THE COMPOSITION OF ANTHROPOLOGY
How do anthropologists write their texts? What is the nature of creativity in the discipline of anthropology? This book follows anthropologists into spaces where words, ideas and arguments take shape and explores the steps in a creative process. In a unique examination of how texts come to be composed, the editors bring together a distinguished group of anthropologists who offer valuable insight into their writing habits. These reflexive glimpses into personal creativity reveal not only the processes by which theory and ethnography come, in particular cases, to be represented on the page but also supply examples that students may follow or adapt.
Morten Nielsen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Aarhus University, Denmark.
Nigel Rapport is Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews, UK.
THE COMPOSITION OF ANTHROPOLOGY
How Anthropological Texts Are Written
Edited by Morten Nielsen and Nigel Rapport
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2018 selection and editorial matter, Morten Nielsen and Nigel Rapport; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Morten Nielsen and Nigel Rapport to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-20812-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-20811-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-46025-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
CONTENTS
Morten Nielsen and Nigel Rapport
Veena Das
Kirin Narayan
Nina Holm Vohnsen
Bjrn Enge Bertelsen
Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Anthony P. Cohen
Nigel Rapport
Helena Wulff
Morten Nielsen
Dominic Boyer
Anthony Stavrianakis, Paul Rabinow and Trine Mygind Korsby
Nigel Rapport and Morten Nielsen
Bjrn Enge Bertelsen is Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen and has researched issues such as state formation, egalitarianism, cosmology, violence and ruralurban connections in Mozambique since 1998. Bertelsen has authored the monograph Violent Becomings: State Formation, Sociality and Power in Mozambique (2016), and has co-edited Crisis of the State: War and Social Upheaval (with Bruce Kapferer, 2009); Navigating Colonial Orders: Norwegian Entrepreneurship in Africa and Oceania, ca. 1850 to 1950 (with Kirsten Alsaker Kjerland, 2015); Violent Reverberations: Global Modalities of Trauma (with Vigdis Broch-Due, 2016); and Critical Anthropological Engagements in Human Alterity and Difference (with Synnve Bendixsen, 2016).
Dominic Boyer is Professor of Anthropology at Rice University and founding director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences (CENHS, culturesofenergy.org), promoting research on the energy/environment nexus in the arts, humanities and social sciences. He is part of the editorial collective of the journal Cultural Anthropology (20152018) and also edits the Expertise: Cultures and Technologies of Knowledge book series for Cornell University Press. His most recent monograph is The Life Informatic: Newsmaking in the Digital Era (Cornell University Press 2013). With James Faubion and George Marcus, he has recently edited Theory Can Be More Than It Used to Be (Cornell University Press 2015) and, with Imre Szeman, has developed Energy Humanities: An Anthology for Johns Hopkins University Press (2017). His next book, Energopolitics , is part of a collaborative multimedia duograph with Cymene Howe, exploring the complexities of wind power development in Southern Mexico. With Howe, he also co-hosts the Cultures of Energy podcast (available on iTunes, PlayerFM and Stitcher).
Anthony P. Cohen was Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh from 1989 to 2003, where he was also Provost. This followed 20 years at universities in Canada and at Manchester. He then became the founding principal and vice-chancellor of Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. He retired in 2009 and is now an Honorary Professor at Edinburgh University. He specialised in issues of personal, social and national identity, and, since retiring, his academic activity has been spent largely in critical reflection on what he did and did not do during his active career.
Veena Das is the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology and Adjunct Professor of Humanities at the Johns Hopkins University. Her books include Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (2007); Affliction: Health, Disease, Poverty (2015); and a jointly authored book, Four Lectures in Ethics (2015). She has also co-edited The Ground Between: Anthropologists Engage Philosophy (2014); and Living and Dying in the Contemporary World: A Compendium (2015). She is currently completing a further book: Textures of the Ordinary: Anthropological Essays, Wittgensteinian Traces . She is also engaged in an interdisciplinary research group (QUTUB) working with other organizations on the goal of reducing time to diagnosis for TB patients in two cities in India and improving treatment adherence. Das is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Academy of Scientists from Developing Countries, and is a recipient of honorary doctorates from the University of Chicago, the University of Edinburgh and Bern University.
Thomas Hylland Eriksen is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. Following his early fieldwork in Mauritius (1986, 199192) and Trinidad (1989), he has published widely on the politics of identity and the cultural dynamics of complex societies. He has also carried out and directed research in Norway addressing these issues. From 2012 to 2017, he was principal investigator (PI) of the ERC AdvGr project Overheating, which takes a comparative look at the crises of identity, climate and economy. His latest books are Identity Destabilised (ed. with E. Schober) and Overheating: An Anthropology of Accelerated Change , both published by Pluto in 2016.
Trine Mygind Korsby is a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, where she works on a project on transnational crime and criminal livelihoods in Romania. She completed her PhD in anthropology at Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen. Her recent publications include Moments in Collaboration: Experiments in Concept Work, co-authored with Anthony Stavrianakis ( Ethnos 2016); and The Brothel Phone Number: Infrastructures of Transnational Pimping in Eastern Romania ( The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology , forthcoming).
