From Hospitality to Grace: A Julian Pitt-Rivers Omnibus

by Julian Pitt-Rivers, Giovanni da Col (Editor), Andrew Shryock (Editor)

Overview

The Pitt-Rivers Omnibus brings together the definitive essays and lectures of the influential social anthropologist Julian A. Pitt-Rivers, a corpus of work that has, until now, remained scattered, untranslated, and unedited. Illuminating the themes and topics that he engaged throughout his life—including hospitality, grace, the symbolic economy of reciprocity, kinship, the paradoxes of friendship, ritual logics, the anthropology of dress, and more—this omnibus brings his reflections to new life.
           
Holding Pitt-Rivers’s diversity of subjects and ethnographic foci in the same gaze, this book reveals a theoretical unity that ran through his work and highlights his iconic wit and brilliance. Striking at the heart of anthropological theory, the pieces here explore the relationship between the mental and the material, between what is thought and what is done. Classic, definitive, and yet still extraordinarily relevant for contemporary anthropology, Pitt-Rivers’s lifetime contribution will provide a new generation of anthropologists with an invaluable resource for reflection on both ethnographic and theoretical issues. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780986132520
Publisher:	HAU
Publication date:	12/15/2017
Pages:	410
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Julian A. Pitt-Rivers (1919-2001) was a British social anthropologist and ethnographer of Andalusian and Mediterranean societies. Giovanni da Col is a research fellow in the department of anthropology at the University of Oslo and is the founder of HAU Books and HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. Andrew Shryock is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction xiii

A perfect host: Julian Pitt-Rivers and the anthropology of grace Andrew Shryock Giovanni da Col

Part I Moral frames: honor, mana, and grace 1

Chapter 1 Honor and social status in Andalusia 3

Chapter 2 Mana 35

Chapter 3 The place of grace in anthropology 69

Chapter 4 The malady of honor 105

Part II Uncertain relations: kin/friend, host/guest, male/female, and human/animal 119

Chapter 5 The kith and the kin 121

Chapter 6 Ritual kinship in the Mediterranean: Spain and the Balkans 141

Chapter 7 The law of hospitality 163

Chapter 8 Women and sanctuary in the Mèditerranean 185

Chapter 9 The paradox of friendship 199

Chapter 10 Lending a hand: Neighborly cooperation in southwestern France 211

Chapter 11 Spiritual power in Central America: The naguals of Chiapas 227

Part III Transformative rites: sacrifice, substitution, and the sacred 249

Chapter 12 The sacrifice of the bull 251

Chapter 13 The role of pain in rites of passage 267

Chapter 14 From the love of food to the love of God 275

Chapter 15 Quand nos aînés n'y seront plus 301

Chapter 16 The fate of Shechem or the politics of sex 323

Part IV Analytics in place: concepts, theory, and method 375

Chapter 17 Contextual analysis and the locus of the model 377

Chapter 18 On the word "caste" 397

Chapter 19 Race in Latin America: The concept of "raza" 421

Chapter 20 Reflections on fieldwork in Spain 449

Afterword: Grace and insight: The legacy of Julian Pitt-Rivers Michael Herzfeld 465

Reference List 473

Index 493

Editorial Reviews

"Pitt-Rivers’ writings have a supple and subtle quality of style and argument, the flow of a fine essay. He draws the reader, only seemingly easily for these papers are cleverly and tightly argued, into wide-ranging reflections on founding patterns and structures, codes, customs and practices that he suggests should frame our understanding of major topics and fields for inquiry such as kinship, hospitality, honour and sacrifice. He moves across ethnographic and historical domains, classical and biblical sources with remarkable scholarship and a capacity for creative speculation. Like Georg Simmel, he opens our minds to thought and to rethinking with grace and economy."

Michael Gilsenan

"Despite his passion for promoting the anthropological study of the Mediterranean, [Pitt-Rivers’] stage was not the narrow one of “area studies” alone; he had much broader goals. The Zeitgeist of his era did not make it easy for a Europeanist to break into the Africanist-dominated world of British anthropological theory-making, even if that was the tradition in which he had been trained. But no man of honor (for it is clear that in much of his analysis he is musing on his own values and predilections) would have refused the challenge. . . . Far from being an antiquarian curiosity, as its period-specific style might initially suggest, his work is resonant with implications for the anthropology we practice today. . . . This collection is indeed an act of grace."

Michael Herzfeld

"This omnibus collection of the writings of Julian Pitt-Rivers is not only welcome but also timely. An avid student of Mediterranean and European history, and an anthropologist often cited for his classical accounts of Spanish culture and authoritative writings on honor, Pitt-Rivers retained a deep interest in what makes communities, despite differences and conflicts, cohere and endure through time. His insights regarding intimate social relations, the role of ritual in public life, and the dynamics of making credible moral claims, seem to me invaluable to an understanding of “community,” today."

Jane Schneider