A Beatty
Biographic Data
| ID | 32148 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A Beatty |
| GIVEN NAMES | A |
| FAMILY NAME | Beatty |
| SIGNATURE | BEATTY A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Brunel University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4386-7264 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 327 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
How to Do Things with Emotions: The Morality of Anger and Shame across Cultures
Publishers love titles that begin How or Why. Better still, How and Why, combining edification with utility. The target group is that overlap between the self-help audience and the idly curious—which is to say, most of us. And since emotions are very much about self-help and self-harm, they offer rich pickings in a burgeoning market. Flanagan's How to Do things with Emotions is a philosopher's take on moral emotions, the allusion to J. L. Austin'…
The rise of affectivism
Emotional Worlds: Beyond an Anthropology of Emotion
Andrew Beatty's *Emotional Worlds: Beyond an Anthropology of Emotion* explores the complex and multifaceted nature of emotions, moving beyond traditional anthropological approaches that often treat emotions as discrete, universal entities. Beatty argues for a more nuanced understanding of emotion, emphasizing its embeddedness within specific social and cultural contexts. The book draws on a range of ethnographic examples to illustrate how emotion…
Authors in search of a character: Ethnography and life writing
Not parallel but tangential: biography fits awkwardly with ethnography, doing well what ethnography does well to avoid. It cuts history to human shape, insinuates author into subject, reads cause in sequence, and turns the world into background. As ‘life writing’, biography rarely captures life: ethnography – immersed, immediate – does the job better. Participant observation opens up dimensions of behaviour and experience that the biographer, usu…
After the Ancestors: An Anthropologist's Story
Set on an isolated Indonesian island, this is the gripping true story of a fieldworker's experience of living in a tribal society during a period of crisis. Featuring a cast of unforgettable characters, After the Ancestors follows a bitter feud between rivals as it escalates into murder, intrigue and revenge. A vivid account of life within a radically different world, it also portrays a unique culture undergoing the transition from tribalism to m…
Lemelson, Robert (dir.). Afflictions: Culture and mental illness in Indonesia (six‐part series of ethnographic films). DVD / PAL, colour, 182 minutes. DER, 2010. $89.95 (non‐profit sale)
Anthropology and emotion
The centrality of emotion in thought and action is increasingly recognized in the human sciences, though basic questions of definition and scope remain unresolved. Where do emotions begin and end? How should we identify and analyse them? How should we write about them? Ethnographic fieldwork, as pioneered by Malinowski, offers powerful insights into the place of emotion in social life; but emotions are peculiarly difficult to capture in the gener…
Current Emotion Research in Anthropology: Reporting the Field
An internal critique of anthropology in recent decades has shifted the focus and scope of anthropological work on emotion. In this article I review the changes, explore the pros and cons of leading anthropological approaches and theories, and argue that-so far as anthropology is concerned-only detailed narrative accounts can do full justice to the complexity of emotions. A narrative approach captures both the particularity and the temporal dimens…
Kala defanged: Managing power in Java away from the centre
If discussions of power in Indonesia have been too Java-centric, power talk about Java has been equally overcentralized. This article presents an alternative view to the top-down, hierarchical, exemplary-centre approach of Anderson, Geertz and others: the view from Banyuwangi in East Java. Through an analysis of local rituals, popular theatre and political action it proposes a different model based on consensus, relativism, and ritual containment
Culture and identity: The history, theory, and practice of psychological anthropology - By Charles Lindholm
The Tell-Tale Heart: Conversion and Emotion in Nias
In this article, I use historical and ethnographic data to analyse the Great Repentance, a violently emotional conversion movement that swept through the Indonesian island of Nias from colonial conquest around 1915, with recurrences until the 1960s. Against rationalist and materialist explanations, I argue for a constitutive role for emotion in the conversion process. I show how the techniques and idioms of Protestant missionaries suppressed indi…
Andrew Beatty, A shadow falls; In the heart of Java
In this feature we highlight a recently launched book. We invite specialists in the field to comment on the book, and we invite the author to respond to their comments. In this issue we focus on Andrew Beatty's, A shadow falls; In the heart of Java. Those invited to comment on the book are Puja Semedi, Michael Peletz and Edwin Wieiringa. Registered readers may participate in the debate
How Did It Feel for You? Emotion, Narrative, and the Limits of Ethnography
In this article, I present the case for a narrative approach to emotion, identifying conceptual and presentational weaknesses in standard ethnographic approaches. First-person and confessional accounts, increasingly offered as a corrective to the distancing and typifying effects of cultural analysis, are shown to be unreliable; shared experience turns out to be an illusion. Instead, I suggest we look to literary examples for lessons in how to cap…
Skulls to the living, bread to the dead: The Day of the Dead in Mexico and beyond - By Stanley Brandes
The Pope in Mexico: Syncretism in Public Ritual
The canonization rites were nested within political ceremonies staged, controversially, to anoint a new presidency. This broader political message was in turn challenged in the media and on the streets. In this article, I show how a major public event can articulate the life of a complex, culturally diverse society. I identify a syncretic effect produced by the struggle for ritual control. And I take a comparative view of syncretism, drawing on J…
Emotions in the Field: What Are We Talking About
In the anthropology of emotion, rival approaches - cultural relativism and a universalism based on common humanity or shared experience - imply different forms of engagement in the field. This article, a sceptical appraisal, suggests that ethnographers commonly fail to build the diversity of emotional practice into their accounts and have therefore provided a flawed basis for theorizing and comparison. With reference to two Indonesian cases - Nia…
Aid in faraway places: The context of an earthquake
Changing Places: Relatives and Relativism in Java
This article examines the social context of conceptual and moral relativism; more specifically, it explores links between religious orientation and experience in an ideologically plural setting. I argue that cultural models of 'changing places' serve to guide a number of Javanese practices: child-borrowing, gender-switching, language use, and even religious conversion. These models, formed in childhood experience, engender and express a relativis…
A World of Babies: Imagined Childcare Guides for Seven Societies
World of Babies: Imagined Childcare Guides for Seven Societies. Judy DeLoache and Alma Gottlieb. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ix. 280 pp., photographs, references, index
Varieties of Javanese Violence
Varieties of Javanese Religion: An Anthropological Account
Java is famous for its combination of diverse cultural forms and religious beliefs. Andrew Beatty considers Javanese solutions to the problem of cultural difference, and explores the ways in which Javanese villages make sense of their complex and multi-layered culture. Pantheist mystics, supernaturalists, orthodox Muslims and Hindu converts at once construct contrasting faiths and create a common ground through syncretist ritual. Vividly evoking …
Adam and Eve and Vishnu: Syncretism in the Javanese Slametan
L'A. jette une lumiere nouvelle sur le « slametan », repas rituel considere par beaucoup comme etant au coeur de la religiosite populaire javanaise. On montre que les groupes aux ideologies tres diverses celebrent ensemble ce rituel, donnant ainsi l'impression de dire les memes choses. Mais, en fait, ils expriment des vues opposees sur Dieu, la revelation, l'Islam, et la place de l'homme dans l'univers. L'A., qui eclaire la facon dont la multivoc…
On Reviewing Exchange Paradigms: Response to McKinnon
Society and Exchange in Nias
Ovasa; Feasts of merit in Nias
Feasts of merit have been described in many areas of Southeast Asia (see Kirsch 1973 for a useful survey), but detailed accounts are rare. In pursuit of the wider significance of festive exchanges it is tempting to pass quickly over the particularities; but it is frequently in the thick of debate over quantities, techniques, and principles that the significance of a transaction is to be found. The present essay, on the ovasa feast of central Nias…
How Did It Feel for You? Emotion, Narrative, and the Limits of Ethnography
In this article, I present the case for a narrative approach to emotion, identifying conceptual and presentational weaknesses in standard ethnographic approaches. First-person and confessional accounts, increasingly offered as a corrective to the distancing and typifying effects of cultural analysis, are shown to be unreliable; shared experience turns out to be an illusion. Instead, I suggest we look to literary examples for lessons in how to cap…
Anthropology and emotion
The centrality of emotion in thought and action is increasingly recognized in the human sciences, though basic questions of definition and scope remain unresolved. Where do emotions begin and end? How should we identify and analyse them? How should we write about them? Ethnographic fieldwork, as pioneered by Malinowski, offers powerful insights into the place of emotion in social life; but emotions are peculiarly difficult to capture in the gener…
Emotions in the Field: What Are We Talking About
In the anthropology of emotion, rival approaches - cultural relativism and a universalism based on common humanity or shared experience - imply different forms of engagement in the field. This article, a sceptical appraisal, suggests that ethnographers commonly fail to build the diversity of emotional practice into their accounts and have therefore provided a flawed basis for theorizing and comparison. With reference to two Indonesian cases - Nia…
Current Emotion Research in Anthropology: Reporting the Field
An internal critique of anthropology in recent decades has shifted the focus and scope of anthropological work on emotion. In this article I review the changes, explore the pros and cons of leading anthropological approaches and theories, and argue that-so far as anthropology is concerned-only detailed narrative accounts can do full justice to the complexity of emotions. A narrative approach captures both the particularity and the temporal dimens…
Changing Places: Relatives and Relativism in Java
This article examines the social context of conceptual and moral relativism; more specifically, it explores links between religious orientation and experience in an ideologically plural setting. I argue that cultural models of 'changing places' serve to guide a number of Javanese practices: child-borrowing, gender-switching, language use, and even religious conversion. These models, formed in childhood experience, engender and express a relativis…
Emotional Worlds: Beyond an Anthropology of Emotion
Andrew Beatty's *Emotional Worlds: Beyond an Anthropology of Emotion* explores the complex and multifaceted nature of emotions, moving beyond traditional anthropological approaches that often treat emotions as discrete, universal entities. Beatty argues for a more nuanced understanding of emotion, emphasizing its embeddedness within specific social and cultural contexts. The book draws on a range of ethnographic examples to illustrate how emotion…
Adam and Eve and Vishnu: Syncretism in the Javanese Slametan
L'A. jette une lumiere nouvelle sur le « slametan », repas rituel considere par beaucoup comme etant au coeur de la religiosite populaire javanaise. On montre que les groupes aux ideologies tres diverses celebrent ensemble ce rituel, donnant ainsi l'impression de dire les memes choses. Mais, en fait, ils expriment des vues opposees sur Dieu, la revelation, l'Islam, et la place de l'homme dans l'univers. L'A., qui eclaire la facon dont la multivoc…
Society and Exchange in Nias
The Tell-Tale Heart: Conversion and Emotion in Nias
In this article, I use historical and ethnographic data to analyse the Great Repentance, a violently emotional conversion movement that swept through the Indonesian island of Nias from colonial conquest around 1915, with recurrences until the 1960s. Against rationalist and materialist explanations, I argue for a constitutive role for emotion in the conversion process. I show how the techniques and idioms of Protestant missionaries suppressed indi…
The rise of affectivism
The Pope in Mexico: Syncretism in Public Ritual
The canonization rites were nested within political ceremonies staged, controversially, to anoint a new presidency. This broader political message was in turn challenged in the media and on the streets. In this article, I show how a major public event can articulate the life of a complex, culturally diverse society. I identify a syncretic effect produced by the struggle for ritual control. And I take a comparative view of syncretism, drawing on J…
Asymmetric Alliance in Nias, Indonesia
Kala defanged: Managing power in Java away from the centre
If discussions of power in Indonesia have been too Java-centric, power talk about Java has been equally overcentralized. This article presents an alternative view to the top-down, hierarchical, exemplary-centre approach of Anderson, Geertz and others: the view from Banyuwangi in East Java. Through an analysis of local rituals, popular theatre and political action it proposes a different model based on consensus, relativism, and ritual containment
A World of Babies: Imagined Childcare Guides for Seven Societies
World of Babies: Imagined Childcare Guides for Seven Societies. Judy DeLoache and Alma Gottlieb. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ix. 280 pp., photographs, references, index
Varieties of Javanese Violence
Asymmetric Alliance in Nias, Indonesia
Ovasa; Feasts of merit in Nias
Feasts of merit have been described in many areas of Southeast Asia (see Kirsch 1973 for a useful survey), but detailed accounts are rare. In pursuit of the wider significance of festive exchanges it is tempting to pass quickly over the particularities; but it is frequently in the thick of debate over quantities, techniques, and principles that the significance of a transaction is to be found. The present essay, on the ovasa feast of central Nias…
Society and Exchange in Nias
On Reviewing Exchange Paradigms: Response to McKinnon
Adam and Eve and Vishnu: Syncretism in the Javanese Slametan
L'A. jette une lumiere nouvelle sur le « slametan », repas rituel considere par beaucoup comme etant au coeur de la religiosite populaire javanaise. On montre que les groupes aux ideologies tres diverses celebrent ensemble ce rituel, donnant ainsi l'impression de dire les memes choses. Mais, en fait, ils expriment des vues opposees sur Dieu, la revelation, l'Islam, et la place de l'homme dans l'univers. L'A., qui eclaire la facon dont la multivoc…
Varieties of Javanese Religion: An Anthropological Account
Java is famous for its combination of diverse cultural forms and religious beliefs. Andrew Beatty considers Javanese solutions to the problem of cultural difference, and explores the ways in which Javanese villages make sense of their complex and multi-layered culture. Pantheist mystics, supernaturalists, orthodox Muslims and Hindu converts at once construct contrasting faiths and create a common ground through syncretist ritual. Vividly evoking …
Varieties of Javanese Violence
A World of Babies: Imagined Childcare Guides for Seven Societies
World of Babies: Imagined Childcare Guides for Seven Societies. Judy DeLoache and Alma Gottlieb. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ix. 280 pp., photographs, references, index
Changing Places: Relatives and Relativism in Java
This article examines the social context of conceptual and moral relativism; more specifically, it explores links between religious orientation and experience in an ideologically plural setting. I argue that cultural models of 'changing places' serve to guide a number of Javanese practices: child-borrowing, gender-switching, language use, and even religious conversion. These models, formed in childhood experience, engender and express a relativis…
Emotions in the Field: What Are We Talking About
In the anthropology of emotion, rival approaches - cultural relativism and a universalism based on common humanity or shared experience - imply different forms of engagement in the field. This article, a sceptical appraisal, suggests that ethnographers commonly fail to build the diversity of emotional practice into their accounts and have therefore provided a flawed basis for theorizing and comparison. With reference to two Indonesian cases - Nia…
Aid in faraway places: The context of an earthquake
The Pope in Mexico: Syncretism in Public Ritual
The canonization rites were nested within political ceremonies staged, controversially, to anoint a new presidency. This broader political message was in turn challenged in the media and on the streets. In this article, I show how a major public event can articulate the life of a complex, culturally diverse society. I identify a syncretic effect produced by the struggle for ritual control. And I take a comparative view of syncretism, drawing on J…
Skulls to the living, bread to the dead: The Day of the Dead in Mexico and beyond - By Stanley Brandes
Andrew Beatty, A shadow falls; In the heart of Java
In this feature we highlight a recently launched book. We invite specialists in the field to comment on the book, and we invite the author to respond to their comments. In this issue we focus on Andrew Beatty's, A shadow falls; In the heart of Java. Those invited to comment on the book are Puja Semedi, Michael Peletz and Edwin Wieiringa. Registered readers may participate in the debate
How Did It Feel for You? Emotion, Narrative, and the Limits of Ethnography
In this article, I present the case for a narrative approach to emotion, identifying conceptual and presentational weaknesses in standard ethnographic approaches. First-person and confessional accounts, increasingly offered as a corrective to the distancing and typifying effects of cultural analysis, are shown to be unreliable; shared experience turns out to be an illusion. Instead, I suggest we look to literary examples for lessons in how to cap…
Kala defanged: Managing power in Java away from the centre
If discussions of power in Indonesia have been too Java-centric, power talk about Java has been equally overcentralized. This article presents an alternative view to the top-down, hierarchical, exemplary-centre approach of Anderson, Geertz and others: the view from Banyuwangi in East Java. Through an analysis of local rituals, popular theatre and political action it proposes a different model based on consensus, relativism, and ritual containment
Culture and identity: The history, theory, and practice of psychological anthropology - By Charles Lindholm
The Tell-Tale Heart: Conversion and Emotion in Nias
In this article, I use historical and ethnographic data to analyse the Great Repentance, a violently emotional conversion movement that swept through the Indonesian island of Nias from colonial conquest around 1915, with recurrences until the 1960s. Against rationalist and materialist explanations, I argue for a constitutive role for emotion in the conversion process. I show how the techniques and idioms of Protestant missionaries suppressed indi…
Current Emotion Research in Anthropology: Reporting the Field
An internal critique of anthropology in recent decades has shifted the focus and scope of anthropological work on emotion. In this article I review the changes, explore the pros and cons of leading anthropological approaches and theories, and argue that-so far as anthropology is concerned-only detailed narrative accounts can do full justice to the complexity of emotions. A narrative approach captures both the particularity and the temporal dimens…
Lemelson, Robert (dir.). Afflictions: Culture and mental illness in Indonesia (six‐part series of ethnographic films). DVD / PAL, colour, 182 minutes. DER, 2010. $89.95 (non‐profit sale)
Anthropology and emotion
The centrality of emotion in thought and action is increasingly recognized in the human sciences, though basic questions of definition and scope remain unresolved. Where do emotions begin and end? How should we identify and analyse them? How should we write about them? Ethnographic fieldwork, as pioneered by Malinowski, offers powerful insights into the place of emotion in social life; but emotions are peculiarly difficult to capture in the gener…
After the Ancestors: An Anthropologist's Story
Set on an isolated Indonesian island, this is the gripping true story of a fieldworker's experience of living in a tribal society during a period of crisis. Featuring a cast of unforgettable characters, After the Ancestors follows a bitter feud between rivals as it escalates into murder, intrigue and revenge. A vivid account of life within a radically different world, it also portrays a unique culture undergoing the transition from tribalism to m…
Authors in search of a character: Ethnography and life writing
Not parallel but tangential: biography fits awkwardly with ethnography, doing well what ethnography does well to avoid. It cuts history to human shape, insinuates author into subject, reads cause in sequence, and turns the world into background. As ‘life writing’, biography rarely captures life: ethnography – immersed, immediate – does the job better. Participant observation opens up dimensions of behaviour and experience that the biographer, usu…
Emotional Worlds: Beyond an Anthropology of Emotion
Andrew Beatty's *Emotional Worlds: Beyond an Anthropology of Emotion* explores the complex and multifaceted nature of emotions, moving beyond traditional anthropological approaches that often treat emotions as discrete, universal entities. Beatty argues for a more nuanced understanding of emotion, emphasizing its embeddedness within specific social and cultural contexts. The book draws on a range of ethnographic examples to illustrate how emotion…
The rise of affectivism
Philosophy (17 works) · Sociology (16 works) · History (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Anthropology (10 works) · Asian Studies and History (10 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (9 works) · Art (9 works)