Crying Shame

Building on ethnographic fieldwork and extensive historical
evidence, Crying Shame analyzes lament across thousands of
years and nearly every continent.

• Explores the enduring power of lament: expressing grief through
  crying songs, often in a collective ritual context

• Draws on the author's extensive ethnographic fieldwork,
  and unique long-term engagement and participation in the
  phenomenon

• Offers a startling new perspective on the nature of modernity
  and postmodernity

• An important addition to growing literature on cultural
  globalization

Auteur

James M. Wilce is Professor of Anthropology at Northern
Arizona University. He has published a number of articles and is
the author of Eloquence in Trouble: The Poetics and Politics of
Complaint in Rural Bangladesh (1998) and Language and
Emotion (forthcoming) and the editor of Social and Cultural
Lives of Immune Systems (2003). Wilce serves on the editorial
board of American Anthropologist and the Journal of
Linguistic Anthropology. He is also the series editor for
Blackwell Studies in Discourse and Culture.

Résumé
Building on ethnographic fieldwork and extensive historical evidence, Crying Shame analyzes lament across thousands of years and nearly every continent.

• Explores the enduring power of lament: expressing grief through crying songs, often in a collective ritual context
• Draws on the author's extensive ethnographic fieldwork, and unique long-term engagement and participation in the phenomenon
• Offers a startling new perspective on the nature of modernity and postmodernity
• An important addition to growing literature on cultural globalization

Contenu

Acknowledgments.

Preface.

1 Introduction.

PART I LOCATING LAMENT AS OBJECT.

Introduction.

2 For Crying Out Loud: What Is Lament Anyway?

3 Lament and Emotion.

4 Antiquity, Metaculture, and the Control of Lament.

PART II LOSING LAMENT: MODERNITY AS LOSS.

Introduction.

5 Cultural Amnesia and the Objectification of Lament in
Bangladesh.

6 Modern Transformations.

7 How Shame Spreads in Modernity.

8 Crying Backward: Primitivist Representations of Lament.

PART III REVIVING LAMENT: LAMENT AS KEY TROPE OF
MODERNITY.

Introduction.

9 Mourning Becomes the Electron's Age: Lamenting
Modernity(ies).

10 Lament's (Post)Modern Vertigo: Floating in a
Deterritorialized Media Sea.

11 Lament in a Postmodern World of "Revivals".

12 Conclusion.

Notes.

References.

Index.