Cultura, proteínas, beneficios: Un comentario al libro de Marvin Harris «Caníbales y reyes».

Sin resume

On Kings

In anthropology, as much as in the current popular imagination, kings remain figures of fascination and intrigue. As the cliché goes, kings continue to die spectacular deaths only to remain subjects of vitality and long life. This collection of essays by a teacher and his student — two of the world’s most distinguished anthropologists— explores what kingship actually is, historically and anthropologically. The divine, the stranger, the numinous, the bestial—the implications for understanding kings and their sacred office are not limited to questions of sovereignty, but issues ranging from temporality and alterity to piracy and utopia; indeed, the authors argue that kingship offers us a unique window into the fundamental dilemmas concerning the very nature of power, meaning, and the human condition. With the wit and sharp analysis characteristic of these two thinkers, this volume opens up new avenues for how an anthropological study of kingship might proceed in the 21st century

Sobre la cultura del valor material y la cosmografía de la riqueza

Herein is a discourse on value and how economics fails as a science thereof by banishing culture to the status of “exogenous factors.” The argument is demonstrated by an ethnographically informed study of the external origins of riches. Among the conclusions: money (“magical property”) as a means rather than the antithesis of extended kinship; scarcity as a function of value rather than the value of scarcity; and other such contradictions of the deceived wisdom.Este trabajo trata el tema del valor y de cómo la economía fracasa como ciencia del valor al desterrar la cultura al estatus de los “valores exógenos.” Esta tesis es demostrada recurriendo a un estudio de índole antropológica sobre el origen externo de la riqueza. Algunas de las conclusiones: el dinero (“propiedad mágica”) como un medio antes que como una antítesis del parentesco extendido; la rareza como función del valor antes que el valor como función de la rareza; y otras contradicciones de esta clase propias de la “sabiduría equivocada”

Fetishism and the social value of objects.

The idea of the fetish has a particular presence in the writings of both Marx and Freud. It implies for these two theorists of the social, a particular form of relation between human beings and objects. In the work of both the idea of the fetish involves attributing properties to objects that they do not 'really' have and that should correctly be recognised as human. While Marx's account of fetishism addresses the exchange-value of commodities at the level of the economic relations of production, it fails to deal in any detail with the use-value or consumption of commodities. In contrast Freud's concept of the fetish as a desired substitute for a suitable sex object explores how objects are desired and consumed. Drawing on both Marx and Freud, Baudrillard breaks with their analyses of fetishism as demonstrating a human relation with unreal objects. He explores the creation of value in objects through the social exchange of sign values, showing how objects are fetishised in ostentation. This paper argues that while Baudrillard breaks with the realism characteristic of Marx's and Freud's analyses of fetishism, he does not go far enough in describing the social and discursive practices in which objects are used and sometimes transformed into fetishes. It is proposed that the fetishisation of objects involves an overdetermination of their social value through a discursive negotiation of the capacities of objects that stimulates fantasy and desire for them

Rebirth of a nation or 'The incomparable toothbrush': the origin story and narrative regeneration in Sri Lanka

I examine the post-Independence role of Sri Lanka’s origin story, revealing the ways in which the foundational myth of the Mahavamsa functions as a conflicted site of cultural ‘encompassment’ (Kapferer) in literary and political discourse. Through an analysis of the fiction of Tissa Abeysekara, Carl Muller and the assassinated president Ranasinghe Premadasa, I show how the scripting of this myth in fiction reveals a shift from the celebratory drives of nationalism to a critique of patriotism in a way that both reflects and anticipates a broader paradigmatic shift in the construction of belonging and the outsider found in post-war Sri Lanka

‘Buying a path’: rethinking resistance in Rwanda

In this essay, I tell the story of Jean-Baptiste, the president of a motorcycle taxi drivers’ co-operative, and his struggle against the machinations of certain high officials in Kigali City Council. Crucial to this story is the way in which Jean-Baptiste’s attempts to retain his position in the face of powerful opposition pit certain agencies of Rwanda’s party state against others. I use this ethnographic narrative to question the way in which much scholarship on popular resistance in Rwanda, drawing on Scott’s simplified opposition between the powerful and the powerless, opposes ‘ordinary Rwandans’ to ‘the state’ as monolithic entities with opposed interests. Theorising Jean-Baptiste’s story in terms of Rwandan idioms of relative power and influence, I suggest that such a Manichean view of power and resistance in Rwanda oversimplifies social realities. I propose instead a model of power and resistance that sees the state as a field of capacities and possible relationships that it presents for certain people, where ‘paths’ to influence and security may by ‘bought’ – especially, but not exclusively, by those who are ‘strong’ and ‘high’

Contemporary Africa through the theory of Louis Dumont

Abstract This article responds to a trend in recent anthropological scholarship in Africa that has overemphasized a lack of social organization following the advancement of neoliberal reforms across the continent. Using a theoretical framework informed by the theory of Louis Dumont, I show that social organization remains an important analytical topic in times of crisis, and that this is best apprehended through an analysis of values. The ethnographic focus of this article is Pentecostal Christianity as it is practiced on the Zambian Copperbelt. In this particular African context, Pentecostalism is animated by an overarching value that I call "moving," which is in turn made up to two sub-values: charisma and prosperity. By exploring how Pentecostal believers navigate the hierarchical relationship between these two sub-values, we are given a clear picture of the social world that Pentecostal adherence makes possible

Recent work on human nature: Beyond traditional essences

Kronfeldner M, Roughley N, Toepfer G. Recent work on human nature: Beyond traditional essences. Philosophy Compass. 2014;9(9):642-652.Recent philosophical work on the concept of human nature disagrees on how to respond to the Darwinian challenge, according to which biological species do not have traditional essences. Three broad kinds of reactions can be distinguished: (1) conservative intrinsic essentialism, which defends essences in the traditional sense, (2) eliminativism, which suggests dropping the concept of human nature altogether, and (3) constructive approaches, which argue that revisions can generate sensible concepts of human nature beyond traditional essences. The different constructive approaches pick out one or two of the three epistemic roles that are fused in traditional essentialist conceptions of human nature: descriptive (descriptivism), explanatory (explanativism), definitional (taxonomic relationalism), or explanatory and definitional (property cluster essentialism). These turns towards diverging epistemic roles are best interpreted pluralistically: there is a plurality of concepts of human nature that have to be clearly distinguished, each with a legitimate role in respective scientific contexts