miratrix Posted February 27, 2009 Posted February 27, 2009 To distract us from the "Notifications" topic, what are your favorite anthropology books or writers? Subfield doesn't matter, recommend what you love! I'll start with a couple ethnographies: my favorites are Veiled Sentiments by Lila Abu-Lughod (read in anth 101, still recommending!) and Saqqaq by Jens Dahl (because Greenland is fascinating).
Coffeerust Posted February 27, 2009 Posted February 27, 2009 ooh, i'm a longtime lurker, and grateful reader of all anthrapplicants' posts, but here's a topic i lurrrve. obeyesekere -- medusa's hair is always good for a laugh, containing as it does the immortal -- and explicit -- assumption "HAIR = PENIS". i can remember being absolutely devastated over beth conklin's consuming grief: compassionate cannibalism in an amazonian society, but i fell in love with maurice bloch for prey into hunter. weirdly, my research interests are primarily political/legal with a splash of feminism, and a soupcon of history, all very abstract and theoretical which i find properly exciting... but the ethnographies that really moved me are the ones about sex, death and food. fleshly stuff. hmm. neil whitehead has a new book coming out called ethnopornography: sexuality and anthropological knowing. i. cannot. wait.
this-sucks Posted February 27, 2009 Posted February 27, 2009 reinventing anthropology - edited volume by dell hymes. this book changed my life. i also really like james siegal and paul ricouer . geertz is always great to read. and despite disagreements with the content of geertz' work, the man writes some poetic prose. other stuff is from psychoanalysis, cult studies, lit and phil but again changed my relationship to anthro. amongst them, a bunch of camus, zizek, lacan, benjamin, constant, arendt, marx and freud. the first time i read fanon, i remember pretty much weeping.
anthcat Posted February 27, 2009 Posted February 27, 2009 neil whitehead has a new book coming out called ethnopornography: sexuality and anthropological knowing. i. cannot. wait. Ooh. I am looking forward to that now! I have to recommend a recent edited volume - Lock and Farquahar's Beyond the Body Proper. There are some interesting inclusions of older articles (Marx, etc) that connect very strangely with the current-day stuff.
spoonfeeding Posted February 27, 2009 Posted February 27, 2009 ooh, good timewaster! In random order, I love: The Gender of the Gift by Marilyn Strathern, Women of Deh Koh by Erika Friedl, Gypsies: The HIdden Americans by Anne Sutherland, What Makes Women Sick? Maternity, Modesty, and Militarism in Israeli Society by Susan Sered, The Riddle of Amish Culture by Donald Kraybill, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power by Ann Stoler, Beyond the Veil, and Dreams of Trespass by Fatima Mernissi (first non-fiction, second memoir), The Ape and the Sushi Master by Frans De Waal, and Guests of the Sheik by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea.
OD09 Posted March 16, 2009 Posted March 16, 2009 The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman is a favorite. I really enjoy anything and everything by Clifford Geertz (Interpretation of Culture, Local Knowledge) and James Clifford (Poetics and Politics of Ethnography). I was a humanities major as an undergrad so that's about as much as I can say on anthro texts. As an aspiring (medical) anthropologist, I would love to hear your recommendations, though!
poetaguerrera Posted March 27, 2009 Posted March 27, 2009 Ethnography and Prostitution In Peru by Lorraine Nencel.
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