Figured Worlds : : Ontological Obstacles in Intercultural Relations / / ed. by John Clammer, Sylvie Poirier, Eric Schwimmer.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Toronto Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• MitwirkendeR: Clammer, John,; Ingold, Tim,; Melkevik, Bjarne,; Parkin, David,; Poirier, Sylvie,; Samson, Colin,; Schwimmer, Eric,; Tanner, Adrian,; Vincent, Sylvie,
• HerausgeberIn: Clammer, John,; Poirier, Sylvie,; Schwimmer, Eric,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2016]; ©2004
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Series: Anthropological Horizons
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (290 p.)

"World Visions can conceive of everything except alternative world visions." If this pronouncement by Umberto Eco is right, how can any ethnic group conceive of living with another group on the same territory ? in Canada or elsewhere ? if their world visions are incompatible? Can we sidestep incompatible world visions or should we try to understand them?Figured Worlds explores the possibilities of equilibrium between commitments to mutual understanding and the framing of strategies of negotiation. This collection begins its rich analytical investigation by describing how people ? Australian Aborigines, New Zealand Maori, Japanese, and Africans ? first learn the figured worlds of their own culture, made up of sensations, affirmations and will, prophecy, revelation, myth, dream, and metamorphoses. It then sets out how diverse figured worlds within a given social system are related, and concludes by offering insightful mappings of the dynamics of these relations, perceived in both their existential-ontological aspects, as well as their material-practical means. Comprising scholarship that is half Canadian and half British, this work offers important foundational perspectives into the thought worlds of cultures found within other cultures.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Preface: The Nature of Nature -- Introduction: The Relevance of Ontologies in Anthropology - Reflections on a New Anthropological Field -- PART I. The Reconstruction of Figured Worlds -- Chapter One. A Circumpolar Night's Dream -- Chapter Two. Ontology, Ancestral Order, and Agencies among the Kukatja of the Australian Western Desert -- Chapter Three. The Politics of Animism -- PART II. Beyond Positional Identities -- Chapter Four. In the Nature of the Human Landscape: Provenances in the Making of Zanzibar! Politics -- Chapter Five. Apparent Compatibility, Real Incompatibility: Native and Western Versions of History - The Innu Example -- PART III. Non-negotiated Ontologies: Authoring Selves -- Chapter Six. 'We Live This Experience': Ontological Insecurity and the Colonial Domination of the Innu People of Northern Labrador -- Chapter Seven. The Cosmology of Nature, Cultural Divergence, and the Metaphysics of Community Healing -- PART IV. Negotiating Ontologies, Making Worlds -- Chapter Eight. The Customary Law of Indigenous Peoples and Modern Law: Rivalry or Reconciliation? -- Chapter Nine. Making a World: The Mâori of Aotearoa/New Zealand -- Epilogue -- Contributors -- Index -- Backmatter