Celebrating Transgression: Method & Politics in Anthropological Studies of Culture

Transgression is the stock in trade of a certain kind of anthropological sensibility that transforms fieldwork from strict social science to something more engaging. It builds on Koepping’s idea that participation transforms perception and investigates how transgressive practices have triggered the re-theorization of conventional forms of thought and life. It focuses on social practices in various cultural fields including the method and politics of anthropology in order to show how transgressive experiences become relevant for the organisation and understanding of social relations. This book brings key authors in anthropology together to debate and transgress anthropological expectations. Through transgression as method, as discussed here, our understanding of the world is transformed, and anthropology as a discipline becomes dangerous and relevant again.

Ursula Rao is Lecturer in Anthropology in the University of Halle, and is now involved in writing about the problem of fieldwork in dispersed and postmodern settings. She has also worked extensively in the field of Religious Anthropology and written Negotiating the Divine: Temple Religion and Temple Politics in Contemporary Urban India (2003, Manohar), Kommunalismus in Indien. Eine Darstellung der wissenschaftlichen Diskussion über Hindu-Muslim-Konflikte (2003) and co-editor of Im Rausch des Rituals: Gestaltung und Transformation der Wirklichkeit in körperlicher Performanz (2000), She has further edited a volume on the relevance of performance for cultural change: Kulturelle VerWandlungen. Die Gestaltung sozialer Welten in der Performanz (2005)

John Hutnyk is Reader in Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has published three single-authored books and four edited collections on topics such as music and politics, representation and diaspora. His book The Rumour of Calcutta: Tourism, Charity and The Poverty of Representation (1996) was widely reviewed, as was his more recent efforts Critique of Exotica: Music, Politics and the Culture Industry (2000) and Bad Marxism: Cultural Studies and Capitalism (2004).