a technical imaginary. Yet despite this projective imaginary, she situates biotechnological reconstructions of the body in a post-millenial world, one in which "the body is already a hybridized one because we already willingly interface with all sorts of devices such that our bodies are not our own or exclusively us" (42). In the face...

Living and Dying in the Contemporary World: A Compendium ed. by Veena Das and Clara Han

Reviewed by: Living and Dying in the Contemporary World: A Compendium ed. by Veena Das and Clara Han Susan Reynolds Whyte Veena Das and Clara Han, eds. Living and Dying in the Contemporary World: A Compendium. Oakland: University of California, 2016. xiv + 876 pp. Ill. $175.00 (978-0-520-27841-7). This is a big book in several senses. Running to nearly nine hundred pages, it is hefty (1.675 kg) and weighty in subject matter, as the title suggests. With an introduction and forty-four chapters grouped in five sections, it covers the spectrum from conception to death and after, in settings around the world. The contributors are mostly anthropologists, with a sprinkling of medical historians, sociologists, and economists. Approaches tend toward phenomenology and philosophical considerations, but they are varied and include studies of interventions, regulation, and demographic trends. The volume opens with a substantial essay by the editors—not an introduction to the chapters, but a concept note, a kind of epilogue turned prologue, written after they had read the contributions. It warns against the bounding of notions of life within the subfields of medical anthropology and science and technology studies, which tend to emphasize biological life and its innovations at the expense of the broader concerns of classical anthropology and philosophy. The editors argue instead for tracing the ways in which biology and older social forms are mutually embedded, in order to understand how newness emerges. They discuss this mutual absorption of the natural and social within several areas of research: biosecurity, biopower, and biolegitimacy in relation to colonial orders; the politics of recognition around disabling biological conditions; and the production of scientific knowledge in searches for cures. Moving on to a discussion of individuality, they first remark its neglect in the work on local biologies, and then devote the last half of the concept note to the treatment of individuality and forms of life in the work of Georges Canguilhem and Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell. This concern with individuals and diverse forms of life is marked in most of the contributions to the compendium, many of which build around detailed cases of persons in particular social situations. Each section of the compendium is preceded by a brief introduction to the chapters contained therein, showing how they “take forward the ways that life and death are folded together in the lives of individuals and communities” (p. 1). It is [End Page 827] a credit to the editors that the sections cohere as well as they do and that there is a clear logic to their ordering. The first one, “Natality, Sexuality, Reproduction,” contains seven chapters spanning adoption in Mexico (Anaid Citlalli Reyes-Kipp), miscarriages in a Palestinian refugee community in Lebanon (Sylvain Perdigon), and the symbolism of pregnancy among transgender hijras in Orissa (Vaibhav Saria). In various ways, these contributions discuss technology, new and old, and ways of dealing with the dangers in all forms of reproduction. The second section, “Medical, Legal, and Pharmaceutical Spaces,” comprises ten chapters on topics from waiting in British National Health System facilities (Sophie Day) to pharmaceutical politics in Nepal (Ian Harper and Nabin Rawal) to right-to-health litigation in Brazil (João Biehl).Together they relate affliction and recovery to social institutions and considerations of justice. In the third section, “Healing: Religious and Secular Bodies,” seven chapters deal with attempts to reconstitute life and bodies, ranging widely from assumptions about the self in immunology (A. David Napier) to the irony of a Turkish healer through whom the voice of Atatürk, the modern secularist, spoke (Christopher Dole). They consider individual lives in relation to social milieu, and the ways that healing concerns the mutual containment of life and death. The ten chapters of the fourth section, “Precarious Lives,” present such diverse topics as Palestinian wives’ experiences of loss (Lotte Buch Segal), disability activism and valuation in the United States (Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp), and self-immolation in Tibet (Vincanne Adams). In considering precariousness, they deal with questions of belonging and fraught claims to a “we.” The final section, “Death and Dying,” not only has geographical reach, from post-genocide Cambodia (Anne Yvonne Guillou) to youth and cemeteries...

¿Con ventanas o sin ventanas? Winch, Apel y la monadología de las formas de vida

El siguiente trabajo se propone analizar algunas categorías epistemológicas a partir del problema antropológico de comprender una forma de vida “extraña”. Para ello, se toma como hilo conductor el programa filosófico-social de Peter Winch y en particular su crítica a la obra clásica de la antropología “Brujería, oráculos y magia entre los azande” de Evans-Pritchard. Winch, siguiendo a Wittgenstein, representa un verdadero cambio de paradigma dentro de la tradición analítica de las ciencias sociales, el cual muestra algunas similitudes con la hermenéutica (Gadamer, Ricoeur), la filosofía intercultural (Fornet-Betancourt) y el pragmatismo (Bernstein). De particular importancia resulta en este contexto el problema de la multiplicidad de las formas de vida y de la respectiva “conmensurabilidad” de los estándares de racionalidad. En respuesta a la acusación de “relativismo” de su propuesta teórica, puede afirmarse que en Winch hay dos categorías de análisis antropológico-social que permitirían, o que orientarían, la comprensión intercultural: las analogías formales y las nociones limitantes. Finalmente, se contrastan tales categorías con las críticas de Karl-Otto Apel.