Moebius Anthropology
Essays on the Forming of Form
Published on 1. November 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
364 pages
978-1-83695-115-5 (ISBN)
Description
Don Handelman's groundbreaking work in anthropology is showcased in this collection of his most powerful essays, edited by Matan Shapiro and Jackie Feldman. The book looks at the intellectual and spiritual roots of Handelman's initiation into anthropology; his work on ritual and on "bureaucratic logic"; analyses of cosmology; and innovative essays on Anthropology and Deleuzian thinking. Handelman reconsiders his theory of the forming of form and how this relates to a new theory of the dynamics of time. This will be the definitive collection of articles by one of the most important anthropologists of the late 20th Century.
Reviews / Votes
"[This book offers a] perspective on an extraordinary scholar, one whose versatility and energy goes far beyond what anthropology has generally aspired to in the twentieth-century. This book is a taster not simply of a work of stunning theoretical breadth, offering profound heuristics for our discipline, but of the man who has refused to dis-intricate himself and his personal trajectory from its conceptual premises." * Ethnos. Journal of Anthropology"This is scintillating - and an engaging and compelling book... It is an extraordinary comment on the versatility and energy of twentieth century socio-cultural anthropology." * Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge
"An ambitious retrospective of Don Handelman's intellectual development... An invaluable resource for scholars of anthropology and ritual studies." * Donna J. Young, University of Toronto Scarborough
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
10 Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
527 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-83695-115-5 (9781836951155)
DOI
10.3167/9781789208542
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
Persons
Don Handelman is the Sarah Allen Shaine Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Matan Shapiro
Part I: Some Significant Formative Influences
Chapter 1. Henry Rupert, Washo Shaman
Chapter 2. Tracing Bureaucratic Logic through Surprise and Abduction
Part II: Forming Form: Ritual and Bureaucratic Logic
Chapter 3. Why Ritual in Its Own Right? How So?
Chapter 4. Bureaucratic Logic
Chapter 5. Bureaucratic Logic, Bureaucratic Aesthetics:? The Opening Event of Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day in Israel
Part III: Cosmological Trajectories
Chapter 6. Passages to Play: Paradox and Process
Chapter 7. Framing Hierarchically, Framing Moebiusly
Chapter 8. Inter-gration and Intra-gration in Cosmology
Part IV: Deleuzian Intersections
Chapter 9. Self-Exploders, Self-Sacrifice, and the Rhizomic Organization of Terrorism
Chapter 10. Thinking Moebiusly: Can We Learn about Ritual from Cinema with Mulholland Drive?
Chapter 11. Folding and Enfolding Walls: Statist Imperatives and Bureaucratic Aesthetics in Divided Jerusalem
Epilogue: Forming Form, Folding Time (Toward Dynamics Through an Anthropology of Form)
Index
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Matan Shapiro
Part I: Some Significant Formative Influences
Chapter 1. Henry Rupert, Washo Shaman
Chapter 2. Tracing Bureaucratic Logic through Surprise and Abduction
Part II: Forming Form: Ritual and Bureaucratic Logic
Chapter 3. Why Ritual in Its Own Right? How So?
Chapter 4. Bureaucratic Logic
Chapter 5. Bureaucratic Logic, Bureaucratic Aesthetics:? The Opening Event of Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day in Israel
Part III: Cosmological Trajectories
Chapter 6. Passages to Play: Paradox and Process
Chapter 7. Framing Hierarchically, Framing Moebiusly
Chapter 8. Inter-gration and Intra-gration in Cosmology
Part IV: Deleuzian Intersections
Chapter 9. Self-Exploders, Self-Sacrifice, and the Rhizomic Organization of Terrorism
Chapter 10. Thinking Moebiusly: Can We Learn about Ritual from Cinema with Mulholland Drive?
Chapter 11. Folding and Enfolding Walls: Statist Imperatives and Bureaucratic Aesthetics in Divided Jerusalem
Epilogue: Forming Form, Folding Time (Toward Dynamics Through an Anthropology of Form)
Index