Tucked away in the Italian Alps, in the town of Oberbozen-Soprabolzano lies the villa that the family of Bronislaw Malinowski and his first wife, Elsie Masson, called home from 1922 to 1935. Yet ...Malinowski himself never wrote about South Tyrol or the Alps in general. This volume features a series of essays that explicitly ponder Malinowski’s intriguing influence on Alpine anthropology: Despite not having worked directly in or on the Alps, he nonetheless left anthropological traces through the works of others. The Malinowski Forum for Ethnography (MFEA) aims to uncover the ineffable presence in Alpine anthropology of Malinowski, a founder of modern social anthropology.
Comparative studies of mountain areas have long been at the core of the discussion about the relations between nature and culture as well as on environmental and social change. This volume searches ...for ways to develop further critical comparative perspectives in the study of cultures in mountain areas by drawing inter- and transdisciplinary links amongst anthropology, geography, folklore studies, montology, and global history. Drawing on examples mostly from the Alps and the Andes, but also extending to the global mountains, the authors explore socioecological environments, historical and political processes, borderscapes, demographic dynamics, forms of domestic organization, rituals, religiosities, and human-non-humanrelations.
Gli studi comparativi sulle aree montane sono da tempo al centro del dibattito sul rapporto tra natura e cultura e sui cambiamenti ecologici e sociali. Questo volume è alla ricerca di nuovi percorsi per sviluppare ulteriormente prospettive comparative critiche per lo studio delle culture delle aree montane, tracciando collegamenti inter- e transdisciplinari tra antropologia, geografia, studi di folklore, montologia e storia globale. Basandosi su esempi provenienti soprattutto dalle Alpi e dalle Ande, ma estendendo l’orizzonte anche ad altre regioni montane a livello globale, le autrici e gli autori esplorano ambienti socio-ecologici, processi storici e politici, paesaggi di confine, dinamiche demografiche, forme di organizzazione domestica, rituali, religiosità e relazioni tra umani e non-umani.
Vergleichende Studien über Bergregionen stehen seit langem im Zentrum der Debatte über das Verhältnis zwischen Natur und Kultur sowie über den ökologischen und sozialen Wandel. Dieser Band sucht nach Wegen, kritische vergleichende Perspektiven in der Erforschung von Kulturen in Bergregionen weiterzuentwickeln, indem er inter- und transdisziplinäre Verbindungen zwischen Anthropologie, Geographie, Volkskunde, Montologie und (Welt-)Geschichte herstellt. Anhand von Beispielen vor allem aus den Alpen und den Anden, aber auch aus anderen Gebirgsregionen der Welt, untersuchen die Autor:innen sozioökologische Umwelten, historische und politische Prozesse, Grenzlandschaften, demografische Dynamiken, Formen der häuslichen Organisation, Rituale, Religiosität und Mensch-/Nicht-Mensch-Beziehungen.
Where and what is Ireland? --What are the identities of the people of Ireland? --How has European Union membership shaped Irish people's lives and interests? --How global is local Ireland? This book ...argues that such questions can be answered only by understanding everyday aspects of Irish culture and identity.
This study offers a novel view of Conference Interpreting by looking at EU interpreters as a professional community of practice. In particular, Duflou's work focuses on the nature of the competence ...conference interpreters working for the European Parliament and the European Commission need to acquire in order to cope with their professional tasks. Making use of observation as a member of the community, in-depth interviews and institutional documents, she explores the link between the specificity of the EU setting and the knowledge and skills required. Her analysis of the learning experiences of newcomers in the professional community shows that EU interpreters' competence is to a large extent context-dependent and acquired through situated learning. In addition, it highlights the various factors which have an impact on this learning process. Using the way Dutch booth EU interpreters share the workload in the booth as a case, Duflou demonstrates the importance of mastering collaborative and embodied skills for EU interpreters. She thereby challenges the idea of interpreting competence from an individual, cognitive accomplishment and redefines it as the ability to apply the practical and setting-determined know-how required to function as a full member of the professional community.
Given the broad reach of anthropology as the science of humankind, there are times when the subject fragments into specialisms and times when there is rapprochement. Rather than just seeing them as ...reactions to each other, it is perhaps better to say that both tendencies co-exist and that it is very much a matter of perspective as to which is dominant at any moment. The perspective adopted by the contributors to this volume is that some anthropologists have, over the last decade or so, been paying considerable attention to developments in the study of social and biological evolution and of material culture, and that this has brought social, material cultural and biological anthropologists closer to each other and closer to allied disciplines such as archaeology and psychology.
A more eclectic anthropology once characteristic of an earlier age is thus re-emerging. The new holism does not result from the merging of sharply distinguished disciplines but from among anthropologists themselves who see social organization as fundamentally a problem of human ecology, and, from that, of material and mental creativity, human biology, and the co-evolution of society and culture. It is part of a wider interest beyond anthropology in the origins and rationale of human activities, claims and beliefs, and draws on inferential or speculative reasoning as well as 'hard' evidence. The book argues that, while usefully borrowing from other subjects, all such reasoning must be grounded in prolonged, intensive and linguistically-informed fieldwork and comparison.
Rational Choice Theory Archer, Margaret S; Tritter, Jonathan Q
2000, 20130403, 2001, 2013-04-03, 2002-01-04
eBook
Rational Choice Theory is flourishing in sociology and is increasingly influential in other disciplines. Contributors to this volume are convinced that it provides an inadequate conceptualization of ...all aspects of decision making: of the individuals who make the decisions, of the process by which decisions get made and of the context within which decisions get made. The ciritique focuses on the four assumptions which are the bedrock of rational choice: rationality: the theory's definition of rationality is incomplete, and cannot satisfactorily incorporate norms and emotions individualism: rational choice is based upon atomistic, individual decision makers and cannot account for decisions made by ;couples', 'groups' or other forms of collective action process: the assumption of fixed, well-ordered preferences and 'perfect information' makes the theory inadequate for situations of change and uncertainty aggregation: as methodological individualists, rational choice theorists can only view structure and culture as aggregates and cannot incorporate structural or cultural influences as emergent properties which have an effect upon decision making. The critique is grounded in discussion of a wide range of social issues, including race, marriage, health and education.
Material cultures Miller, Daniel
1998, 20020910, 1997, 2002-09-10
eBook
This volume is an ethnographic study of material cultures. Incorporating local and global dimensions, a team of scholars explore the changing experiences of cultures in locations as disparate as the ...Philippines and Northern Ireland. Material culture and consumption studies have undergone something of a renaissance recently. This study provides an up-to-date analysis of a developing field in sociological and anthropological based courses.; This book is intended for undergraduate/MA courses on material culture and consumption within cultural studies and anthropology degree schemes.
Cohen establishes the importance of the self and argues that in order to appreciate the complexity of social formations, one must first take note of individuals awareness of themselves and as authors ...of social contexts and formations.
