The Art of Anthropology; Essays and Diagrams

by Alfred Gell and Edited by Eric Hirsch

• ISBN13: 9780485195675
• ISBN10: 0485195674
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 1999-02-01
• Publisher: Berg Pub Ltd

Summary

This work collects together the most influential of Gell's writings with a new introductory chapter written by Gell. The essays vividly demonstrate Gell's theoretical and empirical interests and his distinctive contribution to several key areas of current anthropological enquiry. A central theme of the essays is Gel's highly original exploration of diagrammatic imagery as the site where social relations and cognitive processes converge and crystallise. Gell tracks this imagery across studies of tribal market transactions, dance forms, the iconicity of language and his most recent and groundbreaking analyses of artworks.

Author Biography

Alfred Gell was Reader in Anthropology at the London School of Economics, and was posthumously awarded a Professorship by the School

Table of Contents

List of Plates	vi
Foreword	vii
Eric Hirsch
Acknowledgments	xv
Introduction: Notes on Seminar Culture and Some Other Influences	1	(28)
Strathernograms, or the Semiotics of Mixed Metaphors	29	(47)
Inter-Tribal Commodity Barter and Reproductive Gift Exchange in Old Melanesia	76	(31)
The Market Wheel: Symbolic Aspects of an Indian Tribal Market	107	(29)
Style and Meaning in Umeda Dance	136	(23)
The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology	159	(28)
Vogel's Net: Traps as Artworks and Artworks as Traps	187	(28)
On Coote's `Marvels of Everyday Vision'	215	(17)
The Language of the Forest: Landscape and Phonological Iconism in Umeda	232	(27)
Exalting the King and Obstructing the State: A Political Interpretation of Royal Ritual in Bastar District, Central India	259	(24)
The Published Work of Alfred Gell	283	(3)
Index	286