Anthropology and cryptozoology : researching encounters with mysterious creatures / / edited by Samantha Hurn

• Pubblicazione: New York, N.Y. : , : Routledge, , 2017
• Edizione: 1st ed.
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (227 pages) : illustrations, tables
• Disciplina: 001.944
• Soggetto topico: Monsters - Psychological aspects; Cryptozoology; Anthropology
• Altri autori: HurnSamantha
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and index.
• Nota di contenuto: 1. The place of cryptids in taxonomic debates / Stephanie S. Turner -- 2. Cryptids, classification and categories of cats : an ethnozoological study of unidentified felids from eastern Indoneasia / Gregory Forth -- 3. Cryptid and credulity : the Zanzibar leopard and other imaginary beings / Martin T. Walsh and Helle V. Goldman -- 4. The Naga tiger-man and the modern assemblage of a myth / Michael Heneise -- 5. Human predation and animal sociality : the transformational agency of 'wolf people' in Mongolia / Mette M. High -- 6. Enigmatic bush dwarfs of West Africa : the case of the siyawesi of northwestern Benin / Sharon Merz -- 7. Suspending disbelief and experienceing the extraordinary : how radical participation may facilitate an understanding of aquatic snakes and fish-tailed beings in southern Africa / Penelope Bernard -- 8. Mermaids in Brazil : the (ongoing) creolisation of the water goddesses Oxum and Iemanja / Bettina E. Schmidt -- 9. Ganka : trickster or endangered species? An anthropologist's role in preventing the extinction of the New Jersey sea monster / Tanya J. King -- 10. Far from the madding crowd : big cats on Dartmoor and in Dorset, UK / Adrian Franklin -- 11. Land of beasts and dragons : contemporary myth-making in rural Wales / Samantha Hurn -- 12. Digesting 'cryptid' snakes : a phenomenological approach to the mythic and cosmogenetic properties of serpent hallucinations / Luci Attalla.
• Sommario/riassunto: Cryptozoology is best understood as the study of animals which, in the eyes of Western science, are extinct, unclassified or unrecognised. In consequence, and in part because of its selective methods and lack of epistemological rigour, cryptozoology is often dismissed as a pseudo-science. However, there is a growing recognition that social science can benefit from engaging with it, for as as social scientists are very well aware, 'scientific' categorisation and explanation represents just one of a myriad of systems used by humans to enable them to classify and make sense of the world around them. In many cultural contexts, myth, folk classification and lived experience challenge the 'truth' expounded by scientists. With a reflexive, anthropological approach and drawing on rich empirical and ethnographic studies from around the world, this volume engages with the theoretical and methodological issues raised by reported sightings of unrecognised animals. Bringing into sharp focus the anthropological value and challenges for methodology posed by beliefs about unclassified creatures, Anthropology and Cryptozoology: Exploring encounters with mysterious creatures will be of interest to anthropologists, sociologists and geographers working in the fields of research methods, anthrozoology, mythology and folklore and human-animal interaction.
• Titolo autorizzato: Anthropology and cryptozoology
• ISBN: 1-315-56729-6; 1-317-18045-3; 1-317-18046-1
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Record Nr.: 9910149532703321
• Lo trovi qui: Univ. Federico II
• Serie: Multispecies encounters.