Full Description
What distinguishes humans from nonhuman 'others'? And how do these distinctions shape human sociality and the ways that humans relate to their others? Human Nature and Social Life brings together a collection of articles by prominent anthropologists to address these questions. The articles show how the fundamentally social nature of humans results in an extension of sociality to virtual, semiotic-material and nonhuman spheres, with humans therefore becoming part of 'extended socialities'. However, as the book's contributors demonstrate, human distinctness significantly bears upon these extended socialities, and the manner in which humans partake in them. Taking an ethnographic approach to its subject, this book demonstrates the continued value of studying the specificities of the human condition, and sets itself as a counterweight to current refutations of human exceptionalism.
Contents
Introduction: extended sociality and the social life of humans Kenneth Sillander and Jon Henrik Ziegler Remme; 1. The evanescence of experience and how to capture it Christina Toren; 2. The mirror of the material: things, objects and what we see in them Janet Hoskins; 3. Human at risk: becoming human and the dynamics of extended sociality Jon Henrik Ziegler Remme; 4. Connectedness through separation: human - nonhuman relations in Tibet and Mongolia Heidi Fjeld and Benedikte V. Lindskog; 5. Egalitarian and non-egalitarian sociality Alan Barnard; 6. Peaceful sociality: the causes of nonviolence among the Orang Asli of Malaysia Kirk Endicott; 7. The point of no return: the tristesse of anthropological fieldwork Carol Delaney; 8. Sociality, socialities, and sociality as a causal force Michael Carrithers; 9. Monism, dualism and participant observation Maurice Bloch; 10. Kinship particularism and the project of anthropological comparison Susan McKinnon; Afterword: extensions Marilyn Strathern.
