This open access book applies insights from the anthropology of hospitality to illuminate ethnographic accounts of migrant reception in various parts of the Mediterranean. The contributors ground the ...idea and practice of hospitality in concrete ethnographic settings and challenge how the casual usage of Derridean or Kantian notions of hospitality can blur the boundaries between social scales and between metaphor and practice. Host-guest relations are multiplied through pregnancy and childbirth, and new forms of hospitality emerge with the need to offer mortuary practices for dead strangers, helping to illuminate the spatial and scalar dimensions of morality and politics in Mediterranean migrant reception.
The first book to address the classic anthropological theme of property through the ethnography of Amazonia, Ownership and Nurture sets new and challenging terms for anthropological debates about the ...region and about property in general. Property and ownership have special significance and carry specific meanings in Amazonia, which has been portrayed as the antithesis of Western, property-based, civilization. Through carefully constructed studies of land ownership, slavery, shamanism, spirit mastery, aesthetics, and intellectual property, this volume demonstrates that property relations are of central importance in Amazonia, and that the ownership of persons plays an especially significant role in native cosmology.
Amerindian societies have an iconic status in classical political thought. For Montaigne, Hobbes, Locke, Hume and Rousseau, the native American 'state of nature' operates as a foil for the European ...polity. Challenging this tradition,The Imbalance of Power demonstrates ethnographically that the Carib speaking indigenous societies of the Guiana region of Amazonia do not fit conventional characterizations of 'simple' political units with 'egalitarian' political ideologies and 'harmonious' relationships with nature. Marc Brightman builds a persuasive and original theory of Amerindian politics: far from balanced and egalitarian, Carib societies are rife with tension and difference; but this imbalance conditions social dynamism and a distinctive mode of cohesion.The Imbalance of Power is based on the author's fieldwork in partnership with Vanessa Grotti, who is working on a companion volume entitledLiving with the Enemy: First Contacts and the Making of Christian Bodies in Amazonia.
Animism in rainforest and tundra Brightman, Marc; Grotti, Vanessa Elisa; Ulturgasheva, Olga
2012, 2014., 20120815, 2012-08-15, 20120101
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Amazonia and Siberia, classic regions of shamanism, have long challenged 'western' understandings of man's place in the world. By exploring the social relations between humans and non-human entities ...credited with human-like personhood (not only animals and plants, but also 'things' such as artifacts, trade items, or mineral resources) from a comparative perspective, this volume offers valuable insights into the constitutions of humanity and personhood characteristic of the two areas. The contributors conducted their ethnographic fieldwork among peoples undergoing transformative processes of their lived environments, such as the depletion of natural resources and migration to urban centers. They describe here fundamental relational modes that are being tested in the face of change, presenting groundbreaking research on personhood and agency in shamanic societies and contributing to our global understanding of social and cultural change and continuity.
The Imbalance of Power demonstrates that the indigenous societies of the Guiana region of Amazonia do not fit conventional characterizations of 'simple' political units with 'egalitarian' political ...ideologies and 'harmonious' relationships with nature.
The periodic emergence of indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation in Amazonia have given rise to sensational media reports and heated academic debate. In this chapter we describe briefly the ...historical and contemporary relations between indigenous peoples in and out of isolation in the Guiana Shield region of North-eastern South America and discuss the role of indigenous missionaries in histories of contact. After considering these facts in relation to some of the general debates about isolated peoples and policy, we assess the ethical dimensions of the question of emergence from isolation.
Background: The anthropology of sustainability documents and interprets diverse visions of sustainable and liveable futures. Islamic scholars and financiers are now debating the distinctive ...contribution of Islamic finance to global sustainability. While mainstream global finance has only recently begun to pay explicit attention to social and environmental sustainability, Islamic economics has always emphasised the need to benefit society, the community, and the environment. Objectives: We ask what has been the influence of the emergence of green and social finance upon Islamic finance in Malaysia, the global centre of Islamic finance. Methods: The study is based on collaborative, co-productive ethnography and autoethnography, and textual analysis of working documents of the Securities Commission Malaysia, focusing on how environmental requirements are expressed in new financial products, known as green sukuks, or green Islamic bonds. Results and conclusions: We have found that much of the moral debate in Islamic finance has revolved around the distribution of financial risk: when investors share the risk of failure, they can participate in society rather than merely exploiting social relations, yet the emergence of ‘green’ Islamic finance appears to shift the centre of moral gravity away from risk structuring towards technical criteria of sustainability, replicating the growth-oriented anthropocentric managerialism of mainstream finance.
Creativity and Control: Property in Guianese Amazonia. This article introduces the anthropology of property relations to indigenous Amazonia, where property has long been assumed to be absent, and ...shows that focusing on Amazonian forms of property can lead to greater understanding of native practices and institutions. The article begins by showing that the Trio, Wayana and Akuriyo of southern Suriname have a wide range of practices and values which can usefully be understood in terms of property. This provides the basis for a discussion of the analytical importance of the anthropology of property for Amazonia, followed by a consideration of the place of Amazonian forms of property in the context of anthropological theory.
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