Keeping Company: An Anthropology of Being-in-Relation

This book explores relational modalities in a time of identity politics, drawing inspiration from the Yanyuwa's art of keeping company. It critically engages with reductive identity politics and offers an accessible engagement with identity politics across cultural differences.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 184 pages
Publication date: 25 September 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This captivating book delves into the intricate realm of relational modalities in a time of heightened identity politics. Drawing inspiration from the art of keeping company, a profound relational habit rooted in a kincentric ontology and praxis of interconnected life among the Yanyuwa, Indigenous owners of lands and waters in northern Australia, it embarks on a profound exploration. Through meticulous analysis, the book critically engages with the counterproductive habit of reductive identity politics and the flattening effects it brings, including exceptionalism, individuated rights, limited empathic reach, and a lack of enchantment in the other. Spanning ethnographic insights, conceptual analysis, and personal reflection, Keeping Company provides an accessible entry point into the complexities of identity politics as navigated in the present era across diverse cultural landscapes. This insightful work will captivate scholars and students from anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and Indigenous studies, as well as those passionate about cultivating better relationships with the world, their neighbors, strangers, and themselves.

Weight: 453g
Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032155630