Download or read book Social Sciences as Sorcery written by Stanislav Andreski and published by Saint Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 1974 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ethnographic Sorcery written by Harry G. West and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the people of the Mueda plateau in northern Mozambique, sorcerers remake the world by asserting the authority of their own imaginative visions of it. While conducting research among these Muedans, anthropologist Harry G. West made a revealing discovery—for many of them, West’s efforts to elaborate an ethnographic vision of their world was itself a form of sorcery. In Ethnographic Sorcery, West explores the fascinating issues provoked by this equation. A key theme of West’s research into sorcery is that one sorcerer’s claims can be challenged or reversed by other sorcerers. After West’s attempt to construct a metaphorical interpretation of Muedan assertions that the lions prowling their villages are fabricated by sorcerers is disputed by his Muedan research collaborators, West realized that ethnography and sorcery indeed have much in common. Rather than abandoning ethnography, West draws inspiration from this connection, arguing that anthropologists, along with the people they study, can scarcely avoid interpreting the world they inhabit, and that we are all, inescapably, ethnographic sorcerers.
Download or read book Beyond Rationalism written by Bruce Kapferer and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2003-02-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks a reconsideration of the phenomenon of sorcery and related categories. The contributors to the volume explore the different perspectives on human sociality and social and political constitution that practices typically understood as sorcery, magic and ritual reveal. In doing so the authors are concerned to break away from the dictates of a western externalist rationalist understanding of these phenomena without falling into the trap of mysticism. The articles address a diversity of ethnographic contexts in Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Americas.
Download or read book Understanding Social Science Research written by Thomas R Black and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2002 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ability to read published research critically is essential and is different from the skills involved in undertaking research using statistical analysis. This New Edition of Thomas R Black's best-selling text explains in clear and straightforward terms how students can evaluate research, with particular emphasis on research involving some aspect of measurement. The coverage of fundamental concepts is comprehensive and supports topics including research design, data collection and data analysis by addressing the following major issues: Are the questions and hypotheses advanced appropriate and testable? Is the research design sufficient for the hypothesis? Is the data gathered valid, reliable and objective? Are the statistical techniques used to analyze the data appropriate and do they support the conclusions reached? Each of the chapters from the New Edition has been thoroughly updated, with particular emphasis on improving and increasing the range of activities for students. As well, coverage has been broadened to include: a wider range of research designs; a section on research ethics; item analysis; the definition of standard deviation with a guide for calculation; the concept of `power' in statistical inference; calculating correlations; and a description of the difference between parametric and non-parametric tests in terms of research questions. Evaluating Social Science Research An Introduction 2nd Edition will be key reading for undergraduate and postgrduate students in research methodology and evaluation across the social sciences.
Download or read book In Darkness and Secrecy written by Neil L. Whitehead and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2004-06-03 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Darkness and Secrecy brings together ethnographic examinations of Amazonian assault sorcery, witchcraft, and injurious magic, or “dark shamanism.” Anthropological reflections on South American shamanism have tended to emphasize shamans’ healing powers and positive influence. This collection challenges that assumption by showing that dark shamans are, in many Amazonian cultures, quite different from shamanic healers and prophets. Assault sorcery, in particular, involves violence resulting in physical harm or even death. While highlighting the distinctiveness of such practices, In Darkness and Secrecy reveals them as no less relevant to the continuation of culture and society than curing and prophecy. The contributors suggest that the persistence of dark shamanism can be understood as a form of engagement with modernity. These essays, by leading anthropologists of South American shamanism, consider assault sorcery as it is practiced in parts of Brazil, Guyana, Venezuela, and Peru. They analyze the social and political dynamics of witchcraft and sorcery and their relation to cosmology, mythology, ritual, and other forms of symbolic violence and aggression in each society studied. They also discuss the relations of witchcraft and sorcery to interethnic contact and the ways that shamanic power may be co-opted by the state. In Darkness and Secrecy includes reflections on the ethical and practical implications of ethnographic investigation of violent cultural practices. Contributors. Dominique Buchillet, Carlos Fausto, Michael Heckenberger, Elsje Lagrou, E. Jean Langdon, George Mentore, Donald Pollock, Fernando Santos-Granero, Pamela J. Stewart, Andrew Strathern, Márnio Teixeira-Pinto, Silvia Vidal, Neil L. Whitehead, Johannes Wilbert, Robin Wright
Download or read book Kuru Sorcery written by Shirley Lindenbaum and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-03 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps the best-documented epidemic in the history of medicine, kuru has been studied for more than fifty years by international investigators from medicine and the human sciences. This significantly revised edition of the landmark anthropological classic Kuru Sorcery brings up to date the anthropological contribution to understanding disease, the medical research that resulted in two medical Nobel Prizes, and the views of the Fore people who endured the epidemic and who still believe that sorcerers, rather than cannibalism, caused kuru. The kuru epidemic serves as a prism through which to see how Fore notions of disease causation bring into single focus their views about the body, the world of social and spiritual relations, and changes in economic and political conditions-aspects of thought and behaviour that Western medicine keeps separate.
Download or read book Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa written by John Middleton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Containing ten essays by anthropologists on the beliefs and practices associated with witches and sorcerers in Eastern Africa, the chapters in this book are all based on field research and new information which is studied within its wider social context. First published in 1963.
Download or read book Sorcery in the Black Atlantic written by Luis Nicolau Parés and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most scholarship on sorcery and witchcraft has narrowly focused on specific times and places, particularly early modern Europe and twentieth-century Africa. And much of that research interprets sorcery as merely a remnant of premodern traditions. Boldly challenging these views, Sorcery in the Black Atlantic takes a longer historical and broader geographical perspective, contending that sorcery is best understood as an Atlantic phenomenon that has significant connections to modernity and globalization. A distinguished group of contributors here examine sorcery in Brazil, Cuba, South Africa, Cameroon, and Angola. Their insightful essays reveal the way practices and accusations of witchcraft spread throughout the Atlantic world from the age of discovery up to the present, creating an indelible link between sorcery and the rise of global capitalism. Shedding new light on a topic of perennial interest, Sorcery in the Black Atlantic will be provocative, compelling reading for historians and anthropologists working in this growing field.
Download or read book The Power of the Between written by Paul Stoller and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-05-15 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is the anthropologist’s fate to always be between things: countries, languages, cultures, even realities. But rather than lament this, anthropologist Paul Stoller here celebrates the creative power of the between, showing how it can transform us, changing our conceptions of who we are, what we know, and how we live in the world. Beginning with his early days with the Peace Corps in Africa and culminating with a recent bout with cancer, The Power of the Between is an evocative account of the circuitous path Stoller’s life has taken, offering a fascinating depiction of how a career is shaped over decades of reading and research. Stoller imparts his accumulated wisdom not through grandiose pronouncements but by drawing on his gift for storytelling. Tales of his apprenticeship to a sorcerer in Niger, his studies with Claude Lévi-Strauss in Paris, and his friendships with West African street vendors in New York City accompany philosophical reflections on love, memory, power, courage, health, and illness. Graced with Stoller’s trademark humor and narrative elegance, The Power of the Between is both the story of a distinguished career and a profound meditation on coming to terms with the impermanence of all things.
Download or read book Witchcraft and Sorcery in Rhodesia written by J. R. Crawford and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-08-16 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1967, this book is a study of witchcraft and sorcery among the Shona, Ndebele and Kalanga peoples of Zimbabwe. It analyses in their social context verbatim evidence and confessions from a comprehensive series of judicial records. It provides the first systematic demonstration of the importance and the exstent to which such sources can be used to make a detailed analysis of the character and range of beliefs and motives. The main emphasis is on witchcraft and sorcery beliefs, the nature of accusations, confessions and divination, btoh traditional and as practised by members of the Pentecostal Church.
Download or read book Fashionable Nonsense written by Alan Sokal and published by Picador. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1996 physicist Alan Sokal published an essay in Social Text--an influential academic journal of cultural studies--touting the deep similarities between quantum gravitational theory and postmodern philosophy. Soon thereafter, the essay was revealed as a brilliant parody, a catalog of nonsense written in the cutting-edge but impenetrable lingo of postmodern theorists. The event sparked a furious debate in academic circles and made the headlines of newspapers in the U.S. and abroad. In Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, Sokal and his fellow physicist Jean Bricmont expand from where the hoax left off. In a delightfully witty and clear voice, the two thoughtfully and thoroughly dismantle the pseudo-scientific writings of some of the most fashionable French and American intellectuals. More generally, they challenge the widespread notion that scientific theories are mere "narrations" or social constructions.
Download or read book Learn to Write Badly written by Michael Billig and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-20 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern academia is increasingly competitive yet the writing style of social scientists is routinely poor and continues to deteriorate. Are social science postgraduates being taught to write poorly? What conditions adversely affect the way they write? And which linguistic features contribute towards this bad writing? Michael Billig's witty and entertaining book analyses these questions in a quest to pinpoint exactly what is going wrong with the way social scientists write. Using examples from diverse fields such as linguistics, sociology and experimental social psychology, Billig shows how technical terminology is regularly less precise than simpler language. He demonstrates that there are linguistic problems with the noun-based terminology that social scientists habitually use - 'reification' or 'nominalization' rather than the corresponding verbs 'reify' or 'nominalize'. According to Billig, social scientists not only use their terminology to exaggerate and to conceal, but also to promote themselves and their work.
Download or read book The Feast of the Sorcerer written by Bruce Kapferer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1997-10-15 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sorcery has long been associated with the "dark side" of human development, along with magic and witchcraft. This text argues, however, that sorcery practices reveal critical insights into how consciousness is formed, and how human beings constitute their social
Download or read book Soulstealers written by Philip A KUHN and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Midway through the reign of the Ch'ien-lung emperor, Hungli, mass hysteria broke out among the common people. It was feared that sorcerers were roaming the land, clipping off the ends of men's queues (the braids worn by royal decree) and chanting magical incantations over them in order to steal the souls of their owners. In a fascinating chronicle of this epidemic of fear and the official prosecution of soulstealers that ensued, Philip Kuhn opens a window on the world of eighteenth-century China.
Download or read book Society Of The Spectacle written by Guy Debord and published by Bread and Circuses Publishing. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Das Kapital of the 20th century,Society of the Spectacle is an essential text, and the main theoretical work of the Situationists. Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960's, in particular the May 1968 uprisings in France, up to the present day, with global capitalism seemingly staggering around in it’s Zombie end-phase, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism, and everyday life in the late 20th century. This ‘Red and Black’ translation from 1977 is Introduced by Notting Hill armchair insurrectionary Tom Vague with a galloping time line and pop-situ verve, and given a more analytical over view by young upstart thinker Sam Cooper.
Download or read book What Use is Sociology written by Zygmunt Bauman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-02-06 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What's the use of sociology? The question has been asked often enough and it leaves a lingering doubt in the minds of many. At a time when there is widespread scepticism about the value of sociology and of the social sciences generally, this short book by one of the world's leading thinkers offers a passionate, engaging and important statement of the need for sociology. In a series of conversations with Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Keith Tester, Zygmunt Bauman explains why sociology is necessary if we hope to live fully human lives. But the kind of sociology he advocates is one which sees 'use' as more than economic success and knowledge as more than the generation of facts. Bauman makes a powerful case for the practice of sociology as an ongoing dialogue with human experience, and in so doing he issues a call for us all to start questioning the common sense of our everyday lives. He also offers the clearest statement yet of the principles which inform his own work, reflecting on his life and career and on the role of sociology in our contemporary liquid-modern world. This book stands as a testimony to Bauman's belief in the enduring relevance of sociology. But it is also a call to us all to start questioning the world in which we live and to transform ourselves from being the victims of circumstance into the makers of our own history. For that, at the end of the day, is the use of sociology.
Download or read book Witchcraft and Sorcery of the American Native Peoples written by Deward E. Walker and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of studies (previously published) which is a revised and expanded edition of Walker's 1970 collection. Coverage has been extended to include the peoples of both Mesoamerica and the Arctic. When coupled with comparative studies drawn from other parts of the world, this volume contributes toward a cross-cultural theory of the forms and functions of supernatural techniques used to bring misfortune to others. No index. Printed on acidic paper. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
