Michael Carrithers

From Inchoate Pronouns to Proper Nouns: A Theory Fragment with 9/11, Gertrude Stein, and an East German Ethnography

Despite the elaborate means human beings deploy to render the world predictable and transparent, we nevertheless continually confront situations which are uncertain and opaque. This is especially so in the modern world, in which supralocal institutions and information mediated from afar allow the actions of unaccounted strangers beyond our face‐to‐face knowledge to affect us closely. One of the chief means we use to gain purchase in such situations is to document them, and documentary’s main technique is to move the at‐first‐unknown persons into an understandable narrative: hence the idea that some unknown others (“inchoate pronouns”) become understandable characters (“proper nouns”). This theory is elaborated through a journalistic documentation of the attack on the World Trade Center, a literary representation of the occupation of France during the Second World War, and an ethnographic depiction of current difficulties in East Germany.

Can a Species Be a Person?: A Trope and Its Entanglements in the Anthropocene Era

The notion that an animal species is comparable with a human person is unusual but significant in North Atlantic societies. We analyze this trope to make a case for rhetoric culture theory as a powerful form of anthropological analysis. The “species is person” trope has been woven with other tropes to make moral and cosmological arguments in the present geosocial era of environmental crisis. The trope stands against two others in North Atlantic societies, tropes that are themselves at odds: (1) other animal species are not persons but are means to our ends, and (2) each individual animal of a species is equivalent to an individual human person and so are ends in themselves. The “species is person” trope has been used to evoke the characteristically North Atlantic notion of sacred personhood to support action on behalf of human-distant species such as river-dwelling mollusks, species that unlike pandas or otters are not “charismatic.” The use of the trope both to alter understandings and to initiate commitments to action demonstrates its effectiveness as reasoning but also the importance of this style of analysis.

The Assembly of listeners : Jains in society

List of illustrations List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Michael Carrithers and Caroline Humphrey 1. Jains as a community: a position paper Michael Carrithers and Caroline Humphrey Part I. Jain Ideals and Jain Identity: 2. Jain ideals and Jain identity Michael Carrithers 3. Somadeva Suri and the question of Jain canon K. R. Norman 5. Women and the reproduction of the Jain community Josephine Reynell Part II. Local Jain Communities: 6. Local Jain communities Caroline Humphrey 7. The Jain merchant castes of Rasthan: some aspects of the management of social identity in a market town Christine M. Cottam Ellis 8. Jain shopkeepers and moneylenders: rural informal credit networks in south Rajasthan J. Howard M. Jones 9. A study of Jains in a Rajasthan town N. K. Singhi Part III. Jains In The Indian World: 10. Jains in the Indian world Michael Carrithers 11. The Digambara Jain warrior Paul Dundas 12. Is there a popular Jainism? Padmanabh Jaini 13. Fairs and miracles: at the boundaries of the Jain community in Rajasthan Caroline Humphrey Part IV. New Jain Institutions In India and Beyond: 14. New Jain institutions in India and beyond Caroline Humphrey 15. Reform movements among jains in modern India Vilas Sangave 16. Orthodoxy and dissent: varieties of religious belief among immigrant Gujarati jains in Britain Marcus Banks 17. The foundations of community among southern Digambar Jains: an essay on rhetoric and experience Michael Carrithers Conclusion Michael Carrithers and Caroline Humphrey Glossary and pronunciation Select bibliography Index.

Concretely Imagining the Southern Digambar Jain Community, 1899–1920

In the pilgrimage season of 1899 a ‘small but select’ group of Jains met before the temple of the deity Bharamappa near Kolhapur to found the Southern Maharashtra Jain Sabha, the dakṣiṣ mahāraṣṬrajain sabhā. The intended constituency of the Sabha was the Digambar Jain population of the Southern Maratha Country of the Bombay Presidency, the area including Kolhapur State, Belgaum, and Sangli, with their rural hinterlands. The Sabha prospers still, while so many of the other associations in that lush growth of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in India have disappeared. It has been instrumental in forging a Jain ethnicity, in creating a new sense of a specifically Jain past and present, and in fostering new habits of education and of social intercourse among Jains. A good proportion of what is today taken for granted by Jains about southern Digambar samskrti, ‘culture’ or ‘civilization’, was moulded by Jains acting in and through the Sabha.

Can a Species Be a Person

The notion that an animal species is comparable with a human person is unusual but significant in North Atlantic societies. We analyze this trope to make a case for rhetoric culture theory as a powerful form of anthropological analysis. The “species is person” trope has been woven with other tropes to make moral and cosmological arguments in the present geosocial era of environmental crisis. The trope stands against two others in North Atlantic societies, tropes that are themselves at odds: (1) other animal species are not persons but are means to our ends, and (2) each individual animal of a species is equivalent to an individual human person and so are ends in themselves. The “species is person” trope has been used to evoke the characteristically North Atlantic notion of sacred personhood to support action on behalf of human-distant species such as river-dwelling mollusks, species that unlike pandas or otters are not “charismatic.” The use of the trope both to alter understandings and to initiate commitments to action demonstrates its effectiveness as reasoning but also the importance of this style of analysis.

Anthropology as irony and philosophy, or the knots in simple ethnographic projects

In this essay on the idea of “anthropological knots” I lay out three closely related ideas. One is that the practice of ethnography may be regarded as being also the practice of philosophy, insofar as philosophy is the pursuit of knowledge about ourselves. The second is that this pursuit of ethnography/philosophy is in its nature ironical, which means roughly that it is woven, or knotted, in the encounter of differing viewpoints, just as Socrates’ philosophical work was created in ironizing conversation between different persons and their different viewpoints. The third is that our philosophical, ironical ethnography is a performance to be celebrated; and, again, it is a performance that is woven, knotted together.

On Ethnography without Tears

Critiques of ethnographic texts based on analysis of their rhetoric attribute pistemological significance to the literary devices used to represent oneself and others. In particular, rhetorical devices, and especially those that obscure authorial invention, are taken to be constitutive of a texts authority, i.e., the basis for warranting claims. I argue that the literary analysis of authority confuses literary, epistemological, and political issues.

From lived experience to political representation: Rhetoric and landscape in the North York Moors

Approaches to landscape are characterized by an unresolved distinction between political representation on the one hand and phenomenology on the other. In this paper we address this distinction by demonstrating how those living in close quarters with landscape (farmers) translate their lived experience into political representation. Through the use of rhetoric culture theory we show how farmers use narrative and symbolism to stake their political claims. Moreover, we argue that a focus on lived experience should not deprive our ethnographic encounters of political significance. On the contrary, we demonstrate how by focusing on the lived experience of farmers we can better appreciate how they are motivated to act politically, have the skills to act politically, and gain political legitimacy in the eyes of others. We argue that whilst phenomenological approaches provide fertile grounds for political analysis, the majority of such research remains politically empty. We demonstrate how, contrary to much of the literature, farmers can and do aesthetically fix the landscape for rhetorical effect, and how narrative as rhetorical representation always already serves to politicize time. We suggest rhetoric, therefore, as an appropriate conceptual tool for mediating and advancing our understanding of the relationship between landscape experience and landscape politics.

The Assembly of Listeners: List of contributors

List of illustrations List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Michael Carrithers and Caroline Humphrey 1. Jains as a community: a position paper Michael Carrithers and Caroline Humphrey Part I. Jain Ideals and Jain Identity: 2. Jain ideals and Jain identity Michael Carrithers 3. Somadeva Suri and the question of Jain canon K. R. Norman 5. Women and the reproduction of the Jain community Josephine Reynell Part II. Local Jain Communities: 6. Local Jain communities Caroline Humphrey 7. The Jain merchant castes of Rasthan: some aspects of the management of social identity in a market town Christine M. Cottam Ellis 8. Jain shopkeepers and moneylenders: rural informal credit networks in south Rajasthan J. Howard M. Jones 9. A study of Jains in a Rajasthan town N. K. Singhi Part III. Jains In The Indian World: 10. Jains in the Indian world Michael Carrithers 11. The Digambara Jain warrior Paul Dundas 12. Is there a popular Jainism? Padmanabh Jaini 13. Fairs and miracles: at the boundaries of the Jain community in Rajasthan Caroline Humphrey Part IV. New Jain Institutions In India and Beyond: 14. New Jain institutions in India and beyond Caroline Humphrey 15. Reform movements among jains in modern India Vilas Sangave 16. Orthodoxy and dissent: varieties of religious belief among immigrant Gujarati jains in Britain Marcus Banks 17. The foundations of community among southern Digambar Jains: an essay on rhetoric and experience Michael Carrithers Conclusion Michael Carrithers and Caroline Humphrey Glossary and pronunciation Select bibliography Index.

The Assembly of Listeners: Contents

List of illustrations List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Michael Carrithers and Caroline Humphrey 1. Jains as a community: a position paper Michael Carrithers and Caroline Humphrey Part I. Jain Ideals and Jain Identity: 2. Jain ideals and Jain identity Michael Carrithers 3. Somadeva Suri and the question of Jain canon K. R. Norman 5. Women and the reproduction of the Jain community Josephine Reynell Part II. Local Jain Communities: 6. Local Jain communities Caroline Humphrey 7. The Jain merchant castes of Rasthan: some aspects of the management of social identity in a market town Christine M. Cottam Ellis 8. Jain shopkeepers and moneylenders: rural informal credit networks in south Rajasthan J. Howard M. Jones 9. A study of Jains in a Rajasthan town N. K. Singhi Part III. Jains In The Indian World: 10. Jains in the Indian world Michael Carrithers 11. The Digambara Jain warrior Paul Dundas 12. Is there a popular Jainism? Padmanabh Jaini 13. Fairs and miracles: at the boundaries of the Jain community in Rajasthan Caroline Humphrey Part IV. New Jain Institutions In India and Beyond: 14. New Jain institutions in India and beyond Caroline Humphrey 15. Reform movements among jains in modern India Vilas Sangave 16. Orthodoxy and dissent: varieties of religious belief among immigrant Gujarati jains in Britain Marcus Banks 17. The foundations of community among southern Digambar Jains: an essay on rhetoric and experience Michael Carrithers Conclusion Michael Carrithers and Caroline Humphrey Glossary and pronunciation Select bibliography Index.