The Rhetorical Emergence of Culture: 4 (Studies in Rhetoric and Culture, 4)

ISBN 10: 085745112X ISBN 13: 9780857451125

Publisher: Berghahn Books, 2011

Synopsis

"[A]n engaging, thought-provoking, and generative volume. Simultaneously wide-ranging and coherent, these essays explore the complex roles that rhetorical engagements - artful, resonant, and often transcending the solely verbal - play in shaping social life and the always emergent cultures at the heart of anthropological inquiry." · Don Brenneis, University of California, Santa Cruz

"This volume is a welcome continuation of the Rhetoric Culture Project's efforts to bring anthropology and rhetorical studies together. It does an excellent job illustrating the way that 'culture is founded in rhetoric' just as 'rhetoric is founded in culture'... The specific anthropological perspectives offered by the collection [is] extremely useful and thought provoking, especially valued for the theoretical models and case studies that illustrate the shaping of culture by particular rhetorical activities." · Steven Mailloux, University of California, Irvine

"Just as rhetoric is founded in culture, culture is founded in rhetoric" - the first half of this central statement from the International Rhetoric Culture Project is abundantly evidenced. It is the latter half that this volume explores: how does culture emerge out of rhetorical action, out of seemingly dispersed individual actions and interactions? The contributors do not rely on rhetorical "text" alone but engage the situational, bodily, and often antagonistic character of cultural and communicative practices. The social situation itself is argued to be the fundamental site of cultural creation, as will-driven social processes are shaped by cognitive dispositions and shape them in turn. Drawing on expertise in a variety of disciplines and regions, the contributors critically engage dialogical approaches in their emphasis on how a view from rhetoric changes our perception of people's intersubjective and conjoint creation of culture.

About this title

About the Authors

Christian Meyer is Assistant Professor of Qualitative Research Methods and Social Anthropology at the Faculty for Sociology of the University of Bielefeld. A founding member of the International Rhetoric Culture Project, he has done research and published on comparative rhetoric, ethnographic methodology, Afro-Brazilian ritual practice, and everyday interaction in Senegal.

Felix Girke is Post-Doctoral Researcher and Research Coordinator of the Center for Interdisciplinary Area Studies (ZIRS) at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. He has published on cultural contact, exchange relations, predicaments of decision making, and war and peace in southwestern Ethiopia.

From the Back Cover

"Just as rhetoric is founded in culture, culture is founded in rhetoric" - the first half of this central statement from the International Rhetoric Culture Project is abundantly evidenced. It is the latter half that this volume explores: how does culture emerge out of rhetorical action, out of seemingly dispersed individual actions and interactions? The contributors do not rely on rhetorical "text" alone but engage the situational, bodily, and often antagonistic character of cultural and communicative practices. The social situation itself is argued to be the fundamental site of cultural creation, as will-driven social processes are shaped by cognitive dispositions and shape them in turn. Drawing on expertise in a variety of disciplines and regions, the contributors critically engage dialogical approaches in their emphasis on how a view from rhetoric changes our perception of people's intersubjective and conjoint creation of culture.

"[A]n engaging, thought-provoking, and generative volume. Simultaneously wide-ranging and coherent, these essays explore the complex roles that rhetorical engagements - artful, resonant, and often transcending the solely verbal - play in shaping social life and the always emergent cultures at the heart of anthropological inquiry." - Don Brenneis, University of California, Santa Cruz

"This volume is a welcome continuation of the Rhetoric Culture Project's efforts to bring anthropology and rhetorical studies together. It does an excellent job illustrating the way that 'culture is founded in rhetoric' just as 'rhetoric is founded in culture'... The specific anthropological perspectives offered by the collection [is] extremely useful and thought provoking, especially valued for the theoretical models and case studies that illustrate the shaping of culture by particular rhetorical activities." - Steven Mailloux, University of California, Irvine

Edition details

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 085745112X
• ISBN 13: 9780857451125
• Binding: Library Binding
• Number of pages: 342
• Editor: Meyer Christian, Girke Felix