Returning Life: Language, Life Force and History in Kilimanjaro / Edition 1

by Knut Christian Myhre

Overview

A group of Chagga-speaking men descend the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro to butcher animals and pour milk, beer, and blood on the ground, requesting rain for their continued existence. Returning Life explores how this event engages activities where life force is transferred and transformed to afford and affect beings of different kinds. Historical sources demonstrate how the phenomenon of life force encompasses coffee cash-cropping, Catholic Christianity, and colonial and post-colonial rule, and features in cognate languages from throughout the area. As this vivid ethnography explores how life projects through beings of different kinds, it brings to life concepts and practices that extend through time and space, transcending established analytics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781785336652
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	12/29/2017
Series:	Methodology & History in Anthropology , #32
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Knut Christian Myhre is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology – NTNU. He is the editor of Cutting and Connecting: ‘Afrinesian’ Perspectives on Networks, Exchange and Relationality (Berghahn, 2016) and the author of numerous articles. Myhre has held positions at the Nordic Africa Institute and the University of Oslo, and received the Curl Essay Prize for 2017 from the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Table of Contents

Prologue
Preface
Acknowledgements
A Note on Language and Orhography

Introduction

Chapter 1. Kaa: Historical Transformations in Production and Habitation
Chapter 2. Ialika: Marrying as a Mode of Extension     
Chapter 3. Horu: Channelling Bodies and Shifting Subjects in an Enganging World
Chapter 4. Idamira: Burial as Emplacement and Displacement
Chapter 5. Iabisa: Cursing as a Linguistic and Material Practice
Chapter 6. Ngakuuriya Moo: Returning Life, Affording Rain

Conclusion

Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"For over two decades the New Melanesian Ethnography has extended itself in many useful directions, though rarely, in Africa, has it proved so productive as in this fascinating collection. Working at the analytic crossroads of anthropology, Africa and Melanesia, Returning Life provides fresh insights into some of today's most pressing anthropological challenges." · Todd Sanders, University of Toronto

"This very well written book presents an original argument with rich empirical material and many strong lines of inquiry." · Amy Stambach, University of Wisconsin, Madison

From the Publisher