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Animism in Southeast Asia

Animism in Southeast Asia

Animism refers to ontologies or worldviews which assign agency and personhood to human and non-human beings alike. Recent years have seen a revival of this concept in anthropology where it is now discussed as an alternative to modern-Western naturalistic notions of human-environment relations. Based on original fieldwork this book presents a number of case studies of animism from insular and peninsular Southeast Asia and offers a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon – its diversity and underlying commonalities and its resilience in the face of powerful forces of change. Critically engaging with the current standard notion of animism based on hunter-gatherer and horticulturalist societies in other regions it examines the roles of life forces souls and spirits in local cosmologies and indigenous religion. It proposes an expansion of the concept to societies featuring mixed farming sacrifice and hierarchy and explores the question of how non-human agents are created through acts of attention and communication touching upon the relationship between animist ontologies world religion and the state. Shedding new light on Southeast Asian religious ethnographic research the book is a significant contribution to anthropological theory and the revitalization of the concept of animism in the humanities and social sciences. | Animism in Southeast Asia

GBP 46.99
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Human Hierarchies A General Theory

Human Hierarchies A General Theory

Human beings are hierarchical animals. Always and everywhere people have developed social ranking systems. These differ dramatically in how they are organized but the underlying causal mechanisms that create and sustain them are the same. Whether they are on the top or bottom of the heap people attempt to be superior to some other persons or group. This is the root of Melvyn L. Fein's thesis presented in Human Hierarchies: A General Theory. Fein traces the development of changes from hunter-gatherer times to our own techno-commercial society. In moving from small to large communities humans went from face-to-face contests for superiority to more anonymous and symbolic ones. Societies evolved from hunting bands where the parties knew each other through big-men societies chieftainships agrarian empires patronage chains caste societies estate systems and market-oriented democracies. Where once small groupings were organized primarily by strong forces such as personal relationships the now standard large groupings are more dependent on weaker forces such as those provided by social roles. Bureaucracies and professional roles have become prominent. Bureaucracies allow large-scale organizations to maintain control of people by limiting the potential destructiveness of unregulated tests of strength and by clarifying chains of command. Their rigidity and unresponsiveness requires that they be supplemented by professional roles. At the same time a proliferation of self-motivated experts delegate authority downward thereby introducing a more flexible decentralization. This analysis is a unique and significant advance in both the sociology and anthropology of stratification among humans. | Human Hierarchies A General Theory

GBP 51.99
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