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Anthropology Texts for TeachingCELEBRATING TRANSGRESSION
Method and Politics in Anthropological Studies of Cultures
A book in Honour of Klaus Peter Koepping
Edited by Ursula Rao and John Hutnyk
| 256 pages, bibliog., index ISBN 978-1-84545-025-0 Hb $60.00/£36.50 Published (Autumn 2005) Buy now and get 15% off listed price |
Transgression is the stock in trade of a certain kind of anthropological sensibility that transforms fieldwork from strict social science to something more engaging. It builds on Koepping’s idea that participation transforms perception and investigates how transgressive practices have triggered the re-theorization of conventional forms of thought and life. It focuses on social practices in various cultural fields including the method and politics of anthropology in order to show how transgressive experiences become relevant for the organisation and understanding of social relations. This book brings key authors in anthropology together to debate and transgress anthropological expectations. Through transgression as method, as discussed here, our understanding of the world is transformed, and anthropology as a discipline becomes dangerous and relevant again.
Ursula Rao is Lecturer in Anthropology in the University of Halle, and is now involved in writing about the problem of fieldwork in dispersed and postmodern settings. She has also worked extensively in the field of Religious Anthropology and written Negotiating the Divine: Temple Religion and Temple Politics in Contemporary Urban India (2003, Manohar), Kommunalismus in Indien. Eine Darstellung der wissenschaftlichen Diskussion über Hindu-Muslim-Konflikte (2003) and co-editor of Im Rausch des Rituals: Gestaltung und Transformation der Wirklichkeit in körperlicher Performanz (2000), She has further edited a volume on the relevance of performance for cultural change: Kulturelle VerWandlungen. Die Gestaltung sozialer Welten in der Performanz (2005)
John Hutnyk is Reader in Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has published three single-authored books and four edited collections on topics such as music and politics, representation and diaspora. His book The Rumour of Calcutta: Tourism, Charity and The Poverty of Representation (1996) was widely reviewed, as was his more recent efforts Critique of Exotica: Music, Politics and the Culture Industry (2000) and Bad Marxism: Cultural Studies and Capitalism (2004).
Contents
Introduction Ursula Rao and John Hutnyk
PART I: FIELDWORKS
Chapter 1. Reflexivity Unbound: Shifting Styles of Critical Self-awareness from the Malinowskian Scene of Fieldwork and Writing to the Emergence of Multi-sited Ethnography George Marcus Chapter 2. News from the Field: the Experience of Transgression and the Transformation of Knowledge during Research in an Expert-site Ursula Rao Chapter 3. Soiled Work and the Artefact Howard Potter Chapter 4. Transgression for Transcendence? On the Anthropologist’s (Dis)engagement in the Politics of Meaning Kaori Sugishita Chapter 5. Running Out of Tricks: the Experience of Ethnography and the Politics of Culturalism Thomas Reuter
PART II: PERFORMANCES
Chapter 6. Transcending Transgression with Transgression: Inheriting Forsaken Souls in Bali Mary Ida Bagus Chapter 7. The ‘Dance of Punishment’: Transgression and Punishment in an East Indian Ritual Burkhard Schnepel Chapter 8. Divine Play or Subversive Comedy? Reflections on Costuming and Gender at a Hindu Festival Beatrix Hauser Chapter 9. Between Meaning and Significance: Reflections on Ritual and Mimesis Alexander Henn Chapter 10. Animism on Stage: Tracing Anthropology’s Heritage in Contemporary African Dance in Europe Nadine Sieveking Chapter 11. Transgression and the Erotic Vincent Crapanzano
PART III: INFRINGEMENTS
Chapter 12. Michel Leiris: Master of Ethnographic Failure Peter Phipps Chapter 13. Boundary Confusion in Anthropology and Art: Pablo Picasso and Michel Leiris Judith Weiss Chapter 14. The Concatenation of Minds Klaus Peter Buchheit Chapter 15. Transgressions of Fieldwork/Filed Works: Method in the Madness John Hutnyk
Notes on Contributors Index