Silence

This book is about silence and power and how they interact. It argues that only by studying how silence works-how it is implicated in the construction of meaning-can we arrive at the elusive roots of power in all its dimensions. Silence becomes the currency of power by delineating the margins or what we perceive and through a sleight of hand wherein behaviors undertaken in the service of self-interest appear instead as inevitable and devoid of human agency. The theoretical load of this argument is carried by vivid ethnographic material dealing with music, linguistic behavior, racial conflicts, work dislocations, and the construction of anthropological subjects and texts.

Auteur

Maria-Luisa Achino-Loeb, PhD, teaches at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Studies where she continues to develop courses on silence. She has done research with Waldensians and other minorities within religious groups. Her work has been published in journals such as American Anthropologist and Theory in Psychology, among others. She currently co-chairs the Advisory Council of the Anthropology Section, New York Academy of Sciences.

Contenu

Introduction: Silence as the Currency of Power
Maria-Luisa Achino-Loeb

PART I: SILENCE, CONTEXT, AND CATEGORIES OF IDENTITY

Chapter 1. Silence in Music
William O. Beeman

Chapter 2. Silence and the Imperatives of Identity
Maria-Luisa Achino-Loeb

Chapter 3. Language Policies and the Erasure of Multilingualism in South Africa
Susan E. Cook

PART II: SILENCE AND POWER IN ETHNOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVE

Chapter 4. Strategic Alterity and Silence in the Promotion of California's Proposition 187 and of the Confederate Battle Flag in South Carolina
Ann E. Kingsolver

Chapter 5. No/ma(i)ds: Silenced Subjects in Philippine Migration
Pauline Gardiner Barber

Chapter 6. The Muzzled Saint: Racism, Cultural Censorship, and Religion in Urban Brazil
Robin E. Sheriff

PART III: SILENCE AND THE PLIGHT OF THE OBSERVER

Chapter 7. Between Silences and Culture: A Partisan Anthropology
Gerald Sider

Chapter 8. Silences of the Field
James W. Fernandez

Contributors
Author Index
Subject Index