Abstract
What is human nature? Is there a basic human nature which is then molded differently by culture, gender, and other social forces? The anthropological answers to these questions presented in this edited collection take as a starting point the position that the human species possesses capacities and capabilities, which enable any member or members, in whatever culture, to ‘go beyond’ the economy, the polity, the classificatory, and the physical body (as well as to create such categories). In some respects, this approach is reminiscent of the qualities suggested by one of the names chosen by researchers into early hominids—Homo habilis, meaning ‘the handy human,’ the species that can turn its hand to anything. This is reminiscent in turn of the adjective applied to the protagonist of the Odyssey, ‘man of many devices.’ It is no accident that this volume appears in a series devoted to methodology and history in anthropology because a focus on the capacity to go beyond established frameworks, institutions, and schemes of classifications and definitions of the physical requires detailed ethnographic investigation and attempts to tease out possible causal factors and wider meanings. The anthropologists, as well as those they study, have to recognize that they must ‘go beyond’ categories, institutional frameworks, and the taken-for-granted assumptions both of everyday life and of life at its extremes. In this respect, the volume is as much about the nature of anthropology as a discipline that demands ‘going beyond’ as it is about the nature of human beings.
The eight pairs of essays in the volume, each pair introduced by the editor’s comments, cover a wide range of topics and places. Contributors from Canada and the United States and from Norway and Britain present ethnographic studies of many kinds of ‘going beyond,’ showing their own capacities for transcending established categories in their modes of presentation as well as in their analyses. Those they study exemplify the modes of ‘going beyond,’ which feed into the discussions: social dancers, minaret builders, writers of appeals for philanthropic causes, migrant workers, exchange students, those diagnosed as HIV positive, Eurosceptics, and entification practitioners. In these contemporary and historical examples, human beings are shown as responding to changing circumstances, whether mundane or extraordinary, at the everyday, local or regional level, as well as at the national or global level, with active engagement (acting against what might be perceived as their interests) and creative imaginations (whether for unrealizable or possible futures), sometimes confounding analysts and reframing definitions of moral codes.
While each chapter might well have been presented in a different section or sections—transcending both discourse and classification as the book’s subtitle suggests—for the very categories of ‘polity,’ ‘economy,’ ‘classification,’ and ‘the body’ are themselves thoroughly critiqued, there is nevertheless a sense of cumulative argument. It would have helped to have, as well as the framing introductory and section introductions, an editor’s conclusion and overview. There are a few typographical and grammatical errors, and in at least in one case, need for an explanatory footnote, but otherwise this is a welcome addition to the series, certainly going beyond what one might expect.