Human Nature as Capacity

Nigel Rapport is Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and directs the Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies. He also held the Canada Research Chair in Globalization, Citizenship and Justice at Concordia University, Montreal, and he has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Recent publications include 'I am Dynamite': An Alternative Anthropology of Power (Routledge, 2003) and Of Orderlies and Men: Hospital Porters Achieving Wellness at Work (Carolina Academic Press, 2008).

“This is an engaging collection which is enhanced by the editor’s agenda and his clear and challenging statement of purpose. The notion of ‘going beyond’ is important, and is well realised in his broad, scholarly, and well-argued introduction…a substantial contribution to anthropological theorising about human beings as such, as that enterprise now stands.”  ·  Michael Carrithers, Durham University

• List of IllustrationsList of ContributorsIntroduction: Human Capacity as an Exceeding, a Going  BeyondNigel RapportPART I: BEYOND THE ECONOMYIntroduction to Part INigel RapportChapter 1. Conversations with Eulogio: On Migration and the Building of a Life-Project in MotionNelson FergusonChapter 2. The Limits of Liminality: Capacities for Change and Transition among Student TravellersVered AmitPART II: BEYOND THE POLITYIntroduction to Part IINigel RapportChapter 3. 'Crisis': On the Limits of European Integration and Identity in Northern IrelandThomas M. WilsonChapter 4. Making the Cosmopolitan Plea: Harold Oram's International Fund-raising in the Early Cold WarLaura SuskiPART III: BEYOND THE CLASSIFACTORYIntroduction to Part IIINigel RapportChapter 5. Money, Materiality and Imagination: Life on the Other Side of ValueAndrew IrvingChapter 6. Acts of Entification: The Emergence of Thinghood in Social LifeTord LarsenPART IV: BEYOND THE BODYIntroduction to Part IVNigel RapportChapter 7. Embodied  Cognition, Communication and the Making of Place and Identity: Reflections on Fieldwork with MasonsTrevor H.J. MarchandChapter 8. 'Live in Fragments no Longer': Social Dance and Individual Imagination in Human NatureJonathan SkinnerIndex