Critical Anthropological Engagements in Human Alterity and Difference

This book explores how one measures and analyzes human alterity and difference in an interconnected and ever-globalizing world. This book critically assesses the impact of what has often been dubbed 'the ontological turn' within anthropology in order to provide some answers to these questions. In doing so, the book explores the turn's empirical and theoretical limits, accomplishments, and potential. The book distinguishes between three central strands of the ontological turn, namely worldviews, materialities, and politics. It presents empirically rich case studies, which help to elaborate on the potentiality and challenges which the ontological turn's perspectives and approaches may have to offer.

Auteur
Bjørn Enge Bertelsen is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Norway.
Synnøve Bendixsen is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Norway, and Head of International Migration and Ethnic Relations at Uni Research Rokkansenteret, Norway.

Contenu

Chapter 1: Recalibrating Alterity, Difference, Ontology. Anthropological Engagements with Human and Non-Human Worlds.- Part I: Worldviews.- Chapter 2: Seeing, Being, and Knowing: The Relationality of Species in Chewong Animistic Ontology.- Chapter 3: Alterity, Predation, and Questions of Representation: The Problem of the Kharisiri in the Andes.- Chapter 4: False Prophets: Blasphemy and Ontological Contests in Indonesian Courts.- Chapter 5: Chronically Unstable Ontologies: Ontological Dynamics and the "Difference Within".- Part II: Materialities.- Chapter 6: The Hold Life Has in a Warao Village: Assembling Household and the Practicalities of Everyday Life.- Chapter 7: Disrupting School Smartness: Critical Ethnography of Schooling and the "Ontological Turn" in Anthropology and Educational Studies.- Chapter 8: Beyond Cultural Relativism? Tim Ingold's "Ontology of Dwelling" Revisited.- Part III: Politics.- Chapter 9: Ontological Turns within the Visual Arts: Ontic Violence and the Politics of Anticipation.- Chapter 10: Alter-Politics Reconsidered: From Different Worlds to Osmotic Worlding.- Chapter 11: "It Seems Like a Lie": Opening up the Political to World-Making Practices in Contemporary Peru.- Chapter 12: Reading Holbraad: Truth and Doubt in the Context of Ontological Inquiry.- Postscript: Taking the Ontological Turn Personally.