Human Nature as Capacity

Transcending Discourse and Classification
1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-1-84545-637-5
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, Band 20, 224 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 518 g

Reihe: Methodology & History in Anthropology

What is it to be human? What are our specifically human attributes, our capacities and liabilities? Such questions gave birth to anthropology as an Enlightenment science. This book argues that it is again appropriate to bring “the human” to the fore, to reclaim the singularity of the word as central to the anthropological endeavor, not on the basis of the substance of a human nature – “To be human is to act like this and react like this, to feel this and want this” – but in terms of species-wide capacities: capabilities for action and imagination, liabilities for suffering and cruelty. The contributors approach “the human” with an awareness of these complexities and particularities, rendering this volume unique in its ability to build on anthropology’s ethnographic expertise.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Rapport, Nigel

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Naturwissenschaften, Technik, Medizin

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

List of Contributors

Introduction: Human Capacity as an Exceeding, a Going  Beyond

Nigel Rapport

PART I: BEYOND THE ECONOMY

Introduction to Part I

Nigel Rapport

Chapter 1. Conversations with Eulogio: On Migration and the Building of a Life-Project in Motion

Nelson Ferguson

Chapter 2. The Limits of Liminality: Capacities for Change and Transition among Student Travellers

Vered Amit

PART II: BEYOND THE POLITY

Introduction to Part II

Nigel Rapport

Chapter 3. 'Crisis': On the Limits of European Integration and Identity in Northern Ireland

Thomas M. Wilson

Chapter 4. Making the Cosmopolitan Plea: Harold Oram's International Fund-raising in the Early Cold War

Laura Suski

PART III: BEYOND THE CLASSIFACTORY

Introduction to Part III

Nigel Rapport

Chapter 5. Money, Materiality and Imagination: Life on the Other Side of Value

Andrew Irving

Chapter 6. Acts of Entification: The Emergence of Thinghood in Social Life

Tord Larsen

PART IV: BEYOND THE BODY

Introduction to Part IV

Nigel Rapport

Chapter 7. Embodied  Cognition, Communication and the Making of Place and Identity: Reflections on Fieldwork with Masons

Trevor H.J. Marchand

Chapter 8. 'Live in Fragments no Longer': Social Dance and Individual Imagination in Human Nature

Jonathan Skinner

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Rapport, Nigel
Nigel Rapport is Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and directs the Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies. He also held the Canada Research Chair in Globalization, Citizenship and Justice at Concordia University, Montreal, and he has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Recent publications include 'I am Dynamite': An Alternative Anthropology of Power (Routledge, 2003) and Of Orderlies and Men: Hospital Porters Achieving Wellness at Work (Carolina Academic Press, 2008).