Kirsten Hastrup

den flexibla gemenskapen

Kultur

Peter Hervik

Anthropology poses an explicit challenge to standard notions of scientific knowledge. It claims to produce genuine insights into the workings of culture in general on the basis of individual social experience in the field. Social Experience and Anthropological Knowledge traces the process from the ethnographic experience to the analytical results, showing how fieldwork enables the ethnographer to arrive at an understanding, not only of `culture' and `society', but also of the processes by which cultures and societies are transformed. The contributors challenge the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity, redefine what we should mean by `empirical' and demonstrate the complexity of present-day epistemological problems through concrete examples. By demystifying subjectivity in the ethnographic process and re-emphasizing the vital position of fieldwork, they do much to renew confidence in the anthropological project of comprehending the world.

Social Experience and Anthropological Knowledge

Karen Fog Olwig

'The greatest single impact of climate change could be on human migration', stated the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1990. Since then there has been considerable concern about the large-scale population movements that might take place because of climate change. This book examines emerging patterns of human mobility in relation to climate change, drawing on a multidisciplinary approach, including anthropology and geography. It addresses both larger, general questions and concrete local cases, where the link between climate change and human mobility is manifest and demands attention - empirically, analytically and conceptually. Among the cases explored are both historical and contemporary instances of migration in response to climate change, and together they illustrate the necessity of analyzing new patterns of movement, historic cultural images and regulation practices in the wake of new global processes.

Challenges to the Social Sciences

Climate Change and Human Mobility

The postmodernist critique of Objectivism, Realism and Essentialism has somewhat shattered the foundations of anthropology, seriously questioning the legitimacy of studying others. By confronting the critique and turning it into a vital part of the anthropological debate, A Passage to Anthropology provides a rigorous discussion of central theoretical problems in anthropology that will find a readership in the social sciences and the humanities. It makes the case for a renewed and invigorated scholarly anthropology with extensive reference to recent anthropological debates in Europe and the US, as well as to new developments in linguistic theory and, especially, newer American philosophy. Although the style of the work is mainly theoretical, the author illustrates the points by referring to her own fieldwork conducted in Iceland. A Passage to Anthropology will be of interest to students in anthropology, sociology and cultural studies.

Between Experience and Theory

A Passage to Anthropology

An analysis of Icelandic society from 1400 to 1800, a period of social disintegration and technological decline.

An Anthropological Analysis of History and Mentality

Nature and Policy in Iceland, 1400-1800

On the basis of empirical studies, this book explores nature as an integral part of the social worlds conventionally studied by anthropologists. The book may be read as a form of scholarly "edgework," resisting institutional divisions and conceptual routines in the interest of exploring new modalities of anthropological knowledge making. The present interest in the natural world is partly a response to large-scale natural disasters and global climate change, and to a keen sense that nature matters matters to society at many levels, ranging from the microbiological and genetic framing of reproduction, over co-species development, to macro-ecological changes of weather and climate. Given that the human footprint is now conspicuous across the entire globe, in the oceans as well as in the atmosphere, it is difficult to claim that nature is what is given and permanent, while people and societies are ephemeral and simply derivative features. This implies that society matters to nature, and some natural scientists look towards the social sciences for an understanding of how people think and how societies work. The book thus opens up a space for new forms of reflection on how natures and societies are generated.

Anthropology and Nature

Frida Hastrup

In one form or another, water participates in the making and unmaking of people’s lives, practices, and stories. Contributors’ detailed ethnographic work analyzes the union and mutual shaping of water and social lives. This volume discusses current ecological disturbances and engages in a world where unbounded relationalities and unsettled frames of orientation mark the lives of all, anthropologists included. Water emerges as a fluid object in more senses than one, challenging anthropologists to foreground the mutable character of their objects of study and to responsibly engage with the generative role of cultural analysis.

Anthropology in Fluid Environments

Waterworlds

Peter Loizos

David MacDougall

Terence Wright

André Singer

Alan Macfarlane

Christopher Pinney

Felicia Hughes-Freeland

James C. Faris

Keyan G. Tomaselli

Timothy Asch

Marcus Banks

Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology

Dai Vaughan

Wilton Martinez

Kathleen Kuehnast

Richard Chalfen

Homer Williams

Gary Seaman

This work examines the reasons why anthropologists have not used the camera as a research instrument or film as a means of communicating ethnographic knowledge. It suggests that images and words in this discipline operate on different logical levels; that they are hierarchically related; that whereas writings may encompass the images produced by film, the inverse of this cannot be true. The author argues for this position further by suggesting that the visual is to the written mode as "thin description" (giving a record of the form of behaviour) is to "thick description" (giving an account of meaning).

Film As Ethnography

Cecilie Rubow

Climate change is a lived experience of changes in the environment, often destroying conventional forms of subsistence and production, creating new patterns of movement and connection, and transforming people’s imagined future. This book explores how people across the world think about environmental change and how they act upon the perception of past, present and future opportunities. Drawing on the ethnographic fieldwork of expert authors, it sheds new light on the human experience of and social response to climate change by taking us from the Arctic to the Pacific, from the Southeast Indian Coastal zone to the West-African dry-lands and deserts, as well as to Peruvian mountain communities and cities. Divided into four thematic parts - Water, Landscape, Technology, Time – this book uses rich photographic material to accompany the short texts and reflections in order to bring to life the human ingenuity and social responsibility of people in the face of new uncertainties. In an era of melting glaciers, drying lands, and rising seas, it shows how it is part and parcel of human life to take responsibility for the social community and take creative action on the basis of a localized understanding of the environment. This highly original contribution to the anthropological study of climate change is a must-read for all those wanting to understand better what climate change means on the ground and interested in a sustainable future for the Earth.

Living with Environmental Change

The historization of anthropology has entailed a radically new view upon history and the nature of history. This collection of papers from the first conference of the newly formed European Association of Social Anthropologists demonstrate how ways of thinking about history are important features of any production of history, and how cultural concepts enter as forcs of historical causation.

Other Histories

En stor og smuk bog, der i tekst og billeder giver et levende portræt af Thule igennem otte kapitler: Stedet. Folket. Isen. Fangsten. Teknologien. Kolonien. Invationen. Tiden. Igennem otte år har antropologen Kirsten Hastrup regelmæssigt besøgt Thule for at forstå verden, som den tager sig ud derfra. Møder og samtaler med de mennesker, der bor der, er blevet suppleret med læsning af den lange og righoldige historie. Resultatet er dette portræt af Thule som et samfund med dybe rødder, der netop nu står over for svære udfordringer. Bogens titel henviser til, at Thule i disse år er udsat for massive forandringer. Isen smelter, permafrosten tør, plante- og dyreliv ændrer sig, og i takt hermed ændrer samfundslivet sig naturligvis også. Fangerne har stadigt sværere ved at nå frem til de store havpattedyr, der har været deres livsgrundlag i mere end fire tusind år, og dyrene opfører sig også anderledes. Men der er ikke mange alternativer til fangst i det højarktiske område. Naturens nye luner opleves som en reel trussel mod fangertilværelsen.

Kirsten Hastrup

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