The problem of context / edited by Roy Dilley

Dilley, Roy

ISBN 10: 1571817735 / ISBN 13: 9781571817730

Published by New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1999

About this Item

Fine paperback copy. Particularly well-preserved; tight, bright and clean. Physical description: 256 pages. Contents: Introduction: The problem of context / Roy Dilley -- Contextualisation and paradigm shifts / Ladislav Holy -- Context, the ghost in the machine / Sándor G.J. Hervey -- New paradigm thinking in linguistics: meaning is the context / El?bieta Tabakowska -- Ethnographic misunderstanding and the perils of context / Johannes Fabian -- As they like it: overinterpretation and hyporeality in Bali / Mark Hobart -- Context and interpretation: reflections on Nyau rituals in Malawi / Brian Morris -- holistic individual: context as political process in the New Age movement / Ruth Prince and David Riches -- Context as an act of personal externalisation: Gregory Bateson and the Harvey family in the English village of Wanet / Nigel Rapport -- Culture and context : the effects of visibility / Penelope Harvey. Subjects: Ethnology Methodology. Ethnology Philosophy. Context (Linquistics). Cultural relativism; Congresses. 1 Kg.

Seller Inventory # 355003

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The problem of context / edited by Roy Dilley
• Publisher: New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1571817735
• ISBN 13: 9781571817730
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Paperback Edition.
• Weight: 1 kilogram

About this title

Synopsis

The apparently simple notion that it is contextualization and invocation of context that give form to our interpretations raises important questions about context definition. Moreover, different disciplines involved in the elucidation and interpretation of meanings construe context indifferent ways. How do these ways differ? And what analytical strategies are adopted in order to suggest that the relevant context is "self-evident"? The notion of context has received less attention than is due such a central, key concept in social anthropology, as well as in other related disciplines.

This collection of contributions from a group of leading social anthropologists and anthropological linguists addresses the question of how the idea of context is constructed, invoked, and deployed in the interpretations put forward by social anthropologists. The ethnographic focus embraces peoples from regions such as Bali, Europe, Malawi, and Zaire. Primarily theoretical in its aims, the work also draws on expertise from anthropological linguistics and philosophy in order to set the issue as much in a comparative disciplinary perspective as in a comparative cross-cultural one.

About the Author

R.M. Dilley is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews.