Abstract

The notion of 'sociality' is now widely used within the social sciences and humanities. However, what is meant by the term varies radically, and the contributors here, through compelling and wide ranging essays, identify the strengths and weaknesses of current definitions and their deployment in the social sciences. By developing their own rigorous and innovative theory of human sociality, they re-set the framework of the debate and open up new possibilities for conceptualizing other forms of sociality, such as that of animals or materials. Cases from Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe explore the new directions of human sociality, illuminating how and why it is transformed when human beings engage with such major issues as economic downturn, climate change, new regimes of occupational and psychological therapy, technological innovations in robotics and the creation of new online, 'virtual' environments. This book is an invaluable resource, not only for research and teaching, but for anyone interested in the question of what makes us social.

Nicholas J. Long is Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of Being Malay in Indonesia (NUS/NIAS/University of Hawai’i Press, 2013) and the co-editor of Southeast Asian Perspectives on Power (Routledge, 2012) and The Social Life of Achievement (Berghahn Books, 2013).

Henrietta L. Moore is Director of the Institute for Global Prosperity, University College London where she is also Chair of Culture, Philosophy and Design. Among her recent books is Still Life: Hopes, Desires and Satisfactions (Polity Press, 2011).

“This book reclaims sociality as a research domain for socio-cultural anthropology, as it clearly emphasises the processual and biosocial character of sociality instead of looking at it as a product of social relations or as a biological capacity. The ethnographic case studies provide fine examples of the ever-changing forms in which humans relate to each other, to animals and to the environment, and of how they infuse objects and actions with meaning, as well as anticipate the future and imagine possible worlds.”  ·  Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale

"An ambitious book that aims to put both the concept and changing empirical status of sociality at the center of the agenda of anthropology and the social sciences more broadly… The contributions are all at a high level."  ·  Webb Keane, University of Michigan