Ethnography And The Historical Imagination

Ethnography And The Historical Imagination
Author: John Comaroff
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2019-04-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429719310

Over the years John and Jean Comaroff have broadened the study of culture and society with their reflections on power and meaning. In their work on Africa and colonialism they have explored some of the fundamental questions of social science, delving into the nature of history and human agency, culture and consciousness, ritual and representation. How are human differences constructed and institutionalized, transformed and (sometimes) effaced, empowered and (sometimes) resisted? How do local cultures articulate with global forms? How is the power of some people over others built, sustained, eroded, and negated? How does the social imagination take shape in novel yet collectively meaningful ways? Addressing these questions, the essays in this volume–several never before published–work toward an "imaginative sociology," demonstrating the techniques by which social science may capture the contexts that human beings construct and inhabit. In the introduction, the authors offer their most complete statement to date on the nature of historical anthropology. Standing apart from the traditional disciplines of social history and modernist social science, their work is dedicated to discovering how human worlds are made and signified, forgotten and remade.

The Archaeology and Ethnography of Central Africa

The Archaeology and Ethnography of Central Africa
Author: James Denbow
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2014
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107040701

This book provides the first detailed description of the prehistory of the Loango coast of west-central Africa over the course of more than 3000 years.

Confronting the Sacred: Durkheim vindicated through philosophical analysis, ethnography, archaeology, long-range linguistics, and comparative mythology

Confronting the Sacred: Durkheim vindicated through philosophical analysis, ethnography, archaeology, long-range linguistics, and comparative mythology
Author: Wim van Binsbergen
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 582
Release: 2018-05-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9078382333

With Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) the soci0logist ?mile Durkheim formulated the most influential social-science theory of religion to date. Pivotal are the paired concepts ?sacred / profane?, the notion of ?collective representations?, and the hypothesis that through such religious symbols, society compels its members to venerate herself i.e. to submit to the social as an irreducible instance in its own right. Having grappled with this Durkheimian inheritance for half a century, the anthropologist of religion and intercultural philosopher Wim van Binsbergen in this book traces his own steps in confront_ing Durkheim's sacred, through theoretical criticism, through ethnographic application (to popular Islam in the segmentary social organisation of the highlands of Northwestern Tunisia), and by state-of-the-art long-range methods of linguistic and comparative mythological analysis. Thus, much to his surprise, he demonstrates the continued validity of Durkheim's insights in religion.

Ethnography in Today's World

Ethnography in Today's World
Author: Roger Sanjek
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2014
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0812245458

In Ethnography in Today's World, anthropologist Roger Sanjek addresses the essential practice and purpose of ethnography in ethnically diverse settings. Drawing on decades of globe-spanning fieldwork, he examines how ethnographic fieldwork is and can be conceived, conducted, and communicated in today's interconnected world.

The ANC and the Liberation Struggle in South Africa

The ANC and the Liberation Struggle in South Africa
Author: Thula Simpson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2018-10-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1315459590

The history of the ANC, which is the oldest liberation movement on the African continent, is one that has generated a great deal of interest amongst historians in recent years. Gone are the days when the history of African nationalism could be relegated to the margins of the study of the South African past. Instead, with the ANC having ascended to the helm of political power, a position it has maintained for over twenty years, there can be no question that its history occupies an important and permanent place in the history of the nation. This volume gathers together some of the most important contributions to the literature on the ANC’s role in South Africa’s struggle for liberation. Besides important themes such as gender, ethnicity, and healthcare, contributions from leading historians also address why the ANC decided to engage in armed struggle; what role the South African Communist Party played in making this decision; how the ANC External Mission contributed to the upsurge of mass protest in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s; and the ANC’s contribution, relative to the other components of the liberation struggle, in ensuring the eventual demise of the old racial order. The chapters in this book were originally published in the South African Historical Journal, the Journal of Southern African Studies, and African Studies.