Translation and Ethnography: The Anthropological Challenge of Intercultural Understanding By Tullio Maranhão (editor), Bernhard Streck (editor)
2003 | 220 Pages | ISBN: 0816523037 | PDF | 13 MB
To most people, translation means making the words of one language understandable in another; but translation in a broader sense-seeing strangeness and incorporating it into one's understanding-is perhaps the earliest task of the human brain. This book illustrates the translation process in less-common contexts: cultural, religious, even the translation of pain. Its original contributions seek to trace human understanding of the self, of the other, and of the stranger by discovering how we bridge gaps within or between semiotic systems.Translation and Ethnography focuses on issues that arise when we attempt to make significant thematic or symbolic elements of one culture meaningful in terms of another. Its chapters cover a wide range of topics, all stressing the interpretive practices that enable the approximation of meaning: the role of differential power, of language and so-called world view, and of translation itself as a metaphor of many contemporary cross-cultural processes. The topics covered here represent a global sample of translation, ranging from Papua New Guinea to South America to Europe. Some of the issues addressed include postcolonial translation/transculturation from the perspective of colonized languages, as in the Mexican Zapatista movement; mis-translations of Amerindian conceptions and practices in the Amazon, illustrating the subversive potential of anthropology as a science of translation; Ethiopian oracles translating divine messages for the interpretation of believers; and dreams and clowns as translation media among the Gamk of Sudan. Anthropologists have long been accustomed to handling translation chains; in this book they open their diaries and show the steps they take toward knowledge. Translation and Ethnography raises issues that will shake up the most obdurate, objectivist translators and stimulate scholars in sociolinguistics, communication, ethnography, and other fields who face the challenges of conveying meaning across human boundaries.

Chiara Mengozzi, "Outside the Anthropological Machine: Crossing the Human-Animal Divide and Other Exit Strategies"
English | 2020 | ISBN: 036750457X, 0367504448 | PDF | pages: 293 | 6.1 mb
In the midst of the climate crisis and the threat of the sixth extinction, we can no longer claim to be the masters of nature. Rather, we need to unlearn our species' arrogance for the sake of all animals, human and non-human. Rethinking our being-in-the-world as Homo sapiens, this monograph argues, starts precisely from the way we relate to our closer companion species. The authors gathered here endeavour to find multiple exit strategies from the anthropocentric paradigms that have bound the human and social sciences. Part I investigates the unexplored margins of human history by re-reading historical events, literary texts, and scientific findings from an animal's perspective, rather than a human's. Part II explores different forms of human-animal relationships, putting the emphasis on the institutions, spaces, and discourses that frame our interactions with animals. Part III engages with processes of "translation" that aim to render animals' experience and perception into human words and visual language.

Human Rights, Culture and Context: Anthropological Perspectives By Richard A. Wilson (editor)
1998 | 240 Pages | ISBN: 0745311431 | PDF | 2 MB
'Important, timely and constructive ... An important step forward' Social Anthropology'By establishing a link between normative and empirical analysis, this book offers valuable insights into human rights discourse.' International AffairsDrawing on case studies from around the world - including Iran, Guatemala, USA and Mexico - this collection documents how transnational human rights discourses and legal institutions are materialised, imposed, resisted and transformed in a variety of contexts.

Anthropological History of Andean Polities By John Murra
2009 | 396 Pages | ISBN: 0521105390 | PDF | 7 MB
This collection of essays by scholars from the Andes, Europe and the United States was originally published in the French journal Annales as a special double issue entitled The Historical Anthropology of Andean Societies. It combines the perspectives of archaeology, anthropology and history to present a complex view of Andean societies over various millenia. The unique features of the Andean landscape, the impact of the Inka state on different regions and ethnic groups, the transformations wrought through the colonial presence and the creation of nineteenth-century republics are all analysed, as are the profound continuities in some aspects of Andean culture and social organisation to the present day. The book reflects some of the most innovative research that occurred in the 1970s and 80s. Apart from its substantive interest for students of the Andes and American civilisations in general, it shows the possibility of closer collaboration between history and anthropology.

Anthropological Optimism; Engaging the Power of What Could Go Right
by Edited by Anna J. Willow
English | 2023 | ISBN: 1032386444 | 223 pages | True PDF | 7.5 MB

Véronique Petit, "The Anthropological Demography of Health"
English | ISBN: 0198862431 | 2020 | 576 pages | PDF | 5 MB
The anthropological demography of health, as a field of interdisciplinary population research, has grown from the 1990s, extending to a remarkable range of key human and policy issues, including: genetic disorders; nutrition; mental health; infant, child, and maternal morbidity; malaria; HIV/AIDS; disability and chronic diseases; new reproductive technologies; and population ageing. By observing group formation and change over time, tracking people's networks, and observing variance between what people say and do, anthropological demography goes beyond the characteristically top-down formal methodologies of most mainstream socio-economic demography and population health. This path-breaking volume charts and integrates the growing body of research that combines ethnography with quantitative models and methods in the field of population health. It offers a clear agenda based on important conceptual and methodological advances, and often working in close collaboration with medical

Jutta Berta Sperber, "Anthropological Aspects in the Christian-muslim Dialogues of the Vatican "
English | ISBN: 3110589672 | 2019 | 550 pages | EPUB, PDF | 3 MB + 4 MB
This detailed study by Jutta Sperber shows how the magisterium of the Roman-Catholic Church, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and various parts of the Muslim world from Saudi Arabia to Iran have been engaged in Christian-Muslim dialogues. The mainly anthropological topics range from tolerance and human dignity, the position of women and children, media and education, to mission, resources and nationalism. They paint an interesting picture of the position of Man before God and the world in both Christianity and Islam.

Ernst Tugendhat, Alexei Procyshyn, Mario Wenning, "Egocentricity and Mysticism: An Anthropological Study"
English | 2016 | pages: 187 | ISBN: 0231169124 | PDF | 6,2 mb
In Egocentricity and Mysticism, Ernst Tugendhat casts mysticism as an innate facet of what it means to be human―a response to an existential need for peace of mind. This need is created by our discursive practices, which serve to differentiate us from one another and privilege our respective first-person standpoints. Emphasizing the first person fuels a desire for mysticism, which builds knowledge of what binds us together and connects us to the world.

M. Nazif Shahrani, "Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan: Anthropological Perspectives"
English | ISBN: 0253066778 | 2022 | 404 pages | PDF | 40 MB
When originally published in 1984, Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan provided the first focused consideration of the 1978 Saur Revolution and the subsequent Soviet invasion and occupation of the country. Nearly four decades later, its conclusions remain crucial to understanding Afghanistan today.

Nils Ole Bubandt, "Varieties of Secularism in Asia: Anthropological Explorations of Religion, Politics and the Spiritual "
English | ISBN: 1138787957 | 2014 | 272 pages | PDF | 6 MB
Varieties of Secularism is an ethnographically rich, theoretically well-informed, and intellectually coherent volume which builds off the work of Talal Asad, Charles Taylor, and others who have engaged the issue of secularism(s) and in socio-political life. The volume seeks to examine theories of secularism/secularity and examine concrete ethnographic cases in order to further the theoretical discussion.