Figured Worlds

by Clammer, John R.; Poirier, Sylvie; Schwimmer, Eric

• ISBN13: 9780802087492
• ISBN10: 0802087493
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr

Summary

"World Visions can conceive of everything except alternative world visions." If this pronouncement by Umberto Eco is right, how can any ethnic group conceive of living with another group on the same territory - in Canada or elsewhere - if their world visions are incompatible? Can we sidestep incompatible world visions or should we try to understand them? Figured Worldsexplores the possibilities of equilibrium between commitments to mutual understanding and the framing of strategies of negotiation. This collection begins its rich analytical investigation by describing how people - Australian Aborigines, New Zealand Maori, Japanese, and Africans - first learn the figured worlds of their own culture, made up of sensations, affirmations and will, prophecy, revelation, myth, dream, and metamorphoses. It then sets out how diverse figured worlds within a given social system are related, and concludes by offering insightful mappings of the dynamics of these relations, perceived in both their existential-ontological aspects, as well as their material-practical means. Comprising scholarship that is half Canadian and half British, this work offers important foundational perspectives into the thought worlds of cultures found within other cultures.

Author Biography

John Clammer is a professor in the Department of Comparative Culture at Sophia University. Sylvie Poirier is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at UniversitT Laval. Eric Schwimmer is a professor emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at UniversitT Laval and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Preface: The Nature of Nature	ix
ERIC SCHWIMMER
Introduction: The Relevance of Ontologies in Anthropology - Reflections on a New Anthropological Field	3	(22)
JOHN CLAMMER, SYLVIE POIRIER, AND ERIC SCHWIMMER
Part I: The Reconstruction of Figured Worlds
1 A Circumpolar Night's Dream	25	(33)
TIM INGOLD
2 Ontology, Ancestral Order, and Agencies among the Kukatja of the Australian Western Desert	58	(25)
SYLVIE POIRIER
3 The Politics of Animism	83	(30)
JOHN CLAMMER
Part II: Beyond Positional Identities
4 In the Nature of the Human Landscape: Provenances in the Making of Zanzibari Politics	113	(19)
DAVID PARKIN
5 Apparent Compatibility, Real Incompatibility: Native and Western Versions of History - The Innu Example	132	(19)
SYLVIE VINCENT
Part III: Non-negotiated Ontologies: Authoring Selves
6 'We Live This Experience': Ontological Insecurity and the Colonial Domination of the Innu People of Northern Labrador	151	(38)
COLIN SAMSON
7 The Cosmology of Nature, Cultural Divergence, and the Metaphysics of Community Healing	189	(36)
ADRIAN TANNER
Part IV: Negotiating Ontologies, Making Worlds
8 The Customary Law of Indigenous Peoples and Modern Law: Rivalry or Reconciliation?	225	(18)
BJARNE MELKEVIK
9 Making a World: The Maori of Aotearoa/New Zealand	243	(32)
ERIC SCHWIMMER
Epilogue	275	(8)
ERIC SCHWIMMER
Contributors	283	(2)
Index	285