Download or read book The Anthropology of Evil written by David Parkin and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 1991-01-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evil may be said to be shadowy, mysterious, covert, and associated with night, darkness, secrecy. It is a force acting to destroy the integrity, happiness and welfare of 'normal' society. It is at once the cause and the explanation of misfortune, of the wretchedness of human existence, and of our own individual wrongdoing. That, at any rate, is substantially the western Christianity (and pre-Christian) view. Yet the different societies have opted for very different sets of explanations, which have themselves evolved in radically contrasting ways. There are societies, for example, in which there is no concept of evil. The Anthropology of Evil discusses the problem in the context of different societies and religions- Christian , Confucian, Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim for example. It also provides unusual perspectives on questions such as the nature of innocence, the root of evil, the notion of individual malevolence and even whether God is evil. Much has bee written on evil, notably by historians, theologians and philosophers but very little by anthropologists: this book shows how distinctive and revealing their contribution can be.
Download or read book Engaging Evil written by William C. Olsen and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2019-05-03 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropologists have expressed wariness about the concept of evil even in discussions of morality and ethics, in part because the concept carries its own cultural baggage and theological implications in Euro-American societies. Addressing the problem of evil as a distinctly human phenomenon and a category of ethnographic analysis, this volume shows the usefulness of engaging evil as a descriptor of empirical reality where concepts such as violence, criminality, and hatred fall short of capturing the darkest side of human existence.
Download or read book The Political Sociology and Anthropology of Evil Tricksterology written by Agnes Horvath and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a new approach to the problem of evil through an examination of the anthropological figure of the ‘trickster’. A lesser known and much more recent term than evil, the authors use the trickster to facilitate a greater understanding of the return of evil in the modern era. Instead of simply opposing ‘good’ and ‘evil’, the figure of the trickster is used to pursue the trajectories of similarities and quasi-similarities through imitation. After engaging with the trickster as presented in comparative anthropology and mythology, where it appears in tales and legends as a strange, erratic outsider, the authors seek to gain an inside perspective of trickster knowledge through an examination of mythology and the classical world, including both philosophers and poets. The book then goes on to trace the trickster through prehistory, using archaeological evidence to complement the diverse narratives. In this way, and by investigating the knowledge and customs surrounding evil, the authors use the figure of the trickster to provide an unprecedented diagnosis of the contemporary world, where external, mechanical rationality has become taken for granted and even considered as foundational in politics, economics, and technologised science. The authors advance the idea that the modern world, with its global free markets, mass mediatic democracy and technologised science, represents a universalisation of trickster logic. The Political Sociology and Anthropology of the Evil will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of social theory, political anthropology and political sociology, as well as those interested in the ways in which evil can infiltrate reality.
Download or read book Reimagining the Human written by Eleazar Fernandez and published by Chalice Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores theological anthropology - the doctrine of what it means to be human and to be created in God's image. Fernandez argues that our life in the image of God is damaged and frustrated by the systemic evil of society, particularly the four radical evils of classism, racism, sexism, and naturism (destructive practices against the ecosystem). At the heart of these four evils are matters of faith and idolatry - worshiping human constructs and living under the lie of false securities. Idols demand the sacrifice of our souls, bodies, time, and anything that we cherish most.
Download or read book Evil in Africa written by William C. Olsen and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-30 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William C. Olsen, Walter E. A. van Beek, and the contributors to this volume seek to understand how Africans have confronted evil around them. Grouped around notions of evil as a cognitive or experiential problem, evil as malevolent process, and evil as an inversion of justice, these essays investigate what can be accepted and what must be condemned in order to evaluate being and morality in African cultural and social contexts. These studies of evil entanglements take local and national histories and identities into account, including state politics and civil war, religious practices, Islam, gender, and modernity.
Download or read book Moebius Anthropology written by Don Handelman and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2020-10-07 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Don Handelman’s groundbreaking work in anthropology is showcased in this collection of his most powerful essays, edited by Matan Shapiro and Jackie Feldman. The book looks at the intellectual and spiritual roots of Handelman’s initiation into anthropology; his work on ritual and on “bureaucratic logic”; analyses of cosmology; and innovative essays on Anthropology and Deleuzian thinking. Handelman reconsiders his theory of the forming of form and how this relates to a new theory of the dynamics of time. This will be the definitive collection of articles by one of the most important anthropologists of the late 20th Century.
Download or read book What Evil Means to Us written by C. Fred Alford and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: C. Fred Alford interviewed working people, prisoners, and college students in order to discover how people experience evil—in themselves, in others, and in the world. What people meant by evil, he found, was a profound, inchoate feeling of dread so overwhelming that they tried to inflict it on others to be rid of it themselves. A leather-jacketed emergency medical technician, for example, one of the many young people for whom vampires are oddly seductive icons of evil, said he would "give anything to be a vampire." Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, Alford argues that the primary experience of evil is not moral but existential. The problems of evil are complicated by the terror it evokes, a threat to the self so profound it tends to be isolated deep in the mind. Alford suggests an alternative to this bleak vision. The exercise of imagination—in particular, imagination that takes the form of a shared narrative—offers an active and practical alternative to the contemporary experience of evil. Our society suffers from a paucity of shared narratives and the creative imagination they inspire.
Download or read book The Anthropology of Religion Magic and Witchcraft Pearson eText written by Rebecca L Stein and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-08-07 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book emphasizes the major concepts of both anthropology and the anthropology of religion and examines religious expression from a cross-cultural perspective while incorporating key theoretical concepts. It is aimed at students encountering anthropology for the first time.
Download or read book Good and Evil written by Edward Farley and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to be human in a world filled with tragedy? With creativity and insight Edward Farley, one of today's most respected theologians, here addresses this universal and haunting question of evil. Farley anchors his discussion firmly in interhuman (I-thou) dynamics as a key to unfolding the personal and social spheres of human existence. "It is," says Farley, "the corruption of elemental passions and the resulting contagion of the personal and social spheres that provide a total view of human evil and its redemptive possibilities."
Download or read book An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence written by Bruno Latour and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-19 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a new approach to philosophical anthropology, Bruno Latour offers answers to questions raised in We Have Never Been Modern: If not modern, what have we been, and what values should we inherit? An Inquiry into Modes of Existence offers a new basis for diplomatic encounters with other societies at a time of ecological crisis.
Download or read book Fat written by Don Kulick and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-01-13 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eclectic and highly original examination of one of the most dynamic concepts-and constructs-in the world. With more than one billion overweight adults in the world today, obesity has become an epidemic. But fat is not as straightforward-or even as uni-versally damned-as one might think. Enlisting thirteen anthropologists and a fat activist, editors and anthropologists Don Kulick and Anne Meneley have produced an unconventional-and unprecedented-examination of fat in various cultural and social contexts. In this anthology, these writers argue that fat is neither a mere physical state nor an inert concept. Instead, it is a construct built by culture and judged in courts of public opinion, courts whose laws vary from society to society. From the anthropology of "fat-talk" among teenage girls in Sweden to the veneration of Spam in Hawaii; from fear of the fat-sucking pishtaco vampire in the Andes to the underground allure of fat porn stars like Supersize Betsy-this anthology provides fresh perspectives on a subject more complex than love handles, and less easily understood than a number on a scale. Fat proves that fat can be beautiful, evil, pornographic, delicious, shameful, ugly, or magical. It all depends on who-and where-you are.
Download or read book Powers of Good and Evil written by Paul Clough and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2001 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using a range of examples, from Surinamese zombies to American horror films, this volume demonstrates the extent to which evil imagery is linked to a fear of excess. It examines in-depth key themes in the anthropology of belief.
Download or read book The Anthropology of Sustainability written by Marc Brightman and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-08-02 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book compiles research from leading experts in the social, behavioral, and cultural dimensions of sustainability, as well as local and global understandings of the concept, and on lived practices around the world. It contains studies focusing on ways of living, acting, and thinking which claim to favor the local and global ecological systems of which we are a part, and on which we depend for survival. The concept of sustainability as a product of concern about global environmental degradation, rising social inequalities, and dispossession is presented as a key concept. The contributors explore the opportunities to engage with questions of sustainability and to redefine the concept of sustainability in anthropological terms.
Download or read book The Goodness Paradox written by Richard Wrangham and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A fascinating new analysis of human violence, filled with fresh ideas and gripping evidence from our primate cousins, historical forebears, and contemporary neighbors.” —Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature We Homo sapiens can be the nicest of species and also the nastiest. What occurred during human evolution to account for this paradox? What are the two kinds of aggression that primates are prone to, and why did each evolve separately? How does the intensity of violence among humans compare with the aggressive behavior of other primates? How did humans domesticate themselves? And how were the acquisition of language and the practice of capital punishment determining factors in the rise of culture and civilization? Authoritative, provocative, and engaging, The Goodness Paradox offers a startlingly original theory of how, in the last 250 million years, humankind became an increasingly peaceful species in daily interactions even as its capacity for coolly planned and devastating violence remains undiminished. In tracing the evolutionary histories of reactive and proactive aggression, biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham forcefully and persuasively argues for the necessity of social tolerance and the control of savage divisiveness still haunting us today.
Download or read book Suffering and Evil written by W. S. F. Pickering and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until recently the subject of suffering and evil was neglected in the sociological world and was almost absent in Durkheimian studies as well. This book aims to fill the gap, with particular reference to the Durkheimian tradition, by exploring the different meanings that the concepts of evil and suffering have in Durkheim's works, together with the general role they play in his sociology. It also examines the meanings and roles of these concepts in relation to suffering and evil in the work of other authors within the group of the Année sociologique up until the beginning of World War II. Finally, the Durkheimian legacy in its wider aspects is assessed, with particular reference to the importance of the Durkheimian categories in understanding and conceptualizing contemporary forms of evil and suffering.
Download or read book Marking Evil written by Amos Goldberg and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Talking about the Holocaust has provided an international language for ethics, victimization, political claims, and constructions of collective identity. As part of a worldwide vocabulary, that language helps set the tenor of the era of globalization. This volume addresses manifestations of Holocaust-engendered global discourse by critically examining their function and inherent dilemmas, and the ways in which Holocaust-related matters still instigate public debate and academic deliberation. It contends that the contradiction between the totalizing logic of globalization and the assumed uniqueness of the Holocaust generates continued intellectual and practical discontent.
Download or read book Everyday Evil written by Monique Layton and published by . This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Instead of the epic, alien force of our imagination, anthropologist Monique Layton argues that evil is intrinsic to our humanity, constantly evolving with modern notions of morality. Much of the world's suffering, she argues, can be traced back to the individual actions of ordinary people trying--and failing--to maintain a static social order. Drawing on anthropology, history, philosophy and popular culture, Layton provides a new lens through which to view contemporary issues, establishing connections between such disparate phenomena as: medieval law enforcement and the Trump Baby blimp; the Salem witch trials and female genital mutilation; body-snatching and surrogacy; slavery and fast fashion."--
