Culture and Rhetoric

While some scholars have said that there is no such thing as culture and have urged to abandon the concept altogether, the contributors to this volume overcome this impasse by understanding cultures and their representations for what they ultimately are – rhetorical constructs. These senior, international scholars explore the complex relationships between culture and rhetoric arguing that just as rhetoric is founded in culture, culture is founded in rhetoric. This intersection constitutes the central theme of the first part of the book, while the second is dedicated to the study of figuration as a common ground of rhetoric and anthropology. The book offers a compelling range of theoretical reflections, historical vistas, and empirical investigations, which aim to show how people talk themselves and others into particular modalities of thought and action, and how rhetoric and culture, in this way, are co-emergent. It thus turns a new page in the history of academic discourse by bringing two disciplines – anthropology and rhetoric – together in a way that has never been done before.

Ivo Strecker is Professor Emeritus of Cultural Anthropology at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and co-founder of the International Rhetoric Culture Project in 1998. His empirical work has dealt with Hamar ethnography, and his theoretical work has focused on symbolism, ritual and rhetoric. He is (together with Jean Lydall) author of The Hamar of Southern Ethiopia (1979); The Social Practice of Symbolization (1988); and Ethnographic Chiasmus. Essays on Culture, Conflict and Rhetoric (2010).

Stephen Tyler (1932-2020) was Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Anthropology at Rice University, Houston, Texas. He conducted fieldwork with the Koya tribe in the south of India and co-founded the International Rhetoric Culture Project in 1998. His was editor of Cognitive Anthropology (1969), and author of India: An Anthropological Perspective (1973); The Said and the Unsaid (1978); and The Unspeakable (1987).