Culture and Rhetoric

Ivo Strecker is Professor Emeritus of Cultural Anthropology at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and co-founder of the International Rhetoric Culture Project in 1998. His empirical work has dealt with Hamar ethnography, and his theoretical work has focused on symbolism, ritual and rhetoric. He is (together with Jean Lydall) author of The Hamar of Southern Ethiopia (1979); The Social Practice of Symbolization (1988); and Ethnographic Chiasmus. Essays on Culture, Conflict and Rhetoric (2010).

• PrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroductionIvo Strecker and Stephen TylerPART I: THE CHIASM OF RHETORIC AND CULTUREChapter 1. The rhetoric culture projectStephen Tyler and Ivo StreckerChapter 2. Precursors of rhetoric culture theoryChristian MeyerChapter 3. Homo rhetoricusPeter OesterreichChapter 4. Listening cultureDaniel GrossChapter 5. Practice of rhetoric, rhetoric of practiceVincenzo Cannada BartoliChapter 6. Chiastic thought and culture : A reading of Claude Lévi-StraussBoris WisemanChapter 7. When fair is foul and foul is fair : Lessons from MacbethAnthony PaulPART II: FIGURATION - THE PERSUASIVE POWER OF DEEDS AND TROPESChapter 8. Rhetoric truth and the work of tropeAlan RumseyChapter 9. Figuration, a common ground of rhetoric and anthropologyPhilippe-Joseph SalazarChapter 10. Tropical foundations and foundational tropes of cultureJames W. FernandezChapter 11. Embodied rhetorics of earnest beliefMichael HerzfeldChapter 12. An epistemological queryPierre MarandaChapter 13. Beyond the unsaid : Transcending language through languagePaul FriedrichChapter 14. Future imperfect : Imagining rhetoric cultureRobert HarimanNotes on ContributorsBibliographyIndex

"This collection of essays draws in some of the influential thinkers in anthropological rhetoric from both Europe and America. What is new here is the focus on the chiasm of rhetoric and culture, the mutual constitution of persuasive means and the larger cultures that provide the values about which we are to be persuaded."  ·  Bernard Bate, Yale University"Among them, the contributors put the study of culture on a new, well-worked-out foundation in rhetoric. Their efforts reward close attention."  ·  Stephan Feuchtwang, London School of Economics"Although I retain from classical British social anthropology a distaste for the word ‘culture' I think that Culture and Rhetoric is a very timely book because the future of the human economy is for people to trade at distance, not just things, but what they do for each other. Maybe ‘culture' expresses best the infinite variety of what that entails."  ·  Keith Hart, Goldsmiths College, London"Classical rhetoric viewed its calling as one both analytical and critical within a polity that aspired to be a republic. My reading of Culture and Rhetoric suggests that contemporary rhetoricians and anthropologists will now have to substitute the ancient republic with the oikumene, the whole habitation of sentient beings on this globe."  ·  Michael Carrithers, Durham University