Signs Of Recognition

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Overview

Webb Keane argues that by looking at representations as concrete practices we may find them to be thoroughly entangled in the tensions and hazards of social existence. This book explores the performances and transactions that lie at the heart of public events in contemporary Anakalang, on the Indonesian island of Sumba. Weaving together sharply observed narrative, close analysis of poetic speech and valuable objects, and far-reaching theoretical discussion, Signs of Recognition explores the risks emic in ...
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More About This Book

Overview

Webb Keane argues that by looking at representations as concrete practices we may find them to be thoroughly entangled in the tensions and hazards of social existence. This book explores the performances and transactions that lie at the heart of public events in contemporary Anakalang, on the Indonesian island of Sumba. Weaving together sharply observed narrative, close analysis of poetic speech and valuable objects, and far-reaching theoretical discussion, Signs of Recognition explores the risks emic in representational practices. An awareness of risk is embedded in the very forms of ritual speech and exchange. The possibilities for failure and slippage reveal people's mutual vulnerabilities and give words and things part of their power. Keane shows how the dilemmas posed by the effort to use and control language and objects are implicated with general problems of power, authority, and agency. He persuades us to look differently at ideas of voice and value. Integrating the analysis of words and things, this book contributes to a wide range of fields, including linguistic anthropology, cultural studies, social theory, and the studies of material culture, art, and political economy.

Author Biography: Webb Keane is Assistant Professorof Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780520204751
  • Publisher: University of California Press
  • Publication date: 2/1/1997
  • Edition description: New Edition
  • Pages: 328
  • Sales rank: 1,258,856
  • Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 9.00 (h) x 0.73 (d)

Table of Contents

Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
A Note on Orthography, Transcription, and Vocabulary
1 Introduction: Representation, Recognition, and Hazard 1
2 Geography, History, and Sociality 29
3 Things of Value 65
4 Loaded Terms 94
5 Text, Context, and Displacement 115
6 Voices, Agents, and Interlocutors 138
7 Formality and the Economy of Signs 176
8 Subjects and the Vicissitudes of Objects 199
9 Conclusion 224
Notes 237
Bibliography 269
Index 287
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