I Am Dynamite: An Alternative Anthropology of Power - Hardcover

Rapport, Nigel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415258626 ISBN 13: 9780415258623

Publisher: Routledge, 2003

Synopsis

Power is conventionally regarded as being held by social institutions. We are taught to believe that it is these social structures that determine the environment and circumstances of individual lives. In I Am Dynamite, the anthropologist Nigel Rappaport argues for a different view. Focusing on the lives and works of the writer and Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi, refugee and engineer Ben Glaser, Israeli ceramicist and immigrant Rachel Siblerstein, artist Stanley Spencer, and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, he shows how we can have the capacity and inclination to formulate 'life projects'. It is in the pursuit of these life projects, that is, making our life our work, that we can avoid the structures of ideology and institution.

About this title

About the Author:

Nigel Rapport holds the Chair in Anthropological and Philosophical Studies in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. His books include Key Concepts in Social and Cultural Anthropology (Routledge, 2000), British Subjects (2002) and Transcendent Individual (Routledge, 1997). He has received awards from the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Review:

'Unlike the vast majority of books that anthropologists publish, this work compelled me to ponder the big questions and think again and again about how I perceive the world. It is an important work that will, I think, be read for many years to come.' - Professor of Anthropology at West Chester University; 'Acutely observed and written with warmth and empathy...I find it a bold and courageous book. I have no doubt it will provoke fruitful and lively debate.' - Jeanette Edwards, Manchester University

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0415258626
• ISBN 13: 9780415258623
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 300