Beyond Description: Anthropologies of Explanation
By Paolo Heywood and Matei Candea
()
About this ebook
Beyond Description brings anthropologists and other social scientists together to examine the problem of explanation. What is "an explanation?" What can it add? What makes it authoritative, clarifying, or misleading? Whom does it serve and how is it produced? These questions lie at the heart of recent public crises of confidence in expertise, political representation, and classic liberal visions of whom we can rely on for true and trustworthy accounts. In a world beset by events and processes that seem to defy expert predictions of their impossibility, and in which post-hoc accounts can often feel more like rationalizations than explanations, competing voices vie for public presence and seek to silence one another. Anthropology and the social sciences face such questions too, making contemporary explanatory practice both an empirical and a reflexive challenge.
By combining ethnographic studies of practices of explanation in a range of contemporary political, medical, artistic, religious, and bureaucratic settings, the essays in Beyond Description offer critical examinations of changing norms and forms of explanation in the world and within anthropology itself.
Related to Beyond Description
Related ebooks
Culture and Cognition: The Boundaries of Literary and Scientific Inquiry Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIngenious Nonsense: Religion, Philosophy, Pseudoscience, and the Paranormal Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Challenge of Epistemology: Anthropological Perspectives Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Limits of Meaning: Case Studies in the Anthropology of Christianity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn the Geopragmatics of Anthropological Identification Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEgocentricity and Mysticism: An Anthropological Study Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsValences of Interdisciplinarity: Theory, Practice, Pedagogy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCulture and Practical Reason Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5World: An Anthropological Examination Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPatient Tales: Case Histories and the Uses of Narrative in Psychiarty Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCan Different Cultures Think the Same Thoughts?: A Comparative Study in Metaphysics and Ethics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReflecting on Reflexivity: The Human Condition as an Ontological Surprise Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnthropology Through a Double Lens: Public and Personal Worlds in Human Theory Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnimism beyond the Soul: Ontology, Reflexivity, and the Making of Anthropological Knowledge Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe empty and desolate consciousness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMyth in Indo-European Antiquity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Brief History of Modern Philosophy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCulture, Rhetoric and the Vicissitudes of Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Basis of Social Relations: A Study in Ethnic Psychology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Psychology of the Mystics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOsiris, Volume 31: History of Science and the Emotions Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMoral Engines: Exploring the Ethical Drives in Human Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsToward an Anthropology of the Will Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn Difficulty: And Other Essays Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Philosophy of Science: A Beginner's Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAesthetic Theology and Its Enemies: Judaism in Christian Painting, Poetry, and Politics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Origins of Liberty: An Essay in Platonic Ontology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMoral Anthropology: A Critique Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsErich Przywara and Postmodern Natural Law: A History of the Metaphysics of Morals Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Anthropology For You
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bullshit Jobs: A Theory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Collected Essays: Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, and After Henry Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future---Updated With a New Epilogue Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The White Album: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Regarding the Pain of Others Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dark Matter of the Mind: The Culturally Articulated Unconscious Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bruce Lee Wisdom for the Way Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stories of Rootworkers & Hoodoo in the Mid-South Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Way of the Shaman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Folk Medicine in Southern Appalachia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Psychology of Totalitarianism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Trouble With Testosterone: And Other Essays On The Biology Of The Human Predi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermined America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Survive in Ancient Egypt Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Trails: An Exploration Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Serpent and the Rainbow Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Beyond Description
0 ratings0 reviews