Contemporary Liminality
About the Book Series
This series constitutes a forum for works that make use of concepts such as ‘imitation’, ‘trickster’ or ‘schismogenesis’, but which chiefly deploy the notion of ‘liminality’, as the basis of a new, anthropologically-focused paradigm in social theory. With its versatility and range of possible uses rivalling mainstream concepts such as ‘system’, ‘structure’ or ‘institution’, liminality by now is a new master concept that promises to spark a renewal in social thought.
While charges of Eurocentrism are widely discussed in sociology and anthropology, most theoretical tools in the social sciences continue to rely on approaches developed from within the modern Western intellectual tradition, whilst concepts developed on the basis of extensive anthropological evidence and which challenged commonplaces of modernist thinking, have been either marginalised and ignored, or trivialised. By challenging the taken-for-granted foundations of social theory through incorporating ideas from major thinkers, such as Nietzsche, Dilthey, Weber, Elias, Voegelin, Foucault and Koselleck, as well as perspectives gained through modern social and cultural anthropology and the central concerns of classical philosophical anthropology Contemporary Liminality offers a new direction in social thought.
The Technologisation of the Social: A Political Anthropology of the Digital Machine
1st Edition
Edited
By Paul O'Connor, Marius Ion Benţa
January 29, 2024
In an era of digital revolution, artificial intelligence, big data and augmented reality, technology has shifted from being a tool of communication to a primary medium of experience and sociality. Some of the most basic human capacities are increasingly being outsourced to machines and we ...
Art and Enchantment: How Wonder Works
1st Edition
By Patrick Curry
March 17, 2023
This book concerns the experience of enchantment in art. Considering the essential characteristics, dynamics and conditions of the experience of enchantment in relation to art, including liminality, it offers studies of different kinds of artistic experience and activity, including painting, music,...
Political Anthropology as Method
1st Edition
By Arpad Szakolczai
February 27, 2023
This book explores considerations of method in the field of political anthropology, contending that this constitutes a distinct approach within the broader area of the human, social and political sciences. Faithful to the basic guiding ideas of anthropology, it nonetheless challenges and rejects ...
Liminality and the Philosophy of Presence: A New Direction in Political Theory
1st Edition
By Franziska Hoppen
January 09, 2023
This book departs from the attempt by political theory to confront the challenges of political life with new concepts, offering instead a mode of thought so far excluded from the canon of political theory: the philosophy of presence. Making the experience of liminality the very centre of thought, ...
Political Alchemy: Technology Unbounded
1st Edition
By Agnes Horvath
January 09, 2023
This book explores politics as a form of alchemy, understood as the transformation of entities through an alteration of their identities. Identifying this process as a common denominator of many political phenomena, such as EU integration, mediatisation, communism or globalisation, the author ...
Modern Leaders: Between Charisma and Trickery
1st Edition
Edited
By Agnes Horvath, Arpad Szakolczai, Manussos Marangudakis
April 29, 2022
This book considers the current striking rise of ‘outsider’ political leaders, catapulted, apparently, from nowhere, to take charge of a nation. Arguing that such leaders can be better understood with the help of the anthropologically based concept of ‘the trickster’, it offers studies of ...
Post-Truth Society: A Political Anthropology of Trickster Logic
1st Edition
By Arpad Szakolczai
November 30, 2021
It is widely asserted that we are now living in a post-truth society. What that means, this book argues, is that the contemporary global world is thoroughly infested not only with trickster figures but an entire and operational trickster logic; or, that we now live in a Trickster Land – an argument...
China at a Threshold: Exploring Social Change in Techno-Social Systems
1st Edition
By James B. Cuffe
August 02, 2021
Once the world’s most technologically advanced civilisation, China is poised to yet again take this mantle, having made incredible technological strides over recent decades; but what does this in fact mean? What will this mean for Chinese society, and what ramifications might it have for the future...
The Political Sociology and Anthropology of Evil: Tricksterology
1st Edition
By Agnes Horvath, Arpad Szakolczai
June 30, 2021
This book offers a new approach to the problem of evil through an examination of the anthropological figure of the ‘trickster’. A lesser known and much more recent term than evil, the authors use the trickster to facilitate a greater understanding of the return of evil in the modern era. Instead of...
Divinization and Technology: The Political Anthropology of Subversion
1st Edition
Edited
By Agnes Horvath, Camil Francisc Roman, Gilbert Germain
June 30, 2020
This book offers a political anthropological discussion of subversion, exploring its imbrication with technological and divinization practices, and uncovering some of its particular effects on human existence, from prehistory until the contemporary age. Subversion is often romanticized as a means ...
The Spectacle of Critique: From Philosophy to Cacophony
1st Edition
By Tom Boland
January 14, 2020
Far from being the preserve of a few elite thinkers, critique increasingly dominates public life in modernity, leading to a cacophony of accusation and denunciation around all political issues. The technique of unmasking ‘power’ or ‘hegemony’ or ‘ideology’ has now been adopted across the political ...
Walling, Boundaries and Liminality: A Political Anthropology of Transformations
1st Edition
Edited
By Agnes Horvath, Marius Ion Benţa, Joan Davison
January 14, 2020
Contemporary challenges related to walls, borders and encirclement, such as migration, integration and endemic historical conflicts, can only be understood properly from a long-term perspective. This book seeks to go beyond conventional definitions of the long durée by locating the social practice ...