Living beings : perspectives on interspecies engagements / edited by Penelope Dransart.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Dransart, Penny, editor.

Series:

Association of Social Anthropologists Monographs

ASA monographs ; 50

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human-animal relationships--Case studies.

Human-animal relationships.

Human-plant relationships--Case studies.

Human-plant relationships.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (230 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Bloomsbury, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Living Beings examines the vital characteristics of social interactions between living beings, including humans, other animals and trees.Many discussions of such relationships highlight the exceptional qualities of the human members of the category, insisting for instance on their religious beliefs or creativity. In contrast, the international case studies in this volume dissect views based on hierarchical oppositions between human and other living beings. Although human practices may sometimes appear to exist in a realm beyond nature, they are nevertheless subject to the pull of natural forces. These forces may be brought into prominence through a consideration of the interactions between human beings and other inhabitants of the natural world.The interplay in this book between social anthropologists, philosophers and artists cuts across species divisions to examine the experiential dimensions of interspecies engagements. In ethnographically and/or historically contextualized chapters, contributors examine the juxtaposition of human and other living beings in the light of themes such as wildlife safaris, violence, difference, mimicry, simulation, spiritual renewal, dress and language.

Contents:

Living beings and vital powers : an introduction / Penelope Dransart

Being together with animals : death, violence and noncruelty in Hindu imagination / Veena Das

The nature of nature in Ramon Llull / Sarah Jane Boss

The tree of Gernika : political poetics of rootedness and belonging / Safet HadžiMuhamedović

Bringing the forest to the city : spaces imagined in Israeli sacred song circles / Ronit Grossman-Horesh

Sensuous photographies : living things explored through phenomenological practice / Carole Baker

The field : an art experiment in Levinasian ethics / Alana Jelinek, with Juliette Brown

Hunting the wild 'other' to become a man : wildlife tourism and the modern identity crisis in Israeli safaris to East Africa / Rachel Ben-David

Becoming-animal in the Chinese martial arts / D.S. Farrer

Moral issues in engagements between animals and the environment / Anthropomorphism, anthropocentrism and the study of language in primates / David Cockburn

Dressed in furs : clothing and Yaghan multispecies engagements in Tierra del Fuego / Penelope Dransart

Appendix: Modes of being and destinies of living beings in a Mexican book of fate / Penelope Dransart.

Notes:

"The chapters in this book are based on a selection of papers presented at the 2011 annual conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth (ASA), which met in Lampter, Wales, under the title 'Vital Powers and Politics : Human Interactions with Living Things'"--Preface.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-00-308588-1

1-000-18961-9

1-000-18298-3

1-003-08588-1

1-4725-1907-8

1-4742-1409-6

0-85785-844-0

9781003085881

OCLC:

1158313693