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Experiments in Holism
Theory and Practice in Contemporary Anthropology
The term "holism" is shorthand for a central predicament in anthropology: human situations are culturally structured, but individuals, who participate in more than one cultural "whole," can sometimes change the rules. This volume explores the theoretical space between those two aspects of the human condition. These authors persuasively, even passionately, refocus the analysis of socio-cultural ontology. In showing how the simplistic rejection of past holisms undermined anthropology's fundamental commitments, they instead devise ingeniously critical new perspectives reflecting today's massively reconfigured and variegated understandings of context. In this capacious and brilliantly-edited collection, holism no longer suggests a totalizing project, but rather an indispensable toolkit of world-making strategies. The innovative essays gathered here map a new, multi-scaled landscape of Anthropological research. ‘Holism' does its magic again. This is an extraordinarily interesting commentary on the present state of anthropology that would never have come together without the editors' pursuit of an apparently unfashionable idea.
Richard Handler, University of Virginia
Michael Herzfeld (Harvard University)
James Clifford, University of California, Santa Cruz.
Author of The Predicament of Culture.
Marilyn Strathern
Ton Otto (Edited by), T Otto (Author), Nils Bubandt (Edited by)
9781444333237, Wiley
Hardback, published 8 October 2010
336 pages
25.4 x 17.8 x 2.5 cm, 0.762 kg
Experiments in Holism Experiments in Holism: Theory and Practice in Contemporary Anthropology presents a series of essays that critically examine the ongoing relevance of holism and its theoretical and methodological potential in today’s world. Contributions from a diverse collection of leading anthropologists reveal how recent critiques of the holistic approach have not led to its wholesale rejection, but rather to a panoply of experiments that critically reassess and reemploy holism. The essays focus on aspects of holism including its utilization in current ethnographic research, holistic considerations in cultural anthropology, the French structuralist tradition, the predominantly English tradition of social anthropology, and many others. Collectively, the essays show how holism is simultaneously central to, and problematically a part of, the theory and practice of anthropology. Experiments in Holism reveals how contemporary attempts to rescale and retool anthropology entail new ways of coming to terms with anthropology’s heritage of holism, seeking to obviate its current excesses while recapturing its critical potential to meet the challenges of our contemporary world.
Acknowledgments vii List of Contributors ix 1. Anthropology and the Predicaments of Holism 1 Part 1 Rethinking Holism in Ethnographic Practice 17 2. Beyond the Whole in Ethnographic Practice? Introduction to Part 1 19 3. Holism and the Expectations of Critique in Post-1980s Anthropology: Notes and Queries in Three Acts and an Epilogue 28 4. Worlding the Matsutake Diaspora: Or, Can Actor–Network Theory Experiment With Holism? 47 5. The Whole Beyond Holism: Gambling, Divination, and Ethnography in Cuba 67 Part 2 Beyond Cultural Wholes? Wholes are Parts, and Parts are Wholes 87 6. Beyond Cultural Wholes? Introduction to Part 2 89 7. The Whole is a Part: Intercultural Politics of Order and Change 102 8. Lingual and Cultural Wholes and Fields 127 9. Deep Wholes: Fractal Holography in Trobriand Agency and Culture 150 Part 3 Beyond Structural Wholes? Encompassment, Collectives, and Global Systems 175 10. Beyond Structural Wholes? Introduction to Part 3 177 11. Louis Dumont and a Holist Anthropology 187 12. From Wholes to Collectives: Steps to an Ontology of Social Forms 209 13. Holism and the Transformation of the Contemporary Global Order 227 Part 4 Beyond Social Wholes? Holistic Practice: Cosmology, History, and the Continuity of Life 249 14. Beyond Social Wholes? Introduction to Part 4 251 15. Proportional Holism: Joking the Cosmos Into the Right Shape in North Asia 262 16. One Past and Many Pasts: Varieties of Historical Holism in Melanesia and the West 279 17. Drawing Together: Materials, Gestures, Lines 299 Index 314
Nils Bubandt and Ton Otto
Ton Otto and Nils Bubandt
George E. Marcus
Anna Tsing
Martin Holbraad
Ton Otto and Nils Bubandt
Marshall Sahlins
Alan Rumsey
Mark Mosko
Nils Bubandt and Ton Otto
Bruce Kapferer
Philippe Descola
Jonathan Friedman
Nils Bubandt and Ton Otto
Rane Willerslev and Morten Axel Pedersen
Eric Hirsch and Daniele Moretti
Tim Ingold
Subject Areas: Archaeology [HD]
