I am Dynamite: An Alternative Anthropology of Power

Nigel Rapport

ISBN 10: 0415258634 / ISBN 13: 9780415258630

Published by Routledge, 2003

About this Item

Asking why the real effort of constructing and living within an identity is so often overlooked, this volume examines the subjective experience of existing in the world, with the power to define and transform oneself. Num Pages: 304 pages, 4 b&w photographs, bibliography, index. BIC Classification: HPCD; JMS. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational; (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly; (UU) Undergraduate. Dimension: 233 x 155 x 18. Weight in Grams: 453. . 2003. 1st Edition. paperback. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780415258630

Bibliographic Details

• Title: I am Dynamite: An Alternative Anthropology of Power
• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication Date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0415258634
• ISBN 13: 9780415258630
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

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 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.