Charred Lullabies

Author : E. Valentine Daniel
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 1996-11-11
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781400822034

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Charred Lullabies by E. Valentine Daniel Pdf

How does an ethnographer write about violence? How can he make sense of violent acts, for himself and for his readers, without compromising its sheer excess and its meaning-defying core? How can he remain a scholarly observer when the country of his birth is engulfed by terror? These are some of the questions that engage Valentine Daniel in this exploration of life and death in contemporary Sri Lanka. In 1983 Daniel "walked into the ashes and mortal residue" of the violence that had occurred in his homeland. His planned project--the study of women's folk songs as ethnohistory--was immediately displaced by the responsibility that he felt had been given to him, by surviving family members and friends of victims, to recount beyond Sri Lanka what he had seen and heard there. Trained to do fieldwork by staying in one place and educated to look for coherence and meaning in human behavior, what does an anthropologist do when he is forced by circumstances to keep moving, searching for reasons he never finds? How does he write an ethnography (or an anthropography, to use the author's term) without transforming it into a pornography of violence? In avoiding fattening the anthropography into prurience, how does he avoid flattening it with theory? The ways in which Daniel grapples with these questions, and their answers, instill this groundbreaking book with a rare sense of passion, purpose, and intellect.

Author : Nicholas B. Dirks
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0816631220

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In Near Ruins by Nicholas B. Dirks Pdf

If culture is suspect, what of cultural theory? At a moment when culture's traditional caretakers -- humanism, philosophy, anthropology, and the nation-state -- are undergoing crisis and mutation, this volume charts the tensions and contradictions in the development and deployment of the concept of culture. A genuinely interdisciplinary venture, In Near Ruins brings together respected writers from the fields of history, anthropology, literary criticism, and communications. Together their essays present an intriguing picture of "culture" at the edges of humanism, of the politics of critical inquiry amid current social transformations, of the status and practice of historical knowledge in an age of theory. Skeptical of the concept of culture but fascinated with cultural forms, the authors take up diverse topics, from debates over sexuality in the contemporary United States to relations between empire, capitalism, and gender in nineteenth-century Britain; from poverty in U.S. inner cities to violence in war-torn Sri Lanka; from the operation of nostalgia on cultural practices in Japan to anthropological forms of state power in Indonesia and the writing of history in India. Linked by a common urge to think through the aesthetics and politics of particular social relations amid a variety of globalizing forces -- revolution, colonialism, nationalism, and the disciplinary institutions of the academy itself -- these writers contribute to the ongoing work of remapping the terrain of cultural analysis and reevaluating the stakes in such a daunting effort.

Author : Vincent B. Sherry
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 1987
Category : Poets, English
ISBN : 047210084X

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The Uncommon Tongue by Vincent B. Sherry Pdf

Examines Hill's verse within the context of British and American reaction to the great literary modernists of the early 20th century

Author : Ania Loomba,Ritty A. Lukose
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 433 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2012-03-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9780822351795

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South Asian Feminisms by Ania Loomba,Ritty A. Lukose Pdf

This collection intervenes in key areas of feminist scholarship and activism in contemporary South Asia, particularly India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, while asking how this investigation might enrich feminist theorizing and practice globally.

Author : H.A. Drake
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 403 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2016-12-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9781351875745

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Violence in Late Antiquity by H.A. Drake Pdf

'Violence' is virtually synonymous in the popular imagination with the period of the Later Roman Empire-a time when waves of barbarian invaders combined with urban mobs and religious zealots to bring an end to centuries of peace and serenity. All of these images come together in the Visigothic sack of the city of Rome in A.D. 410, a date commonly used for the fall of the entire empire. But was this period in fact as violent as it has been portrayed? A new generation of scholars in the field of Late Antiquity has called into question the standard narrative, pointing to evidence of cultural continuity and peaceful interaction between "barbarians" and Romans, Christians and pagans. To assess the state of this question, the fifth biennial 'Shifting Frontiers' conference was devoted to the theme of 'Violence in Late Antiquity'. Conferees addressed aspects of this question from standpoints as diverse as archaeology and rhetoric, anthropology and economics. A selection of the papers then delivered have been prepared for the present volume, along with others commissioned for the purpose and a concluding essay by Martin Zimmerman, reflecting on the theme of the book. The four sections on Defining Violence, 'Legitimate' Violence, Violence and Rhetoric, and Religious Violence are each introduced by a theme essay from a leading scholar in the field. While offering no definitive answer to the question of violence in Late Antiquity, the papers in this volume aim to stimulate a fresh look at this age-old problem.

Author : E.M. Knottenbelt
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 428 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2022-07-18
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9789004483521

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Passionate Intelligence: The Poetry of Geoffrey Hill by E.M. Knottenbelt Pdf

Author : Edward Weisband
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 481 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2018
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780190677886

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The Macabresque by Edward Weisband Pdf

Studies of genocide and mass atrocity most often focus on their causes and consequences, their aims and effects, and the number of people killed. But if the main goal is death, why is torture necessary? By understanding how and why mass violence occurs and the reasons for its variations, The Macabresque aims to explain why so many seemingly normal or "ordinary" people participate in mass atrocity across cultures and why such egregious violence occursrepeatedly through history.

Author : Hannah Whittaker
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 186 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2015-10-20
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9789004283084

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Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Kenya by Hannah Whittaker Pdf

In Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Kenya, Hannah Whittaker offers an in-depth analysis of the Somali secessionist war in northern Kenya, 1963-68.

Author : Anand Pandian
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 104 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2019-10-18
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781478004370

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A Possible Anthropology by Anand Pandian Pdf

In a time of intense uncertainty, social strife, and ecological upheaval, what does it take to envision the world as it yet may be? The field of anthropology, Anand Pandian argues, has resources essential for this critical and imaginative task. Anthropology is no stranger to injustice and exploitation. Still, its methods can reveal unseen dimensions of the world at hand and radical experience as the seed of a humanity yet to come. A Possible Anthropology is an ethnography of anthropologists at work: canonical figures like Bronislaw Malinowski and Claude Lévi-Strauss, ethnographic storytellers like Zora Neale Hurston and Ursula K. Le Guin, contemporary scholars like Jane Guyer and Michael Jackson, and artists and indigenous activists inspired by the field. In their company, Pandian explores the moral and political horizons of anthropological inquiry, the creative and transformative potential of an experimental practice.

Author : Kirsten Gibson,ian Biddle
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2016-11-18
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781317156420

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Cultural Histories of Noise, Sound and Listening in Europe, 1300–1918 by Kirsten Gibson,ian Biddle Pdf

Cultural Histories of Noise, Sound and Listening in Europe, 1300-1918 presents a range of historical case studies on the sounding worlds of the European past. The chapters in this volume explore ways of thinking about sound historically, and seek to understand how people have understood and negotiated their relationships with the sounding world in Europe from the Middle Ages through to the early twentieth century. They consider, in particular: sound and music in the later Middle Ages; the politics of sound in the early modern period; the history of the body and perception during the Ancien Régime; and the sounds of the city in the nineteenth century and sound and colonial rule at the fin de siècle. The case studies also range in geographical orientation to include considerations not only of Britain and France, the countries most considered in European historical sound studies in English-language scholarship to date, but also Bosnia-Herzegovina, British Colonial India, Germany, Italy and Portugal. Out of this diverse group of case studies emerge significant themes that recur time and again, varying according to time and place: sound, power and identity; sound as a marker of power or violence; and sound, physiology and sensory perception and technologies of sound, consumption and meaning.

Author : Veena Das
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 402 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0520216075

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Violence and Subjectivity by Veena Das Pdf

A collection of original essays that address the ways in which violence manifests itself on societal and interpersonal levels, analyzing how different kinds of violence are, and are not, interpreted on the world stage. By looking at hotspots of conflict, the contributors discuss the nature of violence in an age of worldwide "crisis management."

Author : Arthur Kleinman,Veena Das,Margaret M. Lock
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 436 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 1997-12-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0520209958

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Social Suffering by Arthur Kleinman,Veena Das,Margaret M. Lock Pdf

"Social Suffering" takes in the human consequences of war, famine, depression, disease and torture, problems that result from what political, economic and institutional power does to people. Experts have joined together to investigate the cultural representations of.

Author : Yumna Siddiqi
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : History
ISBN : 9780231138086

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Anxieties of Empire and the Fiction of Intrigue by Yumna Siddiqi Pdf

Focusing on late nineteenth- and twentieth-century stories of detection, policing, and espionage by British and South Asian writers, Yumna Siddiqi presents an original and compelling exploration of the cultural anxieties created by imperialism. She suggests that while colonial writers use narratives of intrigue to endorse imperial rule, postcolonial writers turn the generic conventions and topography of the fiction of intrigue on its head, launching a critique of imperial power that makes the repressive and emancipatory impulses of postcolonial modernity visible. Siddiqi devotes the first part of her book to the colonial fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle and John Buchan, in which the British regime's preoccupation with maintaining power found its voice. The rationalization of difference, pronouncedly expressed through the genre's strategies of representation and narrative resolution, helped to reinforce domination and, in some cases, allay fears concerning the loss of colonial power. In the second part, Siddiqi argues that late twentieth-century South Asian writers also underscore the state's insecurities, but unlike British imperial writers, they take a critical view of the state's authoritarian tendencies. Such writers as Amitav Ghosh, Michael Ondaatje, Arundhati Roy, and Salman Rushdie use the conventions of detective and spy fiction in creative ways to explore the coercive actions of the postcolonial state and the power dynamics of a postcolonial New Empire. Drawing on the work of leading theorists of imperialism such as Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, and the Subaltern Studies historians, Siddiqi reveals how British writers express the anxious workings of a will to maintain imperial power in their writing. She also illuminates the ways South Asian writers portray the paradoxes of postcolonial modernity and trace the ruses and uses of reason in a world where the modern marks a horizon not only of hope but also of economic, military, and ecological disaster.

Author : Tessa J. Bartholomeusz,Chandra R. de Silva
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 1998-07-10
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780791495865

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Buddhist Fundamentalism and Minority Identities in Sri Lanka by Tessa J. Bartholomeusz,Chandra R. de Silva Pdf

Buddhist Fundamentalism and Minority Identities in Sri Lanka explores Sinhala-Buddhist fundamentalist ideology and its power to shape the identities of Sri Lanka's ethnic and religious minorities. Sinhala-Buddhist fundamentalists in contemporary Sri Lanka share an ideology that asserts a vital link between the island of Sri Lanka and the Sinhala people, especially in their role as curators of Buddhism, and often at the exclusion of the minorities. Minority responses to Sinhala-Buddhist fundamentalism are manifold, ranging from assimilation to the formation of rival fundamentalisms. The authors provide views of history markedly different from most scholarly reflections on Sri Lanka; thus, the history of shifting perceptions of Sinhala-Buddhist fundamentalism offered here constitutes an important contribution to the subaltern history of Sri Lanka. By treating both the development of Sinhala-Buddhist fundamentalism in the late nineteenth century and its hegemony in the late twentieth, this study links the present to the past.

Author : Achala Gunasekara-Rockwell
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 203 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2022-08-19
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781000630862

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Devas, Demons and Buddhist Cosmology in Sri Lanka by Achala Gunasekara-Rockwell Pdf

This book examines the worship of devas and demons in Sri Lanka, illustrating how diverse influences interacted to create the Sinhala Buddhist cosmology. The work explains the processes by which apotheosis plays an important role in revitalizing that cosmology. The author offers an examination of holy sites associated with the worship of Hūniyam. These sacred spaces each have a unique background historically, and the ritualists associated with these sites have divergent understandings concerning Hūniyam. Building upon the examination of the temples, the book delves into the iconography of Hūniyam, illustrating his transformation from demon to deity in the manner that he is depicted in imagery associated with his worship. The book moves to a discussion of Aritṭ ạ Kivenḍu Perumāl, a South Indian adventurer, demonstrating the likelihood that he is the historical figure later apotheosized as Hūniyam. Sri Lankan society felt his impact so strongly that in death he became a demon in the Sinhala Buddhist cosmology. Finally, the book demonstrates that the same apotheosis processes are at work today. This book will be of interest to researchers and students engaged in the study of religion, anthropology, folklore, and history, specifically in the South Asian context.