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"Rites, ceremonies"
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Rational ritual
Why do Internet, financial service, and beer commercials dominate Super Bowl advertising? How do political ceremonies establish authority? Why does repetition characterize anthems and ritual speech? Why were circular forms favored for public festivals during the French Revolution? This book answers these questions using a single concept: common knowledge.
Game theory shows that in order to coordinate its actions, a group of people must form \"common knowledge.\" Each person wants to participate only if others also participate. Members must have knowledge of each other, knowledge of that knowledge, knowledge of the knowledge of that knowledge, and so on. Michael Chwe applies this insight, with striking erudition, to analyze a range of rituals across history and cultures. He shows that public ceremonies are powerful not simply because they transmit meaning from a central source to each audience member but because they let audience members know what other members know. For instance, people watching the Super Bowl know that many others are seeing precisely what they see and that those people know in turn that many others are also watching. This creates common knowledge, and advertisers selling products that depend on consensus are willing to pay large sums to gain access to it. Remarkably, a great variety of rituals and ceremonies, such as formal inaugurations, work in much the same way.
By using a rational-choice argument to explain diverse cultural practices, Chwe argues for a close reciprocal relationship between the perspectives of rationality and culture. He illustrates how game theory can be applied to an unexpectedly broad spectrum of problems, while showing in an admirably clear way what game theory might hold for scholars in the social sciences and humanities who are not yet acquainted with it.
In a new afterword, Chwe delves into new applications of common knowledge, both in the real world and in experiments, and considers how generating common knowledge has become easier in the digital age.
eBook
Living with the dead : how we care for the deceased
Spanning geographies, cultures, and the ages, a moving journey into the physical facts and metaphysical mysteries of how the living care for the dead. Death is universal. It will meet us all. But it's also a practical problem--what do we do with dead bodies? Vibeke Maria and Andreas Viestad live by a cemetery and are daily spectators of its routines, and their fascination with burials has led them to dig deep to examine our relationship with the dead. Taking us on a journey around the world and into the past, the Viestads explore how the deceased are honored and cared for, cremated, and buried. From archaeological sites in Spain, Israel, and Russia to environmentally friendly burials in the United States and Ghana's fantasy coffins, and from cremations without fire to the new industry turning our dearly departed's ashes into diamonds, this empathetic and enthralling book is for anyone who knows their turn is coming, but who'd like a good book for the journey.
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Mortuary Dialogues
Mortuary Dialogues presents fresh perspectives on death and mourning across the Pacific Islands. Through a set of rich ethnographies, the book examines how funerals and death rituals give rise to discourse and debate about sustaining moral personhood and community amid modernity and its enormous transformations. The book's key concept, \"mortuary dialogue,\" describes the different genres of talk and expressive culture through which people struggle to restore individual and collective order in the aftermath of death in the contemporary Pacific.
eBook
Death and burial in ancient Egypt
Death, burial, and the afterlife were as important to the ancient Egyptians as how they lived. This well-illustrated book explores all aspects of death in ancient Egypt, including beliefs of the afterlife, mummification, the protection of the body, tombs and their construction and decoration, funerary goods, and the funeral itself. It also addresses the relationship between the living and the dead, and the magico-religious interaction of these two in ancient Egyptian culture.Salima Ikram's own experience with experimental mummification and funerary archaeology lends the book many completely original and provocative insights. In addition, a full survey of current development in the field makes this a unique book that combines all aspects of death and burial in ancient Egypt into one volume.
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Hunters, predators and prey
Inuit hunting traditions are rich in perceptions, practices and stories relating to animals and human beings. The authors examine key figures such as the raven, an animal that has a central place in Inuit culture as a creator and a trickster, andqupirruit, a category consisting of insects and other small life forms. After these non-social and inedible animals, they discuss the dog, the companion of the hunter, and the fellow hunter, the bear, considered to resemble a human being. A discussion of the renewal of whale hunting accompanies the chapters about animals considered 'prey par excellence': the caribou, the seals and the whale, symbol of the whole. By giving precedence to Inuit categories such as 'inua' (owner) and 'tarniq' (shade) over European concepts such as 'spirit 'and 'soul', the book compares and contrasts human beings and animals to provide a better understanding of human-animal relationships in a hunting society.
eBook
The new death : mortality and death care in the twenty-first century
The New Death brings together scholars who are intrigued by today's rapidly changing death practices and attitudes. New and different ways of treating the body and memorializing the dead are proliferating across global cities. Using ethnographic, historical, and media-based approaches, the contributors to this volume focus on new attitudes and practices around mortality and mourning—from the possibilities of digitally enhanced afterlives to industrialized \"necro-waste, \" the ethics of care, the meaning of secular rituals, and the political economy of death. Together, the chapters coalesce around the argument that there are two major currents running through the new death—reconfigurations of temporality and of intimacy. Pushing back against the folklorization endemic to anthropological studies of death practices and the whiteness of death studies as a field, the chapters strive to override divisions between the Global South and the Anglophone world, focusing instead on syncretization, globalization, and magic within the mundane.
eBook
We Remember, We Love, We Grieve
This is a book about death, comprehensive in its discussion of strategies for coping with loss and grief in rural northern Russia. Elizabeth Warner and Svetlana Adonyeva bring forth the voices of those for whom caring for their dead is deeply personal and firmly rooted in practices of everyday life. Thoroughly researched chapters consider lamenting traditions, examine beliefs surrounding natural symbols, and parse sensitive and profound funereal rituals. \"We remember, we love, we grieve\" is a common epitaph in this part of the world. As contemporary Russia contends with the Soviet Union's legacy of dismantling older ways of life, the phrase ripples beyond individual loss-it encapsulates communities' determination to preserve their customs when faced with oppression. This volume offers insight into a core cultural practice, exploring the dynamism of tradition.
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