Managing Turbulent Hearts: A Balinese Formula for Living / Edition 1

by Unni Wikan

Overview

How do Balinese manage to present to the world the clear, bright face, the grace and poise, that they regard as crucial to self-respect and social esteem? How can the anthropologist pass behind the conventions of such a complex culture to recognize what is going on between people, in terms that convey their own experience?

Wikan's study of the Indonesian island of Bali is an absorbing debate with previous anthropological interpretations as well as an innovative development of the anthropology of experience.

"This is indeed an important book, a landmark in studies of Bali and one surely destined to have major theoretical impact on anthropological research well beyond that famous Indonesian island."—Anthony R. Walker, Journal of Asian and African Studies

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226896809
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	12/15/1990
Edition description:	1
Pages:	370
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Unni Wikan is professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, Norway. She is the author of several books, including Resonance: Beyond the Words and Generous Betrayal: Politics of Culture in the New Europe, both published by the University of Chicago Press. 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Beyond Spectacle and Bright Face
Part One: Experience and Its Interpretation
1. Grief, Gaiety, and Laughter
2. Interpreting Everyday Practice
Part Two: Bridgings, and Cares Carried Across
3. Hidden Hearts and Bright Faces
4. Movement in Social Space
5. Could People See . . . All Would Perish from Fright
6. Managing the Heart—To Please as Virtue Pleases
Part Three: Feeling-Thoughts, Morality, and Health
7. Feeling-Thoughts and Their Interpretation
8. Laughter, Sadness, and Death Reconsidered
9. Vitality and Health
Part Four: Coping with the Suffering Life Inevitably Brings
10. Finding a Way Out of Sadness
11. Power, a Fight for Freedom, and Covert Violence
12. At the Balian's: Seeking Relief for Life's Strains and Stresses
13. The Power to Heal
Part Five: Culture and Translation
14. Going Beyond the Words: A Plea for Resonance
Notes
Glossary
References
Index