Experiments in Holism
Theory and Practice in Contemporary Anthropology
1. Edition October 2010
336 Pages, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Experiments in Holism
Experiments in Holism: Theory and Practice in Contemporary Anthropology presents a series of essays that critically examine the ongoing relevance of holism and its theoretical and methodological potential in today's world. Contributions from a diverse collection of leading anthropologists reveal how recent critiques of the holistic approach have not led to its wholesale rejection, but rather to a panoply of experiments that critically reassess and reemploy holism. The essays focus on aspects of holism including its utilization in current ethnographic research, holistic considerations in cultural anthropology, the French structuralist tradition, the predominantly English tradition of social anthropology, and many others. Collectively, the essays show how holism is simultaneously central to, and problematically a part of, the theory and practice of anthropology. Experiments in Holism reveals how contemporary attempts to rescale and retool anthropology entail new ways of coming to terms with anthropology's heritage of holism, seeking to obviate its current excesses while recapturing its critical potential to meet the challenges of our contemporary world.
List of Contributors ix
1. Anthropology and the Predicaments of Holism 1
Nils Bubandt and Ton Otto
Part 1 Rethinking Holism in Ethnographic Practice 17
2. Beyond the Whole in Ethnographic Practice? Introduction to Part 1 19
Ton Otto and Nils Bubandt
3. Holism and the Expectations of Critique in Post-1980s Anthropology: Notes and Queries in Three Acts and an Epilogue 28
George E. Marcus
4. Worlding the Matsutake Diaspora: Or, Can Actor-Network Theory Experiment With Holism? 47
Anna Tsing
5. The Whole Beyond Holism: Gambling, Divination, and Ethnography in Cuba 67
Martin Holbraad
Part 2 Beyond Cultural Wholes? Wholes are Parts, and Parts are Wholes 87
6. Beyond Cultural Wholes? Introduction to Part 2 89
Ton Otto and Nils Bubandt
7. The Whole is a Part: Intercultural Politics of Order and Change 102
Marshall Sahlins
8. Lingual and Cultural Wholes and Fields 127
Alan Rumsey
9. Deep Wholes: Fractal Holography in Trobriand Agency and Culture 150
Mark Mosko
Part 3 Beyond Structural Wholes? Encompassment, Collectives, and Global Systems 175
10. Beyond Structural Wholes? Introduction to Part 3 177
Nils Bubandt and Ton Otto
11. Louis Dumont and a Holist Anthropology 187
Bruce Kapferer
12. From Wholes to Collectives: Steps to an Ontology of Social Forms 209
Philippe Descola
13. Holism and the Transformation of the Contemporary Global Order 227
Jonathan Friedman
Part 4 Beyond Social Wholes? Holistic Practice: Cosmology, History, and the Continuity of Life 249
14. Beyond Social Wholes? Introduction to Part 4 251
Nils Bubandt and Ton Otto
15. Proportional Holism: Joking the Cosmos Into the Right Shape in North Asia 262
Rane Willerslev and Morten Axel Pedersen
16. One Past and Many Pasts: Varieties of Historical Holism in Melanesia and the West 279
Eric Hirsch and Daniele Moretti
17. Drawing Together: Materials, Gestures, Lines 299
Tim Ingold
Index 314
anthropology: human situations are culturally structured, but
individuals, who participate in more than one cultural "whole," can
sometimes change the rules. This volume explores the
theoretical space between those two aspects of the human
condition.
Richard Handler, University of Virginia
These authors persuasively, even passionately, refocus the
analysis of socio-cultural ontology. In showing how the
simplistic rejection of past holisms undermined anthropology's
fundamental commitments, they instead devise ingeniously critical
new perspectives reflecting today's massively reconfigured and
variegated understandings of context.
Michael Herzfeld (Harvard University)
In this capacious and brilliantly-edited
collection, holism no longer suggests a totalizing project,
but rather an indispensable toolkit of world-making strategies.
The innovative essays gathered here map a new, multi-scaled
landscape of Anthropological research.
James Clifford, University of California, Santa Cruz.
Author of The Predicament of Culture.
'Holism' does its magic again. This is an
extraordinarily interesting commentary on the present state of
anthropology that would never have come together without the
editors' pursuit of an apparently unfashionable idea.
Marilyn Strathern
Nils Bubandt is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Aarhus University and co-editor-in-chief of Ethnos. He is the co-author of Imagining Nature: Practices of Cosmology and Identity (2003, with Andreas Roepstorff and Kalevi Kull), and has published numerous articles on topics such as forgery, witchcraft, globalization, and conflict.
