The Social Practice of Symbolisation

All societies are shaped by arts, media, and other persuasive practices that can awe, captivate, enchant or otherwise seem to cast a spell on the audience. Likewise, scholarship itself often is driven by a sense of wonder and a willingness to be open to what lies beyond the obvious. This book broadens and deepens this perspective. Inspired by Stephen Tyler's view of ethnography as an art of evocation, international scholars from the fields of aesthetics, anthropology, and rhetoric explore the spellbinding power of elusive meanings as people experience them in daily life and while gazing at works of art, watching films or studying other cultures. The book is divided into three parts covering the evocative power of visual art, the immersion in ritual and performance, and the reading, writing, and interpretation of texts. Taken as a whole, the contributions to the book demonstrate how astonishment and evocation deserve an important place in the conceptual repertoire of the human sciences.

"This collection of essays draws in some of the influential thinkers in anthropological rhetoric from both Europe and America. What is new here is the focus on the chiasm of rhetoric and culture, the mutual constitution of persuasive means and the larger cultures that provide the values about which we are to be persuaded." Bernard Bate, Yale University

"Among them, the contributors put the study of culture on a new, well-worked-out foundation in rhetoric. Their efforts reward close attention." Stephan Feuchtwang, London School of Economics

"Although I retain from classical British social anthropology a distaste for the word 'culture' I think that" Culture and Rhetoric "is a very timely book because the future of the human economy is for people to trade at distance, not just things, but what they do for each other. Maybe 'culture' expresses best the infinite variety of what that entails." Keith Hart, Goldsmiths College, London

"Classical rhetoric viewed its calling as one both analytical and critical within a polity that aspired to be a republic. My reading of" Culture and Rhetoric "suggests that contemporary rhetoricians and anthropologists will now have to substitute the ancient republic with the oikumene, the whole habitation of sentient beings on this globe." Michael Carrithers, Durham University

While some scholars have said that there is no such thing as culture and have urged to abandon the concept altogether, the contributors to this volume overcome this impasse by understanding cultures and their representations for what they ultimately are - rhetorical constructs. These senior, international scholars explore the complex relationships between culture and rhetoric arguing that just as rhetoric is founded in culture, culture is founded in rhetoric. This intersection constitutes the central theme of the first part of the book, while the second is dedicated to the study of figuration as a common ground of rhetoric and anthropology. The book offers a compelling range of theoretical reflections, historical vistas, and empirical investigations, which aim to show how people talk themselves and others into particular modalities of thought and action, and how rhetoric and culture, in this way, are co-emergent. It thus turns a new page in the history of academic discourse by bringing two disciplines - anthropology and rhetoric - together in a way that has never been done before.

Ivo Strecker is Professor Emeritus of Cultural Anthropology at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and co-founder of the International Rhetoric Culture Project in 1998.

Stephen Tyler is Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Anthropology (Emeritus) at Rice University, Houston, Texas and co-founder of the International Rhetoric Culture Project in 1998.

While some scholars have said that there is no such thing as culture and have urged to abandon the concept altogether, the contributors to this volume overcome this impasse by understanding cultures and their representations for what they ultimately are - rhetorical constructs. These senior, international scholars explore the complex relationships between culture and rhetoric arguing that just as rhetoric is founded in culture, culture is founded in rhetoric. This intersection constitutes the central theme of the first part of the book, while the second is dedicated to the study of figuration as a common ground of rhetoric and anthropology. The book offers a compelling range of theoretical reflections, historical vistas, and empirical investigations, which aim to show how people talk themselves and others into particular modalities of thought and action, and how rhetoric and culture, in this way, are co-emergent. It thus turns a new page in the history of academic discourse by bringing two disciplines - anthropology and rhetoric - together in a way that has never been done before.

The Social Practice of Symbolisation

The essays assembled in this volume are shaped by conditions - both enabling and constraining - that can perhaps best be described as an "ethnographic chiasmus." This expression refers to the surprise and reversal of position that are characteristic of fieldwork, and it attends to the fact that trans-cultural understanding comes about as a meeting, touching, or "crossing." Chiasmus also pertains to the relationship between culture and rhetoric in general. Culture structures rhetoric, rhetoric structures culture. Both are co-emergent. In order to elucidate this process, ethnography has to focus on the manifold modes of rhetoric through which culture-specific patterns of thought and action are created.