Menu Expand

Existence in the Details

Cite BOOK

Style

Piette, A. (2015). Existence in the Details. Theory and Methodology in Existential Anthropology. Translated by Matthew Cunningham. Duncker & Humblot. https://doi.org/10.3790/978-3-428-54677-0
Piette, Albert. Existence in the Details: Theory and Methodology in Existential Anthropology. Translated by Matthew Cunningham. Duncker & Humblot, 2015. Book. https://doi.org/10.3790/978-3-428-54677-0
Piette, A (2015): Existence in the Details: Theory and Methodology in Existential Anthropology. Translated by Matthew Cunningham, Duncker & Humblot, [online] https://doi.org/10.3790/978-3-428-54677-0

Format

Existence in the Details

Theory and Methodology in Existential Anthropology. Translated by Matthew Cunningham

Piette, Albert

Anthropology, Existence and Individuals, Vol. 1

(2015)

Additional Information

Book Details

Pricing

About The Author

Albert Piette is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Paris-Nanterre and Researcher at the Centre for Ethnology and Comparative Sociology (CNRS). He is the author of books in French about anthropological theory, methodology of details, religious phenomena, and especially existential anthropology.

Abstract

This book is an anthropology book, not a social and cultural anthropology book, but an existential anthropology book. It presents a critique of the theories and methods of the social sciences, which Albert Piette reproaches for side-stepping human beings, their modes of being and more generally the fact of existing. The book also offers an original combination of methods for exploring the details of existence: the particularities of each person in a group, the succession of situations in a day, and the subtlety of moments of presence. It gives rise to new theoretical propositions on what constitutes the specificity of human existence and social life.This book is an anthropology book, not a social and cultural anthropology book, but an existential anthropology book. It presents a critique of the theories and methods of the social sciences, which Albert Piette reproaches for side-stepping human beings, their modes of being and more generally the fact of existing. The book also offers an original combination of methods for exploring the details of existence: the particularities of each person in a group, the succession of situations in a day, and the subtlety of moments of presence. It gives rise to new theoretical propositions on what constitutes the specificity of human existence and social life.

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Contents 7
Figures, Tables and Charts 9
Introduction 11
Part One: Wholes and Particularities 16
I. A critique of the operation of the social sciences 16
1. The “good” sociological object 16
2. Cultural ethnography and interactional ethnography 21
II. Leftovers of details: a photographic experiment 33
III. What is the minor mode of reality? 39
Part Two: Existence and Days 45
I. Displacement and continuity 45
II. Plurality, laterality, singularity 55
III. Existential anthropology: from sociology to non-sociology 63
Part Three: Presences and Intensities 68
I. “Entering into” presence 68
II. Reposity chart and intensitometry 72
III. Mitigated humans: what can be concluded? 86
IV. Phenomenographic paths for analyzing presence 90
Conclusion 99
I. An ontology of the individual 99
II. Minima 100
III. Where is “society”? 104
IV. A narrative of origin 109
References 113