Ways of Knowing New Approaches in the Anthropology of Knowledge and Learning [Hardcover]

That there are multiple ways of knowing the world has become a truism. What meaning is left in the sheer familiarity of the phrase? The essays here consider how humans come to know themselves and their worlds. Should anthropologists should seek complexity or simplicity in their analyses of other societies? By going beyond the notion that a way of knowing is a perspective on the world, this book explores paths to understanding, as people travel along them, craft their knowledge and shape experience. The topics examined here range from illness to ignorance, teaching undergraduates in Scotland to learning a Brazilian martial arts dance, Hegels concept of the dialectic to the poetry of a Swahili philosopher. A central concern is how anthropologists can know and write about the silent, theconcealed and theembodied.

List of Figures
Acknowledgements

Introduction:Ways of Knowing'
Mark Harris

PART I: PARADIGMS AND POLEMICS

Chapter 1.Of Dialectical Germans and Dialectical Ethnographers: Notes from an Engagement with Philosophy
Dominic Boyer

Chapter 2.Practising an Anthropology of Philosophy: General Reflections and the Swahili Context
Kai Kresse

Chapter 3.Is Religion a Way of Knowing?
Ot?vio Velho

Chapter 4.Deskilling, Dumbing Down and the Auditing of Knowledge in the Practical Mastery of Artisans and Academics: An Ethnographers Response to a Global Problem
Michael Herzfeld

PART II: TIME AND THE DISRUPTION OF KNOWING

Chapter 5.Knowing Silence and Merging Horizons: The Case of the Great Potos? Cover-Up
Tristan PlattwithPablo Quisbert

Chapter 6.The Construction of Ethnographic Knowledge in a Colonial Context: The Case of Henri Gadenlc,