Khoisan Consciousness

Khoisan Consciousness
Author: Rafael Verbuyst
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2022-06-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004516611

Based on unprecedented ethnographic fieldwork among ‘Khoisan revivalists’ in Cape Town, this book explores how and why the past is engaged with to revive an indigenous culture and identity that are widely believed to have vanished during colonialism and apartheid.

The Strategic Repositioning of Arts, Culture and Heritage in the 21st Century

The Strategic Repositioning of Arts, Culture and Heritage in the 21st Century
Author: George Mugovhani
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2018-06-11
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1527512916

The post-millennium world has been experiencing several recognisable historical milestones with regard to arts, culture and heritage. One of these has been the resuscitation and revival of creative elements of the arts, culture and heritage of previously marginalised or disadvantaged communities around the world. Until recently, there had been scant regard and skewed allocation of resources for these, but lately attempts have been made to promote and sustain them in order to enable the socio-economic aspirations of a multicultural society. The contributions brought together here are the product of papers that were presented during a conference on “Strategic Repositioning of Arts, Culture and Heritage in the 21st Century”. They cover a broad spectrum of subjects such as indigeneity, music, song and identity, politics, national reconciliation, education, product development, and national development.

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art
Author: Bruno David
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1185
Release: 2018-10-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0190844949

Rock art is one of the most visible and geographically widespread of cultural expressions, and it spans much of the period of our species' existence. Rock art also provides rare and often unique insights into the minds and visually creative capacities of our ancestors and how selected rock outcrops with distinctive images were used to construct symbolic landscapes and shape worldviews. Equally important, rock art is often central to the expression of and engagement with spiritual entities and forces, and in all these dimensions it signals the diversity of cultural practices, across place and through time. Over the past 150 years, archaeologists have studied ancient arts on rock surfaces, both out in the open and within caves and rock shelters, and social anthropologists have revealed how people today use art in their daily lives. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art showcases examples of such research from around the world and across a broad range of cultural contexts, giving a sense of the art's regional variability, its antiquity, and how it is meaningful to people in the recent past and today - including how we have ourselves tended to make sense of the art of others, replete with our own preconceptions. It reviews past, present, and emerging theoretical approaches to rock art investigation and presents new, cutting-edge methods of rock art analysis for the student and professional researcher alike.

Conversation Analysis

Conversation Analysis
Author: Rebecca Clift
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2016-09-08
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1316571491

We live our lives in conversation, building families, societies and civilisations. In over seven thousand languages across the world, the basic infrastructure by which we communicate remains the same. This is the first ever book-length linguistic introduction to conversation analysis (CA), the field that has done more than any other to illuminate the mechanics of interaction. Starting by locating CA by reference to a number of cognate disciplines investigating language in use, it provides an overview of the origins and methodology of CA. By using conversational data from a range of languages, it examines the basic apparatus of sequence organisation: turn-taking, preference, identity construction and repair. As the basis for these investigations, the book uses the twin analytic resources of action and sequence to throw new light on the origins and nature of language use.

Human-Animal Relationships in San and Hunter-Gatherer Cosmology, Volume II

Human-Animal Relationships in San and Hunter-Gatherer Cosmology, Volume II
Author: Mathias Guenther
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2019-08-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 303021186X

Exploring a hitherto unexamined aspect of San cosmology, Mathias Guenther’s two volumes on human-animal relations in San cosmology link “new Animism” with Khoisan Studies, providing valuable insights for Khoisan Studies and San culture, but also for anthropological theory, relational ontology, folklorists, historians, literary critics and art historians. Building from the examinations of San myth and contemporary culture in Volume I, Volume II considers the experiential implications of a cosmology in which ontological mutability—ambiguity and inconstancy—hold sway. As he considers how people experience ontological mutability and deal with profound identity issues mentally and affectively, Guenther explores three primary areas: general receptiveness to ontological ambiguity; the impact of the experience of transformation (both virtual/vicarious and actual/direct); and the intersection of the mythic, spirit world with reality. Through a comparative consideration of animistic cosmology amongst the San, Bantu-speakers and the Inuit of Canada’s eastern Arctic, alongside a discussion of animistic currents in Western humanities and ethology, Guenther clearly paints the relative strengths and weaknesses of New Animism discourse, particularly in relation to San ontology and cosmology, but with overarching relevance.

Inclusion and Exclusion in the Global Arena

Inclusion and Exclusion in the Global Arena
Author: Max Kirsch
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2014-01-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317721454

This collection of essays addresses the inclusion and exclusion of peoples, populations and regions in an era of global economic and social integration. Although many publications have discussed the way in which globalization has changed the nature of boundaries, space and the movement of peoples, there is a wide gap in a literature that rarely addresses the reaction of local communities and inclusion for some stakeholders in decision making while excluding others, particularly in regard to global integration of industry, the legislation of planning, and trade. This gap has often led to narrow and sometimes misleading ways of presenting the results of globalizing processes. This collection aims to bridge this gap by providing on-the ground case studies that lead to alternative ways of viewing current conceptual frameworks of globalization and its consequences. This collection is an elaboration of a special issue of Urban Anthropology that contained essays by June Nash, Jack Goody, Helen Safa and Max Kirsch. The special issue addressed concerns that have become prominent not only in anthropology but in the wider social sciences and humanities. The reader focuses on the conceptual divisions among the constructs of space and place, indigenous strategies for autonomy, polity and global planning mechanisms, and the role of trans-national corporations in community disintegrations and resistance.

Mapping the Unmappable?

Mapping the Unmappable?
Author: Ute Dieckmann
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2021-04-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3839452414

How can we map differing perceptions of the living environment? Mapping the Unmappable? explores the potential of cartography to communicate the relations of Africa's indigenous peoples with other human and non-human actors within their environments. These relations transcend Western dichotomies such as culture-nature, human-animal, natural-supernatural. The volume brings two strands of research - cartography and »relational« anthropology - into a closer dialogue. It provides case studies in Africa as well as lessons to be learned from other continents (e.g. North America, Asia and Australia). The contributors create a deepened understanding of indigenous ontologies for a further decolonization of maps, and thus advance current debates in the social sciences.

Human-Animal Relationships in San and Hunter-Gatherer Cosmology, Volume I

Human-Animal Relationships in San and Hunter-Gatherer Cosmology, Volume I
Author: Mathias Guenther
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2019-08-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3030211827

Exploring a hitherto unexamined aspect of San cosmology, Mathias Guenther’s two volumes on human-animal relations in San cosmology link “new Animism” with Khoisan Studies, providing valuable insights for Khoisan Studies and San culture, but also for anthropological theory, relational ontology, folklorists, historians, literary critics and art historians. In Volume I, therianthropes and transformations, two manifestations of ontological mutability that are conceptually and phenomenologically linked, are contextualized in broader San myth. Guenther explores the pervasiveness of human-animal hybridity and transformation in San expressive culture (myth, stories and storytelling, ludic dancing and art, ancestral rock art and contemporary easel art), ritual (trance dance curing, female and male rites of passage) and hunting. Transformation is shown to be experienced by humans, particularly via rituals and dancing that evoke animal identity mergers, but also by hunters who may engage with their prey animals in terms of sympathy and inter-subjectivity, particularly through the use of “hunting medicines.”

Hunter-Gatherers in History, Archaeology and Anthropology

Hunter-Gatherers in History, Archaeology and Anthropology
Author: Alan Barnard
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2020-05-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000183637

The study of hunter-gatherers has had a profound impact on thinking about human nature and about the nature of society. The subject has especially influenced ideas on social evolution and on the development of human culture. Anthropologists and archaeologists continue to investigate living hunter-gatherers and the remains of past hunter-gatherer societies in the hope of unearthing the secrets of our ancestors and learning something of the natural existence of humankind. Hunter-Gatherers in History, Archaeology and Anthropology provides a definitive overview of hunter-gatherer historiography, from the earliest anthropological writings through to the present day. What can early visions of the hunter-gatherer tell us about the societies that generated them? How do diverse national traditions, such as American, Russian and Japanese, manifest themselves in hunter-gatherer research? What is the most up-to-date thinking on the subject and how does it reflect current trends within the social sciences? This book provides a much-needed overview of the history of thought on one of science's most intriguing subjects. It will serve as a landmark text for anthropologists, archaeologists and students researching anthropological theory or the history of social anthropology and related disciplines.