Human Nature as Capacity: Transcending Discourse and Classification

Published by Berghahn Books 2010

Human Nature as Capacity

Transcending Discourse and Classification

Edited by: Nigel Rapport

Volume 20 in the series Methodology & History in Anthropology

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781845458157

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

Nigel Rapport is Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and directs the Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies. He also held the Canada Research Chair in Globalization, Citizenship and Justice at Concordia University, Montreal, and he has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Recent publications include 'I am Dynamite': An Alternative Anthropology of Power (Routledge, 2003) and Of Orderlies and Men: Hospital Porters Achieving Wellness at Work (Carolina Academic Press, 2008).

Reviews

“This is an engaging collection which is enhanced by the editor’s agenda and his clear and challenging statement of purpose. The notion of ‘going beyond’ is important, and is well realised in his broad, scholarly, and well-argued introduction…a substantial contribution to anthropological theorising about human beings as such, as that enterprise now stands.” · Michael Carrithers, Durham University

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
List of Contributors Publicly Available Download PDF	x
Introduction: Human Capacity as an Exceeding, a Going Beyond Nigel Rapport Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I: Beyond the Economy
Introduction to Part I Nigel Rapport Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	29
1. Conversations with Eulogio: On Migration and the Building of a Life-Project in Motion Nelson Ferguson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	31
2. The Limits of Liminality: Capacities for Change and Transition among Student Travellers Vered Amit Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	54
Part II: Beyond the Polity
Introduction to Part II Nigel Rapport Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	75
3. ‘Crisis’: On the Limits of European Integration and Identity in Northern Ireland Thomas M. Wilson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	77
4. Making the Cosmopolitan Plea: Harold Oram’s International Fund-raising in the Early Cold War Laura Suski Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	101
Part III: Beyond the Classificatory
Introduction to Part III Nigel Rapport Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	127
5. Money, Materiality and Imagination: Life on the Other Side of Value Andrew Irving Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	130
6. Acts of Entification: The Emergence of Thinghood in Social Life Tord Larsen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	154
Part IV: Beyond the Body
Introduction to Part IV Nigel Rapport Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
7. Embodied Cognition, Communication and the Making of Place and Identity: Reflections on Fieldwork with Masons Trevor H. J. Marchand Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	182
8. ‘Live in Fragments no Longer’: Social Dance and Individual Imagination in Human Nature Jonathan Skinner Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 224
Keywords: Theory and Methodology

eBook

Published: March 1, 2010
ISBN: 9781845458157