Lifeworlds: Essays in Existential Anthropology

359 Pages·2012·3.11 MB·English

by  Michael Jackson

Lifeworlds

Lifeworlds
Essays in Existential Anthropology
Michael Jackson
The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London
Michael Jackson is the Distinguished Visiting Professor of
World Religions at the Harvard Divinity School.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2013 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2013.
Printed in the United States of America
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN-13: 978–0-226–92364–2 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978–0-226–92365–9 (paper)
ISBN-13: 978–0-226–92366–6 (e-book)
ISBN-10: 0–226–92364–9 (cloth)
ISBN-10: 0–226–92365–7 (paper)
ISBN-10: 0–226–92366–5 (e-book)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jackson, Michael, 1940–
Lifeworlds : essays in existential anthropology /
Michael Jackson.
pages ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-92364-2 (cloth : alkaline paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-92365-9 (paperback : alkaline paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-92366-6 (e-book)
ISBN-10: 0-226-92364-9 (cloth : alkaline paper)
[etc.]
1. Anthropology—Philosophy. 2. Ethnology—Sierra Leone.
3. Kuranko (African people). 4. Human body. 5. Existential
phenomenology. I. Title.
GN33.J33 2013
301.01—dc23
2012011667
a This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992
(Permanence of Paper).
To Francine, with love

[Bruegel’s Netherlandish Proverbs] endowed the lowly social material of the prov-
erb with an aesthetic, formal grandeur signaling its lofty philosophical impor-
tance, while the painting’s vivid descriptions retained a representational grip on
the proverb’s common, comic types and situations. . . . his proverbs thus took
on visually the quality of “natural law ” so important in his art more generally. . . .
on this universal level, the peasant works as an everyman, as the figure of natural
mankind whose folly pervades all social classes and groups. RobeRt baldwin,
Language and Power in BruegeL’s “netherLandish ProverBs”
There is a delicate form of empiricism that enters into such a close relation-
ship with its object that it thereby becomes theory. The general and the par-
ticular converge: the particular is the general, made manifest under different
conditions. Johann wolfgang von goethe, “thoughts about aRt, ethics
and natuRe in the spiRit of the tRaveleRs,” in wiLheLm meister’s Journey-
man years, 1829

Contents
Preface xi
1 The Scope of Existential Anthropology 3
2 How to Do Things with Stones 31
3 Knowledge of the Body 51
4 The Migration of a Name: Alexander in Africa 75
5 The Man Who Could Turn into an Elephant 93
6 Custom and Conflict in Sierra Leone: An Essay
on Anarchy 115
7 Migrant Imaginaries: With Sewa Koroma in
Southeast London 137
8 The Stories That Shadow Us 169
9 Familiar and Foreign Bodies: A Phenomenological
Exploration of the Human-Technology Interface 191
10 The Prose of Suffering 209
11 On Autonomy: An Ethnographic and
Existential Critique 229
12 Where Thought Belongs: An Anthropological Critique of
the Project of Philosophy 253
Epilogue 271
Acknowledgments 279
Notes 281
Index 325