This book develops an exciting new view of this otherwise taken-for-granted image and considers their metaphoric value in and for moral order.
Knots are well known as symbols of moral relationships. This book develops an exciting new view of this otherwise taken-for-granted image and considers their metaphoric value in and for moral order. In chapters that focus on Japan, China, Europe, South America and in several Pacific Island societies, granular ethnography depicts how knots are deployed to express unity in daily and ritual embodiment, political authority and the cosmos, as well as in social thought. The volume will be of interest to anthropologists and other scholars concerned with metaphor and symbolism, material culture and technology.
1 Knots as moral relationshiDavid Lipset and Eric K. Silverman:Part 1:
Personhood and Society: 2 Knots in Sumo Wrestling and JapanKenji Tierney; 3
Knots and entanglements in JapanEllen Schattschneider: 4 Canoes, knots and
the concept of the person in the Sepik (Papua New Guinea)Eric K. Silverman
and David Lipset: 5 Making Manus social fabric (Papua New Guinea)Michelle
Nayahmui Rooney: Part 2: State and Cosmos: 6 The knotted empire of the Inka
StateGary Urton; 7 Weaving metaphors and cosmo-political thought in early
ChinaDavid Pankenier: 8 Knots at the edge of order in the Northeast Kula Ring
(Papua New Guinea)Frederick H. Damon; 9 The knot in the Pacific body
politicSusanne Küchler; 10 Knots of authority and sanctity in ancient
HawaiiAdrienne Kaeppler: Part 3: Social Thought; 11 Anthropologys
entanglement with EuropeSarah Green: 12 Afterword: Knots as Moral
ReflexivityDavid Lipset and Eric K. Silverman
David Lipset is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, USA.
Eric K. Silverman, former Professor of Anthropology at Wheelock College, is now Resident Scholar at the Womens Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, USA.
