Recovering the Human Subject
Cambridge University Press, 2/15/2018
EAN 9781108424967, ISBN10: 1108424961
Hardcover, 206 pages, 23.5 x 15.8 x 1.5 cm
Language: English
This volume responds to the often-proclaimed 'death of the subject' in post-structuralist theorizing, and to calls from across the social sciences for 'post-humanist' alternatives to liberal humanism in a distinctively anthropological manner. It asks: can we use the intellectual resources developed in those approaches and debates to reconstruct a new account of how individual human subjects are contingently put together in diverse historical and ethnographic contexts? Anthropologists know that the people they work with think in terms of particular, distinctive, individual human personalities, and that in times of change and crisis these individuals matter crucially to how things turn out. The volume features a classic essay by Caroline Humphrey, 'Reassembling individual subjects', that provides a focus for the debate, and it brings together a distinguished collection of essays, which exhibit a range of theoretical approaches and rich and varied ethnography.
1. Introduction
freedom, creativity, and decision in recovering human subject Barbara Bodenhorn, Martin Holbraad and James Laidlaw
2. Reassembling individual subjects
events and decisions in troubled times Caroline Humphrey
Part I. Decision
3. On singularity and the event
further reflections on the ordinary Veena Das
4. Apathy and revolution
temporal sensibilities in contemporary Mongolia Lars Højer
5. Apparitions of the Virgin Mary as decision-events Agnieszka Halemba
Part II. Freedom
6. Incidental connections
freedom and urban life in Mongolia Morten Axel Pedersen
7. The return to slavery? Nostalgia and a new generation of escape in Southwest China Katherine Swancutt (è‹Â梦林) and Jiarimuji (嘉日姆几)
Part III. Creativity
8. Paradoxical pedagogies and humanist double binds Matei Candea
9. Where in the world are values? Exemplarity, morality, and social process Joel Robbins.