Framing Cosmologies The Anthropology of Worlds

How might the anthropological study of cosmologies – the ways in which the horizons of human worlds are imagined and engaged – illuminate understandings of the contemporary world? This book addresses this question by bringing together anthropologists whose research is informed by a concern with cosmological dimensions of social life in different ethnographic settings. Its overall aim is to reaffirm the value of the cosmological frame as a continuing source of analytical insight.

Attending to the novel cosmological formations that emerge in such fields as modern markets, political landscapes, digital media and popular cinema, the book's key task is to explore how modern circumstances are constituted within the variable imagination of worlds and their horizons. It will be of interest to all students and researchers in anthropology, as well as scholars in fields as diverse as film studies, cultural studies, comparative religion, science and technology studies, and broader social theory.

Allen Abramson and Martin Holbraad convene the Cosmology, Ontology, Religion and Culture Research Group (CROC) in the Department of Anthropology at University College London (UCL), where they both teach.

Introduction: The Cosmological Frame in Anthropology; Allen Abramson and Martin Holbraad
PART I: HORIZONS OF COSMOLOGICAL WONDER: WHITHER THE WHOLE?
1. To be a Wonder: Anthropology, Cosmology, and Alterity; Michael W. Scott
2. A New Man: The Cosmological Horizons of Development, Curses, and Personhood in Vanuatu; Knut Rio and Annelin Eriksen
3. Auto-Relations: Doing Cosmology and Transforming the Self the Saiva Way; Soumhya Venkatesan
4. Inter-Gration and Intra-Gration in Cosmology; Don Handelman
5. Coordinates of Body and Place: Chinese Practices of Centring; Stephan Feuchtwang
PART II: COSMOLOGICAL CONSTITUTIONS: ECONOMIES, POLITICS AND THE COSMOS
6. Stranger Kings in General: The Cosmo-logics of Power; Marshall Sahlins
7. Transitional Cosmologies: Shamanism and Postsocialism in Northern Mongolia; Morten Axel Pedersen
8. Portioning Loans: Cosmologies of Wealth and Power in Mongolia; Rebecca Empson
9. Maize Mill Sorcery: Cosmologies of Substance, Production, and Accumulation in Central Mozambique; Bjørn Enge Bertelsen
PART III: EMBEDDED MODERNITIES: COSMOS, SCIENCE AND THE MOVIES
10. A Politico-Astral Cosmology in Contemporary Russia; Caroline Humphrey
11. Facebook and the Origins of Religion; Daniel Miller
12. Don't Yell Fire! The Origin of Humanity Goes to the Movies; Gregory Schrempp
13. Cosmology and the Mythic in Kubrick's 2001: The Imaginary in the Aesthetic of Cinema; Bruce Kapferer
Index