Synopses & Reviews
The monsters that anthropologists encounter in their field sites differ significantly from those portrayed and analyzed in the thriving interdisciplinary literature—anthropology's monsters haunt off the pages of books and screens of televisions. These monsters come in all sorts of (non-gothic) guises, and their presence is inextricably intertwined with the lives of those they haunt. Offering a dialogue between anthropology and literature, media, and cultural studies, this book presents fine-grained ethnographic vignettes of monsters dwelling in the contemporary world, from Aboriginal Australia in the Pacific to Asia and Europe.
Synopsis
Offering a dialogue between anthropology and literature, culture, and media, this book presents fine-grained ethnographic vignettes of monsters dwelling in the contemporary world. These monsters hail from Aboriginal Australia, the Pacific, Asia, and Europe, and their presence is inextricably intertwined with the lives of those they haunt.
About the Author
Yasmine Musharbash is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sydney, Australia.
Geir Henning Presterudstuen is Lecturer at the School of Social Sciences and Psychology at the University of Western Sydney, Australia.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: Monsters, Anthropology, and Monster Studies; Yasmine Musharbash
2. Cave Men, Luminoids and Dragons: Monstrous Creatures Mediating Relationships between People and Country in Aboriginal Northern Australia; Joanne Thurman
3. Monstrous Transformations: A Case Study from Central Australia; Yasmine Musharbash
4. Specters of Reality; Mamu in the Eastern Western Desert of Australia; Ute Eickelkamp
5. A Murder of Monsters: Terror and Morality in an Aboriginal Religion; John Morton
6. Burnt Woman of the Mission: Gender and Horror in an Aboriginal Settlement in Northern New South Wales; Mahnaz Alimardanian
7. Demons Within: Maleficent Manifestations in the Hare Krishna Movement; Malcolm Haddon
8. Ghosts and the Everyday Politics of Race in Fiji; Geir Henning Presterudstuen
9. Entanglements Between Tao People and Anito and LAnyu Island, Taiwan; Leberecht Funk
10. When Goblins Come to Town: The Ethnography of Urban Hauntings in Georgia; Paul Manning
11. The Workings of Monsters: Of Monsters and Humans in Icelandic Society; Helena Onnudottir
12. Afterword: Strangerhood Pragmatics, and Place in the Dialectics of Monster and Norm; Rupert Stasch