Hostname: page-component-7b9c58cd5d-dlb68 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-16T11:23:58.510Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropography of Violence, by E. Valentine Daniel. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society, by Webb Keane (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Metaphysical Community: The Interplay of the Senses and the Intellect, by Greg Urban (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996).

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2002

Michael Herzfeld
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Questions of ontology are socially as consequential as gossip. In saying this, I do not mean to belittle them but, on the contrary, to emphasize their pervasive ubiquity and importance. Paradoxically, however, it is that ubiquity that all too often reduces them to a banal and unthinking obviousness: the relationship between experienced reality and the discourses that render it palpable have often--like gossip--escaped critical attention, filtered out of anthropologistsÕ awareness by the singularly unrewarding opposition between “symbolic” and “materialist” approaches to the study of culture and society.

Type
CSSH Discussion
Copyright
© 2002 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History