The Taste of Ethnographic Things

The Taste of Ethnographic Things PDF

Author: Paul Stoller

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2010-11-24

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 0812203143

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Anthropologists who have lost their senses write ethnographies that are often disconnected from the worlds they seek to portray. For most anthropologists, Stoller contends, tasteless theories are more important than the savory sauces of ethnographic life. That they have lost the smells, sounds, and tastes of the places they study is unfortunate for them, for their subjects, and for the discipline itself. The Taste of Ethnographic Things describes how, through long-term participation in the lives of the Songhay of Niger, Stoller eventually came to his senses. Taken together, the separate chapters speak to two important and integrated issues. The first is methodological—all the chapters demonstrate the rewards of long-term study of a culture. The second issue is how he became truer to the Songhay through increased sensual awareness.

Sensuous Scholarship

Sensuous Scholarship PDF

Author: Paul Stoller

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2010-11-24

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 0812203135

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Among the Songhay of Mali and Niger, who consider the stomach the seat of personality, learning is understood not in terms of mental activity but in bodily terms. Songhay bards study history by "eating the words of the ancestors," and sorcerers learn their art by ingesting particular substances, by testing their flesh with knives, by mastering pain and illness. In Sensuous Scholarship Paul Stoller challenges contemporary social theorists and cultural critics who—using the notion of embodiment to critique Eurocentric and phallocentric predispositions in scholarly thought—consider the body primarily as a text that can be read and analyzed. Stoller argues that this attitude is in itself Eurocentric and is particularly inappropriate for anthropologists, who often work in societies in which the notion of text, and textual interpretation, is foreign. Throughout Sensuous Scholarship Stoller argues for the importance of understanding the "sensuous epistemologies" of many non-Western societies so that we can better understand the societies themselves and what their epistemologies have to teach us about human experience in general.

The Ethnographic Self as Resource

The Ethnographic Self as Resource PDF

Author: Peter Collins

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2010-05-01

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1845458281

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It is commonly acknowledged that anthropologists use personal experiences to inform their writing. However, it is often assumed that only fieldwork experiences are relevant and that the personal appears only in the form of self-reflexivity. This book takes a step beyond anthropology at home and auto-ethnography and shows how anthropologists can include their memories and experiences as ethnographic data in their writing. It discusses issues such as authenticity, translation and ethics in relation to the self, and offers a new perspective on doing ethnographic fieldwork.

Doing Sensory Ethnography

Doing Sensory Ethnography PDF

Author: Sarah Pink

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2015-02-09

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1473917042

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This bold agenda-setting title continues to spearhead interdisciplinary, multisensory research into experience, knowledge and practice. Drawing on an explosion of new, cutting edge research Sarah Pink uses real world examples to bring this innovative area of study to life. She encourages us to challenge, revise and rethink core components of ethnography including interviews, participant observation and doing research in a digital world. The book provides an important framework for thinking about sensory ethnography stressing the numerous ways that smell, taste, touch and vision can be interconnected and interrelated within research. Bursting with practical advice on how to effectively conduct and share sensory ethnography this is an important, original book, relevant to all branches of social sciences and humanities.

The Things of Others: Ethnographies, Histories, and Other Artefacts

The Things of Others: Ethnographies, Histories, and Other Artefacts PDF

Author: Olívia Maria Gomes da Cunha

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-05-18

Total Pages: 772

ISBN-13: 9004429301

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The Things of Others: Ethnographies, Histories, and Other Artefacts deals with the things mainly, but not only, mobilized by anthropologists in order to produce knowledge about the African American, the Afro-Brazilian and the Afro-Cuban during the 1930s.

In Sorcery's Shadow

In Sorcery's Shadow PDF

Author: Paul Stoller

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2013-08-09

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 022609829X

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The tale of Paul Stoller's sojourn among sorcerors in the Republic of Niger is a story of growth and change, of mutual respect and understanding that will challenge all who read it to plunge deeply into an alien world.

The Opera Fanatic

The Opera Fanatic PDF

Author: Claudio E. Benzecry

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2011-07-15

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 0226043428

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Though some dismiss opera as old-fashioned, it shows no sign of disappearing from the world's stage. So why do audiences continue to flock to it? Opera lovers are an intense lot, Benzecry discovers in his look at the fanatics who haunt the legendary Colón Opera House in Buenos Aires.

Destination Culture

Destination Culture PDF

Author: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1998-09-05

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9780520209664

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With the question, "What does it mean to show?", the author explores the agency of display in museums and tourist attractions. She looks at how objects are made to perform their meaning by being collected and how techniques of display, not just the things shown, convey a powerful message.

Embodying Colonial Memories

Embodying Colonial Memories PDF

Author: Paul Stoller

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-01-02

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1136652663

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A study of the West African Hauka - spirits that grotesquely mimic and mock "Europeans" of the colonial epoch. The author considers spirit possession as a set of embodied practices with serious social and cultural consequences. Embodying Colonial Memories is the first in-depth study of the West African Hauka, spirits in the body of (human) mediums which mimic and mock Europeans of the colonial epoch. Paul Stoller, who was initiated into a spirit possession troupe, recounts an insider's tale of the Hauka with respect and "brotherly" deference. He combines narrative description, historical analysis, and reflections on the importance of embodiment and mimesis to social theory, with particular reference to the Songhay peoples of the Republic of Niger.

Things That Art

Things That Art PDF

Author: Lochlann Jain

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2019-08-22

Total Pages: 121

ISBN-13: 1487570562

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Lochlann Jain’s debut non-fiction graphic novel, Things That Art, playfully interrogates the order of things. Toying with the relationship between words and images, Jain’s whimsical compositions may seem straightforward. Upon closer inspection, however, the drawings reveal profound and startling paradoxes at the heart of how we make sense of the world. Commentaries by architect and theorist Maria McVarish, poet and naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield, musician and English Professor Drew Daniel, and the author offer further insight into the drawings in this collection. A captivating look at the fundamental absurdities of everyday communication, Things That Art jolts us toward new forms of collation and collaboration.