Toward an anthropology of the will
By: edited by Keith M. Murphy and C. Jason Throop.
Contributors: Murphy, Keith M.; Throop, C. Jason.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 227
ISBN-13: 9780804768870
Subjects: Will -- Anthropological aspects; Act (Philosophy); Cognition and culture; Personality and culture; Ethnopsychology
Description: This study systematically explores volition from an ethnographically informed anthropological point of view. While philosophers have for centuries puzzled over the degree to which individuals are 'free' to choose how to act in the world, anthropologists have either assumed that the will is a stable, constant fact of the human condition or simply ignored it. Although they are usually quite comfortable discussing the relationship between culture and cognition or culture and emotion, anthropologists have not yet focused on how culture and volition are interconnected. The contributors to this book draw upon their unique insights and research experience to address fundamental questions.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Willing contours : locating volition in anthropological theory / Keith M. Murphy and C. Jason Throop; title: In the midst of action / C. Jason Throop; title: Moral willing as narrative re-envisioning / Cheryl Mattingly; title: By the will of others or by one's own action? / Linda C. Garro; title: Willful souls : dreaming and the dialectics of self-experience among the Tzotzil Maya of highland Chiapas, Mexico / Kevin P. Groark; title: Transforming will, transforming culture / Jeanneatte Mageo; title: How can will be expressed and what role does the imagination play? / Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern; title: Emil Kraepelin on pathologies of the will / Byron J. Good; title: Afterword : willing on context / Douglas W. Hollan.