From the Preface, by Arthur Kleinman:Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture presents a theoretical framework for studying the relationship between medicine, psychiatry, and culture. That ...framework is principally illustrated by materials gathered in field research in Taiwan and, to a lesser extent, from materials gathered in similar research in Boston. The reader will find this book contains a dialectical tension between two reciprocally related orientations: it is both a cross-cultural (largely anthropological) perspective on the essential components of clinical care and a clinical perspective on anthropological studies of medicine and psychiatry. That dialectic is embodied in my own academic training and professional life, so that this book is a personal statement. I am a psychiatrist trained in anthropology. I have worked in library, field, and clinic on problems concerning medicine and psychiatry in Chinese culture. I teach cross-cultural psychiatry and medical anthropology, but I also practice and teach consultation psychiatry and take a clinical approach to my major cross-cultural teaching and research involvements. The theoretical framework elaborated in this book has been applied to all of those areas; in turn, they are used to illustrate the theory. Both the theory and its application embody the same dialectic. The purpose of this book is to advance both poles of that dialectic: to demonstrate the critical role of social science (especially anthropology and cross-cultural studies) in clinical medicine and psychiatry and to encourage study of clinical problems by anthropologists and other investigators involved in cross-cultural research.
The discipline of anthropology is, at its best, characterized by turbulence, self-examination, and inventiveness. In recent decades, new thinking and practice within the field has certainly reflected ...this pattern, as shown for example by numerous fruitful ventures into the "politics and poetics" of anthropology. Surprisingly little attention, however, has been given to the simple insight that anthropology is composed of claims, whether tacit or explicit, about anthropos and about logos--and the myriad ways in which these two Greek nouns have been, might be, and should be, connected. Anthropos Today represents a pathbreaking effort to fill this gap. Paul Rabinow brings together years of distinguished work in this magisterial volume that seeks to reinvigorate the human sciences. Specifically, he assembles a set of conceptual tools--"modern equipment"--to assess how intellectual work is currently conducted and how it might change.
Este volume – que reporta os resultados do projeto de investigação EXCEL The Pursuit of Excellence, coordenado pela autora no Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa –apresenta ...ambições, desejos e práticas de embelezamento e de melhoramento humano, discutindo os dramas associados à normatividade dos ideais hegemónicos de beleza e perfeição na sociedade contemporânea. Este volume nutre-se da esperança de conseguirmos num futuro próximo tornar os nossos ideais de beleza mais abrangentes e inclusivos. Para que cada pessoa possa ser como é, na sua especificidade, ocupando no mundo o espaço que quer, em liberdade.
Mouraria, Retalhos de Um Imaginário: Significados Urbanos de Um Bairro de Lisboa, resulta de uma investigação sobre os motivos socioculturais dos dilemas, contendas e conflitos simbólicos ...relacionados com o processo de construção de imagens identitárias de um bairro tradicional da cidade de Lisboa. O espaço central é o indicador central do estudo e é analisado a partir das significações imaginárias do bairro e das práticas de uso e apropriação do espaço público urbano local. O livro faz uma síntese da história do bairro e reflete sobre dados etnográficos de uso, apropriação e representação do bairro. A partir da etnografia realizada, o leitor poderá compreender alguns dos significados que vigoram no processo de construção da ideia de que o bairro é um dos contextos representativos de uma Lisboa típica, tradicional e popular, patrimonial e histórica, pluralista e multiétnica, podendo ainda denotar variantes que levam a pensá-lo como espaço marginal e liminar. Ao lidar com a complexidade local, o livro incorpora os contributos de uma perspetiva antropológica que, a partir da etnografia, privilegia a análise de um segmento do espaço urbano através da observação, da proximidade social e da assiduidade junto e dentro do contexto de estudo.
Au retour de son premier « terrain » en Malaisie, Jeanne Cuisinier, l'une des pionnières de l'ethnologie professionnelle en France, partage ses connaissances dans une série de conférences ...radiophoniques destinées au grand public. Pédagogue, très bonne narratrice, l'ethnologue offre aux auditeurs une occasion de découvrir son métier, d'approcher la diversité des peuples de la péninsule malaise, mais aussi de questionner les préjugés raciaux et coloniaux de l'époque. Derrière l'apparente légèreté de son propos, elle nous lègue une vision unique de la Malaisie des années 1930, de vraies leçons d'ethnographie et le plaisir de la joyeuse empathie qu'elle pratiquait face à l'altérité culturelle. Ces textes paraissent pour la première fois en français. Ils viennent d'être publiés à Kuala Lumpur en anglais, malais et chinois.
How might we speak of human life amid violence, deprivation, or disease so intrusive as to put the idea of the human into question? How can scholarship and advocacy address new forms of war or the ...slow, corrosive violence that belie democracy's promise to mitigate human suffering? To Veena Das, the answers to these question lie not in foundational ideas about human nature but in a close attention to the diverse ways in which the natural and the social mutually absorb each other on a daily basis.
Textures of the Ordinary shows how anthropology finds a companionship with philosophy in the exploration of everyday life. Based on two decades of ethnographic work among low-income urban families in India, Das shows how the notion of texture aligns ethnography with the anthropological tone in Wittgenstein and Cavell, as well as in literary texts.
Das shows that doing anthropology after Wittgenstein does not consist in taking over a new set of terms such as forms of life, language games, or private language from Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Instead, we must learn to see what eludes us in the everyday precisely because it is before our eyes. The book shows different routes of return to the everyday as it is corroded not only by catastrophic events but also by repetitive and routine violence within everyday life itself. As an alternative to normative ethics, this book develops ordinary ethics as attentiveness to the other and as the ability of small acts of care to stand up to horrific violence.
Textures of the Ordinary offers a model of thinking in which concepts and experience are shown to be mutually vulnerable. With questions returned to repeatedly throughout the text and over a lifetime, this book is an intellectually intimate invitation into the ordinary, that which is most simple yet most difficult to perceive in our lives.
Selon une thèse largement répandue, Schiller serait l’héritier et le continuateur de Kant, et les Lettres sur l’éducation esthétique de l’homme représenteraient le témoignage de son adhésion créative ...au kantisme par la conception d’une relation nouvelle entre la théorie et la pratique. L’ouvrage prend le contrepied de ce lieu commun. Il s’efforce de renouveler l’interprétation du texte de Schiller et montre en particulier l’influence de la philosophie populaire précritique, et notamment de sa composante anthropologique. La conjonction de ce registre avec une lecture singulière de l’esthétique kantienne se révèle caractéristique d’une forme de pensée qu’on peut qualifier de réformisme conservateur et dans laquelle on doit voir la matrice du libéralisme politique qui naît au début du XIXe siècle. Par sa lecture philologique serrée, ce livre s’adresse tout autant aux spécialistes de la pensée kantienne et post-kantienne qu’aux étudiants recherchant une introduction aux Lettres de Schiller.
D’ordinaire, le pouvoir d’évocation de la chair des dieux se situe aux antipodes du commerce, du tourisme et de la modernité. C’est sans doute cet idéal qui a attiré des visiteurs passionnés de magie ...et de mycologie dans les replis de la Sierra Mazateca mexicaine au milieu du siècle dernier. Depuis, Huautla, le chef-lieu des hautes terres mazatèques, est devenu la célèbre ville des champignons sacrés et de la chamane Maria Sabina. Le chamanisme local a-t-il simplement été converti en un accessoire commercial et touristique ? Cet ouvrage répond à cette question par la négative en portant un regard situé sur les retombées de la circulation du tourisme spirituel, du multiculturalisme d’État et de la globalisation néolibérale. Il propose de prendre la mesure des contrastes sociaux en jeu dans la société locale pour observer les appropriations contradictoires de la publicité du chamanisme mazatèque. Quelles raisons politiques et identitaires ont conduit des habitants à s’investir dans la construction de sa version publique et touristique ? Quelles sont les formes vernaculaires de sa marchandisation ? Comment le tourisme est-il mobilisé dans la transformation du complexe religieux local et dans un agencement cosmopolitique mouvant ? Le livre s’appuie sur une approche sociohistorique et un dense travail de terrain. Au fil du récit, il dessine la part active que les habitants de ce coin de la Sierra prennent à une modernité composite et contradictoire. Il éclaire la complexité d’une situation hybride traversée par la pluralité des temps sociaux et caractérisée par la pluriactivité économique, le bilinguisme espagnol et mazatèque, la mixité de l’écrit et de l’oralité, un système religieux hétérogène. Il interroge ainsi les inscriptions concrètes du tourisme chamanique et du néolibéralisme au sud du Mexique.
