Michael Lambek

A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion is a collection of some of the most significant classic and contemporary writings on the anthropology of religion. It includes both material whose theme is 'religion' in a straightforward and obvious sense, as well as material that has expanded how we might look at religion - and the horizons of what we mean by 'religion' - linking it to broader questions of culture and politics.

A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion

The Villa Tugendhat, designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1928, is an icon of architectural modernism and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Behind the Glass tells the true story of the large family connected to it, who rose to prominence through industrial textile manufacturing. The book traces the transformations in the life of the family, from their roots in a Jewish ghetto to part of the wealthy bourgeoisie in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to adaptation in interwar independent Czechoslovakia and flight in the face of Nazi invasion. Michael Lambek examines the generation born in the first decade of the twentieth century, especially Grete Tugendhat – Lambek’s maternal grandmother – who commissioned, inhabited, championed, and relinquished the distinctive modern house. An exploration of life in and surrounding the Villa Tugendhat offers a factual portrait that runs counter to the fictional one portrayed in Simon Mawer’s The Glass Room. The book also provides unpublished correspondence between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Tugendhat, Grete’s son, as well as a description of the impact of a 2017 family reunion. Behind the Glass reflects on the meaning of a "family" and suggests that it is more than a nuclear household – a family reproduces itself over generations, a product of how it represents itself and is represented by others.

The Villa Tugendhat and Its Family

Behind the Glass

Janice Boddy

A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion presents a collection of original, ethnographically-informed essays that explore the variety of beliefs, practices, and religious experiences in the contemporary world and asks how to think about religion as a subject of anthropological inquiry. Presents a collection of original, ethnographically-informed essays exploring the wide variety of beliefs, practices, and religious experiences in the contemporary world Explores a broad range of topics including the ‘perspectivism’ debate, the rise of religious nationalism, reflections on religion and new media, religion and politics, and ideas of self and gender in relation to religious belief Includes examples drawn from different religious traditions and from several regions of the world Features newly-commissioned articles reflecting the most up-to-date research and critical thinking in the field, written by an international team of leading scholars Adds immeasurably to our understanding of the complex relationships between religion, culture, society, and the individual in today’s world

A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion

Based on intensive ethnographic fieldwork, this book describes and interprets trance behaviour among the Malagasy speakers of Mayotte, a small island in the Comoro Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of East Africa. Professor Lambek describes how the people of Mayotte (most often women) enter into trances, during which they believe their bodies are inhabited by spirits. He then analyses the conventions for behaviour in trance and the process by which the individuals come to terms with the spirits in their midst. The book presents thorough case studies of spirit possession over time, providing one of the most detailed accounts of possession phenomena available for a single society. The author argues that trance can best be understood as a social activity within a defined system of cultural meaning rather than as a psychological problem, a simple deception or a means of manipulating others. This book should be of particular interest to those concerned with the study of ritual, symbols and non-Western religious systems.

Human Spirits: A Cultural Account of Trance in Mayotte

Didier Fassin

Veena Das

Webb Keane

Anthropology has recently seen a lively interest in the subject of ethics and comparative notions of morality and freedom. This Masterclass brings together four among the most eminent contributors to the discussion of ethics and morality within the field Michael Lambek, Veena Das, Didier Fassin, and Webb Keane. In this multi-authored volume, each author provides a distinct lecture and responses to the other lectures, inviting readers into the conversation and elaborating some of their thoughts on the presence of ethics in social life and current theoerical debate. How do we recognize the ethical in different ethnographic worlds? What constitutes agency and awareness in everyday life? What might an ethnography of ordinary ethics look like? And what happens when ethics confronts the political in both Western and non-Western societies? Contrasting in perspective and method, yet profoundly complementary, this Masterclass will serve as an essential guide for how an anthropology of ethics can be formulated in the twenty first century. "

Anthropological Perspectives

Four Lectures on Ethics

Sandra Evers

Gwyn Campbell

Land is the nexus of Malagasy livelihood and socio-cultural relations. Simultaneously, the Malagasy government and international stakeholders value land for its biodiversity, minerals and agricultural potential. This book provides vital background to the contest for land in Madagascar.

Environment, Ancestors and Development

Contest for Land in Madagascar

Paul Antze

Tense Past provides a much needed appraisal and contextualization of the upsurge of interest in questions of memory and trauma evident in multiple personality and post-traumatic stress disorders, child abuse, and commemoration of the Holocaust. Contributors examine the historical origins of memory in psychiatric discourse and show its connection to broader developments in Western science and medicine. They address the new links between trauma and memory, and they explore how memory shapes the way traumatic events are put into narrative form. They also consider the social and political contexts in which sufferers speak and remember.

Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory

Tense Past

Bringing together ethnographic exposition with philosophical concepts and arguments and effectively transcending subdisciplinary boundaries between cultural and linguistic anthropology, the essays collected in this volume explore the ethical entailments of speech and action and demonstrate the centrality of ethical practice, judgment, reasoning, responsibility, cultivation, commitment, and questioning in social life. Rather than focus on codes of conduct or hot-button issues, they make the cumulative argument that ethics is profoundly "ordinary," pervasiveùand possibly even intrinsic to speech and action. In addition to deepening our understanding of ethics, the volume makes an incisive and necessary intervention in anthropological theory, recasting discussion in ways that force us to rethink such concepts as power, agency, and relativism. Michael Lambek is the Canada Research Chair in the Anthropology of Ethical Life in the Department of Social Sciences, University of Toronto at Scarborough, as well as Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto

Anthropology, Language, and Action

Ordinary Ethics

Andrew Strathern

Michael Joshua Lambek

Professor of Anthropology Michael Lambek

A comparative analysis of notions of personhood and embodiment in African and Melanesian societies.

Comparative Perspectives from Africa and Melanesia

Bodies and Persons

Island in the Stream introduces an original genre of ethnographic history as it follows a community on Mayotte, an East African island in the Mozambique Channel, through eleven periods of fieldwork between 1975 and 2015. Over this 40-year span Mayotte shifted from a declining and neglected colonial backwater to a full département of the French state. In a highly unusual postcolonial trajectory, citizens of Mayotte demanded this incorporation within France rather than joining the independent republic of the Comoros. The Malagasy-speaking Muslim villagers Michael Lambek encountered in 1975 practiced subsistence cultivation and lived without roads, schools, electricity, or running water; today they are educated citizens of the EU who travel regularly to metropolitan France and beyond. Offering a series of ethnographic slices of life across time, Island in the Stream highlights community members' ethical engagement in their own history as they looked to the future, acknowledged the past, and engaged and transformed local forms of sociality, exchange, and ritual performance. This is a unique account of the changing horizons and historical consciousness of an African community and an intimate portrait of the inhabitants and their concerns, as well as a glimpse into the changing perspective of the ethnographer.

An Ethnographic History of Mayotte

Island in the Stream

This book follows the trajectory of life in an African island community as composed of ethnographic portraits taken over eleven visits across 40 years. It initiates an original genre of ethnographic history and describes people's ongoing ethical engagement with their past and future.

Michael Lambek

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