| Author | : Michael Lambek |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 514 |
| Release | : 1993 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : |
An ethnography of the religious and ethnomedical practices of Malagasy speakers in Mayotte, an island off the coast of East Africa near Madagascar. Based on participant-observation fieldwork, and making extensive use of case histories, Lambek's (anthropology, U. of Toronto) rich work provides an acc
| Author | : Michael Lambek |
| Publisher | : Anthropological Horizons |
| Total Pages | : 468 |
| Release | : 1993 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : 9780802077837 |
An ethnography of the religious and ethnomedical practices of Malagasy speakers in Mayotte, an island off the coast of East Africa near Madagascar. Based on participant-observation fieldwork, and making extensive use of case histories, Lambek's (anthropology, U. of Toronto) rich work provides an account of the disciplines of Islam, cosmology (astrology), and spirit possession as they emerge in the practice of local experts and ordinary villagers. Paper edition (unseen), $24.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
| Author | : Michael Lambek |
| Publisher | : University of Toronto Press |
| Total Pages | : 441 |
| Release | : 1993-10-04 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1442638613 |
On the East African island of Mayotte, Islam co-exists with two other systems of understanding and interpreting the world around its inhabitants: cosmology and spirit-mediumship. In a witty, evocative style accessible to both the specialist and non-specialist reader, Michael Lambek provides a significant contribution to writing on African systems of thought, on local forms of religious and therapeutic practice, on social accountability, and on the place of explicit forms of knowledge in the analysis of non-western societies. The "objectified" textual knowledge characteristic of Islam and of cosmology is contrasted with the "embodied" knowledge of spirit possession. Lambek emphasizes the power and authority constituted by each discipline, as well as the challenge that each kind of knowledge presents to the others and their resolution in daily practice. "Disciplines" are defined as an organized body of practitioners or adepts, a concept precise and useful when applied to the contexts of Lambek's own research and equally so in the study of comparable environments elsewhere. Essential reading for those interested in the comparative study of Islamic societies, Lambek's argument directly contributes to the main anthropological arguments of the day concerning the social and cultural basis of systems of knowledge and ethnographic strategies for depicting them.
| Author | : Peter Meusburger |
| Publisher | : Springer |
| Total Pages | : 310 |
| Release | : 2015-10-28 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 3319219006 |
This book presents theoretical and methodical discussions on local knowledge and indigenous knowledge. It examines educational attainment of ethnic minorities, race and politics in educational systems, and the problem of losing indigenous knowledge. It comprises a broad range of case studies about specifics of local knowledge from several regions of the world, reflecting the interdependence of norms, tradition, ethnic and cultural identities, and knowledge. The contributors explore gaps between knowledge and agency, address questions of the social distribution of knowledge, consider its relation to communal activities, and inquire into the relation and intersection of knowledge assemblages at local, national, and global scales. The book highlights the relevance of local and indigenous knowledge and discusses implications for educational and developmental politics. It provides ideas and a cross-disciplinary scientific background for scholars, students, and professionals including NGO activists, and policy-makers.
| Author | : Paul Sillitoe |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 266 |
| Release | : 2019-05-23 |
| Genre | : Science |
| ISBN | : 0429581246 |
Originally published in 2004. Local knowledge reflects many generations of experience and problem solving by people around the world, increasingly affected by globalizing forces. Such knowledge is far more sophisticated than development professionals previously assumed and, as such, represents an immensely valuable resource. A growing number of governments and international development agencies are recognizing that local-level knowledge and organizations offer the foundation for new participatory models of development that are both cost-effective and sustainable, and ecologically and socially sound. This book provides a timely overview of new directions and new approaches to investigating the role of rural communities in generating knowledge founded on their sophisticated understandings of their environments, devising mechanisms to conserve and sustain their natural resources, and establishing community-based organizations that serve as forums for identifying problems and dealing with them through local-level experimentation, innovation, and exchange of information with other societies. These studies show that development activities that work with and through local knowledge and organizations have several important advantages over projects that operate outside them. Local knowledge informs grassroots decision-making, much of which takes place through indigenous organizations and associations at the community level as people seek to identify and determine solutions to their problems.
| Author | : Michael Lambek |
| Publisher | : University of Chicago Press |
| Total Pages | : 388 |
| Release | : 2015-10-23 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 022629224X |
"This volume contains a selection of my essays that attend ethnographically to ethical life, to the action entailed in becoming and being a person, and to the relationship of acts and persons to value. The essays address central questions of social theory from an assumption and by means of a demonstration of the pervasiveness of what I elaborate as ethical. The ethical in my vocabulary is not an object, not a distinct compartment of the social, so much as a force, dimension, or quality of human existence. To attend to the ethical is to look at social life in a certain way and to put it under a certain kind of description. Ignoring the ethical leaves ethnographicl description thin and risks caricature in place of social analysis"--Preface.
| Author | : Michael Lambek |
| Publisher | : University of Toronto Press |
| Total Pages | : 173 |
| Release | : 2021-11-01 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1487539606 |
The Tanner Lectures are a collection of educational and scientific discussions relating to human values. Conducted by leaders in their fields, the lectures are presented at renowned institutions around the world, including the Universities of Oxford, Harvard, and Yale. In January 2019, University of Toronto’s Michael Lambek, professor, former Canada Research Chair, and member of the Royal Society of Canada, delivered the Tanner Lecture at the University of Michigan’s Department of Philosophy on the topic of "Concepts and Persons." As well as tracing his career in social and cultural anthropology, Lambek’s Tanner Lecture spoke on the intersection of anthropology and philosophy as a means of articulating the moral basis of human action. By elucidating where anthropology and philosophy might intersect, Lambek’s lecture is a profound examination of the human condition, and is beautifully captured in this publication. Concepts and Persons recounts the lecture as delivered at the prestigious event, the commentary of three distinguished respondents, and Lambek’s own response to that commentary. The book’s presentation of the lecture also includes a rich and layered set of notes that augment the lecture significantly, as well as additional clarification and thought that has developed since the event. Foreword Elizabeth Anderson, John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies, University of Michigan Commentators Jonathan Lear, John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor at the Committee on Social Thought and in the Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago Sherry B. Ortner, Distinguished Research Professor of Anthropology, UCLA Joel Robbins, Sigrid Rausing Professor of Social Anthropology, Cambridge University, and Fellow, Trinity College
| Author | : Elisabeth McMahon |
| Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
| Total Pages | : 305 |
| Release | : 2013-04-30 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1107328519 |
Examining the process of abolition on the island of Pemba off the East African coast in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this book demonstrates the links between emancipation and the redefinition of honour among all classes of people on the island. By examining the social vulnerability of ex-slaves and the former slave-owning elite caused by the abolition order of 1897, this study argues that moments of resistance on Pemba reflected an effort to mitigate vulnerability rather than resist the hegemonic power of elites or the colonial state. As the meaning of the Swahili word heshima shifted from honour to respectability, individuals' reputations came under scrutiny and the Islamic kadhi and colonial courts became an integral location for interrogating reputations in the community. This study illustrates the ways in which former slaves used piety, reputation, gossip, education, kinship and witchcraft to negotiate the gap between emancipation and local notions of belonging.
| Author | : Anne K. Bang |
| Publisher | : BRILL |
| Total Pages | : 241 |
| Release | : 2014-08-07 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : 9004276548 |
In the period c. 1880-1940, organized Sufism spread rapidly in the western Indian Ocean. New communities turned to Islam, and Muslim communities turned to new texts, practices and religious leaders. On the East African coast, the orders were both a vehicle for conversion to Islam and for reform of Islamic practice. The impact of Sufism on local communities is here traced geographically as a ripple reaching beyond the Swahili cultural zone southwards to Mozambique, Madagascar and Cape Town. Through an investigation of the texts, ritual practices and scholarly networks that went alongside Sufi expansion, this book places religious change in the western Indian Ocean within the wider framework of Islamic reform.
