
On the Nervous Edge of an Impossible Paradise
Affect, Tourism, Belize
Kenneth Little(Author)
Berghahn Books (Publisher)
Published on 2. August 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
204 pages
978-1-80539-344-3 (ISBN)
Description
There are beastly forces in Belize. Forces that are actively involved in making paradise impossible. On the Nervous Edge of an Impossible Paradise is a collection of seven stories about local lives in the fictional village of Wallaceville. Lives turn rogue in the face of runaway forces that take the form and figure of a Belize beast-time, which can appear as a comic mishap, social ruin, tragic excess, or wild guesses. Inciting the affective politics of life in the region, this fable of emergence evokes the unnerving uncertainties of life in the tourist state of Belize.
Reviews / Votes
"Pushes anthropology to new levels, and in doing so argues profoundly for its relevance in an effort to understand the 21st century world as it is (troublingly) unfolding. This work pushes the reader to think in dense and complex ways about the tourism experience and all that it symbolizes." * Julia Harrison, Trent University"A pioneering work... ranks alongside such classic texts as Claude Levi-Strauss's Triste Tropiques, Evans-Pritchard's The Nuer, Paul Rabinow's Reflections on Fieldwork in Morroco and Jean-Paul Dumont's The Headman and I." * Sally Ann Ness, University of California
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Bibliography; Index; 8 Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 11 mm
Weight
307 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-80539-344-3 (9781805393443)
DOI
10.3167/9781789206463
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

E-Book
02/2020
1st Edition
Berghahn Books
€24.49
Available for download
Person
Kenneth Little is Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar, Department of Anthropology, York University in Toronto. His research focuses on the analysis of society as spectacle, the critical turn in anthropology to the study of affect, social creativity, experiments in ethnographic writing, and performativity.
Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Writing Stories of Make-Belize
Chapter 1. "For the Time is at Hand": Beast-Time Somet'ings
Chapter 2. Impossible Tropics
Chapter 3. Richie's Tourists
Chapter 4. Nowhere Paradise
Chapter 5. Belize Ephemera
Chapter 6. Belize Blues
Chapter 7. Parca's Picks
Epilogue: Belize Fabulations
Glossary
References
Index
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Writing Stories of Make-Belize
Chapter 1. "For the Time is at Hand": Beast-Time Somet'ings
Chapter 2. Impossible Tropics
Chapter 3. Richie's Tourists
Chapter 4. Nowhere Paradise
Chapter 5. Belize Ephemera
Chapter 6. Belize Blues
Chapter 7. Parca's Picks
Epilogue: Belize Fabulations
Glossary
References
Index