In volume 1, Professor Verdon sought to identify what crippled social anthropologys original project, that of understanding sociocultural variability. He found its cause in a universal, Aristotelian cosmology that renders groups ontologically variable to their principles of social organization, by defining them in terms of behaviour regulation. In this second volume, he develops a cure to that cosmological malaise: to define groups outside all behaviour regulation, and to define a separate group for every type of activity (unifunctional groups). From these two new cosmological requirements he sets out to define all the main concepts of social anthropology in what he calls an operational language (defined with respect to anthropologys aims, not as entities with intrinsic anthropological attributes): groups, corporations, descent, territoriality, lineages, segmentation, sovereignty and so on.He then applies this language to translate classical ethnographies operationally. He first chose the most famous ethnographies of so-called segmentary lineage societies, the Nuer (Sudan), Tallensi (Ghana) and Tiv (Nigeria), and then added the Berbers from the Rif (Morocco), the Yao (Malawi) and Australian Aborigines. All those societies were described as having descent groups. Translated operationally, ONLY ONE of them retains descent groups (the Tallensi). This leads him radically to transform the ethnographic landscape of social anthropology. Where all ethnographers saw descent groups almost everywhere, he finds them to be rare occurrences, now replaced with clientelistic social formations.Overall, setting out to define a set of etic (objective) concepts, he discovers that this language actually yields much better emic approaches to social organization (an approach closer to the actors subjective experience).
British food has an unsavoury global reputation, but the folklore which made it what it is can be traced back millennia. Folklorist Ben Gazur guides you through the dark alleys of British history to uncover how our food habits have been passed down through generations of traditions. Readers will get a taste of what life was life in a time when food was both magical ingredient and sustenance.Discover why we throw salt over our shoulder, why we think carrots help us see in the dark, when living snakes in pies were once the height of fashion at weddings, and why people risk life and limb to chase wheels of cheese down a hill.Hilarious and fascinating, A Feast of Folklore will introduce you to the gloriously eccentric folk who arent often noticed by historians. Here lies a smorgasbord of their dark remedies and deadly delicacies, waiting to be discovered.
Building on the premise that landscapes provide a common ground where different kinds of knowledge may come together, this edited volume draws on a wide range of disciplines, including geology and geography, cultural anthropology and philosophy, architecture and art history. It suggests that the complex social and environmental crises of the 21st century cannot be understood independently of a historically constituted aesthetic approach to landscapes.Boulouki is a collective that deals with the traditional knowledge of building. Under the Landscape (Santorini and Therasia, 2021 2022), one of the collectives most important projects, comprised a participatory restoration, research into local materials, an exhibition and a symposium, and is the basis and starting point of this publication.