What drives people to take to the streets in protest? What is their connection to other activists and how does that change over time? How do seemingly spontaneous activist movements emerge, endure, and evolve, especially when they lack a leader and concrete agenda? How does one analyze a changing political movement immersed in contingency? Impulse to Act addresses these questions incisively, examining a wide range of activist movements from the December 2008 protests in Greece to the recent chto delat in Russia. Contributors in the first section of this volume highlight the affective dimensions of political movements, charting the various ways in which participants coalesce around and belong to collectives of resistance. The potent agency of movements is highlighted in the second section, where scholars show how the emerging actions and critiques of protesters help disrupt authoritative political structures. Responding to the demands of the field today, the novel approaches to protest movements in Impulse to Act offer new ways to reengage with the traditional cornerstones of political anthropology.

Clifford Geertz, in his 1973 Interpretation of Cultures, brought about an epistemological revolution unprecedented since Levi-Strauss' structuralism. In place of Levi-Strauss' deep structures, Geertz placed deep meanings and thick descriptions, in a synthesis of the American tradition of cultural anthropology and new qualitative approaches in the humanities. He powerfully synthesized and gave the heart of anthropology's tradition a new and enriched conceptual language that came to be known as interpretive anthropology and that placed meaning over form in the center of social analysis. This book maps the circuits of cross fertilizations among disciplines in the humanities and social sciences that have developed from Geertz's interpretive turn. Panourgia and Marcus bring together anthropologists working in various parts of the world (Greece, Bali, Taiwan, the United States) with classicists, historians, and scholars in cultural studies. The volume takes into account global realities such as 9/11 and the opening of the Cypriot Green Line and explores the different ways in which Geertz's anthropology has shaped the pedagogy of their disciplines and enabled discussions among them. Focusing on place and time, locations and temporalities, the essays in this volume interrogate the fixity of interpretation and open new spaces of inquiry. The volume addresses a wide audience from the humanities and the social sciences - anyone interested in the development of a new humanism that will relocate the human as a subject of social action.The contributors include: Marc Abeles, Athena Athanasiou, James A. Boon, Clifford Geertz, Maria Kakavoulia, Pavlos Kavouras, Antonis Liakos, George E. Marcus, Richard P. Martin, Yael Navaro-Yashin, Neni Panourgia, Eleni Papagaroufali, Louisa Schein, and, Kath Weston.

In a striking departure from conventional treatments of the Greek Civil War and its effects on the people of Greece, Dangerous Citizens begins by placing it within a larger historical context beginning in 1929 when the Greek state set up numerous exile and rehabilitation camps on the Greek archipelago, and extending up until 2004 with the famous trial of the Revolutionary Organization 17 November. Using ethnographic interviews, archival material, unpublished personal narratives, and memoirs of political prisoners and dissidents, Dangerous Citizens examines the various tortured microhistories that have created the modern Greek citizen as a fraught political subject. Returning to ethnographic terrain that is intimately familiar to PanourgiA, she analyzes the difficulties of conducting ethnographic research on a subject matter that not only spans several decades but which has also now become historical. Dangerous Citizens also analyzes how a liberal state (Greece) engaged in a process of excision of an increasingly large segment of its population as dangerous to the nation leaving a fundamental scar that is still visible. Through detailed ethnographic work, PanourgiA shows that the past is not a space of comfort, and what people remember as the truth is deeply instructive of how people manage and negotiate the past without being mendacious.Between 1929 and 1974 tens of thousands of dissidents were imprisoned and tortured in concentration and rehabilitation camps. PanourgiA's anthropological focus in this book is on two particular camps that have been ignored in the scholarly literature: Al Dabaa (in Egypt) and YAros (in Greece). In Al Dabaa, Greek men from Athens were exiled betweenJanuary and June 1945. These men ranged in age from 16 to 60 and had either participated in the Resistance against the Germans during the Second World War as members of the leftist army ELAS, or were members of Athens-based ELAS Youth. They were arrested and exiled by the British Occupation Forces after the Germans retreated (in October 1944). YAros is the second camp PanourgiA focuses on, used as a place of imprisonment, first between 1947-1963, and again during the dictatorship of 1967-1974. By using a widened historical frame PanourgiA demonstrates that the effects of the Greek Civil War are palpable in the everyday lives of Greek citizens even today.

In a striking departure from conventional treatments of the Greek Civil War and its effects on the people of Greece, Dangerous Citizens begins by placing it within a larger historical context beginning in 1929 when the Greek state set up numerous exile and rehabilitation camps on the Greek archipelago, and extending up until 2004 with the famous trial of the Revolutionary Organization 17 November. Using ethnographic interviews, archival material, unpublished personal narratives, and memoirs of political prisoners and dissidents, Dangerous Citizens examines the various tortured microhistories that have created the modern Greek citizen as a fraught political subject. Returning to ethnographic terrain that is intimately familiar to PanourgiA, she analyzes the difficulties of conducting ethnographic research on a subject matter that not only spans several decades but which has also now become historical. Dangerous Citizens also analyzes how a liberal state (Greece) engaged in a process of excision of an increasingly large segment of its population as dangerous to the nation leaving a fundamental scar that is still visible. Through detailed ethnographic work, PanourgiA shows that the past is not a space of comfort, and what people remember as the truth is deeply instructive of how people manage and negotiate the past without being mendacious.Between 1929 and 1974 tens of thousands of dissidents were imprisoned and tortured in concentration and rehabilitation camps. PanourgiA's anthropological focus in this book is on two particular camps that have been ignored in the scholarly literature: Al Dabaa (in Egypt) and YAros (in Greece). In Al Dabaa, Greek men from Athens were exiled betweenJanuary and June 1945. These men ranged in age from 16 to 60 and had either participated in the Resistance against the Germans during the Second World War as members of the leftist army ELAS, or were members of Athens-based ELAS Youth. They were arrested and exiled by the British Occupation Forces after the Germans retreated (in October 1944). YAros is the second camp PanourgiA focuses on, used as a place of imprisonment, first between 1947-1963, and again during the dictatorship of 1967-1974. By using a widened historical frame PanourgiA demonstrates that the effects of the Greek Civil War are palpable in the everyday lives of Greek citizens even today.

Clifford Geertz, in his 1973 Interpretation of Cultures, brought about an epistemological revolution unprecedented since Levi-Strauss' structuralism. In place of Levi-Strauss' deep structures, Geertz placed deep meanings and thick descriptions, in a synthesis of the American tradition of cultural anthropology and new qualitative approaches in the humanities. He powerfully synthesized and gave the heart of anthropology's tradition a new and enriched conceptual language that came to be known as interpretive anthropology and that placed meaning over form in the center of social analysis. This book maps the circuits of cross fertilizations among disciplines in the humanities and social sciences that have developed from Geertz's interpretive turn. Panourgia and Marcus bring together anthropologists working in various parts of the world (Greece, Bali, Taiwan, the United States) with classicists, historians, and scholars in cultural studies. The volume takes into account global realities such as 9/11 and the opening of the Cypriot Green Line and explores the different ways in which Geertz's anthropology has shaped the pedagogy of their disciplines and enabled discussions among them. Focusing on place and time, locations and temporalities, the essays in this volume interrogate the fixity of interpretation and open new spaces of inquiry. The volume addresses a wide audience from the humanities and the social sciences - anyone interested in the development of a new humanism that will relocate the human as a subject of social action.The contributors include: Marc Abeles, Athena Athanasiou, James A. Boon, Clifford Geertz, Maria Kakavoulia, Pavlos Kavouras, Antonis Liakos, George E. Marcus, Richard P. Martin, Yael Navaro-Yashin, Neni Panourgia, Eleni Papagaroufali, Louisa Schein, and, Kath Weston.

"Primitive Man as Philosopher" is influential anthropologist and ethnologist Paul Radin's enduringly relevant survey of an array of aboriginal cultures and belief systems, including those of the Winnebago, Oglala Sioux, Maori, Banda, the Buin of Melanesia, Tahitian, Hawaiian, Zuni, and Ewe. Radin examines the conditioning of thought and religion practiced among the members of each society and the freedom of individuals to deviate from the group and to affect change. Written in a straightforward, almost conversational style, Radin's discourse is rooted in firsthand accounts. He allows his subjects to speak for themselves by quoting extensively from interviews (many of which he conducted in the course of his own fieldwork), and includes a veritable anthology of poems and songs from the varied traditions. Radin, known in his field for his honesty and integrity, offers brilliant interpretations of myth and symbolism in his exploration of their deeper meanings in each culture. Readers both in and out of the field will appreciate the rich and varied insights of this classic of anthropology. Celebrated anthropologist Neni Panourgiá provides a new introduction to this landmark and pioneering work.

What drives people to take to the streets in protest? What is their connection to other activists and how does that change over time? How do seemingly spontaneous activist movements emerge, endure, and evolve, especially when they lack a leader and concrete agenda? How does one analyze a changing political movement immersed in contingency? Impulse to Act addresses these questions incisively, examining a wide range of activist movements from the December 2008 protests in Greece to the recent chto delat in Russia. Contributors in the first section of this volume highlight the affective dimensions of political movements, charting the various ways in which participants coalesce around and belong to collectives of resistance. The potent agency of movements is highlighted in the second section, where scholars show how the emerging actions and critiques of protesters help disrupt authoritative political structures. Responding to the demands of the field today, the novel approaches to protest movements in Impulse to Act offer new ways to reengage with the traditional cornerstones of political anthropology.