******************************************************
* http://www.anthropologymatters.com *
* A postgraduate project comprising online journal, *
* online discussions, teaching and research resources *
* and international contacts directory. *
******************************************************
*** Sincere apologies for cross-posting***
----------------------------------------------------------
SPECIAL ISSUE
Future and Fortune. Contingency, Morality and the Anticipation of Everyday Life
Edited by Giovanni da Col and Caroline Humphrey (Cambridge)
As with the preceding companion issue (Social Analysis 56, no. 1), this volume is concerned with the ways in which fortune, luck, and chance are conceived in a range of different societies and how these concepts are employed to negotiate the contingencies and uncertainties of everyday life. Taken together, the articles gathered in this second collection deal with human attempts toproject their desire for mastering uncertainties about the future while solving the moral predicaments of fortune’s proportions and their management in everyday life. Ranging from Melanesian and Greek gamblers to online gamers and Siberian hunters, from lay Chinese mathematicians of fate to young Mongolians, the ethnographies in this special issue reveal the creative potentials of practical matrixes for calculating luck and mobilizing diverse ‘technologies of anticipation’ of the future. A few of the articles present rites to invoke fortune, gambling, or games as practices to master contingency and as generative fields of agentive creativity and subjectivity.
What is the role of idioms of luck and fortune in the formation of accounts of events? What is the role of fortune and luck in everyday moralities, ethical decisions, and the constitution of personhood? How does fortune relate to concepts of value, desire, fame, and prestige? How do cosmologies of luck and fortune manifest in contingent singularities and temporal views? How are different hierarchies of luck and fortune related to specific domains of temporal action? What is the relation between fortune, moral agency, and destiny? How is a fortunate future anticipated and produced with hopeful and creative acts of engagement with misfortunate events or fatalistic worldviews? The essays gathered in these pages will hopefully add a vigorous and attuned anthropological voice to the recent chorus of interdisciplinary interest in the themes of contingency and gambling and in the category of the future.
Articles
1 Introduction: Subjects of Luck—Contingency, Morality, and the Anticipation of Everyday Life (OPEN ACCESS)
Giovanni da Col and Caroline Humphrey (Cambridge)
19 Laki Charms: ‘Luck’ and Personal Agency in North Mekeo Social Change
Mark S. Mosko (Australian National University)
39 The Allotted Share: Managing Fortune in Astrological Counseling in Contemporary India
Caterina Guenzi (EHESS)
56 Fame, Fate-Fortune, and Tokens of Value among the Nuosu of Southwest China
Katherine Swancutt (Oxford)
73 When Good Luck Is Bad Fortune: Between Too Little and Too Much Hunting Success in Siberia
Ludek Broz (Charles University Prague) and Rane Willerslev (Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo)
90 Misfortune and What Can Be Done about It: A Taiwanese Case Study
Charles Stafford (London School of Economics)
103 Our Present Misfortune: Games and the Post-bureaucratic Colonization of Contingency
Thomas M. Malaby (Indiana University)
117 Fate, Agency, and the Economy of Desire in Chinese Ritual and Society
P. Steven Sangren (Cornell University)
136 A Day in the Cadillac: The Work of Hope in Urban Mongolia
Morten Axel Pedersen (Copenhagen)
152 Fortune in the Wind: An Impersonal Subjectivity
Caroline Humphrey (Cambridge) and Hurelbaatar Ujeed (Inner Mongolia National University)
*************************************************************
* Anthropology-Matters Mailing List *
* To join this list or to look at the archived previous *
* messages visit: *
* http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/Anthropology-Matters.HTML *
* If you have ALREADY subscribed: to send a message to all *
* those currently subscribed to the list,just send mail to: *
* [log in to unmask] *
* *
* Enjoyed the mailing list? Why not join the new *
* CONTACTS SECTION @ www.anthropologymatters.com *
* an international directory of anthropology researchers *
***************************************************************
|
