Limit this search to....

Harmattan: A Philosophical Fiction
Contributor(s): Jackson, Michael D. (Author)
ISBN: 0231172346     ISBN-13: 9780231172349
Publisher: Columbia University Press
OUR PRICE:   $99.00  
Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats
Published: April 2015
Qty:
Temporarily out of stock - Will ship within 2 to 5 weeks
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Anthropology - Cultural & Social
- History | Africa - West
- Religion | Ethnic & Tribal
Dewey: 128
LCCN: 2014034074
Series: Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and C
Physical Information: 0.7" H x 5.5" W x 8.3" (0.75 lbs) 192 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - West Africa
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
We all experience qualms and anxieties when we move from the known to the unknown. Though our fulfillment in life may depend on testing limits, our faintheartedness is a reminder of our need for security and our awareness of the risks of venturing into alien worlds.

Evoking the hot, dust-filled Harmattan winds that blow from the Sahara to the Gulf of Guinea, this book creatively explores what it means to be buffeted by the unforeseen and the unknown. Celebrating the life-giving potential of people, places, and powers that lie beyond our established worlds, Harmattan connects existential vitality to the act of resisting prescribed customs and questioning received notions of truth. At the book's heart is the fictional story of Tom Lannon, a graduate student from Cambridge University, who remains ambivalent about pursuing a conventional life. After traveling to Sierra Leone in the aftermath of its devastating civil war, Tom meets a writer who helps him explore the possibilities of renewal. Illustrating the fact that certain aspects of human existence are common to all people regardless of culture and history, Harmattan remakes the distinction between home and world and the relationship between knowledge and life.


Contributor Bio(s): Jackson, Michael D.: - Michael D. Jackson (PhD, Anthropology, Cambridge)is Distinguished Visiting Professor of World Religions at Harvard University. He is the author of numerous books, including At Home in the World (Duke, 2012), Lifeworlds: Essays in Existential Anthropology (Chicago, 2013), As Wide as the World is Wise: Reinventing Philosophical Anthropology (Columbia, 2016), The Varieties of Temporal Experience: Travels in Philosophical, Historical, and Ethnographic Time (Columbia, 2018), and The Work of Art: Rethinking the Elementary Forms of Religious Life (Columbia, 2016).