Anthropologists have long sought to engage and describe foreign or
"alien" societies, yet few have considered the fluid communities
centered around a shared belief in alien beings and UFO sightings
and their effect on popular and expressive culture. Opening up a
new frontier for anthropological study, the contributors to E.T.
Culture take these communities seriously. They demonstrate that an
E.T. orientation toward various forms of visitation-including alien
beings, alien technologies, and uncanny visions-engages primary
concepts underpinning anthropological research: host and visitor,
home and away, subjectivity and objectivity. Taking the point of
view of those who commit to sci-fi as sci-fact, contributors to
this volume show how discussions and representations of
otherworldly beings express concerns about racial and ethnic
differences, the anxieties and fascination associated with modern
technologies, and alienation from the inner workings of
government.Drawing on social science, science studies, linguistics,
popular and expressive culture, and social and intellectual
history, the writers of E.T. Culture unsettle the boundaries of
science, magic, and religion as well as those of technological and
human agency. They consider the ways that sufferers of "unmarked"
diseases such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome come to feel alien to
both the "healthy" world and the medical community incapable of
treating them; the development of alien languages like Klingon;
attempts to formulate a communications technology-such as that
created for the spaceship Voyager-that will reach alien beings; the
pilgrimage spirit of UFO seekers; the out-of-time experiences of
Nobel scientists; the embrace of the alien within Japanese
animation and fan culture; and the physical spirituality of the
Raelian religious network. Contributors. Debbora Battaglia, Richard
Doyle, Joseph Dumit, Mizuko Ito, Susan Lepselter, Christopher Roth,
David Samuels
General
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