What Is Existential Anthropology

Inspired by existential thought, but using ethnographic methods, Jackson explores a variety of compelling topics, including 9/11, episodes from the war in Sierra Leone and its aftermath, the marginalization of indigenous Australians, the application of new technologies, mundane forms of ritualization, the magical use of language, the sociality of violence, the prose of suffering, and the discourse of human rights. Throughout this compelling work, Jackson demonstrates that existentialism, far from being a philosophy of individual being, enables us to explore issues of social existence and coexistence in new ways, and to theorise events as the sites of a dynamic interplay between the finite possibilities of the situations in which human beings find themselves and the capacities they yet possess for creating viable forms of social life.

What is existential anthropology, and how would you define it? What has been gained by using existential perspectives in your fieldwork and writing? Editors Michael Jackson and Albert Piette each invited anthropologists on both sides of the Atlantic to address these questions and explore how various approaches to the human condition might be brought together on the levels of method and of theory. Both editors also bring their own perspective: while Jackson has drawn on phenomenology, deploying the concepts of intersubjectivity, lifeworld, experience, existential mobility, and event, Piette has drawn on Heidegger’s Dasein-analysis, and developed a phenomenographical method for the observation and description of human beings in their singularity and ever-changing situations.

4e de couv.: Michael Jackson's Lifeworlds is a masterful collection of essays, the culmination of a career of exploring the relationship between anthropology and philosophy. Drawing inspiration from James, Dewey, Arendt, Husserl, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, and from ethnographic fieldwork among the Kuranko of Sierra Leone, the Warlpiri of Central Australia, and the Maori of Aotearoa (New Zealand), Jackson outlines an existential anthropology grounded in the dynamics and quandaries of everyday life. He offers a pragmatic understanding of how people act to make their lives more viable, to bridge the gap between self and other, to grasp the elusive, and to transform abstract possibilities into embodied truths.

"The real beauty of this book is that the thinking does not stop . . . deep in the thickets of philosophic references. Instead, true to the spirit of phenomoenology, we are provided with provocative accounts of how such thinking flows in contemporary anthropological practice." —XCP - Cross Cultural Poetics In this timely collection, thirteen contemporary ethnographers demonstrate the importance of phenomenological and existential ideas for anthropology. In emphasizing the link between the empirical and the experiential, these ethnographers also explore the relationship between phenomenology and other theories of the lifeworld, such as existentialism, radical empiricism, and critical theory.

"Between One and One Another is a lively and fascinating exploration of the interplay between being a part of the lives of others, and being apart from them. Michael Jackson, one of the leading and most innovative anthropologists today, draws on a wealth of anthropological, literary, philosophical, and autobiographical resources to make his case on the matter. It's clear that a lifetime of learning and reflection has gone into the thoughts invested in this text."—Robert Desjarlais, author of Counterplay: An Anthropologist at the Chessboard

The postmodern opposition between theory and lived reality has led in part to an anthropological turn to "dialogic" or "reflexive" approaches. Michael Jackson claims these approaches are hardly radical as they still drift into such abstractions as "society" or "culture." His Minima Ethnographica proposes an existential anthropology that recognizes even abstract relationships as modalities of interpersonal life. Written in the style of Theodor Adorno's Minima Moralia, Jackson's work shows how general ideas are always anchored in particular social events and critical concerns. Emphasizing the intersubjective encounter over objective descriptions of the whole historical and contemporary situation of a given people, he illustrates the power and originality of existential anthropology through a series of vignettes from his fieldwork in Sierra Leone and Australia. An award-winning poet, novelist, and anthropologist, Jackson offers a timely critique of conventions that dull our sense of the links between academic study and lived experience.

The Wherewithal of Life engages with current developments in the anthropology of ethics and migration studies to explore in empirical depth and detail the life experiences of three young men – a Ugandan migrant in Copenhagen, a Burkina Faso migrant in Amsterdam, and a Mexican migrant in Boston – in ways that significantly broaden our understanding of the existential situations and ethical dilemmas of those migrating from the global south. Michael Jackson offers the first biographically based phenomenological account of migration and mobility, providing new insights into the various motives, tactics, dilemmas, dreams, and disappointments that characterize contemporary migration. It is argued that the quandaries of African or Mexican migrants are not unique to people moving between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ worlds. While more intensely felt by the young, seeking to find a way out of a world of limited opportunity and circumscribed values, the experiences of transition are familiar to us all, whatever our age, gender, ethnicity or social status – namely, the impossibility of calculating what one may lose in leaving a settled life or home place; what one may gain by risking oneself in an alien environment; the difficulty of striking a balance between personal fulfillment and the moral claims of kinship; and the struggle to know the difference between ‘concrete’ and ‘abstract’ utopias (the first reasonable and worth pursuing; the second hopelessly unattainable).

The present book is no ordinary anthology, but rather a workroom in which anthropologists and philosophers initiate a dialogue on trust and hope, two important topics for both fields of study. The book combines work between scholars from different universities in the U.S. and Denmark. Thus, besides bringing the two disciplines in dialogue, it also cuts across differences in national contexts and academic style. The interdisciplinary efforts of the contributors demonstrate how such a collaboration can result in new and challenging ways of thinking about trust and hope. Reading the dialogues may, therefore, also inspire others to work in the productive intersection between anthropology and philosophy.