320 research outputs found
On the Resilience of Superstition
The concept of “belief” has always been taken seriously by anthropologists and philosophers; nevertheless, it has led to a long series of perplexities. To the contrary, the concept of “superstition” has simply been discarded as ethnocentric. The first has been pushed aside for its logical uncertainty; the second for its ethical uncertainty. Yet, the two concepts seem to be surprisingly resilient in face of the continued exercise of anthropological questioning. Furthermore, their capacity for survival appears to be connected precisely to that which connects them: superstition is unfounded belief but the issue of the foundation of belief is at the centre of the anthropological and philosophical perplexities that have haunted the concept of belief. In this paper I examine two examples – one of them a short story by Joseph Conrad – in order to show that today we can look differently at what superstition may be
Lusotopy as Ecumene
In order to avoid the sociocentric proclivity to identify language with culture and nation, thus echoing the language of empire, this paper follows the suggestions of Kroeber, Hannerz, and Mintz in taking recourse to the concept of ecumene. It aims to show that the concept can be applied profitably to the spaces and moments that integrate the vastly differentiated worldwide network of relations resulting from the historical expansion of the Portuguese. To that extent, Lusotopy is a space of human cohabitation structured by amity
Xará: Namesakes in Southern Mozambique and Bahia (Brazil)
In Maputo (Southern Mozambique) and Bahia (Brazil), the most commonly
used word to refer to namesakes is xara´ – a word of Amerindian origin. Although the
institutions in question diverge considerably in each of these contexts, the two usages
come together in that the sharing of a personal name establishes an alliance not only
between the two persons involved but also among their relations. In this way, it is
argued that the namesake institution is both supervening upon filiation and is a way
of closing the local universe of relatedness upon itself. By superimposing a set of crossing
ties, the namesake institution consolidates the entities at play and their relations.
Nevertheless, much like filiation, upon which it is dependent, the namesake relation is
one of co-responsibility and fusion between the partners, not of reciprocal responsibility.
The latter is the product of the triangulation that such relations of alliance produce
“La soglia degli affetti: considerazioni sull’attribuzione del nome e la costruzione sociale della persona”
This is an article (in Italian) about name attribution and the social construction of persons in Bahia (NE Brazil
Portugal and the Dynamics of Smallness
The problem of smallness is no longer one that countries like Portugal have to face alone, but one that faces the whole world. The world today is small in the sense that there are no empty spaces out there anymore; we have reached the limits of the model of
growth that drove modernity. That model was imperial and wasteful of resources, and it has increasingly turned against itself. The smallness of Portugal, both in political and economic terms, is no longer alone a Portuguese problem, but one of global dimensions: in environmental, legal, financial and social terms
The ethnographic present revisited
The old methodological injunction to focus on the ethnographic present has been taken negatively to mean a refusal of history. In this paper, I propose that the notion of ethnographic present be used conjecturally to reflect the situated nature of all ethnographic research.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Dona Berta’s Garden: Reaching across the colonial boundary
This is a paper about continuity in change; about inertia and unconscious resistance. Situations of
rapid political change, such as independence from colonial domination, lead to a total reconstruction
of the political discourse. Whatever the specific status of these ideological projects, they will always have to confront the resistance of the lived world and its immense inertia and complexity. In the middle of post-Independence Maputo, Dona Berta’s Park is a symbolic reminder of the indivisibility of Mozambican history and of the inescapability of a historically constructed world that functions as a referent for communication.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
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