The Composition of Anthropology How Anthropological Texts Are Written

How do anthropologists write their texts? What is the nature of creativity in the discipline of anthropology? This book follows anthropologists into spaces where words, ideas and arguments take shape and explores the steps in a creative process. In a unique examination of how texts come to be composed, the editors bring together a distinguished group of anthropologists who offer valuable insight into their writing habits. These reflexive glimpses into personal creativity reveal not only the processes by which theory and ethnography come, in particular cases, to be represented on the page but also supply examples that students may follow or adapt.

Introduction: On the Genealogy of Writing Anthropology Morten Nielsen and Nigel Rapport1. The Life of Concepts and How They Speak to Experience Veena Das2. Ten Preludes to a Preface Kirin Narayan3. Writing against conclusion Nina Holm Vohnsen4. Composing texts and the composition of uprisings: Notes on writing the postcolonial political Bjørn Enge Bertelsen5. Public Ritual in Mauritius Thomas Hylland Eriksen6. Writing Whalsay: Reflections on how, why, and for who anthropologists write Anthony Cohen7. Writing a Cosmopolitan Anthropology in Recognition of Anyone Nigel Rapport 8. Diversifying from Within: Diaspora writings in Sweden Helena Wulff 9. Dialogic Aesthetics: Notes and nodes in analogical software coding Morten Nielsen10. Composing American stiob Dominic Boyer11. In the Workshop: Anthropology in a Collaborative Zone of Inquiry Anthony Stavrianakis, Paul Rabinow and Trine Mygind Korsby Epilogue: Writing the Human: Anthropological accounts as generic fragments Nigel Rapport and Morten Nielsen

Morten Nielsen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Aarhus University, Denmark. Nigel Rapport is Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews, UK.