Human Nature and Social Life: Perspectives on Extended Sociality

Jon Henrik Ziegler Remme · Kenneth Sillander

jun 2017 · Cambridge University Press

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What distinguishes humans from nonhuman 'others'? And how do these distinctions shape human sociality and the ways that humans relate to their others? Human Nature and Social Life brings together a collection of articles by prominent anthropologists to address these questions. The articles show how the fundamentally social nature of humans results in an extension of sociality to virtual, semiotic-material and nonhuman spheres, with humans therefore becoming part of 'extended socialities'. However, as the book's contributors demonstrate, human distinctness significantly bears upon these extended socialities, and the manner in which humans partake in them. Taking an ethnographic approach to its subject, this book demonstrates the continued value of studying the specificities of the human condition, and sets itself as a counterweight to current refutations of human exceptionalism.

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Jon Henrik Ziegler Remme is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology, Universitetet i Oslo. He has conducted research among the Ifugao of the Philippines and has published extensively on such themes as religion, rituals, causality, and human-animal relations, including the monograph Pigs and Persons in the Philippines (2014). He has twice won awards for best article of the year in Norsk antropologisk tidsskrift, Norway's national anthropological journal. He is currently turning his research interests towards the political aspects of lobster farming and fishing along the Norwegian west coast.

Kenneth Sillander is senior lecturer in sociology at the Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki. He has conducted long-term ethnographic research among the Bentian people of Indonesian Borneo and published articles on subjects such as kinship, religion, rituals, naming, and ethnicity. He has previously edited Anarchic Solidarity (with Thomas Gibson, 2011), Ancestors in Borneo Societies (with Pascal Couderc, 2012), and 'Belonging in Borneo: Refiguring Dayak Ethnicity in Indonesia' (special issue in the Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, with Jennifer Alexander, 2016).