Marc Augé

Short fragments and essays that explore how a seemingly irrelevant aesthetic detail may cause the eruption of sublimity within the mundane. That the nude painted by Manet (in a painting so conceptually new that it created a scandal in its day) achieves so much truth through such a minor detail, that ribbon that modernizes Olympia and, even more than a beauty mark or a patch of freckles would, renders her more precise and more immediately visible, making her a woman with ties to a particular milieu and era: that is what lends itself to reflection, if not divagation!—from The Ribbon at Olympia's ThroatIn The Ribbon at Olympia's Throat, Michel Leiris investigates what Lydia Davis has called the “expressive power of fetishism”: how a seemingly irrelevant aesthetic detail may cause the eruption of sublimity within the mundane. Written in 1981, toward the end of Leiris's life, The Ribbon at Olympia's Throat serves as a coda to his autobiographical masterwork, The Rules of the Game, taking the form of both shorter fragments (poems, memory scraps, notes) that are as formally disarming as the fetishistic experiences they describe, and longer essays, more exhaustive critical meditations on writing, apprehension, and the nature of the modern. Rooted in remembrance, devoted to the kaleidoscopic intricacies of wordplay, Leiris draws from his own aesthetic experiences as writer and spectator to explore the fetish that “exposes and disarms the sinister passage of time,” conferring “an undeniable realness upon the whole by essentially causing it to crystallize in a reality it would never have possessed if that sturdy fragment hadn't acted as bait.”

Anthropology is changing. Traditionally seen as the comparative study of cultural diversity, Anthropology now faces an increasingly globalised world, a world in which societies are not discrete or unique but are all, to some degree, connected. The role of the anthropologist is now less the comparative study of specific cultures than the study of the flow of goods, persons and ideas in the contemporary world. The World of the Anthropologist is a guide to this changing world, revealing what Anthropology is today and what anthropologists do now. The book explains what remains of a traditional Anthropology - such as the anthropological construction of kinship, politics, religion and economics as well as the continuing centrality of fieldwork - and also explores the newer territory which Anthropology is studying, such as performance, science, sexuality, media, ethics, and visual culture. Clearly explaining the key ideas and methods which underpin the subject - from fieldwork through to the construction of knowledge itself - The World of the Anthropologist offers a fascinating insight into and overview of Anthropology today.

Anthropology is changing. Traditionally seen as the comparative study of cultural diversity, Anthropology now faces an increasingly globalised world, a world in which societies are not discrete or unique but are all, to some degree, connected. The role of the anthropologist is now less the comparative study of specific cultures than the study of the flow of goods, persons and ideas in the contemporary world. The World of the Anthropologist is a guide to this changing world, revealing what Anthropology is today and what anthropologists do now. The book explains what remains of a traditional Anthropology - such as the anthropological construction of kinship, politics, religion and economics as well as the continuing centrality of fieldwork - and also explores the newer territory which Anthropology is studying, such as performance, science, sexuality, media, ethics, and visual culture. Clearly explaining the key ideas and methods which underpin the subject - from fieldwork through to the construction of knowledge itself - The World of the Anthropologist offers a fascinating insight into and overview of Anthropology today.

First Published in 1988. The Meaning of Illness offers new ways of understanding the nature of disease and explores the idea that health and illness have a special interdependence. Experiences which illness brings to our attention -limitation, vulnerability and dependence - are explored here as inescapable and valuable dimensions to human existence which we ignore at our peril. The contributors include medical practitioners and consultants, psychotherapists, Jungian analysts, a homoeopath, an acupuncturist, and two women actively involved in self-help. They have few illusions about the pain, terror and suffering caused by illness, yet convey a shared sense, expressed in many different ways, that illness needs to be rescued from its exclusively negative connotations. Their contributions approach the phenomenon of illness not just as a curse, but as a potential gift. In particular, they explore the function illness can play as a message-bearer from the world of the neglected unconscious, and as an agent of consciousness and change. This challenge to the familiar mechanistic medical model is part of a wider re-evaluation of the modern Western world-view - especially the problem-solving approach to healing, and accepted notions of limitless progress. The Meaning of Illness is relevant to all those whose lives are touched by illness, and is particularly important for those in the medical and caring professions.