Michael Lambek Research Articles

Behind the Glass: The Villa Tugendhat and Its Family by Michael Lambek (review)

Behind the Glass: The Villa Tugendhat and Its Family by Michael Lambek (review)

Religion and Relationality in Punk: Musicking and Ordinary Ethics

Engaging with Christopher Small’s notion of musicking and Veena Das and Michael Lambek’s notion of ordinary ethics, this article analyzes research on religion in punk from religion studies, sociology, and theology to offer a (self) critique of the representation of religious belief and relationships in punk. Focusing on the presence of evangelical Christianity in contemporary punk, and emphasizing relationships as central to the activity of musicking, this article draws attention to exclusions and essentializations in research in this field. Focusing on the ordinary ethics enacted through punk musicking, rather than the normative ethics located in sometimes polemical punk statements and scholarship, it is argued that a more accurate understanding of the place of religion in punk becomes apparent by focusing on quotidian relational practices.

Michael LAMBEK, Knowledge and Practice in Mayotte: Local Discourses of Islam, Sorcery, and Spirit Possession, Toronto: University of T oronto Press, 1993; xxii + 468 pages, $24.95 (paper), $70 (cloth)

Michael LAMBEK, Knowledge and Practice in Mayotte: Local Discourses of Islam, Sorcery, and Spirit Possession, Toronto: University of T oronto Press, 1993; xxii + 468 pages, $24.95 (paper), $70 (cloth). An article from journal Culture (Volume 14, Number 1, 1994, pp. 5-109), on Érudit.

Island in the Stream: An Ethnographic History of Mayotte by Michael Lambek

Reviewed by: Island in the Stream: An Ethnographic History of Mayotte by Michael Lambek Kai Kresse Michael Lambek, Island in the Stream: An Ethnographic History of Mayotte. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. 376 pp. "If ethnography is about anything it is surely about human being-in-the-world." —Michael Lambek (2018:281) Michael Lambek, one of the most thoughtful and stimulating anthropologists of our time, presents us with a fascinating book, in which he looks back on his 40 years of fieldwork on the island of Mayotte, situated in the western Indian Ocean between Madagascar and the Comoro Islands, to which it belongs. It is a book of books, one might say. In the new and original genre of "ethnographic history" that Lambek coins here, intertwining layers of time and ethnographic experience are presented. They unfold through layers of narrative reflection and commentaries upon earlier experiences and times, of being-in-the-world on Mayotte. These are narrated from the evolving points of view of the anthropologist's respective ethnographic presents and presences, the thens and theres of ethnographic experience. This hermeneutically oriented ethnography takes account of and reflects upon social experience. Over 13 chapters, Lambek presents, revisits, and discusses perspectives on social life in Mayotte, focusing on the dynamic interplay of religion, kinship, and marriage, and of the political dimensions of migration and citizenship. These interlacing narratives [End Page 153] constitute his "ethnographic history." The intriguing particulars of this project and its conceptual features are laid out and recapped in the introductory and concluding parts (I and IV) of the book. As readers familiar with Lambek's work might expect, Gadamer's notion of a "horizon" is central here, as a blurred and dynamically changing progressive sphere of the work of human understanding. The horizon stands as a leitmotif for a hermeneutical and, in Lambek's view, adequately sensitized approach to the understanding of human beings—anywhere in the world—as enveloped, embedded, and entrapped in dynamic and multi-layered processes of meaning-making and becoming. These are in turn, again, shaping them as particular historical and moral beings, in specific ways and according to their respective surroundings, in terms of culture, language, and history. In the interplay of understanding that Lambek sketches out here for Mayotte, "horizons of the past" and "horizons of the future" (279–280) intersect, overlap, and characterize human experience and perception as specific processes of historical coming-into-being that is shifting and in flux. "Moral horizons" mark the relational intersecting dimensions of processes of knowledge in practice, which are linked to specific obligations and normative expectations that people respond to and/or set for themselves. In related philosophical terms, from which Lambek draws often, and as ably as only few anthropologists can, aspects of "being-in-theworld" (Heidegger) and the "human condition" (Arendt) stand out and are emphasized (281). While constituting the leitmotif for this book, the newly coined genre of ethnographic history is introduced also as "central conceit" (5): as a long-term synchronic portrayal, it is a narrative that is historically oriented but narrated with a view to a given present, which is itself to be understood by means of the (historically informed) ethnographic account. In the opening paragraph of the Preface, Lambek characterizes this new anthropological genre as "composed of successive portraits or analyses written at different times in series of ethnographic presents, each with their own changing horizons of future and past" (xxi). This characterization echoes a Gadamer quotation that is used as the epigraph for the book. It points to the dynamic existential horizons of future and past which, in their interplay, constitute the human perception of what is called "the present" (xxi). The more experienced Lambek readers will see a number of versions of earlier publications in these chapters, adjusted and revised to fit the overarching narrative voice of ethnographic history presented here. This [End Page 154] works well, as a multi-layered narrative moving backwards and forwards in time becomes more meaningful as it proceeds. As readers, we are being treated to rich and vivid accounts of significant instances of everyday life, observed in different decades by the ever-returning anthropologist, who then also guides...

Michael Lambek, Island in the Stream. An Ethnographic History of Mayotte

Michael Lambek reunit dans cet ouvrage differents articles, rediges au cours de quarante annees de recherches a Mayotte. Il y rend compte du stream of time (« cours du temps ») : d’une part, de l’evolution contextuelle et politique de ses ethnographies au fur et a mesure du processus de departementalisation francaise de l’ile ; d’autre part, des pratiques, experiences et personnes rendues a leurs temporalites intrinseques durant cette meme periode, dans lesquelles l’anthropologue lui-meme se ...

Island in the Stream: An Ethnographic History of Mayotte by Michael Lambek

Reviewed by: Island in the Stream: An Ethnographic History of Mayotte by Michael Lambek Claudy Delné Lambek, Michael. Island in the Stream: An Ethnographic History of Mayotte. UP of Toronto, 2018. 978-1-4875-2299-5. Pp. 338. Island in the Stream is neither the title of a song by Dolly Parton or Kenny Rogers nor a posthumous text by Hemingway. This ethnographic work by Lambek is part of a long-term perspective with regard to the field of research to which he has devoted himself for many decades. This text is timely in that it culminates in a series of research projects undertaken since 1991 under the name of Anthropological Horizons Series. Given the political status of Mayotte, well-informed readers will soon be disappointed if they seek to inquire into any political history of the island. The decision of the Mahorais people to remain in the bosom of the French Republic by opting for the status of overseas department validates the epistemological position of Aimé Césaire and Leopold Sédar Senghor—national liberation does not necessarily favor human emancipation. Similarly, self-determination does not always result in the sovereignty of the state as the antinomies of freedom. Lambek shows once again, through the various essays that form the frame of this book, that Mayotte has chosen to live its emancipation under horizons other than national sovereignty. Drawing from a genre he calls an ethnographic history that is to be dissociated from historical ethnography, Lambek's work is a biography of a community that takes shape in "successive portraits or analyses written at different times in a series of ethnographic presents, each with their changing horizons of future and past" (xxi). The book focuses on two Mahorais villages, with a set of topics such as historicity, ethical life, sociality, marriage, and exchanges that transcend them considerably. What seems original in this research is the methodological rigor with which Lambek approaches these different themes by drawing inspiration from the history of German thought from Husserl, via Heidegger, to arrive at Gadamer and Koselleck so as to better apprehend his object. The author demonstrates a great deal of objectivity for not highlighting the return of the ethnographer with his intermittent visits to the detriment of the progress of the community studied within these forty years of his field of research. Gadamer's introductory thought establishes the direction of this work: "Historical thinking has its dignity and values as truth in the acknowledgment that there is no present, but rather constantly changing horizons of future and past" (xxi). Lambek's series of essays captures the essence of the metaphor of Heraclitus—one never bathes twice in the same river—to emphasize the tension between identity understood as constancy and as movement (xxvii). Readers will appreciate the importance that the ethnographer devotes to the dream narrative as a form of historical consciousness and as an object of anthropological study (184). Lambek's case study is an original work of epistemological exploration that challenges all of us. [End Page 239] Claudy Delné Independent Scholar Copyright © 2020 American Association of Teachers of French

Event ethics and their elasticity: weddings in Botswana and the exploration of the tacit extraordinary

AbstractWhereas Michael Lambek situates the exploration of the significance of ‘ordinary ethics’ in the everyday as the study of ‘the ethical in the conjunction or movement between explicit local pronouncements and implicit local practices and circumstances’, this article takes the opposite view by drawing attention to special events that appear to engage – or provide space for – extraordinary ethics. Special events and their extraordinary ethics bring into relief the implicitness of the ordinary in everyday ethics. Weddings in Botswana are moments in the social life of the individual, the family and the community that produce such event ethics. On one level, the event ethics relate to the execution of these highly stylized weddings in terms of concerns about their performance and marital arrangements. On another level, the event ethics can have tacit dimensions that belong to the special nature of the occasion. This article argues not only that ‘ordinary ethics’ may be privileged through the study of what is tacit in social interactions, but that ‘event ethics’ also demonstrate the importance of the tacit.

Auld lang syne

Auld lang syne

The materiality of marriage payments

It is generally agreed that rates of marriage are declining in Southern Africa. It is also clear that for people who are wealthy enough to marry, the long-standing constitution of marriage as process is increasingly replaced by a making of marriage as event. What I wish to add to both of these broad assessments is something that this focus on the decline of marriage might risk overlooking, which is the proliferation of partial or unfinished but nonetheless deeply consequential unions: bonds of affinity that, in rural northern KwaZulu-Natal, as in many other parts of Southern Africa, are set in motion by histories of material prestation, including but not limited to marriage payments as such. Engaging with recent theoretical work by Michael Lambek, I explore this social consequentiality of marriage payments — finished or not — by focusing on the efficacy and the afterlives of the act of prestation itself. I suggest that these transactions constitute sensuous figurations of both kinship and affinity, in a process that draws its effects from the recognition of an act by a sensing audience, including, very importantly, the audience of the dead. This produces enchainments of marriage payments in social processes that outlive their performance, whether they are part of a concluded bond or not.

Comment

Journal of the Royal Anthropological InstituteVolume 22, Issue 4 p. 781-785 Original Article Comment Michael Lambek, Michael Lambek University of Toronto ScarboroughSearch for more papers by this author Michael Lambek, Michael Lambek University of Toronto ScarboroughSearch for more papers by this author First published: 08 November 2016 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12494_2Citations: 16Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume22, Issue4December 2016Pages 781-785 RelatedInformation

Ethnography at its edges: The insistence of religion: A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion. Janice Boddy and Michael Lambek, eds. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. 584 pp.

Ethnography at its edges: The insistence of religion: A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion. Janice Boddy and Michael Lambek, eds. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. 584 pp.

Ethics without immanence: A reply to Michael Lambek

A virtue of the turn called ‘ordinary ethics’ is that it can steer us toward the often tacit and seemingly pervasive presence of ethics in everyday social practice. Yet what is the status of this presence? Is ethics somehow intrinsic to discursive interaction, as suggested by Michael Lambek and by earlier writers ranging from Goffman to Habermas? I argue that ordinary ethics’ notion of ethical immanence poses risks for the anthropology of ethics. This notion indulges an old desire to trace ethics back to its roots, to some purportedly singular, determinate ‘source’ – here, a disciplinary defined object of knowledge like ‘interaction’ or ‘language’. The notion also risks making us complacent with respect to studying the diverse forms of communicative labor by which actors themselves frame and construe behavior as ‘ethical’. And without taking as our guide what actors do, it becomes difficult methodologically for us to distinguish the ethical from non-ethical dimensions of social life in a given context.

Contest for Land in Madagascar: Environment, Ancestors, and Development. Edited by Sandra J. T. M. Evers, Gwyn Campbell, and Michael Lambek. Leiden: Brill, 2013. 252 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, notes, and index. Paper $44.50.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook Reviews Contest for Land in Madagascar: Environment, Ancestors, and Development. Edited by Sandra J. T. M. Evers, Gwyn Campbell, and Michael Lambek. Leiden: Brill, 2013. 252 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, notes, and index. Paper $44.50.Christian A. KullChristian A. KullUniversité de Lausanne and Monash University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 20, Number 1January 2015 Published for the American Society for Environmental History and the Forest History Society Views: 7Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1093/envhis/emu109 Views: 7Total views on this site HistoryPublished online December 14, 2014 © 2014 The Author. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Culture of Ethics by Franco La Cecla and Piero Zanini (review)

Franco La Ceda and Piero Zanini, The Culture of Ethics. Lydia G. Cochrane, trans. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2013.119 pp.The Culture of Ethics is a work of charming and (one lengthy citation / of Bourdieu aside) accessible prose. It might, more representatively, have been titled Cultures of Ethics because it is resolutely committed to the ongoing existence of bounded collectives marked by common habits, commitments, and systems of symbols, even as it attends to global processes and flows. Geertz remains among its theoretical touchstones, as do what Le Ceda and Zanini refer to on more than one occasion as tribes (17, 54). In any event, its scope is broadly comparative and its chief focus is ordinary ethics, loosely defined as a tenuous but constant form of rule and of (17). These aren't directly rules of good and bad, but rather constitute a tissue of one or another art of living on which we depend in order to manage the everyday and to know how to get along with those who live next to (17). This is in accord with what Michael Lambek (2010) intends in introducing us to ordinary ethics-the term and the phenomenon-save one crucial difference. Like most everyone else who works in the still-indefinite currents of the anthropology of ethics (or moral anthropology), Lambek would not license the casual reduction of ethics to rules. With most everyone else, he agrees that such a reduction, credited to or blamed on Durkheim, has done far more to hinder the program matization of an anthropology of ethics than to further it. This is just one instance of a tendency toward intellectual nonchalance that makes the book less effective as an introduction to the anthropology of ethics than it might otherwise be.Even so, it's a book with many merits. Several of its chapters extract from additions to the ethnographic corpus vivid instances of the confusions and dilemmas that come when distinct ethical systems bump up against one another and the relativization of relativism (21) that often results. They call effectively on Unni Wikan (2000), Joel Robbins (2004), and Karen Sykes (2008), but most provocatively on Michelle Rosaldo (1980) and Renato Rosaldo's (1980) research among the (formerly) head-hunting llongot, leading La Ceda and Zanini to pose the inevitable question:What kind of morality is this? Is it possible that an entire community was held together by this violent cosmology? Yes, obviously, it is possible, and there are many similar cases. (44)La Cecla and Zanini rightly suggest that such bumps are one of the conditions that account for the very emergence of the anthropology of ethics and their identification of other such conditions is equally on the mark (34). Again somewhat casually, they put the case of the llongot to further use in contrasting culturally specific of every day with such universal moralities as that of the Decalogue, concluding largely in favor of the llongot that it isn't just but also all theologies that manifest a repugnance of the (48).The phrase is a spin off of Stanley Cavell's accusation that philosophy's concentration on the meaning of particular words and phrases, in isolation from a systematic attention to their concrete uses, constitutes a rejection of the (1979:206-207), and it is chiefly from Cavell (and Wittgenstein before him) that the authors take or at least lend authority to what might be called their culturalist humanism, which is nowhere more evident than in their subtle and provocative critique of the philosophy of human rights (87-95). …

Sandra J.T.M. Evers, Gwyn Campbell et Michael Lambek eds., Contest for land in Madagascar. Environment, ancestors and development

Sandra J.T.M. Evers, Gwyn Campbell et Michael Lambek eds., Contest for land in Madagascar. Environment, ancestors and development

Anna Fedele and Ruy Llera Blanes (orgs.), Encounters of Body and Soul in Contemporary Religious Practices: Anthropological Reflections

The book places itself within a relatively recent effort in the social sciences to acknowledge the centrality of the body and the corporeal dimensions of social phenomena – in anthropology, see for instance, the works by Thomas Csordas (Embodiment and Experience, Cambridge University Press, 1994), Andrew Strathern and Michael Lambek (Bodies and Persons, Cambridge University Press, 1998), or Brian Turner (The Body and Society, Sage, 2008 [1984]). Religious contexts seem to be of particular int...

A note from the editor Hau: Year one

A note from the editor H<scp>au</scp>: Year one

Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language, and Action edited by Michael Lambek

Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language, and Action edited by <i>Michael Lambek</i>

Ordinary ethics: anthropology, language, and action – Edited by Michael Lambek

Ordinary ethics: anthropology, language, and action – Edited by Michael Lambek

Wor(l)ds of grief: Traumatic memory and literary witnessing in cross-cultural perspective

Considering the work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the criticisms levelled against it, and the literary response it has evoked in terms of a struggle over definitions of trauma and recovery can help the debate over the perceived monocultural bias of trauma theory in its ‘classical’, mid-1990s formulation and the fraught relationship between such tendencies and the commitment to social justice on which the field prides itself. Insofar as the TRC mapped Euro-American concepts of trauma and recovery onto an apartheid-colonial situation, it was subject to the same problems and limitations faced by trauma theory—problems and limitations which post-apartheid literature has not been slow to confront. Sindiwe Magona’s truth-and-reconciliation novel Mother to Mother, for example, can be seen to supplement the work of the TRC by critically revisiting its limits, exclusions, and elisions—and thus also to suggest a possible way for ‘traditional’ trauma theory to reinvent and renew itself.