In this classic book, Michael Taussig explores the social significance of the devil in the folklore of contemporary plantation workers and miners in South America. Grounding his analysis in Marxist theory, Taussig finds that the fetishization of evil, in the image of the devil, mediates the conflict between precapitalist and capitalist modes of objectifying the human condition. He links traditional narratives of the devil-pact, in which the soul is bartered for illusory or transitory power, with the way in which production in capitalist economies causes workers to become alienated from the commodities they produce. A new chapter for this anniversary edition features a discussion of Walter Benjamin and Georges Bataille that extends Taussig’s ideas about the devil-pact metaphor.
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In this classic book, Taussig explores the social significance of the devil in the folklore of contemporary plantation workers and miners in South America. A new chapter for this anniversary edition features a discussion of Walter Benjamin and Georges Bataille that extends some of the ideas discussed in the original text.
About the Author
Michael T. Taussig is professor of anthropology at Columbia University. He is author of ten books, including What Color Is the Sacred? and Walter Benjamin's Grave.
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This books attempts to interpret what are to us in the industrialized world the exotic ideas of some rural people in Columbia and Bolivia concerning the meaning of the capitalist relations of production and exchange into which they are daily being drawn. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
proletarian devil contract, neophyte proletarians, peasant sphere, baptized bill, llama fat, spirit owners, devil contracts, tin barons, peasant mode, phantom objectivity, proletarian labor, curing rites, peasant plots, mountain spirits, precapitalist societies, devil figure, commodity fetishism Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
South America, Puerto Tejada, Sergio Arboleda, United States, Palo River, Jesus Christ, Latin America, Middle Ages, Garcilaso de la Vega, Great Cane, Julio Arboleda, Cenecio Mina, Green Monster, Jaime Gomez, Juan Rojas, Adam Smith, Costas Arguedas, Gobernador del Cauca, Jaramillo Uribe, Mount Kaata, New Earth, Santa Eulalia, Santiago Eder, Third World, Virgin of Guadelupe New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
This books attempts to interpret what are to us in the industrialized world the exotic ideas of some rural people in Columbia and Bolivia concerning the meaning of the capitalist relations of production and exchange into which they are daily being drawn. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
proletarian devil contract, neophyte proletarians, peasant sphere, baptized bill, llama fat, spirit owners, devil contracts, tin barons, peasant mode, phantom objectivity, proletarian labor, curing rites, peasant plots, mountain spirits, precapitalist societies, devil figure, commodity fetishism Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
South America, Puerto Tejada, Sergio Arboleda, United States, Palo River, Jesus Christ, Latin America, Middle Ages, Garcilaso de la Vega, Great Cane, Julio Arboleda, Cenecio Mina, Green Monster, Jaime Gomez, Juan Rojas, Adam Smith, Costas Arguedas, Gobernador del Cauca, Jaramillo Uribe, Mount Kaata, New Earth, Santa Eulalia, Santiago Eder, Third World, Virgin of Guadelupe New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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This book cites 57
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- New Science (Penguin Classics) by Giambattista Vico on page 1, page 102, and Back Matter
- The Protestant Ethic And the Spirit of Capitalism by Gilbert Geis on page 22, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Economy Editions) by Max Weber on page 22, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Seven Red Sundays by Ramon J. Sender on page 28, and Back Matter
- Maya History and Religion (Civilization of the American Indian Series) by J. Thompson on page 178, and Back Matter
See all 57 books this book cites
- Songs and Gifts at the Frontier (Current Research in Ethnomusicology: Outstanding Dissertations) by Jose S. Buenconsejo on 4 pages
- A Refuge in Thunder: Candomblé and Alternative Spaces of Blackness (Blacks in the Diaspora) by Rachel E. Harding on 4 pages
- Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography by James Clifford on page 173, page 176, and Back Matter
- Card Sharps and Bucket Shops: Gambling in Nineteenth-Century America by Ann Fabian in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense by Michael Shermer on page 241, and Back Matter
See all 100 books citing this book
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