Table Of ContentPHENOMENOLOGY in ANTHROPOLOGY
PHENOMENOLOGY
IN
ANTHROPOLOGY
A Sense of Perspective
EDITED BY
KALPANA RAM
AND
CHRISTOPHER HOUSTON
AFTERWORD BY
MICHAEL JACKSON
indiana university press
Bloomington and Indianapolis
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1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15
we dedicate this book to ian bedford,
who passed away during its preparation.
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Contents
Introduction: Phenomenology’s Methodological Invitation 1
Kalpana Ram and Christopher Houston
Part I. The Body as Constitutive Horizon of Experience
1 Moods and Method: Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty on Emotion
and Understanding 29
Kalpana Ram
2 Toward a Cultural Phenomenology of Body-World Relations 50
Thomas J. Csordas
3 Sacred Suffering: A Phenomenological Anthropological Perspective 68
C. Jason Throop
4 Being “Sita”: Physical Affects in the North Indian Dance of Kathak 90
Monica Dalidowicz
5 Beneath the Horizon: The Organic Body’s Role in Athletic Experience 114
Greg Downey
6 Unmeasured Music and Silence 138
Ian Bedford
Part II. History and Temporality
7 Experiencing Self-Abstraction: Studio Production and Vocal
Consciousness 153
Daniel Fisher
8 Being-in-the-Covenant: Reflections on the Crisis of
Historicism in North Malaita, Solomon Islands 175
Jaap Timmer
Part III. The Poetics and Politics of Phenomenological Ethnography
9 Seared with Reality: Phenomenology through Photography, in Nepal 197
Robert Desjarlais
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10 Writing Affect, Love, and Desire into Ethnography 224
L. L. Wynn
11 Senses of Magic: Anthropology, Art, and Christianity in the Vula’a
Lifeworld 248
Deborah Van Heekeren
12 Neither Things in Themselves nor Things for Us Only: Anthropology,
Phenomenology, and Poetry 268
Christopher Houston
Afterword 293
Michael Jackson
Contributors 305
Index 308
Preface
P
henomenology in Anthropology: A Sense of Perspective continues a dialogue
with previous debates in phenomenological anthropology by incorporating in-
vited and origi nal contributions from earlier participants in that debate, including
Robert Desjarlais, Thomas Csordas, and Jason Throop. The volume has been fur-
ther enriched by Michael Jackson’s generous contribution of an afterword, in which
he reflects on his earlier insights into phenomenological anthropology as well as
on continuities or changes in his present engagement with it.
This book has its practical origins in a shared intellectual endeavor. Many
of the essays found here were written first for presentation at the staff seminar of
the Anthropology Department at Macquarie University, when contributors were
asked to explore the phenomenological dimensions of social life in their respective
fieldwork locations. Invited contributors read each other’s work, building upon
ideas developed in this dialogue to fill out vari ous dimensions of the broad con-
vergence of anthropology and phenomenology. Contributors then engaged as a
group with these central methodological issues, each breathing diversity and fresh
life into these broad questions by bringing their own area of empirical enquiry
and thematic preoccupations to bear on them. Through this joint collaboration,
we hope to have shown that phenomenology speaks to a broader range of meth-
odological questions and empirical fields of enquiry than is oft en recognized.
The editors wish to thank the Faculty of Arts at Macquarie University for its
generous support toward the publication of this volume. Most importantly, we ac-
knowledge the collegiality and enthusiasm of our colleagues in the Department
of Anthropology, who have helped make the organizing and writing of this work
an absolute pleasure.
We dedicate this book to Ian Bedford, cherished husband of Kalpara Ram who
passed away while it was in production. As founding member of the Department
of Anthropology at Macquarie Uni ver sity, novelist, and translator of eighteenth-
century Urdu Sufi poetry from South Asia, he helped shape generations of students
and colleagues and touched many more with his erudition, humanity, and sheer
enthusiasm for ideas. Those who had the great fortune to be supervised by him
came to know first- hand the importance he placed on good writing. For, to quote
from his contribution to this volume, “Many a good utterance on the page is heard,
is listened for. Part of the task of comprehension lies in this listening. Part of the
force of language lies in a superfluity at the heart of language. How many essay-
writing students have had to be taught that it is not only the facts to be reported,
the bare bones of the argument on the page, but the cadence that matters!”
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