Anthropology today seems to shy away from the big, comparative questions that ordinary people in many societies find compelling. Questions of Anthropology brings these issues back to the centre of anthropological concerns. Individual essays explore birth, death and sexuality, puzzles about the relationship between science and religion, questions about the nature of ritual, work, political leadership and genocide, and our personal fears and desires, from the quest to control the future and to find one's ''true'' identity to the fear of being alone. Each essay starts with a question posed by individual ethnographic experience and then goes on to frame this question in a broader, comparative context.
Author(s): Jonathan Parry, Rita Astuti, Charles Stafford
Series: London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology
Publisher: Berg Publishers
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 384
COVER
......Page 1
CONTENTS......Page 6
PREFACE......Page 8
1 WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE ALONE?......Page 14
2 HOW DO WE KNOW WHO WE ARE?......Page 41
3 WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT?......Page 68
4 WHY, EXACTLY, IS THE WORLD AS IT IS?......Page 90
5 HOW DOES RITUAL MATTER?......Page 117
6 WHAT MAKES PEOPLE WORK?......Page 150
7 WHAT KIND OF SEX MAKES PEOPLE HAPPY?......Page 180
8 HOW DO WOMEN GIVE BIRTH?......Page 210
9 WHAT HAPPENS AFTER DEATH?......Page 240
10 HOW DOES GENOCIDE HAPPEN?......Page 262
11 WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE POWERFUL?......Page 294
12 HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT IS TRUE?......Page 320
AFTERWORD QUESTIONS OF (‘ZAFIMANIRY’) ANTHROPOLOGY......Page 350
CONTRIBUTORS......Page 378
INDEX......Page 379
