Human nature as capacity : transcending discourse and classification

Bibliographic Information

Human nature as capacity : transcending discourse and classification

edited by Nigel Rapport

(Methodology and history in anthropology, v. 20)

Berghahn Books, 2010

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Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

What is it to be human? What are our specifically human attributes, our capacities and liabilities? Such questions gave birth to anthropology as an Enlightenment science. This book argues that it is again appropriate to bring "the human" to the fore, to reclaim the singularity of the word as central to the anthropological endeavor, not on the basis of the substance of a human nature - "To be human is to act like this and react like this, to feel this and want this" - but in terms of species-wide capacities: capabilities for action and imagination, liabilities for suffering and cruelty. The contributors approach "the human" with an awareness of these complexities and particularities, rendering this volume unique in its ability to build on anthropology's ethnographic expertise.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations List of Contributors Introduction: Human Capacity as an Exceeding, a Going Beyond Nigel Rapport PART I: BEYOND THE ECONOMY Introduction to Part I Nigel Rapport Chapter 1. Conversations with Eulogio: On Migration and the Building of a Life-Project in Motion Nelson Ferguson Chapter 2. The Limits of Liminality: Capacities for Change and Transition among Student Travellers Vered Amit PART II: BEYOND THE POLITY Introduction to Part II Nigel Rapport Chapter 3. 'Crisis': On the Limits of European Integration and Identity in Northern Ireland Thomas M. Wilson Chapter 4. Making the Cosmopolitan Plea: Harold Oram's International Fund-raising in the Early Cold War Laura Suski PART III: BEYOND THE CLASSIFACTORY Introduction to Part III Nigel Rapport Chapter 5. Money, Materiality and Imagination: Life on the Other Side of Value Andrew Irving Chapter 6. Acts of Entification: The Emergence of Thinghood in Social Life Tord Larsen PART IV: BEYOND THE BODY Introduction to Part IV Nigel Rapport Chapter 7. Embodied Cognition, Communication and the Making of Place and Identity: Reflections on Fieldwork with Masons Trevor H.J. Marchand Chapter 8. 'Live in Fragments no Longer': Social Dance and Individual Imagination in Human Nature Jonathan Skinner Index

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