Date of publishing:
1.6.2016
The Český lid provides open access to all of its content under licenseCreative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International.
Abstract:
In the theoretical section of the study, I present selected themes of the ontological turn, its merits, but also its difficulties that I try to overcome by means of present-day phenomenological anthropology. The key question – in which are the examined otherness and its apprehending grounded? – I attempt to answer through the concepts of the everyday experience and the lifeworld. In the empirical section of the study, I illustrate the theory with the ethnography of Maya perception of crosses, mountains and caves, which are considered to be living and acting beings. Then, I situate Maya cosmology into lived experience of both natural and social world, into an ongoing human engagement with the land and with the beings that dwell therein. Special attention is devoted to the phenomenal and existential aspects of the mountains and their importance, which is based not only on their representations, but also on the mountains as such.
Keywords
Guatemala, the Maya, religion, anthropology of nature, ontological turn, phenomenological anthropology
Article Text
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