Michael Lambek – författare

Anthropology has recently seen a lively interest in the subject of ethics and comparative notions of morality and freedom. This masterclass brings together four of the most eminent anthropologists working in this field-Michael Lambek, Veena Das, Didier Fassin, and Webb Keane-to discuss, via lectures and responses, important topics facing anthropological ethics and the theoretical debates that surround it. The authors explore the ways we understand morality across many different cultural settings, asking questions such as: How do we recognize the ethical in different ethnographic worlds? What constitutes agency and awareness in everyday life? What might an anthropology of ordinary ethics look like? And what happens when ethics approaches the political in both Western and non-Western societies. Contrasting perspectives and methods-and yet in complimentary ways-this masterclass will serve as an essential guide for how an anthropology of ethics can be formulated in the twenty-first century.

Adapting Wittgenstein's concept of the human species as 'a ceremonial animal', Wendy James writes vividly and readably. Her new overview advocates a clear line of argument: that the concept of social form is a primary key to anthropology and the human sciences as a whole. Weaving memorable ethnographic examples into her text, James brings together carefully selected historical sources as well as references to current ideas in neighbouring disciplines such as archaeology, paleoanthropology, genetics, art and material culture, ethnomusicology, urban and development studies, politics, economics, psychology, and religious studies. She shows the relevance of anthropology to pressing world issues such as migration, humanitarian politics, the new reproductive technologies, and religious fundamentalism. Wendy James's engaging style will appeal to specialist and non-specialist alike. The Foreword is written by Michael J. Lambek, Professor of Anthropology, University of Toronto.

Written over a thirty-year span, Michael Lambek's essays in this collection point with definitive force toward a single central truth: ethics is intrinsic to social life. As he shows through rich ethnographic accounts and multiple theoretical traditions, our human condition is at heart an ethical one-we may not always be good or just, but we are always subject to their criteria. Detailing Lambek's trajectory as one anthropologist thinking deeply throughout a career on the nature of ethical life, the essays accumulate into a vibrant demonstration of the relevance of ethics as a practice and its crucial importance to ethnography, social theory, and philosophy. Organized chronologically, the essays begin among Malagasy speakers on the island of Mayotte and in northwest Madagascar. Building from ethnographic accounts there, they synthesize Aristotelian notions of practical judgment and virtuous action with Wittgensteinian notions of the ordinariness of ethical life and the importance of language, everyday speech, and ritual in order to understand how ethics are lived.They illustrate the multiple ways in which ethics informs personhood, character, and practice; explore the centrality of judgment, action, and irony to ethical life; and consider the relation of virtue to value. The result is a fully fleshed-out picture of ethics as a deeply rooted aspect of the human experience.

Tense Past provides a much needed appraisal and contextualization of the upsurge of interest in questions of memory and trauma evident in multiple personality and post-traumatic stress disorders, child abuse, and commemoration of the Holocaust. Contributors examine the historical origins of memory in psychiatric discourse and show its connection to broader developments in Western science and medicine. They address the new links between trauma and memory, and they explore how memory shapes the way traumatic events are put into narrative form. They also consider the social and political contexts in which sufferers speak and remember.

Based on intensive ethnographic fieldwork, this book describes and interprets trance behaviour among the Malagasy speakers of Mayotte, a small island in the Comoro Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of East Africa. Professor Lambek describes how the people of Mayotte (most often women) enter into trances, during which they believe their bodies are inhabited by spirits. He then analyses the conventions for behaviour in trance and the process by which the individuals come to terms with the spirits in their midst. The book presents thorough case studies of spirit possession over time, providing one of the most detailed accounts of possession phenomena available for a single society. The author argues that trance can best be understood as a social activity within a defined system of cultural meaning rather than as a psychological problem, a simple deception or a means of manipulating others. This book should be of particular interest to those concerned with the study of ritual, symbols and non-Western religious systems.

Large-scale comparisons are out of fashion in anthropology, but this book suggests a bold comparative approach to broad cultural differences between Africa and Melanesia. Its theme is personhood, which is understood in terms of what anthropologists call 'embodiment'. These concepts are applied to questions ranging from the meanings of spirit possession, to the logics of witchcraft and kinship relations, the use of rituals to heal the sick, 'electric vampires', and even the impact of capitalism. There are detailed ethnographic analyses, and suggestive comparisons of classic African and Melanesian ethnographic cases, such as the Nuer and the Melpa. The contributors debate alternative strategies for cross-cultural comparison, and demonstrate that there is a surprising range of continuities, putting in question common assumptions about the huge differences between these two parts of the world.

Large-scale comparisons are out of fashion in anthropology, but this book suggests a bold comparative approach to broad cultural differences between Africa and Melanesia. Its theme is personhood, which is understood in terms of what anthropologists call 'embodiment'. These concepts are applied to questions ranging from the meanings of spirit possession, to the logics of witchcraft and kinship relations, the use of rituals to heal the sick, 'electric vampires', and even the impact of capitalism. There are detailed ethnographic analyses, and suggestive comparisons of classic African and Melanesian ethnographic cases, such as the Nuer and the Melpa. The contributors debate alternative strategies for cross-cultural comparison, and demonstrate that there is a surprising range of continuities, putting in question common assumptions about the huge differences between these two parts of the world.

This innovative book takes a look at the anthropology of kinship and the comparative study of relatedness. Kinship has historically been central to the discipline of anthropology but what sort of future does it have? What is the impact of recent studies of reproductive technologies, of gender, and of the social construction of science in the West? What significance does public anxiety about the family, or new family forms in the West have for anthropology's analytic strategies? The study of kinship has rested on a distinction between the 'biological' and the 'social'. But recent technological developments have made this distinction no longer self-evident. What does this imply about the comparison of kinship institutions cross-culturally? Janet Carsten gives an approachable view of the past, present, and future of kinship in anthropology, which will be of interest not just to anthropologists but to social scientists generally.

On the East African island of Mayotte, Islam co-exists with two other systems of understanding and interpreting the world around its inhabitants: cosmology and spirit-mediumship. In a witty, evocative style accessible to both the specialist and non-specialist reader, Michael Lambek provides a significant contribution to writing on African systems of thought, on local forms of religious and therapeutic practice, on social accountability, and on the place of explicit forms of knowledge in the analysis of non-western societies.The "objectified" textual knowledge characteristic of Islam and of cosmology is contrasted with the "embodied" knowledge of spirit possession. Lambek emphasizes the power and authority constituted by each discipline, as well as the challenge that each kind of knowledge presents to the others and their resolution in daily practice. "Disciplines" are defined as an organized body of practitioners or adepts, a concept precise and useful when applied to the contexts of Lambek's own research and equally so in the study of comparable environments elsewhere.Essential reading for those interested in the comparative study of Islamic societies, Lambek's argument directly contributes to the main anthropological arguments of the day concerning the social and cultural basis of systems of knowledge and ethnographic strategies for depicting them.

What is the place of the ethical in human life? How do we render it visible? How might sustained attention to the ethical transform anthropological theory and enrich our understanding of thought, speech, and social action? This volume offers a significant attempt to address these questions. It is a common experience of most ethnographers that the people we encounter are trying to do what they consider right or good, are being evaluated according to criteria of what is right and good, or are in some debate about what constitutes the human good. Yet anthropological theory has tended to overlook all this in favor of analyses that emphasize structure, power, and interest.Bringing together ethnographic exposition with philosophical concepts and arguments and effectively transcending subdisciplinary boundaries between cultural and linguistic anthropology, the essays collected in this volume explore the ethical entailments of speech and action and demonstrate the centrality of ethical practice, judgment, reasoning, responsibility, cultivation, commitment, and questioning in social life. Rather than focus on codes of conduct or hot-button issues, they make the cumulative argument that ethics is profoundly "ordinary," pervasive—and possibly even intrinsic to speech and action. In addition to deepening our understanding of ethics, the volume makes an incisive and necessary intervention in anthropological theory,recasting discussion in ways that force us to rethink such concepts as power, agency, and relativism.Individual chapters consider the place of ethics with respect to conversation and interaction; judgment and responsibility; formality, etiquette, performance, ritual, and law; character and empathy; social boundaries and exclusions; socialization and punishment; and commemoration, history, and living together in peace and war.Together they offer a comprehensive portrait of an approach that is now critical for advancing anthropological theory and ethnographic description, as well as fruitful conversation with philosophy.

What is the place of the ethical in human life? How do we render it visible? How might sustained attention to the ethical transform anthropological theory and enrich our understanding of thought, speech, and social action? This volume offers a significant attempt to address these questions. It is a common experience of most ethnographers that the people we encounter are trying to do what they consider right or good, are being evaluated according to criteria of what is right and good, or are in some debate about what constitutes the human good. Yet anthropological theory has tended to overlook all this in favor of analyses that emphasize structure, power, and interest.Bringing together ethnographic exposition with philosophical concepts and arguments and effectively transcending subdisciplinary boundaries between cultural and linguistic anthropology, the essays collected in this volume explore the ethical entailments of speech and action and demonstrate the centrality of ethical practice, judgment, reasoning, responsibility, cultivation, commitment, and questioning in social life. Rather than focus on codes of conduct or hot-button issues, they make the cumulative argument that ethics is profoundly "ordinary," pervasive—and possibly even intrinsic to speech and action. In addition to deepening our understanding of ethics, the volume makes an incisive and necessary intervention in anthropological theory,recasting discussion in ways that force us to rethink such concepts as power, agency, and relativism.Individual chapters consider the place of ethics with respect to conversation and interaction; judgment and responsibility; formality, etiquette, performance, ritual, and law; character and empathy; social boundaries and exclusions; socialization and punishment; and commemoration, history, and living together in peace and war.Together they offer a comprehensive portrait of an approach that is now critical for advancing anthropological theory and ethnographic description, as well as fruitful conversation with philosophy.

A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion presents a collection of original, ethnographically-informed essays that explore the variety of beliefs, practices, and religious experiences in the contemporary world and asks how to think about religion as a subject of anthropological inquiry. Presents a collection of original, ethnographically-informed essays exploring the wide variety of beliefs, practices, and religious experiences in the contemporary worldExplores a broad range of topics including the ‘perspectivism’ debate, the rise of religious nationalism, reflections on religion and new media, religion and politics, and ideas of self and gender in relation to religious beliefIncludes examples drawn from different religious traditions and from several regions of the worldFeatures newly-commissioned articles reflecting the most up-to-date research and critical thinking in the field, written by an international team of leading scholarsAdds immeasurably to our understanding of the complex relationships between religion, culture, society, and the individual in today’s world

A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion is a collection of some of the most significant classic and contemporary writings in the field. Updated in its second edition, this volume examines numerous aspects of religion in a diversity of cultures and expands upon the idea of what we mean by ‘religion’, linking it to some of the broader questions of culture and politics. Collects classic and contemporary articles from the major thinkers in both North American and British anthropologyEmphasizes the ongoing conversation among anthropologists with respect to central questions of religious behaviorPresents comprehensive coverage of theory and religious practice, through time and ethnographic regions, integrated by editorial commentaryIncludes additional classic pieces by Pouillon, Burridge, and Meyerhoff, as well as more contemporary work by Harding, De Boeck, and PalmiéIncludes indexed bibliography arranged according to both ethnographic region and religious topics and practices

A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion is a collection of some of the most significant classic and contemporary writings in the field. Updated in its second edition, this volume examines numerous aspects of religion in a diversity of cultures and expands upon the idea of what we mean by ‘religion’, linking it to some of the broader questions of culture and politics. Collects classic and contemporary articles from the major thinkers in both North American and British anthropologyEmphasizes the ongoing conversation among anthropologists with respect to central questions of religious behaviorPresents comprehensive coverage of theory and religious practice, through time and ethnographic regions, integrated by editorial commentaryIncludes additional classic pieces by Pouillon, Burridge, and Meyerhoff, as well as more contemporary work by Harding, De Boeck, and PalmiéIncludes indexed bibliography arranged according to both ethnographic region and religious topics and practices

The Tanner Lectures are a collection of educational and scientific discussions relating to human values. Conducted by leaders in their fields, the lectures are presented at renowned institutions around the world, including the Universities of Oxford, Harvard, and Yale. In January 2019, University of Toronto’s Michael Lambek, professor, former Canada Research Chair, and member of the Royal Society of Canada, delivered the Tanner Lecture at the University of Michigan’s Department of Philosophy on the topic of "Concepts and Persons."As well as tracing his career in social and cultural anthropology, Lambek’s Tanner Lecture spoke on the intersection of anthropology and philosophy as a means of articulating the moral basis of human action. By elucidating where anthropology and philosophy might intersect, Lambek’s lecture is a profound examination of the human condition, and is beautifully captured in this publication.Concepts and Persons recounts the lecture as delivered at the prestigious event, the commentary of three distinguished respondents, and Lambek’s own response to that commentary. The book’s presentation of the lecture also includes a rich and layered set of notes that augment the lecture significantly, as well as additional clarification and thought that has developed since the event.ForewordElizabeth Anderson, John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies, University of MichiganCommentatorsJonathan Lear, John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor at the Committee on Social Thought and in the Department of Philosophy, University of ChicagoSherry B. Ortner, Distinguished Research Professor of Anthropology, UCLAJoel Robbins, Sigrid Rausing Professor of Social Anthropology, Cambridge University, and Fellow, Trinity College

Island in the Stream introduces an original genre of ethnographic history as it follows a community on Mayotte, an East African island in the Mozambique Channel, through eleven periods of fieldwork between 1975 and 2015. Over this 40-year span Mayotte shifted from a declining and neglected colonial backwater to a full département of the French state. In a highly unusual postcolonial trajectory, citizens of Mayotte demanded this incorporation within France rather than joining the independent republic of the Comoros. The Malagasy-speaking Muslim villagers Michael Lambek encountered in 1975 practiced subsistence cultivation and lived without roads, schools, electricity, or running water; today they are educated citizens of the EU who travel regularly to metropolitan France and beyond. Offering a series of ethnographic slices of life across time, Island in the Stream highlights community members' ethical engagement in their own history as they looked to the future, acknowledged the past, and engaged and transformed local forms of sociality, exchange, and ritual performance. This is a unique account of the changing horizons and historical consciousness of an African community and an intimate portrait of the inhabitants and their concerns, as well as a glimpse into the changing perspective of the ethnographer.

The Villa Tugendhat, designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1928, is an icon of architectural modernism and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Behind the Glass tells the true story of the large family connected to it, who rose to prominence through industrial textile manufacturing.The book traces the transformations in the life of the family, from their roots in a Jewish ghetto to part of the wealthy bourgeoisie in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to adaptation in interwar independent Czechoslovakia and flight in the face of Nazi invasion. Michael Lambek examines the generation born in the first decade of the twentieth century, especially Grete Tugendhat – Lambek’s maternal grandmother – who commissioned, inhabited, championed, and relinquished the distinctive modern house.An exploration of life in and surrounding the Villa Tugendhat offers a factual portrait that runs counter to the fictional one portrayed in Simon Mawer’s The Glass Room. The book also provides unpublished correspondence between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Tugendhat, Grete’s son, as well as a description of the impact of a 2017 family reunion.Behind the Glass reflects on the meaning of a "family" and suggests that it is more than a nuclear household – a family reproduces itself over generations, a product of how it represents itself and is represented by others.

Possession aptly describes the explicit manifestations of spirits when they temporarily displace individuals by assuming control of their bodies and minds, but the word does not account for what it means to cohabit with them. Cohabiting with Spirits offers an intimate portrait of the intertwined lives of a married couple together with the various spirits who came to possess each of them. Set against the backdrop of the island of Mayotte during the twentieth century, the book paints a vivid picture of the couple's lives, navigating the demands of their respective spirits while practising an art of cohabitation, both with the spirits and with each other.While studies of spirit possession often focus on ceremonial practices and dramatic performances of spirit mediums in trance, Michael Lambek shifts the focus to explore what it can be like to cohabit with spirits. The book examines the ways in which various spirits entered the lives of this married couple and how their presence shaped the hosts' careers as healers, leaving lasting impacts on their domestic and personal lives. Based on rich ethnographic research conducted over the course of several decades, Cohabiting with Spirits presents a rare biography of "ordinary" Africans in the twentieth century and celebrates the resilience of a strong marriage.

Possession aptly describes the explicit manifestations of spirits when they temporarily displace individuals by assuming control of their bodies and minds, but the word does not account for what it means to cohabit with them. Cohabiting with Spirits offers an intimate portrait of the intertwined lives of a married couple together with the various spirits who came to possess each of them. Set against the backdrop of the island of Mayotte during the twentieth century, the book paints a vivid picture of the couple's lives, navigating the demands of their respective spirits while practising an art of cohabitation, both with the spirits and with each other.While studies of spirit possession often focus on ceremonial practices and dramatic performances of spirit mediums in trance, Michael Lambek shifts the focus to explore what it can be like to cohabit with spirits. The book examines the ways in which various spirits entered the lives of this married couple and how their presence shaped the hosts' careers as healers, leaving lasting impacts on their domestic and personal lives. Based on rich ethnographic research conducted over the course of several decades, Cohabiting with Spirits presents a rare biography of "ordinary" Africans in the twentieth century and celebrates the resilience of a strong marriage.

Theories of illness and therapy since Freud have included the possibility that sufferers are complicit in their conditions. The studies in this volume explore the ways in which illness and therapy may be characterized as sites at which ironies of the human condition are produced, encountered, acknowledged – or discounted in favor of more literal readings. They ask what these sites can teach us about questions of human agency and about the broader importance of irony for theory.Encompassing a variety of perspectives, the contributors included in Illness and Irony apply theories of irony to a myriad of cultural contexts, ranging from Freud’s consulting room and the Lacanian clinics of Buenos Aires to fright illness in a Yemeni village and spirit possession on the island of Mayotte. An introductory chapter by Michael Lambek establishes a contextual viewpoint on irony, arising from the writings of Thomas Mann, Alexander Nehamas and others. Vincent Crapanzano concludes the volume by linking the contributions to current debates about irony in rhetoric, linguistics and comparative literature.