Overview

This open access book provides thought-provoking anthropology grounded in comparative ethnography. The theory captures the current historical moment, the long-term trends that led us here, and the prospects for a humane future. The experience of complexity characterizing a globalized information society triggers simplexes. These unidimensional responses instrumental in bringing about a predictable effect are altering our ways of communicating and the technologies we design.   In Part I, a ‘speciated’ history, injected with the anthropology of Bateson and Gluckman, describes the semantic and experiential impoverishment of the lifeworld. After going through the affects of distrust (the neolithic lifeway), of futility (industrial lifeway) and disconnection (post-knowledge), the human species today depends for its survival on installing a new lifeway, which manages to wed (eco-social) inclusion to the already difficult first pair of the French Revolution. The species needs to rehumanize.  Part II illustrates the remedies currently developed: to reframe, re-sphere and re-source. What do critical street art, international football matches, presidential elections, hip-hop dissing performances, charismatic church services, intuition stimulation, and ‘pre-ceptive’ experiences of consciousness have in common? They are moments of the real. Rooted in ‘life sensing’, they are tensors organizing frameshift. As multiplex measures tackling the simplex, these tensors overcome the cultural relativism of the postmodern matrix. 

Full Product Details

Author:   Koen Stroeken
Publisher:   Springer International Publishing AG
Imprint:   Palgrave Macmillan
Edition:   1st ed. 2024
Weight:   0.435kg
ISBN:  

9783031411175

ISBN 10:   303141117
Pages:   320
Publication Date:   08 November 2023
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

PrologueIntroduction: After KnowledgePart I Simplex FramesChapter One: Simpl(if)icationChapter Two: FrameshiftChapter Three: Losing the Feel for the CraftChapter Four: The Human ExperimentChapter Five: Simplex Communication SocietyPart II Tensors of the UndertowChapter Six: Collective ReasonChapter Seven: The Oracle and the RealChapter Eight: Healer or KingChapter Nine: A Model LeaderChapter Ten: EntropologyChapter Eleven: Soccer as MirrorChapter Twelve: Street CredChapter Thirteen: GodworkChapter Fourteen: Intuition, Destiny, LoveChapter Fifteen: Phantoms of the FutureEpilogue: Or 16

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Author Information

Koen Stroeken is an associate professor in Africanist anthropology at Ghent University, Belgium, who did his ethnographic fieldwork mostly in northern Tanzania. Stroeken co-founded CARAM, the Centre for Anthropological Research on Affect and Materiality. He authored two monographs on medico-political anthropology.

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