Materiality and Meaning at an Annual Harvest Gathering
| dc.contributor.advisor | Foster, Morris W. | |
| dc.creator | Colbert, Deborah L. | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2019-06-03T20:35:25Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2019-06-03T20:35:25Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2012 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Every autumn, people from diverse walks of life gather for a four-day Harvest Gathering at the home of a Native American flute-maker and musician who is widely recognized as a tradition-bearer. Gathered from the wide social and cultural networks in which he travels, participants come together to share their diverse traditions and cultural perspectives while striving to construct mutual orientation through a variety of social and ceremonial activities. Many participants are strangers to each other and others do not share English as a primary language. While language certainly plays a role in their efforts to create common ground, most of the work is done in the realm of the non-verbal - the exchange of objects, sharing the day-to-day chores, dance, music, ritual forms and bodily sensations, silence and engagement of the physical landscape which is, in turn, a discourse materialized and infused with particular constellations of social and cosmologic values. In this paper, I consider the processes of material semiosis with which participants anchor themselves to the Gathering and to each other. I combine concepts of topology from Actor Network Theory with spatial indexicality from the anthropology of communication in order to analyze the processes by which participants create an indexically-anchored topology for mutual points of reference through exchanges of a multitude of circulating objects, cultural practices, and narratives from the distant times and places of their homes. | |
| dc.format.extent | 362 pages | |
| dc.format.medium | application.pdf | |
| dc.identifier | 99173242402042 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/11244/320196 | |
| dc.language | en_US | |
| dc.relation.requires | Adobe Acrobat Reader | |
| dc.subject | Indians of North America--Communication | |
| dc.subject | Indians of North America--Rites and ceremonies | |
| dc.subject | Nonverbal communication | |
| dc.thesis.degree | Ph.D. | |
| dc.title | Materiality and Meaning at an Annual Harvest Gathering | |
| dc.type | text | |
| dc.type | document | |
| ou.group | College of Arts and Sciences::Department of Anthropology |
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