Verging on Extra-Vagance
Anthropology, History, Religion, Literature, Arts . . . Showbiz
Published on 18. April 1999
Book
Hardback
368 pages
978-0-691-01632-0 (ISBN)
Description
Extra-vagance refers to thought that skirts traditional boundaries. To follow this up, the author broaches subjects as diverse as Balinese ritual, Montaigne, Chaucer, Tarzan and Perry Mason, making leaps among eclectic texts and rituals that do not hold single, fixed meanings, but numerous, changing, and specific ones. The text explores links between ritual and reading, focusing on commentaries about the seclusion of menstruating women in Native American culture, trance dances in Bali, and circumcision in contrasting religions. He considers the ironies of "first-person ethnography" by telling stories from his own fieldwork, reflecting on ethnological museums, and making seriocomic connections between Mark Twain and Marcel Mauss.
Reviews / Votes
"James Boon is one of this country's most exciting theorists and practitioners of cultural comparativism. The book is an exemplary work on, and of, cultural translation and the hazards thereof. It is marvelously conceived, brilliantly executed, and almost astonishing in the range of its erudition."-Marc Manganaro, Rutgers University "At a moment when much of 'cultural studies' proceeds without a broadly comparativist framework and in opposition to anthropological relativism, Boon embraces both. This is important and gutsy-and it is done with a genuine sense of pleasure and even beauty. There is really nothing else quite like this work."-Daniel A. Segal, Pitzer CollegeMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New Jersey
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Trade binding
Illustrations
16 halftones
Dimensions
Height: 254 mm
Width: 197 mm
Weight
680 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-691-01632-0 (9780691016320)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
James A. Boon
Verging on Extra-Vagance
Anthropology, History, Religion, Literature, Arts . . . Showbiz
E-Book
06/2021
1st Edition
Princeton University Press
€66.49
Available for download
Person
James A. Boon is Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His researches bridge Indonesian studies, Euro-American colonial and intellectual history, and philosophies of synaesthesic arts and experience. His works include From Symbolism to Structuralism, The Anthropological Romance of Bali, Other Tribes, Other Scribes, and Affinities and Extremes.