Winner of the Modern Language Association's Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies Who speaks? The author as producer, the contingency of the text, intertextuality, the “device”—core ideas of modern literary theory—were all pioneered in the shadow of oral literature. Authorless, loosely dated, and variable, oral texts have always posed a challenge to critical interpretation. When it began to be thought that culturally significant texts—starting with Homer and the Bible—had emerged from an oral tradition, assumptions on how to read these texts were greatly perturbed. Through readings that range from ancient Greece, Rome, and China to the Cold War imaginary, The Ethnography of Rhythm situates the study of oral traditions in the contentious space of nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinking about language, mind, and culture. It also demonstrates the role of technologies in framing this category of poetic creation. By making possible a new understanding of Maussian “techniques of the body” as belonging to the domain of Derridean “arche-writing,” Haun Saussy shows how oral tradition is a means of inscription in its own right, rather than an antecedent made obsolete by the written word or other media and data-storage devices.

Rhythm: A Theological Category argues that, as a pervasive dimension of human existence with theological implications, rhythm ought to be considered a category of theological significance. Philosophers and theologians have drawn on the category of rhythm--patterned movements of repetition and variation-to describe reality, however, the ways in which rhythm is used and understood differ based on a variety of metaphysical commitments with varying theological implications. Lexi Eikelboom brings those implications into the open through using resources from phenomenology, prosody, and the social sciences to analyse and evaluate uses of rhythm in metaphysical and theological accounts of reality. The analysis relies on a distinction from prosody between a synchronic approach to rhythm, which observes the whole at once and considers how various dimensions of a rhythm hold together harmoniously, and a diachronic approach, which focuses on the ways in which time unfolds as the subject experiences it. Based on an engagement with the twentieth-century Jesuit theologian Erich Przywara alongside thinkers as diverse as Augustine and the contemporary philosopher Giorgio Agamben, Eikelboom proposes an approach to rhythm that serves the concerns of theological conversation. It then demonstrates the difference that including rhythm in such theological conversation makes to how we think about questions such as "what is creation" and "what is the nature of the God-creature relationship?" from the perspective of rhythm. As a theoretical category, capable of expressing metaphysical commitments, yet shaped by the cultural rhythms in which those expressing such commitments are embedded, rhythm is particularly significant for theology as a phenomenon through which culture and embodied experience influence doctrine.

In the accounts compiled in this book, ethnography occurs through processes of material and social interventions that turn the field into a site for epistemic collaboration. Through creative interventions that unfold what we term as “fieldwork devices”—such as coproduced books, the circulation of repurposed data, co-organized events, authorization protocols, relational frictions, and social rhythms—anthropologists engage with their counterparts in the field in the construction of joint anthropological problematizations. In these situations, the traditional tropes of the fieldwork encounter (i.e. immersion and distance) give way to a narrative of intervention, where the aesthetics of collaboration in the production of knowledge substitutes or intermingles with participant observation. Building on this, the book proposes the concept of “experimental collaborations” to describe and conceptualize this distinctive ethnographic modality.

This is the first anthropological study of writers, writing and contemporary literary culture. Drawing on the flourishing literary scene in Ireland as the basis for her research, Helena Wulff explores the social world of contemporary Irish writers, examining fiction, novels, short stories as well as journalism. Discussing writers such as John Banville, Roddy Doyle, Colm Tóibín, Frank McCourt, Anne Enright, Deirdre Madden, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Colum McCann, David Park, and Joseph O ́Connor, Wulff reveals how the making of a writer's career is built on the 'rhythms of writing': long hours of writing in solitude alternate with public events such as book readings and media appearances. Destined to launch a new field of enquiry, Rhythms of Writing is essential reading for students and scholars in anthropology, literary studies, creative writing, cultural studies, and Irish studies.

Summary: The book presents an ethnographic account of the design rhythm in the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Written as a collection of short stories, it draws on the mundane trajectories of models and architects at the OMA. Includes photo documentation on various projects: the Seattle Public Library, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), la Casa da Musica in Porto, etc.

Tracing a developing fascination with rhythm's significance, its patterns, and its measures, across philosophy, psychology, science, and the whole range of arts, Rhythmical Subjects shows how and why attention to rhythm came to serve as connective tissue between fields of inquiry at a time when modern disciplines were still in the process of formation or consolidation. The concentration on 'rhythm' and its cognates largely arose, Laura Marcus demonstrates, from the desire to reclaim or retain human and natural measures in the face of the coming of the machine and the speed of technological innovation. Rhythmical Subjects uncovers the disparate routes by which rhythm acquired its newfound ability to link ancient and modern forms of intellectual inquiry, and to fathom and re-invigorate temporal articulations of modern subjective life. Among the numerous intellectual and artistic developments set in a new light by this brilliantly wide-ranging book are: the long line of philosophical and theoretical writing on rhythm, from Nietzsche to Bergson and their twentieth-century interlocutors; psychological explorations of rhythm as the fundamental law of life, from Herbert Spencer and Ralph Waldo Emerson to Elsie Fogarty; more experimental engagements with psychology's rhythms, from Wilhelm Wundt, Théodule Ribot, and Karl Groos to the aesthetic writings of Vernon Lee; the history of prosody; pioneering applications of rhythm studies to social and sexual reform, by Havelock Ellis, Marie Stopes, D. H. Lawrence, and Mary Austin (among others); Lebensreform movements and the contribution of Rudolf Steiner and Emile Jaques-Dalcroze; and numerous endeavours in artistic and critical innovation, from the small modernist magazines of Bloomsbury and Paris to art salons and dance studios across Britain, Continental Europe, and America.

. An accompanying compact disk enables the reader to work closely with the sound of African speech and song discussed in the book.

The Third Edition of the best-selling Ethnography: Step-By-Step guides readers in managing mountains of ethnographic data and making meaningful statements based on that data. The second edition provided coverage of a then "new frontier"--the Internet. This new edition builds on that coverage and offers an up-to-date discussion of technology in ethnography, covering a range of topics from technological tools to research with virtual communities. Other notable additions to this updated classic include increased coverage of ethics in ethnography and updated examples and references from a broader range of fields, so as to represent the landscape of ethnography today. Popular with readers for its friendly and accessible approach, this new edition will be an indispensable resource for doing ethnographic research. It is especially well suited for courses in ethnography, qualitative research methods, and social research methods.

More than the persistent beat of a song or the structural frame of poetry, rhythm is a deeply imbedded force that drives our world and is also a central component of the condition of human existence. It’s the pulse of the body, a power that orders matter, a strange and natural force that flows through us. Virginia Woolf describes it as a “wave in the mind” that carries us, something we can no more escape than we could stop our hearts from beating. Vincent Barletta explores rhythm through three historical moments, each addressing it as a phenomenon that transcends poetry, aesthetics, and even temporality. He reveals rhythm to be a power that holds us in place, dispossesses us, and shapes the foundations of our world. In these moments, Barletta encounters rhythm as a primordial and physical binding force that establishes order and form in the ancient world, as the anatomy of lived experience in early modern Europe, and as a subject of aesthetic and ethical questioning in the twentieth century. A wide-ranging book covering a period spanning two millennia and texts from over ten languages, Rhythm will expand the conversation around this complex and powerful phenomenon.

How is “rhythm” experienced? What role does “rhythm” play in musicians’ search for a collective musical identity? These questions are answered in this book on the fascinating blend of musical styles and influences within contemporary Malagasy music. Madagascar is the fourth largest island in the world, “the footprint between Africa and Asia,” with a history marked by many waves of migration. Over the centuries, a wide range of styles of music, of instruments and of dance have become a part of the island’s musical palette. Despite this and the resulting diversity of regional musical particularities, musicians claim there is one element they all share: a common rhythmical base. To explore this claim and the meaning of “rhythm” in the Malagasy context, Jenny Fuhr makes use of her dual role as musician and researcher. Self-reflexive field research combined with learning to play and perform Malagasy music enables a profound intercultural dialogue. This book shows how her intense involvement in music-making and a constant dialogue between musical experiences and discourses opens up new paths of understanding. In doing so, it challenges prevalent Western analytical perspectives on music and demonstrates the need for a more performance-based approach to ethnomusicology.