Some of the most recent articles from open access anthropology journals (beta)
This article discusses two distinct notions of harm, wakllichishka and oil harm, and two distinct ways of shaping bodies. Following postcolonial and decolonial insights, I develop an approach that deploys two Indigenous concepts—wakllichishka, and not …
Using theoretical debates about how to deploy reflexivity in ethnographic research to contextualize anthropological knowledge, this article begins with an awkward encounter between an anthropologist from the Global South and a research participant to r…
Economy and emulation are freighted concepts. They draw attention to universal phenomena, the forms of which vary according to social organization, and in particular the dynamics of (in)equality. Socialist modernization, which is explored here in the c…
This article discusses the possibilities and limitations of digital creative methods developed by the author in response to lockdown and social distancing regulations. Building on prepandemic research, the analysis focuses on remote fieldwork in 2020 a…
In his essay on the cockfight, Clifford Geertz charted a now familiar course in anthropological argument. He showed how the minute details of a practice can dramatize cultural ideas about it. Many anthropologists since have been persuaded that “practic…
The recent anthropological focus on “ordinary ethics” emerges out of a concern to attend to the ethical aspect of social action that is intrinsic to the human condition. Ethnographic and theoretical contributions to this literature have drawn on a vari…
Marianne Thamm’s memoir Hitler, Verwoerd, Mandela and Me provides an interesting take on adoption: the adoption of an immigrant by a destination country and vice versa. This paper investigates Thamm’s navigation of the geographic, social, and linguisti…
This study investigates the experiences of those learning tailoring and trading in urban Sierra Leone, examining why they engage in training, what is basically taught, and the training outcomes. It includes ethnographic fieldwork on vocational training…
The European Union and many individual European countries emphasize the value of partnerships with Africa, including in research and development. This article examined research collaborations and related knowledge creation processes between Africa, Swe…
This article approaches parallelism as a semiotic phenomenon that can operate across verbal art and other media in performance. It presents an approach to different media and the uniting performance mode as construing “metered frames.” Multimedial parallelism is analyzed as a phenomenon resulting from the coordination of expressions in relation to these frames to form […]
The post Multimedial Parallelism in Ritual Performance (Parallelism Dynamics II) appeared first on Oral Tradition.
This article approaches parallelism as a semiotic phenomenon that can operate across verbal art and other media in performance. It presents an approach to different media and the uniting performance mode as construing “metered frames.” Multimedial parallelism is analyzed as a phenomenon resulting from the coordination of expressions in relation to these frames to form […]
The post Multimedial Parallelism in Ritual Performance (Parallelism Dynamics II) appeared first on Oral Tradition.
This paper addresses the interrelations between poetic parallelism and interactional stance-taking in stand-up comedy by examining commercially edited recordings of stand-up routines performed by two contemporary comics. Methodologically, the article suggests a heuristic distinction between 1) an approach to parallelism as a textual and rhetorical device based on sequential repetition of units of expression, and […]
The post Twin Constellations: Parallelism and Stance in Stand-Up Comedy appeared first on Oral Tradition.
This paper addresses the interrelations between poetic parallelism and interactional stance-taking in stand-up comedy by examining commercially edited recordings of stand-up routines performed by two contemporary comics. Methodologically, the article suggests a heuristic distinction between 1) an approach to parallelism as a textual and rhetorical device based on sequential repetition of units of expression, and […]
The post Twin Constellations: Parallelism and Stance in Stand-Up Comedy appeared first on Oral Tradition.
The ceremonial song-poetry performed by Arandic people of central Australia is characterized by parallelism of sound, form and meaning in both auditory and visual modalities. Parallelism, in all its manifestations, operates at multiple levels of the hierarchically structured poetic form. In the period Arandic people call the Altyerre, “Dreaming,” ancestral spirit-beings created the land and […]
The post Parallelism in Arandic Song-Poetry appeared first on Oral Tradition.
The ceremonial song-poetry performed by Arandic people of central Australia is characterized by parallelism of sound, form and meaning in both auditory and visual modalities. Parallelism, in all its manifestations, operates at multiple levels of the hierarchically structured poetic form. In the period Arandic people call the Altyerre, “Dreaming,” ancestral spirit-beings created the land and […]
The post Parallelism in Arandic Song-Poetry appeared first on Oral Tradition.
La42 qin4 kchin4 or ‘Prayers for the Community’ are supplications spoken by elders, traditional authorities, and virtuoso Chatino speakers from Oaxaca, Mexico. Chatino prayers are composed of varied, and complex forms of parallelism, repetition, and formulaic expressions. Units of meaning in these prayers are developed and presented in semantically and syntactically related stanzas consisting of […]
The post Prayers for the Community: Parallelism and Performance in San Juan Quiahije Eastern Chatino appeared first on Oral Tradition.
La42 qin4 kchin4 or ‘Prayers for the Community’ are supplications spoken by elders, traditional authorities, and virtuoso Chatino speakers from Oaxaca, Mexico. Chatino prayers are composed of varied, and complex forms of parallelism, repetition, and formulaic expressions. Units of meaning in these prayers are developed and presented in semantically and syntactically related stanzas consisting of […]
The post Prayers for the Community: Parallelism and Performance in San Juan Quiahije Eastern Chatino appeared first on Oral Tradition.
Karelian laments are performed by women during a ritual – funerals, weddings, and recruiting ceremonies – and were once commonly used in other contexts of everyday life. Laments are works of a special kind of improvisation. They were created during the performance process in relation to a concrete situation, drawing upon traditional language, stylistic means […]
The post Parallelism in Karelian Laments appeared first on Oral Tradition.
Karelian laments are performed by women during a ritual – funerals, weddings, and recruiting ceremonies – and were once commonly used in other contexts of everyday life. Laments are works of a special kind of improvisation. They were created during the performance process in relation to a concrete situation, drawing upon traditional language, stylistic means […]
The post Parallelism in Karelian Laments appeared first on Oral Tradition.
This essay sets out an approach to parallelism in verbal art as a semiotic phenomenon that can operate at multiple orders (or levels) of signification. It examines parallelism in the sounds through which words are communicated, in language communicated by those sounds, in symbols or minimal units of narration communicated through language, and then in […]
The post Parallelism and Orders of Signification (Parallelism Dynamics I) appeared first on Oral Tradition.
This essay sets out an approach to parallelism in verbal art as a semiotic phenomenon that can operate at multiple orders (or levels) of signification. It examines parallelism in the sounds through which words are communicated, in language communicated by those sounds, in symbols or minimal units of narration communicated through language, and then in […]
The post Parallelism and Orders of Signification (Parallelism Dynamics I) appeared first on Oral Tradition.
Verse parallelism is one of the most distinctive features of a Finnic tradition of oral poetry, which is called “kalevalaic poetry” in Finland or “regilaul” in Estonia. This essay presents grammatical and semantic principles and patterns according to which parallel verses are composed, and introduces a statistical analysis of parallelism in the repertoire of one […]
The post “Said a Word, Uttered Thus”: Structures and Functions of Parallelism in Arhippa Perttunen’s Poems appeared first on Oral Tradition.
Verse parallelism is one of the most distinctive features of a Finnic tradition of oral poetry, which is called “kalevalaic poetry” in Finland or “regilaul” in Estonia. This essay presents grammatical and semantic principles and patterns according to which parallel verses are composed, and introduces a statistical analysis of parallelism in the repertoire of one […]
The post “Said a Word, Uttered Thus”: Structures and Functions of Parallelism in Arhippa Perttunen’s Poems appeared first on Oral Tradition.
Zhuang is a Tai-Kadai language spoken in southern China. Parallelism is ubiquitous in Zhuang poetry and song,in ritual texts, and in a range of oral genres. Curiously, this salient fact has generally escaped the notice of scholars writing on the subject of Zhuang poetics. This article looks specifically at the phenomenon of parallelism in one […]
The post Parallelism in the Hanvueng: A Zhuang Verse Epic from West-Central Guangxi in Southern China appeared first on Oral Tradition.
Zhuang is a Tai-Kadai language spoken in southern China. Parallelism is ubiquitous in Zhuang poetry and song,in ritual texts, and in a range of oral genres. Curiously, this salient fact has generally escaped the notice of scholars writing on the subject of Zhuang poetics. This article looks specifically at the phenomenon of parallelism in one […]
The post Parallelism in the Hanvueng: A Zhuang Verse Epic from West-Central Guangxi in Southern China appeared first on Oral Tradition.