Ethnographic chiasmus : essays on culture, conflict, and rhetoric / Ivo Strecker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Strecker, Ivo A., 1940-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethnology--Fieldwork.

Ethnology.

Ethnology--Methodology.

Cross-cultural orientation.

Culture conflict.

Physical Description:

x, 400 pages : illustrations, map ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

East Lansing : Michigan State University Press ; Munster : LIT Verlag, [2011]

Summary:

The essays assembled in this volume are shaped by conditions-both enabling and constraining-that can perhaps best be described as an "ethnographic chiasmus." This expression refers to the surprise and reversal of position that are characteristic of fieldwork, and it attends to the fact that transcultural understanding comes about as a meeting, touching, or "crossing."

Chiasmus also pertains to the relationship between culture and rhetoric in general. Culture structures rhetoric; rhetoric structures culture. Both are co-emergent. In order to elucidate this process, ethnography has to focus on the manifold modes of rhetoric through which culture-specific patterns of thought and action are created. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Rhetorical Creation of Culture and Self

Rhetoric in the creation of Hamar culture 29

'Face' and the person 45

Do the Hamar have a concept of honour? 71

Part II Rhetorics of War and Peace

Speech situations and social control 89

Michere - How the whipping wand speaks 107

Political discourse in an egalitarian society 123

To share or not to share: Notes on authority and anarchy 135

Lomotor's talk, or the imperial gerund 157

Predicaments of war and peace 169

Temptations of war and the struggle for peace 181

Rhetoric in the context of war 229

Part III Rhetorical Articulation of Knowledge and Belief

The genius loci of Hamar 257

Rhetorics of local knowledge 289

Meanings and rhetoric of the barjo aela 315

Magic and the rhetorical will 323

Mantic and magical confidence: The work of persuasion 333.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [355]-363) and indexes.

ISBN:

9780870139901

0870139908

9783825878580

3825878589

OCLC:

657080482