Michael Carrithers is Professor of Anthropology at Durham University. He is author of a biography of the Buddha and of Why Humans Have Cultures (Oxford University Press, 1992). He has also written about Buddhist forest monks and of Jainism in India. At present he is researching rhetoric and public culture in East Germany.

• PrefaceIntroductionChapter 1. Inventions of hyperbolic cultureRalph CintronChapter 2. Medical rhetoric in the US and Africa: the oncologist as CharonMegan BieseleChapter 3. The diffuse in testimoniesStevan WeineChapter 4. Internal rhetorics: Constituting selves in diaries and beyondJein NienkampChapter 5. Ordeals of languageEllen BassoChapter 6. ‘As if Goya was on hand as a marksman’: Foot and mouth disease as a rhetorical and cultural phenomenonBrigitte NerlichChapter 7. Story seeds and the InchoateMichael CarrithersChapter 8. The palaestral aspect of rhetoricF.G. BaileyChapter 9. Rhetoric in the moral order: a critique of tropological approaches to cultureJames FernandezNotes on contributorsBibliographyIndex

“…a fine collection of essays illuminating situation uses of narratives, images and tropes that are not contemplated as ‘explanations’ but as cultural resources mobilized to impart meaning and order when facing concrete circumstances…a great variety of excellent analyses going beyond the disciplinary boundaries of anthropology…this book is a welcome contribution and the project I belongs to offers one of the most important shifts in European anthropology in the coming decade.” • Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale