Questions of Anthropology

Description

Anthropology today seems to shy away from the big, comparative questions that ordinary people in many societies find compelling. Questions of Anthropology brings these issues back to the centre of anthropological concerns.Individual essays explore birth, death and sexuality, puzzles about the relationship between science and religion, questions about the nature of ritual, work, political leadership and genocide, and our personal fears and desires, from the quest to control the future and to find one's 'true' identity to the fear of being alone. Each essay starts with a question posed by individual ethnographic experience and then goes on to frame this question in a broader, comparative context. Written in an engaging and accessible style, Questions of Anthropology presents an exciting introduction to the purpose and value of Anthropology today.

Rita Astuti is co-author of Constraints On Conceptual Development. Jonathan Parry is author of Death in Banaras. Charles Stafford is author of Separation and Reunion in Modern China. All the editors teach Anthropology at the London School of Economics.

'This fascinating volume addresses large existential questions through the specifics of real people in real places. We hear an extraordinary diversity of voices, from Scottish adoptees on the anxieties of parentage, to Chinese farmers on anxieties about the future, to the president of Madagascar on the anxieties of power. Without embracing any simplistic universalism, Questions of Anthropology reminds us that all of us on this rapidly shrinking globe do indeed share a common humanity.' Sherry B. Ortner, University of California, Los Angeles