The Culture of Invention in the Americas takes the theoretical contribution of one of anthropology's most radical thinkers, Roy Wagner, as a basis for conceptual improvisation. It uses Wagner's most synthetic and complex insights - developed in Melanesia and captured in the title of his most famous book, The Invention of Culture - as a springboard for an exploration of other anthropological and societal imaginaries. What do the inherent reflexivity, recursiveness and limits of all and any peoples' anthropologies render for us to write and think about, and live within? Who is doing anthropology about whom? Which are the best ways to convey our partial grasp of these conundrums: theory, poetry, jokes? No claim is made to resolve what should not be seen as a problem. Instead, inspired by Roy Wagner's study and use of metaphor, this book explores analogical variations of these riddles. The chapters bring together ethnographic regions rarely investigated together: indigenous peoples of Mexico and Lowland South America; and Afro-American peoples of Brazil and Cuba. The `partial connections' highlighted by the authors' analytic conjunctions - Ifa divination practices and Yanomami shamanism, Ki~sedje (Amazonia) and Huichol (Mexico) anthropology of Whites, and Meso-American and Afro-American practices of sacrifice - show the inspirational potential of such rapprochements. As the first book to acknowledge the full range of Wagner's anthropological contributions, and an initial joint exploration of Native American and Afro-American ethnographies, this experimental work honours Wagner's vision of a multiplicity of peoples' anthropologies through and of each other. It concludes with a remarkable dialogue created by Roy Wagner's responses to each author's work. We don't have to imagine what Wagner might have made of this inspired collection: his concluding commentary on each of these extraordinary chapters is in effect a collection in itself. The sparks they together ignite make this an editorial and publishing triumph. Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge If Roy Wagner famously `invented' culture, the contributors to this volume `counter-invent' Wagner, at once engaging comprehensively and didactically with his thought, and exteriorizing it onto novel conceptual and geographical territories. A book from `tomorrow's yesterday' (Wagner), The Culture of Invention in the Americas anticipates for us the anthropology to come - playful, experimental, and deeply ethnographic. Alberto Corsin Jimenez, Spanish National Research Council

This important new work by Roy Wagner is about the autonomy of symbols and their role in creating culture. Its argument, anticipated in the author's previous book, "The Invention of Culture," is at once symbolic, philosophical, and evolutionary: meaning is a form of perception to which human beings are physically and mentally adapted. Using examples from his many years of research among the Daribi people of New Guinea as well as from Western culture, Wagner approaches the question of the creation of meaning by examining the nonreferential qualities of symbols--such as their aesthetic and formal properties--that enable symbols to stand for themselves.

This book is the first to collect the most influential essays and lectures of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Published in a wide variety of venues, and often difficult to find, the pieces are brought together here for the first time in a one major volume, which includes his momentous 1998 Cambridge University Lectures, "Cosmological Perspectivism in Amazonia and Elsewhere." Rounded out with new English translations of a number of previously unpublished works, the resulting book is a wide-ranging portrait of one of the towering figures of contemporary thought - philosopher, anthropologist, ethnographer, ethnologist, and more. With a new afterword by Roy Wagner elucidating Viveiros de Castro's work, influence, and legacy, The Relative Native will be required reading, further cementing Viveiros de Castro's position at the center of contemporary anthropological inquiry.

In line with the emerging field of philosophy of mathematical practice, this book pushes the philosophy of mathematics away from questions about the reality and truth of mathematical entities and statements and toward a focus on what mathematicians actually do--and how that evolves and changes over time. How do new mathematical entities come to be? What internal, natural, cognitive, and social constraints shape mathematical cultures? How do mathematical signs form and reform their meanings? How can we model the cognitive processes at play in mathematical evolution? And how does mathematics tie together ideas, reality, and applications? Roi Wagner uniquely combines philosophical, historical, and cognitive studies to paint a fully rounded image of mathematics not as an absolute ideal but as a human endeavor that takes shape in specific social and institutional contexts. The book builds on ancient, medieval, and modern case studies to confront philosophical reconstructions and cutting-edge cognitive theories. It focuses on the contingent semiotic and interpretive dimensions of mathematical practice, rather than on mathematics' claim to universal or fundamental truths, in order to explore not only what mathematics is, but also what it could be. Along the way, Wagner challenges conventional views that mathematical signs represent fixed, ideal entities; that mathematical cognition is a rigid transfer of inferences between formal domains; and that mathematics' exceptional consensus is due to the subject's underlying reality. The result is a revisionist account of mathematical philosophy that will interest mathematicians, philosophers, and historians of science alike.

Professor Wagner's study of Barok social and ritual life pays special attention to the men's-house feasting cycle. The kaba. or culminating death feast" of that cycle, is invoked by the word "asiwinarong," which symbolizes the leadership succession on which Barok claims to ethical integrity and precedence rest Originally published in 1986. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Professor Wagner's study of Barok social and ritual life pays special attention to the men's-house feasting cycle. The kaba. or culminating death feast" of that cycle, is invoked by the word "asiwinarong," which symbolizes the leadership succession on which Barok claims to ethical integrity and precedence rest

Originally published in 1986.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In anthropology, a field that is known for its critical edge and intellectual agility, few books manage to maintain both historical value and contemporary relevance. Roy Wagner's The Invention of Culture, originally published in 1981, is one. Wagner breaks new ground by arguing that culture arises from the dialectic between the individual and the social world. Rooting his analysis in the relationship between invention and convention, innovation and control, meaning and context, he builds a theory that insists on the importance of creativity, placing people-as-inventors at the heart of the process that creates culture. In an elegant twist, he shows that those very processes ultimately produce the discipline of anthropology itself. This new edition, with a foreword by Tim Ingold, puts the book in context of current debates and makes an unimpeachable case for its status as a classic in the field.

In this long-awaited sequel to The Invention of Culture, Roy Wagner tackles the logic and motives that underlie cultural invention. Could there be a single, logical factor that makes the invention of the distinction between self and other possible, much as specific human genes allow for language? Wagner explores what he calls “the reciprocity of perspectives� through a journey between Euro-American bodies of knowledge and his in-depth knowledge of Melanesian modes of thought. This logic grounds variants of the subject/object transformation, as Wagner works through examples such as the figure-ground reversal in Gestalt psychology, Lacan’s theory of the mirror-stage formation of the Ego, and even the self-recursive structure of the aphorism and the joke. Juxtaposing Wittgenstein’s and Leibniz’s philosophy with Melanesian social logic, Wagner explores the cosmological dimensions of the ways in which different societies develop models of self and the subject/object distinction. The result is a philosophical tour de force by one of anthropology’s greatest mavericks.

In contrast to western notions of the soul as the essence or most native part of a human being, the Tzeltal-speaking Indians of Chiapas, Mexico, regard the soul first and foremost as an Other. Made up of beings that personify the antithesis of their native selves-animals such as hummingbirds or jaguars, atmospheric phenomena like lightning bolts or rainbows, or spirits of European appearance such as Catholic priests or evangelical musicians-Tzeltal souls represent the maximum expression of that which is alien. And because their souls enfold that which is outside and Other, the Tzeltal contain within themselves the history of their relationship with Europeans from the beginning of the Spanish conquest to the present time. Thus, to understand the Indian self opens a window into the Tzeltal conception of culture and community, their notions of identity and alterity, and their interpretation of interethnic relations and types of historical memory. In this pathfinding ethnography, which was originally published in Spanish in 1996 as Ch'ulel: una etnografia de las almas tzeltales and is now extensively rewritten and amplified in English, Pedro Pitarch offers a new understanding of indigenous concepts of the soul, personhood, and historical memory in highland Chiapas. Exploring numerous aspects of indigenous culture and history-medicine and shamanism, geography and cosmology, and politics and kinship among them-he engages in a radical rethinking of classic issues in Mesoamerican anthropology, such as ethnicity and alterity, community and tradition, and change and permanence.

Coyote Anthropology shatters anthropology’s vaunted theories of practice and offers a radical and comprehensive alternative for the new century. Building on his seminal contributions to symbolic analysis, Roy Wagner repositions anthropology at the heart of the creation of meaning—in terms of what anthropology perceives, how it goes about representing its subjects, and how it understands and legitimizes itself. Of particular concern is that meaning is comprehended and created through a complex and continually unfolding process predicated on what is not there—the unspoken, the unheard, the unknown—as much as on what is there. Such powerful absences, described by Wagner as “anti-twins,� are crucial for the invention of cultures and any discipline that proposes to study them. As revealed through conversations between Wagner and Coyote, Wagner's anti-twin, a coyote anthropology should be as much concerned with absence as with presence if it is to depict accurately the dynamic and creative worlds of others. Furthermore, Wagner suggests that anthropologists not only be aware of what informs and conditions their discipline but also understand the range of necessary exclusions that permit anthropology to do what it does. Sly and enticing, probing and startling, Coyote Anthropology beckons anthropologists to draw closer to the center of all things, known and unknown.

In 2016, Edith Turner passed away. She left behind an intellectual legacy that, together with her husband, Victor Turner, transformed modern anthropology. This edited collection focuses on Victor and Edith Turner's significant theoretical contributions, including their work on communitas, liminality, pilgrimage, friendship, fieldwork, self-reflection, affective culture, religion, spirits, and faith. This collection includes retrospectives on the personal lives of Edith and Victor, as provided by their son; a close look at Edith's work on last rites, for which she studied and contemplated her own demise; an examination of Edith's faith and belief system in light of her personal research interests; and contemporary applications of the Turners's theories in relation to modern social processes. Contributors touch on a variety of topics, including current political upheavals and inversions, the values of friendship and bonding, the importance of music as affective culture, jazz as a pilgrimage, and deeper theoretical issues surrounding the concept of liminality. This work illustrates the Turners' enduring theoretical and affective contributions and emphasizes the great importance they placed on studying and understanding what it means to be human. We continue to learn from their example.

"Roy Wagner is a one-of-a-kind anthropologist whose books provide intense intellectual stimulation. His way of connecting the world of New Guinea to the world of anthropology is unique and, well, mind-blowing. . . . He writes books that you actually want to and will read more than once."--Steven Feld, author of "Sound and Sentiment"

"Wagner asks, daringly, what it would be like to imagine one of the most significant of human activities, the activity of description or representation, as a self-scaling phenomenon. . . . One begins to glimpse a genuine 'alternative anthropology.'"--Marilyn Strathern, author of "The Gender of the Gift"