JEAN-PAUL BALDACCHINO is a professor of anthropology at the University of Malta in Msida, Malta. He is the coeditor, with Jon Mitchell, of Morality, Crisis and Capitalism: Anthropology for Troubled Times.CHRISTOPHER HOUSTON is a professor of anthropology at Macquarie University in New South Wales, Australia. He is the author of Theocracy, Secularism, and Islam in Turkey: Anthropocratic Republic and Istanbul, City of the Fearless: Urban Activism, Coup d'État, and Memory in Turkey.

"Anthropology has only recently focused on one of the basic human experiences: that people set out to change themselves, and they do so using the tools that their culture offers to them. This volume presents a rich array of observations around this theme to carry the conversation forward." - Tanya Luhrmann (author of How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others) "This remarkable volume casts new light on our understanding of selfhood, by looking at the ways different people in different contexts alter themselves." - Jon P. Mitchell (author of Ambivalent Europeans: Ritual, Memory and the Public Sphere in Malta)

• Chapter 1 Introduction: A Time for Change: Modes of Self-AlterationJean-Paul Baldacchino and Christopher HoustonPart I: Religious Cultures, Spiritual Practices, and Self-AlterationChapter 2 Exemplary Masters, Exemplary Reeds: Pedagogies of Self-Alteration in Sufi MusicBanu ŞenayChapter 3 Re-imagining Self and Self-Alteration in Contemporary New Age, Pagan and Neo-Shamanic SpiritualitiesKathryn RountreeChapter 4 Wounded by Grace: Becoming a Prophet in an Evangelical Revival in Solomon IslandsJaap TimmerPart II: Self-Alteration and Political ActivismChapter 5 Fabricating the New Man and Woman: Self-Alteration Through Revolutionary SocialismChristopher HoustonChapter 6 Transcendental Terror: Zen Self-Transformation through White Supremacist Atrocity, from Nazi Germany to UtØya and ChristchurchMax HarwoodPart III: Gendered Bodies and Therapeutic InterventionsChapter 7 Beautiful, Moral, Functional: Bodily Self-Alteration in an Italian Centre for Eating DisordersGisella OrsiniChapter 8 Porous Individuality as Self-Alteration: Commercial Self-Improvement in Urban ChinaGil HiziChapter 9 How Is Psychoanalysis a Mode of Self-Alteration? Anthropological InterrogationsJean-Paul BaldacchinoPart IV: Self-Alteration, The Human, and the More-Than-HumanChapter 10 Mutualistic Self-Alteration: Human-Pigeon Assemblages in Rural PakistanMuhammad A. KaveshChapter 11 Self-Alteration as Human Capacity and as Cosmopolitan RightNigel RapportPart V: AfterwordChapter 12 Making Oneself Otherwise: Reflections on NatalityMichael JacksonAcknowledgments     Notes on ContributorsIndex

JEAN-PAUL BALDACCHINO is a professor of anthropology at the University of Malta in Msida, Malta. He is the coeditor, with Jon Mitchell, of Morality, Crisis and Capitalism: Anthropology for Troubled Times.CHRISTOPHER HOUSTON is a professor of anthropology at Macquarie University in New South Wales, Australia. He is the author of Theocracy, Secularism, and Islam in Turkey: Anthropocratic Republic and Istanbul, City of the Fearless: Urban Activism, Coup d'État, and Memory in Turkey.

"Anthropology has only recently focused on one of the basic human experiences: that people set out to change themselves, and they do so using the tools that their culture offers to them. This volume presents a rich array of observations around this theme to carry the conversation forward." - Tanya Luhrmann (author of How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others) "This remarkable volume casts new light on our understanding of selfhood, by looking at the ways different people in different contexts alter themselves." - Jon P. Mitchell (author of Ambivalent Europeans: Ritual, Memory and the Public Sphere in Malta)

• Chapter 1 Introduction: A Time for Change: Modes of Self-AlterationJean-Paul Baldacchino and Christopher HoustonPart I: Religious Cultures, Spiritual Practices, and Self-AlterationChapter 2 Exemplary Masters, Exemplary Reeds: Pedagogies of Self-Alteration in Sufi MusicBanu ŞenayChapter 3 Re-imagining Self and Self-Alteration in Contemporary New Age, Pagan and Neo-Shamanic SpiritualitiesKathryn RountreeChapter 4 Wounded by Grace: Becoming a Prophet in an Evangelical Revival in Solomon IslandsJaap TimmerPart II: Self-Alteration and Political ActivismChapter 5 Fabricating the New Man and Woman: Self-Alteration Through Revolutionary SocialismChristopher HoustonChapter 6 Transcendental Terror: Zen Self-Transformation through White Supremacist Atrocity, from Nazi Germany to UtØya and ChristchurchMax HarwoodPart III: Gendered Bodies and Therapeutic InterventionsChapter 7 Beautiful, Moral, Functional: Bodily Self-Alteration in an Italian Centre for Eating DisordersGisella OrsiniChapter 8 Porous Individuality as Self-Alteration: Commercial Self-Improvement in Urban ChinaGil HiziChapter 9 How Is Psychoanalysis a Mode of Self-Alteration? Anthropological InterrogationsJean-Paul BaldacchinoPart IV: Self-Alteration, The Human, and the More-Than-HumanChapter 10 Mutualistic Self-Alteration: Human-Pigeon Assemblages in Rural PakistanMuhammad A. KaveshChapter 11 Self-Alteration as Human Capacity and as Cosmopolitan RightNigel RapportPart V: AfterwordChapter 12 Making Oneself Otherwise: Reflections on NatalityMichael JacksonAcknowledgments     Notes on ContributorsIndex

JEAN-PAUL BALDACCHINO is a professor of anthropology at the University of Malta in Msida, Malta. He is the coeditor, with Jon Mitchell, of Morality, Crisis and Capitalism: Anthropology for Troubled Times.CHRISTOPHER HOUSTON is a professor of anthropology at Macquarie University in New South Wales, Australia. He is the author of Theocracy, Secularism, and Islam in Turkey: Anthropocratic Republic and Istanbul, City of the Fearless: Urban Activism, Coup d'État, and Memory in Turkey.

"Anthropology has only recently focused on one of the basic human experiences: that people set out to change themselves, and they do so using the tools that their culture offers to them. This volume presents a rich array of observations around this theme to carry the conversation forward." - Tanya Luhrmann (author of How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others) "This remarkable volume casts new light on our understanding of selfhood, by looking at the ways different people in different contexts alter themselves." - Jon P. Mitchell (author of Ambivalent Europeans: Ritual, Memory and the Public Sphere in Malta)

• Chapter 1 Introduction: A Time for Change: Modes of Self-AlterationJean-Paul Baldacchino and Christopher HoustonPart I: Religious Cultures, Spiritual Practices, and Self-AlterationChapter 2 Exemplary Masters, Exemplary Reeds: Pedagogies of Self-Alteration in Sufi MusicBanu ŞenayChapter 3 Re-imagining Self and Self-Alteration in Contemporary New Age, Pagan and Neo-Shamanic SpiritualitiesKathryn RountreeChapter 4 Wounded by Grace: Becoming a Prophet in an Evangelical Revival in Solomon IslandsJaap TimmerPart II: Self-Alteration and Political ActivismChapter 5 Fabricating the New Man and Woman: Self-Alteration Through Revolutionary SocialismChristopher HoustonChapter 6 Transcendental Terror: Zen Self-Transformation through White Supremacist Atrocity, from Nazi Germany to UtØya and ChristchurchMax HarwoodPart III: Gendered Bodies and Therapeutic InterventionsChapter 7 Beautiful, Moral, Functional: Bodily Self-Alteration in an Italian Centre for Eating DisordersGisella OrsiniChapter 8 Porous Individuality as Self-Alteration: Commercial Self-Improvement in Urban ChinaGil HiziChapter 9 How Is Psychoanalysis a Mode of Self-Alteration? Anthropological InterrogationsJean-Paul BaldacchinoPart IV: Self-Alteration, The Human, and the More-Than-HumanChapter 10 Mutualistic Self-Alteration: Human-Pigeon Assemblages in Rural PakistanMuhammad A. KaveshChapter 11 Self-Alteration as Human Capacity and as Cosmopolitan RightNigel RapportPart V: AfterwordChapter 12 Making Oneself Otherwise: Reflections on NatalityMichael JacksonAcknowledgments     Notes on ContributorsIndex