Steven C Caton
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 87437 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Steven C Caton |
| PRENOMES | Steven C |
| SOBRENOME | Caton |
| ASSINATURA | CATON S C |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of California, Santa Cruz |
| VERIFICADO | Não |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 33 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 257 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 31 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1985 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2022 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Part Three. Responsibility and Agency
Anthropology, Film Industries, Modularity
Tribes in Modern Yemen
In Yemen, "tribe" is a historically rooted, emic concept of social representation. Rooted in remotest antiquity, over the last centuries the concept of tribe in Yemen has undergone transformations, but also featured aspects of continuity. Today, with the emergence of massive political change, the eruption of popular uprisings, armed conflicts, external military intervention and the associated weakness of the state, tribalism seems to be gaining i…
The New Old Imperialism in the Arabian Peninsula
This essay argues that the horrific war in Yemen (2015–present) waged by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates against the Houthis who control the northern part of the country is not really a Sunni-Schi’a conflict or a proxy war against Iran or a replay of the Cold War—all of which have been put forward to explain it—but rather is better understood as the actions of belligerent imperialist powers located in the Arabian Peninsula, acting in th…
Tribes and Politics in Yemen
Several years ago, I was interviewed by a correspondent from The Guardian who wanted my analysis of the Houthi rebellion. He framed it as a Sunni–Shiʿi conflict, one stoked by Iranian interference, and I tried to dissuade him from that overly simplistic explanation, one that is shared by far too many journalists. I went into an explanation of who the Houthis are, who the high-born religious elite or sādah are, to which the Houthis belong, what ha…
Henri Bergson in Highland Yemen
Yemen
Yemen is a country that is critical to U.S. security and our political interests, yet most Americans know virtually nothing about it. This book unlocks its secrets and explains its complexities in simple yet compelling language. A nation with a rich civilization that has spanned 3,000 years, Yemen is the only democratic republic in the Arabian Peninsula. While events in modern-day Yemen are often in international news, most Americans know nothing…
Commentary on Feldman
Gardening the World
Water Sustainability
Water has become an urgent theme in anthropology as the worldwide need to provide adequate supplies of clean water to all people becomes more challenging. Anthropologists contribute by seeing water not only as a resource, but also as a substance that connects many realms of social life. They trace the different forms of valuing water, examine the often unequal distribution of water, explore the rules and institutions that govern water use and sha…
Abu Ghraib, the security apparatus, and the performativity of power
The critical discourse on U.S. military detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison has been dominated by Weberian-style arguments (a bureaucracy gone wrong, insufficient or badly applied administrative rules, or individuals acting as cogs in a machine). We argue that Michel Foucault's "security apparatus" provides a more insightful model for understanding the Abu Ghraib phenomenon. According to this model, the prison becomes a nodal point in an informat…
"What Is an ''Authorizing Discourse"?
Linguistic Ideologies, Text Regulation, and the Question of Post-Structuralism
Three works are reviewed that make significant contributions to anthropological linguistics. Two address theoretical and ethnographic concerns regarding linguistic ideologies and the dilemmas they pose for speech practices such as text regulation. Such practices are harnessed to cultural projects such as language modernization and nationalism. The third, a post-structuralist reading of language-and-culture studies concerned with orality and liter…
Coetzee, Agamben, and the Passion of Abu Ghraib
In this article, I address J. M. Coetzee's chapter "The Problem of Evil" in Elizabeth Costello (2003); specifically, I discuss the danger of texts that attempt to represent evil letting loose that evil in the world. This insight is pushed by connecting it to the problem of sovereignty as put forth in Agamben's Homo Sacer (1998). To demonstrate the connection of evil and sovereignty, three different sets of images are analyzed that circulated in t…
Learning Places
The Architecture of Mud
CHAPTER 4. An Allegory of Anthropology
Lawrence of Arabia
Combining ethnography, film criticism, and his extensive knowledge of the Middle East, Steven C. Caton presents an innovative and fascinating examination of the classic film, Lawrence of Arabia. Caton is interested in why this epic film has been so compelling for so many people for more than three decades. In seeking an answer he draws from situations in his own life, biographies of the film's key participants, and analyses of issues relating to …
Showing Signs of Violence
Showing Signs of Violence: The Cultural Polltics of a Twentieth-Century Headhunting Ritual. KENNETH M. GEORGE. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. xv + 339 pp., appendixes, notes, bibliography, index
Oral Poetry & Narratives from Central Arabia I
The Calligraphic State
Icons of the Person
Tribal ceremonies in North Yemen are analysed as cultural performances in which ideal notions of the male person are constructed. It is claimed that the theme of the person is more widespread in rites of passage than has been generally assumed. Lacan's concept of the image and G. H. Mead's ideas on reflexivity are applied to the analysis of the Yemeni data, as an effort on the one hand to extend psychological theory beyond its original usage in W…
Verbal Art in San Bias
Verbal Art in San Bias: Kuna Culture through Its Discourse. Joel Sherzer. Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture, 21. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.281 pp. $39.50 (cloth
Sumatran Politics and Poetics
The Bedouin of Cyrenaica
Water Sustainability
Water has become an urgent theme in anthropology as the worldwide need to provide adequate supplies of clean water to all people becomes more challenging. Anthropologists contribute by seeing water not only as a resource, but also as a substance that connects many realms of social life. They trace the different forms of valuing water, examine the often unequal distribution of water, explore the rules and institutions that govern water use and sha…
Salāam Tahīyah
The North Yemeni speech event of greeting as a rich semiotic act is interesting to analyze from both a linguistic and an anthropological point of view. It is argued that an indexical or pragmatic approach combined with an "interpretive" or symbolic understanding of culture may lead to the most interesting insights into verbal forms and their social meanings. In particular, it is argued that different constructs of the "person" are created in the …
Contributions Of Roman Jakobson
Infrastructures are material forms that allow for the possibility of exchange over space. They are the physical networks through which goods, ideas, waste, power, people, and finance are trafficked. In this article I trace the range of anthropological ...Read More
Coetzee, Agamben, and the Passion of Abu Ghraib
In this article, I address J. M. Coetzee's chapter "The Problem of Evil" in Elizabeth Costello (2003); specifically, I discuss the danger of texts that attempt to represent evil letting loose that evil in the world. This insight is pushed by connecting it to the problem of sovereignty as put forth in Agamben's Homo Sacer (1998). To demonstrate the connection of evil and sovereignty, three different sets of images are analyzed that circulated in t…
Power Persuasion, and Language
A famous definition of power reads: In studying political organization, we have to deal with the maintenance or establishment of social order ... by the organized exercise of coercive authority through the use, or the possibility of use, of physical force
Abu Ghraib, the security apparatus, and the performativity of power
The critical discourse on U.S. military detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison has been dominated by Weberian-style arguments (a bureaucracy gone wrong, insufficient or badly applied administrative rules, or individuals acting as cogs in a machine). We argue that Michel Foucault's "security apparatus" provides a more insightful model for understanding the Abu Ghraib phenomenon. According to this model, the prison becomes a nodal point in an informat…
The Poetic Construction of Self
North Yemeni tribes perform an oral verse genre called the balah in their wedding ceremonies. It is argued that the selfofthe honorable tribesman emerges in the compositionalprocess, particularly in a routine of challenge-and-response carried out between competing poets. George Herbert Mead's model of symbolic interaction is used to bring out the idea of the self emerging in an artistic act. Implications for Middle Eastern research are considered
Icons of the Person
Tribal ceremonies in North Yemen are analysed as cultural performances in which ideal notions of the male person are constructed. It is claimed that the theme of the person is more widespread in rites of passage than has been generally assumed. Lacan's concept of the image and G. H. Mead's ideas on reflexivity are applied to the analysis of the Yemeni data, as an effort on the one hand to extend psychological theory beyond its original usage in W…
The New Old Imperialism in the Arabian Peninsula
This essay argues that the horrific war in Yemen (2015–present) waged by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates against the Houthis who control the northern part of the country is not really a Sunni-Schi’a conflict or a proxy war against Iran or a replay of the Cold War—all of which have been put forward to explain it—but rather is better understood as the actions of belligerent imperialist powers located in the Arabian Peninsula, acting in th…
The Bedouin of Cyrenaica
The Poetic Construction of Self
North Yemeni tribes perform an oral verse genre called the balah in their wedding ceremonies. It is argued that the selfofthe honorable tribesman emerges in the compositionalprocess, particularly in a routine of challenge-and-response carried out between competing poets. George Herbert Mead's model of symbolic interaction is used to bring out the idea of the self emerging in an artistic act. Implications for Middle Eastern research are considered
Salāam Tahīyah
The North Yemeni speech event of greeting as a rich semiotic act is interesting to analyze from both a linguistic and an anthropological point of view. It is argued that an indexical or pragmatic approach combined with an "interpretive" or symbolic understanding of culture may lead to the most interesting insights into verbal forms and their social meanings. In particular, it is argued that different constructs of the "person" are created in the …
Power Persuasion, and Language
A famous definition of power reads: In studying political organization, we have to deal with the maintenance or establishment of social order ... by the organized exercise of coercive authority through the use, or the possibility of use, of physical force
Contributions Of Roman Jakobson
Infrastructures are material forms that allow for the possibility of exchange over space. They are the physical networks through which goods, ideas, waste, power, people, and finance are trafficked. In this article I trace the range of anthropological ...Read More
The Art of Reciting the Qur'an. KRISHNA Nelson
Social Action and Human Nature. Axel Honneth and Hans Joas (translated by Raymond Meyer)
Anthropology, genuine and spurious
Sapir, Edward, Selected Writings in Language, Culture, and Personality, ed. by David G. Mandelbaum. With a New Epilogue by Dell H. Hymes. Paperback Edition. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1985. iii + 617 pp. including bibliography. $14.95 paper. Reiss, Nira. Speech Act Taxonomy. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1985. vi + 153 pp. including references and appendices. $36.00 paper
Social/Cultural Anthropology
Icons of the Person
Tribal ceremonies in North Yemen are analysed as cultural performances in which ideal notions of the male person are constructed. It is claimed that the theme of the person is more widespread in rites of passage than has been generally assumed. Lacan's concept of the image and G. H. Mead's ideas on reflexivity are applied to the analysis of the Yemeni data, as an effort on the one hand to extend psychological theory beyond its original usage in W…
Verbal Art in San Bias
Verbal Art in San Bias: Kuna Culture through Its Discourse. Joel Sherzer. Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture, 21. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.281 pp. $39.50 (cloth
Sumatran Politics and Poetics
The Bedouin of Cyrenaica
Oral Poetry & Narratives from Central Arabia I
The Calligraphic State
Showing Signs of Violence
Showing Signs of Violence: The Cultural Polltics of a Twentieth-Century Headhunting Ritual. KENNETH M. GEORGE. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. xv + 339 pp., appendixes, notes, bibliography, index
CHAPTER 4. An Allegory of Anthropology
Lawrence of Arabia
Combining ethnography, film criticism, and his extensive knowledge of the Middle East, Steven C. Caton presents an innovative and fascinating examination of the classic film, Lawrence of Arabia. Caton is interested in why this epic film has been so compelling for so many people for more than three decades. In seeking an answer he draws from situations in his own life, biographies of the film's key participants, and analyses of issues relating to …
The Architecture of Mud
Learning Places
"What Is an ''Authorizing Discourse"?
Linguistic Ideologies, Text Regulation, and the Question of Post-Structuralism
Three works are reviewed that make significant contributions to anthropological linguistics. Two address theoretical and ethnographic concerns regarding linguistic ideologies and the dilemmas they pose for speech practices such as text regulation. Such practices are harnessed to cultural projects such as language modernization and nationalism. The third, a post-structuralist reading of language-and-culture studies concerned with orality and liter…
Coetzee, Agamben, and the Passion of Abu Ghraib
In this article, I address J. M. Coetzee's chapter "The Problem of Evil" in Elizabeth Costello (2003); specifically, I discuss the danger of texts that attempt to represent evil letting loose that evil in the world. This insight is pushed by connecting it to the problem of sovereignty as put forth in Agamben's Homo Sacer (1998). To demonstrate the connection of evil and sovereignty, three different sets of images are analyzed that circulated in t…
Water Sustainability
Water has become an urgent theme in anthropology as the worldwide need to provide adequate supplies of clean water to all people becomes more challenging. Anthropologists contribute by seeing water not only as a resource, but also as a substance that connects many realms of social life. They trace the different forms of valuing water, examine the often unequal distribution of water, explore the rules and institutions that govern water use and sha…
Abu Ghraib, the security apparatus, and the performativity of power
The critical discourse on U.S. military detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison has been dominated by Weberian-style arguments (a bureaucracy gone wrong, insufficient or badly applied administrative rules, or individuals acting as cogs in a machine). We argue that Michel Foucault's "security apparatus" provides a more insightful model for understanding the Abu Ghraib phenomenon. According to this model, the prison becomes a nodal point in an informat…
Gardening the World
Sociology (20 obras) · History (14 obras) · Philosophy (13 obras) · Art (12 obras) · Political science (11 obras) · Islamic Studies and History (10 obras) · Politics (10 obras) · Law (9 obras) · Anthropology (8 obras) · Computer Science (8 obras)