Recovering the Human Subject

James Laidlaw is the William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology and a Fellow of King's College at the University of Cambridge. His most recent book is The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom (Cambridge, 2014). Barbara Bodenhorn is a former Newton Trust Lecturer in Social Anthropology and is currently Fellow Emerita of Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge. She is co-editor of An Anthropology of Names and Naming (Cambridge, 2006). Martin Holbraad is Professor of Social Anthropology at University College London. He is author of Truth in Motion: The Recursive Anthropology of Cuban Divination (2012), and co-author of The Ontological Turn: An Anthropological Exposition (Cambridge, 2017).

'This collection is something of a Festschrift. It justly highlights Caroline Humphrey's seminal thoughts on the anthropology of sociocultural dynamics and their ethical inflections. All of the contributors pay homage to Humphrey's special gifts in synthesizing the philosophical and the ethnographic, her conceptual originality and, above all, her acute critical reflections on the limitations and incautiousness of the post-humanist turn in social and cultural thought. Yet, it's a Festschrift with a twist. The distinguished scholars whose essays appear in the collection don't rest with paeans. They instead supplement and enlarge Humphrey's insights. In every instance, they demonstrate that those insights enrich anthropological conversations already ongoing, but also open doors to anthropological conversations yet to come. The result is a must-read - analytically sparkling and elegantly composed from start to finish.' James D. Faubion

• 1. Introduction: freedom, creativity, and decision in recovering human subject Barbara Bodenhorn, Martin Holbraad and James Laidlaw; 2. Reassembling individual subjects: events and decisions in troubled times Caroline Humphrey; Part I. Decision: 3. On singularity and the event: further reflections on the ordinary Veena Das; 4. Apathy and revolution: temporal sensibilities in contemporary Mongolia Lars Højer; 5. Apparitions of the Virgin Mary as decision-events Agnieszka Halemba; Part II. Freedom: 6. Incidental connections: freedom and urban life in Mongolia Morten Axel Pedersen; 7. The return to slavery? Nostalgia and a new generation of escape in Southwest China Katherine Swancutt (苏梦林) and Jiarimuji (嘉日姆几); Part III. Creativity: 8. Paradoxical pedagogies and humanist double binds Matei Candea; 9. Where in the world are values? Exemplarity, morality, and social process Joel Robbins.