It Happens Among People: Resonances and Extensions of the Work of Fredrik Barth

by Keping Wu (Editor), Robert P. Weller (Editor)

Overview

Written by eleven leading anthropologists from around the world, this volume extends the insights of Fredrik Barth, one of the most important anthropologists of the twentieth century, to push even further at the frontiers of anthropology and honor his memory. As a collection, the chapters thus expand Barth’s pioneering work on values, further develop his insights on human agency and its potential creativity, as well as continuing to develop the relevance for his work as a way of thinking about and beyond the state. The work is grounded on his insistence that theory should grow only from observed life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789204292
Publisher:	Berghahn Books, Incorporated
Publication date:	11/04/2019
Series:	WYSE Series in Social Anthropology , #8
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	242
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Keping Wu is Associate Professor at the Department of China Studies in Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. Trained as an anthropologist, she had previous teaching and research positions at Sun Yat-sen University, National University of Singapore, and The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has recently published Religion and Charity: The Social Life of Goodness in Chinese Societies, co-authored with Robert P. Weller and Julia Huang (Cambridge, 2018).

Robert P. Weller is Professor of Anthropology at Boston University.  Most of his work concentrates on Chinese societies in a comparative context, frequently with a focus on the problem of religious meaning and authority.  His most recent book is How Things Count as the Same: Memory, Mimesis, and Metaphor, co-authored with Adam Seligman (Oxford, 2019).  He is currently working on urbanization and religious change.

Table of Contents

List of Figures

Introduction
Robert P. Weller and Keping Wu

Chapter 1. Humility First: Fredrik Barth in His Own Words – and Mine
Unni Wikan

Chapter 2. Transacting Knowledge and Value: Fredrik Barth and the Tactics of Mutual Incomprehension
Michael Herzfeld

Chapter 3. Cosmologies in the Remaking: Variation and Time in Chinese Temple Religion
Robert P. Weller

Chapter 4. Building Infrastructure and Making Boundaries in Southwest China
Keping Wu

Chapter 5. On Nomads of South Persia
Thomas Barfield

Chapter 6. The Language of Trust and Betrayal
Gunnar Haaland

Chapter 7. Khan and Sufi:  Two Types of Authority in Swat, Northern Pakistan
Charles Lindholm

Chapter 8. Values and the Value of Secrecy: Barthian Reflections on Values and the Nature of Mountain Ok Social Process
Joel Robbins

Chapter 9. Paradigm Change in Chinese Ethnology and Fredrik Barth’s Influence
Ke Fan

Chapter 10. An Overall Generative Approach: Fredrik Barth's Contribution to Anthropological Research and Writing
Chee-Beng Tan

Afterword: A Rooted Cosmopolitan Remembered
Ulf Hannerz

Index

Editorial Reviews

"While Barth might not be the 'star author' in fashion in academia today, invisible in many of the scholarly discourses, he is without any doubt a member of the small group of anthropologists who will be a source of inspiration for generations to come...I highly recommend this book, especially for readers interested in the future of anthropology and Barth's place in it. Clearly, Barth keeps fuelling new thoughts and perspectives in the global anthropological community." - Anthropology Book Forum

"The entire volumes testifies to Barth's long-lived relevance in anthropological theory and practice." - Choice

"This is an unusually interesting volume. Part conventional Festschrift for Fredrik Barth (one of the most significant and influential anthropologists, also one of the most original and distinctive, of the second half of the twentieth century), but also part record and outcome of Barth's specific influence in China and makes for a very distinctive volume." - James Laidlaw, University of Cambridge

From the Publisher