Human Nature and Social Life

Perspectives on Extended Sociality

Jon Henrik Ziegler Remme, Kenneth Sillander

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781107179202
• eBook ISBN:
  9781316836378
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

What distinguishes humans from nonhuman 'others'? And how do these distinctions shape human sociality and the ways that humans relate to their others? Human Nature and Social Life brings together a collection of articles by prominent anthropologists to address these questions. The articles show how the fundamentally social nature of humans results in an extension of sociality to virtual, semiotic-material and nonhuman spheres, with humans therefore becoming part of 'extended socialities'. However, as the book's contributors demonstrate, human distinctness significantly bears upon these extended socialities, and the manner in which humans partake in them. Taking an ethnographic approach to its subject, this book demonstrates the continued value of studying the specificities of the human condition, and sets itself as a counterweight to current refutations of human exceptionalism.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Dedication
• Table of contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Evanescence of Experience and How to Capture It
• 2 The Mirror of the Material
• 3 Human at Risk
• 4 Connectedness through Separation
• 5 Egalitarian and Non-Egalitarian Sociality
• 6 Peaceful Sociality
• 7 The Point of No Return
• 8 Sociality, Socialities and Sociality as a Causal Force
• 9 Monism, Dualism and Participant Observation
• 10 Kinship Particularism and the Project of Anthropological Comparison
• Afterword: Extensions
• References
• Index