Professor Emeritus of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.Founding Director of the St Andrews Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies.
This thesis comes at the end of more than three years of explorations, aimless meanderings and so... more This thesis comes at the end of more than three years of explorations, aimless meanderings and some focused work. This would, however, might have remained a fuzzy aberration if not for the support from my supervisors Didier Maquin and Christophe Aubrun, and the ever helping José Ragot. Didier's meticulous reviews, whether during regular update meetings or a journal article, have been pivotal in the progress I made in my research work. He showed tremendous patience during my anarchical days of research. He has also been very supportive and understanding of my need to push my thesis beyond the regular 3 years. Christophe's support has been to whatever he can do to smooth things for my PhD life. From helping the clueless anglophone in France when I arrived, or provide help to secure a teaching position for financing my 4th year, his support has always been an asset of a different kind. José's impact on this thesis is very difficult to quantify. Even though he is not officially a supervisor, he has been of a huge influence as soon as he started to work with me a year after I started my PhD. His enthusiasm and willingness to discuss any technical detail, related or not to the thesis, provided an environment that I felt at ease with to do research. I wish I can be as active, as sharp and as inquisitive as José in the decades to come. And a big thanks to Floriane Collin, who was very helpful to formulate a part of the thesis I wrestled for months. Any scholarly activity wouldn't happen without the funding that supports it. I'm thankful for the EiT FP7 project, especially the leader, Dominique Sauter for extending the financial support and being patient with the need to accommodate our PhD responsibilities. Thanks are also due to other project collaborators, Frédéric Hamelin, Joseph Yamé, Eric Levrat and Alexandre Voisin. Thanks to Patrick Sibille for having confidence in me to teach in French, and to Jean-Christophe Ponsart and Vincent Laurain for their help in executing it. I'm also indebted to other faculties in CRAN who have entertained my mostly naive questions, specifically, Taha Boukhobza, Romain Postoyan and Samir Aberkane. Dealing with bureaucracy is difficult and without all the support from Sabine Huraux, I would still probably be figuring out how to complete an administrative procedure. Friends and colleagues played an important part in both keeping my sanity and uplifting it during all these years. Tejaswinee and Collince proved able colleagues and helpful friends during the project. Manal and Ghassane were immensely helpful during the initial setup and continue to watch over from a distance. And they also gave me an opportunity to visit Morocco. Other CRAN colleagues have been supportive at different parts of my PhD, including
This thesis comes at the end of more than three years of explorations, aimless meanderings and so... more This thesis comes at the end of more than three years of explorations, aimless meanderings and some focused work. This would, however, might have remained a fuzzy aberration if not for the support from my supervisors Didier Maquin and Christophe Aubrun, and the ever helping José Ragot. Didier's meticulous reviews, whether during regular update meetings or a journal article, have been pivotal in the progress I made in my research work. He showed tremendous patience during my anarchical days of research. He has also been very supportive and understanding of my need to push my thesis beyond the regular 3 years. Christophe's support has been to whatever he can do to smooth things for my PhD life. From helping the clueless anglophone in France when I arrived, or provide help to secure a teaching position for financing my 4th year, his support has always been an asset of a different kind. José's impact on this thesis is very difficult to quantify. Even though he is not officially a supervisor, he has been of a huge influence as soon as he started to work with me a year after I started my PhD. His enthusiasm and willingness to discuss any technical detail, related or not to the thesis, provided an environment that I felt at ease with to do research. I wish I can be as active, as sharp and as inquisitive as José in the decades to come. And a big thanks to Floriane Collin, who was very helpful to formulate a part of the thesis I wrestled for months. Any scholarly activity wouldn't happen without the funding that supports it. I'm thankful for the EiT FP7 project, especially the leader, Dominique Sauter for extending the financial support and being patient with the need to accommodate our PhD responsibilities. Thanks are also due to other project collaborators, Frédéric Hamelin, Joseph Yamé, Eric Levrat and Alexandre Voisin. Thanks to Patrick Sibille for having confidence in me to teach in French, and to Jean-Christophe Ponsart and Vincent Laurain for their help in executing it. I'm also indebted to other faculties in CRAN who have entertained my mostly naive questions, specifically, Taha Boukhobza, Romain Postoyan and Samir Aberkane. Dealing with bureaucracy is difficult and without all the support from Sabine Huraux, I would still probably be figuring out how to complete an administrative procedure. Friends and colleagues played an important part in both keeping my sanity and uplifting it during all these years. Tejaswinee and Collince proved able colleagues and helpful friends during the project. Manal and Ghassane were immensely helpful during the initial setup and continue to watch over from a distance. And they also gave me an opportunity to visit Morocco. Other CRAN colleagues have been supportive at different parts of my PhD, including
The aim of this special issue, Morten Nielsen has explained, is analytically to conjoin 'urban' a... more The aim of this special issue, Morten Nielsen has explained, is analytically to conjoin 'urban' and 'time' the better to conceptualize contemporary predicaments, anxieties and challenges of social life in the world's cities. The invitation is to a temporally orientated ethnography of urban life. Nielsen wants us to take this proposal absolutely literally. If cities have been characterized thus far in terms of an intensified spatial agglomeration of persons and things then there is an imminent need, he claims, to understand also an inherently temporal aspect to these processes. Nielsen's contributors then chart how temporal topologies are implicated in the lives of urbanites in a diversity of settings throughout the world. The temporal city comes to be at once a frame of mind, a social condition, a methodology and a political-cum-moral programme.
This article argues that the individual, as an actor with an identity over and above his or her m... more This article argues that the individual, as an actor with an identity over and above his or her membership in social groupings and cultural traditions, exists universally as an ontological reality. The recognition of this figure in anthropology is both an empirical and a moral necessity. The article suggests the moniker, Everyone, for the transcendent individual figure. The course of the article, after the introduction of Everyone, is to admit the critiques that have appeared in social commentary of such a figure, critiques of cultural, institutional, real-politische and phenomenological kinds. The article suggests ripostes to these critiques, ripostes which would invest Everyone with an ontological and a moral existence that is anthropologically persuasive and accord with the ethnographic record. Everyone is the individual within the role-player, the actor who has the capacity to ‘pass’ as member of any social grouping, any cultural tradition. The article concludes with a discussio...
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2010
'rupture of modernity' (p. 110), is a baseline for Wulff's work, as are the ambiguous tensions im... more 'rupture of modernity' (p. 110), is a baseline for Wulff's work, as are the ambiguous tensions implicit in a resistant stance to nationalizing cultural forms. Wulff examines a range of traditional dance forms, treating dance as a microcosm of culture in Ireland. She moves from Riverdance, to tournaments, to community-based dances in pubs. The initially apparently monolithic 'Irish dance' is fragmented into a bewildering variety. Not only is it highly varied in form and genre, Book reviews 411
Acknowledgements Prologue: The Book's Structure Nigel Rapport and Vered Amit PART I COMMUNITY... more Acknowledgements Prologue: The Book's Structure Nigel Rapport and Vered Amit PART I COMMUNITY AND DISJUNCTION: THE CREATIVITY AND UNCERTAINTY OF EVERYDAY ENGAGEMENT Vered Amit 1. Community as 'Good to Think With': The Productiveness of Strategic Ambiguities. 2. Consociation and Communitas: The Ambiguous Charms of the Quotidian 3. Disjuncture as 'Good to Think With' 4. Mobility and Cosmopolitanism: Frustrated Aspirations towards disjuncture. Notes References PART II COSMOPOLITANISM: ACTORS, RELATIONS AND INSTITUTIONS BEYOND THE COMMUNITARIAN Nigel Rapport Preamble 5. Introduction: The Space of Cosmopolitanism, and the Cosmopolitan Subject 6. Cosmopolitan Living: People of the Air and Global Guests 7. Cosmopolitan Learning: Diffusion, Openness and Irony 8. Cosmopolitan Planning: Anyone, Society and Community 9. Epilogue: Cosmopolitanism and Culture Notes References PART III: DIALOGUE 10. Amit Responds to Rapport: When cosmopolitan rights are not enough 11. Rapport Responds to Amit: On the analytical need to deconstruct "community" Index
Nel suo incisivo ed equilibrato commento su “cosa c’e di europeo nell’antropologia europea”, Thom... more Nel suo incisivo ed equilibrato commento su “cosa c’e di europeo nell’antropologia europea”, Thomas Hylland Eriksen sostiene che cio sia il suo cosmopolitismo. Una antropologia cosmopolita, prosegue Eriksen, potrebbe andare oltre le gerarchie di lingua, paese e istituzione; potrebbe offrire un orizzonte alla frizione tra diverse tradizioni che produca uno scambio intellettuale globale; e potrebbe elaborare approfondimenti globali da confrontare, comparativamente, sulle questioni locali dell’economia politica. In questo modo Eriksen crea interessanti connessioni tra l’“antropologia europea” come idea o concetto e l’“antropologia europea” come insieme di studi etnografici. Leggo qui l’idea che, in virtu dei fatti empirici che la ricerca antropologica in contesti europei ha portato alla luce, possiamo oggi immaginare un modo di praticare l’antropologia che e “cosmopolita” nel senso precedentemente spiegato. Vorrei impegnarmi, ugualmente, in una antropologia cosmopolita e vorrei esplora...
This thesis comes at the end of more than three years of explorations, aimless meanderings and so... more This thesis comes at the end of more than three years of explorations, aimless meanderings and some focused work. This would, however, might have remained a fuzzy aberration if not for the support from my supervisors Didier Maquin and Christophe Aubrun, and the ever helping José Ragot. Didier's meticulous reviews, whether during regular update meetings or a journal article, have been pivotal in the progress I made in my research work. He showed tremendous patience during my anarchical days of research. He has also been very supportive and understanding of my need to push my thesis beyond the regular 3 years. Christophe's support has been to whatever he can do to smooth things for my PhD life. From helping the clueless anglophone in France when I arrived, or provide help to secure a teaching position for financing my 4th year, his support has always been an asset of a different kind. José's impact on this thesis is very difficult to quantify. Even though he is not officially a supervisor, he has been of a huge influence as soon as he started to work with me a year after I started my PhD. His enthusiasm and willingness to discuss any technical detail, related or not to the thesis, provided an environment that I felt at ease with to do research. I wish I can be as active, as sharp and as inquisitive as José in the decades to come. And a big thanks to Floriane Collin, who was very helpful to formulate a part of the thesis I wrestled for months. Any scholarly activity wouldn't happen without the funding that supports it. I'm thankful for the EiT FP7 project, especially the leader, Dominique Sauter for extending the financial support and being patient with the need to accommodate our PhD responsibilities. Thanks are also due to other project collaborators, Frédéric Hamelin, Joseph Yamé, Eric Levrat and Alexandre Voisin. Thanks to Patrick Sibille for having confidence in me to teach in French, and to Jean-Christophe Ponsart and Vincent Laurain for their help in executing it. I'm also indebted to other faculties in CRAN who have entertained my mostly naive questions, specifically, Taha Boukhobza, Romain Postoyan and Samir Aberkane. Dealing with bureaucracy is difficult and without all the support from Sabine Huraux, I would still probably be figuring out how to complete an administrative procedure. Friends and colleagues played an important part in both keeping my sanity and uplifting it during all these years. Tejaswinee and Collince proved able colleagues and helpful friends during the project. Manal and Ghassane were immensely helpful during the initial setup and continue to watch over from a distance. And they also gave me an opportunity to visit Morocco. Other CRAN colleagues have been supportive at different parts of my PhD, including
This thesis comes at the end of more than three years of explorations, aimless meanderings and so... more This thesis comes at the end of more than three years of explorations, aimless meanderings and some focused work. This would, however, might have remained a fuzzy aberration if not for the support from my supervisors Didier Maquin and Christophe Aubrun, and the ever helping José Ragot. Didier's meticulous reviews, whether during regular update meetings or a journal article, have been pivotal in the progress I made in my research work. He showed tremendous patience during my anarchical days of research. He has also been very supportive and understanding of my need to push my thesis beyond the regular 3 years. Christophe's support has been to whatever he can do to smooth things for my PhD life. From helping the clueless anglophone in France when I arrived, or provide help to secure a teaching position for financing my 4th year, his support has always been an asset of a different kind. José's impact on this thesis is very difficult to quantify. Even though he is not officially a supervisor, he has been of a huge influence as soon as he started to work with me a year after I started my PhD. His enthusiasm and willingness to discuss any technical detail, related or not to the thesis, provided an environment that I felt at ease with to do research. I wish I can be as active, as sharp and as inquisitive as José in the decades to come. And a big thanks to Floriane Collin, who was very helpful to formulate a part of the thesis I wrestled for months. Any scholarly activity wouldn't happen without the funding that supports it. I'm thankful for the EiT FP7 project, especially the leader, Dominique Sauter for extending the financial support and being patient with the need to accommodate our PhD responsibilities. Thanks are also due to other project collaborators, Frédéric Hamelin, Joseph Yamé, Eric Levrat and Alexandre Voisin. Thanks to Patrick Sibille for having confidence in me to teach in French, and to Jean-Christophe Ponsart and Vincent Laurain for their help in executing it. I'm also indebted to other faculties in CRAN who have entertained my mostly naive questions, specifically, Taha Boukhobza, Romain Postoyan and Samir Aberkane. Dealing with bureaucracy is difficult and without all the support from Sabine Huraux, I would still probably be figuring out how to complete an administrative procedure. Friends and colleagues played an important part in both keeping my sanity and uplifting it during all these years. Tejaswinee and Collince proved able colleagues and helpful friends during the project. Manal and Ghassane were immensely helpful during the initial setup and continue to watch over from a distance. And they also gave me an opportunity to visit Morocco. Other CRAN colleagues have been supportive at different parts of my PhD, including
The aim of this special issue, Morten Nielsen has explained, is analytically to conjoin 'urban' a... more The aim of this special issue, Morten Nielsen has explained, is analytically to conjoin 'urban' and 'time' the better to conceptualize contemporary predicaments, anxieties and challenges of social life in the world's cities. The invitation is to a temporally orientated ethnography of urban life. Nielsen wants us to take this proposal absolutely literally. If cities have been characterized thus far in terms of an intensified spatial agglomeration of persons and things then there is an imminent need, he claims, to understand also an inherently temporal aspect to these processes. Nielsen's contributors then chart how temporal topologies are implicated in the lives of urbanites in a diversity of settings throughout the world. The temporal city comes to be at once a frame of mind, a social condition, a methodology and a political-cum-moral programme.
This article argues that the individual, as an actor with an identity over and above his or her m... more This article argues that the individual, as an actor with an identity over and above his or her membership in social groupings and cultural traditions, exists universally as an ontological reality. The recognition of this figure in anthropology is both an empirical and a moral necessity. The article suggests the moniker, Everyone, for the transcendent individual figure. The course of the article, after the introduction of Everyone, is to admit the critiques that have appeared in social commentary of such a figure, critiques of cultural, institutional, real-politische and phenomenological kinds. The article suggests ripostes to these critiques, ripostes which would invest Everyone with an ontological and a moral existence that is anthropologically persuasive and accord with the ethnographic record. Everyone is the individual within the role-player, the actor who has the capacity to ‘pass’ as member of any social grouping, any cultural tradition. The article concludes with a discussio...
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2010
'rupture of modernity' (p. 110), is a baseline for Wulff's work, as are the ambiguous tensions im... more 'rupture of modernity' (p. 110), is a baseline for Wulff's work, as are the ambiguous tensions implicit in a resistant stance to nationalizing cultural forms. Wulff examines a range of traditional dance forms, treating dance as a microcosm of culture in Ireland. She moves from Riverdance, to tournaments, to community-based dances in pubs. The initially apparently monolithic 'Irish dance' is fragmented into a bewildering variety. Not only is it highly varied in form and genre, Book reviews 411
Acknowledgements Prologue: The Book's Structure Nigel Rapport and Vered Amit PART I COMMUNITY... more Acknowledgements Prologue: The Book's Structure Nigel Rapport and Vered Amit PART I COMMUNITY AND DISJUNCTION: THE CREATIVITY AND UNCERTAINTY OF EVERYDAY ENGAGEMENT Vered Amit 1. Community as 'Good to Think With': The Productiveness of Strategic Ambiguities. 2. Consociation and Communitas: The Ambiguous Charms of the Quotidian 3. Disjuncture as 'Good to Think With' 4. Mobility and Cosmopolitanism: Frustrated Aspirations towards disjuncture. Notes References PART II COSMOPOLITANISM: ACTORS, RELATIONS AND INSTITUTIONS BEYOND THE COMMUNITARIAN Nigel Rapport Preamble 5. Introduction: The Space of Cosmopolitanism, and the Cosmopolitan Subject 6. Cosmopolitan Living: People of the Air and Global Guests 7. Cosmopolitan Learning: Diffusion, Openness and Irony 8. Cosmopolitan Planning: Anyone, Society and Community 9. Epilogue: Cosmopolitanism and Culture Notes References PART III: DIALOGUE 10. Amit Responds to Rapport: When cosmopolitan rights are not enough 11. Rapport Responds to Amit: On the analytical need to deconstruct "community" Index
Nel suo incisivo ed equilibrato commento su “cosa c’e di europeo nell’antropologia europea”, Thom... more Nel suo incisivo ed equilibrato commento su “cosa c’e di europeo nell’antropologia europea”, Thomas Hylland Eriksen sostiene che cio sia il suo cosmopolitismo. Una antropologia cosmopolita, prosegue Eriksen, potrebbe andare oltre le gerarchie di lingua, paese e istituzione; potrebbe offrire un orizzonte alla frizione tra diverse tradizioni che produca uno scambio intellettuale globale; e potrebbe elaborare approfondimenti globali da confrontare, comparativamente, sulle questioni locali dell’economia politica. In questo modo Eriksen crea interessanti connessioni tra l’“antropologia europea” come idea o concetto e l’“antropologia europea” come insieme di studi etnografici. Leggo qui l’idea che, in virtu dei fatti empirici che la ricerca antropologica in contesti europei ha portato alla luce, possiamo oggi immaginare un modo di praticare l’antropologia che e “cosmopolita” nel senso precedentemente spiegato. Vorrei impegnarmi, ugualmente, in una antropologia cosmopolita e vorrei esplora...
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