Returning Life: Language, Life Force and History in Kilimanjaro

By Knut Christian Myhre

Book Overview

The book centers on vernacular concepts and claims to investigate how 'life' is an effect of transfers and transformations of 'life force' that occur through parts of persons, houses, livestock, and crops in the activity of 'dwelling' and that afford and constitute the existence of beings of different kinds. It is an historical ethnography that combines contemporary fieldwork material with historical sources in multiple languages to investigate changes and continuities in these vernacular concepts and claims, and their attendant practices. It is a language-oriented ethnography that draws on Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy to explore how vernacular concepts and claims entail, entangle, and engage things and activities in a manner that avert questions of symbolisation and signification. It attends to communication and interaction across ethnic, social, cultural, and national divides, and explores how cognate notions in different languages and people's multilingual capabilities combine to constitute a horizon of meaning that does not coincide with establish analytics, such as 'culture' and 'society'.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1800739478
• ISBN13: 9781800739475
• Release Date: March 2023
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 8.9"