The essays assembled in this volume are shaped by conditions—both enabling and constraining—that can perhaps best be described as an “ethnographic chiasmus.” This expression refers to the surprise and reversal of position that are characteristic of fieldwork, and it attends to the fact that transcultural understanding comes about as a meeting, touching, or “crossing.” Chiasmus also pertains to the relationship between culture and rhetoric in general. Culture structures rhetoric; rhetoric structures culture. Both are coemergent. In order to elucidate this process, ethnography has to focus on the manifold modes of rhetoric through which culture-specific patterns of thought and action are created.
ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The ethnographic chiasmusPrologue: Our barjo brought us together! Obituary for BaldambeRhetoric in the creation of Hamar culture‘Face’ and the personDo the Hamar have a concept of honour?Speech situations and social controlMichere - How the whipping wand speaksPolitical discourse in an egalitarian societyTo share or not to share: Notes on authority and anarchyLomotor’s talk, or the imperial gerundPredicaments of war and peaceTemptations of war and the struggle for peaceRhetoric in the context of warThe genius loci of HamarRhetorics of local knowledgeMeanings and rhetoric of the barjo aelaMagic and the rhetorical willMantic and magical confidence: The work of persuasionEpilogue: What caused Baldambe’s death?BibliographyMap: The Hamar and their neighboursIndexesIndex of themesIndex of dramatis personaeIndex of places and peoplesIndex of authors
