The Well: A Story of Love, Death & Real Life in the Seminal Online Community

Amazon.com

The term "online community" has been sucked dry of meaning in recent years, but there was a time when it connoted exciting possibilities and radical change. One early experiment, the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), united smart, independent, left-leaning folks from all over as early as 1984, and still lives and breathes 17 years later. Journalist and long-time member Katie Hafner tells the story of its early days in The Well: A Story of Love, Death and Real Life in the Seminal Online Community.

Though the title isn't strictly accurate--there were comparatively primitive online communities long before 1984--the tale is well told and compelling. Started by visionary Stewart Brand and do-gooder Larry Brilliant, the dialup BBS offered a wide-open space for communication, developing relationships, and, inevitably, conflicts. Spicing up her story with excerpts from online posts, interviews with participants, and sometimes sordid details of WELL-being, Hafner shows that not all online communities are the same.

Though the WELL's social and business problems are legion--eventually it was bought by Salon.com--the participants and administrators consistently showed intelligence and determination, essential qualities for homesteading pioneers. Though the book can't begin to address big questions about virtual social environments (Do they help or hinder users' lives? Are they as deeply satisfying as traditional relationships? What makes them so popular?), it does help the reader begin to address them personally. That individual determination, aided by discussion with others, is the WELL's greatest legacy. --Rob Lightner

Book Description

The Well was conceived during the Orwellian year of 1984, yet instead of heralding Big Brother, it became a boundary-breaking cultural invention that helped change our world. Though few glimpsed its potential, it quickly became indispensable to the evolution of the Internet as we know it today. Its creators were Larry Brilliant, a visionary software engineer and philanthropic doctor, and Stewart Brand, Sixties legend and originator of The Whole Earth Catalog. They imagined a new kind of community, one whose members would meet in everyday space, as ideal communities always have, while also inhabiting a new kind of environment, the virtual ether of a world that hadn't even yet been named. By the end of the 1980s, the pioneering community founded by Brilliant and Brand was attracting thousands of early adopters, from former commune-dwellers to students to technologists to businesspeople to fans of the Grateful Dead, all participating in online conferences with other Well-beings (as they called themselves) on myriad topics. This fascinating anecdotal history unfolds their story. It is filled with memorable personalities and their early electronic postings, which are quoted as they were originally transmitted, as it analyzes the many reasons for the Well's legendary success, from its beginnings less than two decades ago up to the present day, including its recent purchase by salon.com.

Customer Reviews:

Familiar tales for any veteran of online forums.......2002-02-16

I liked this book. I've been there on well.com now and then, and it's true that the site was influential in forming the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other key initiatives in protecting the freedoms of the 'net. But the book is cool because even though Hafner says the Well is historic and unique, it's more like a very strong example of something we've all seen.

There's a soap opera pleasure to the conflicts in the book.

The Well's traditional attention to "process" can get annoying, but over all it's not so bad that any sanction against a user is heavily debated, unlike on some boards. You'll recognize the personalities and see the problems of trying to attract a wide range of smart outspoken people who can be jerks at times. You've seen this all before somewhere, and not just on the web.

Keeping a group at all cohesive when it is made of hundreds of strong personalities is classic challenge. The book is ultimately more about the problems of being in groups and communities, and of being human.

A Little Book about Big Things (like Life and Death).......2001-05-22

I finished the book with a sad, sober feeling. Yes, the word "death" absolutely belongs in the title. The book is about life and death. It's one of those little books that appears to be about something concrete and specific, and is in fact evocative of much deeper issues. I was reminded of what I experienced as the sometimes toxic atmosphere on The Well by the posts in the book, and by the accounts of some of the principal players. As well as the beatific spirits who made the whole thing run behind the scenes. The influence of the Farm -- that was new to me -- but it explains a lot.

Will people realize that this is an emotional story, a sad sobering story of dreams fulfilled, frustrated, and failed? That is what got me about it. It contains more pathos than many novels whose goal is to move readers. Going in, I took the subtitle as ironic, like the "Fear and Loathing" title of the gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson, but it is literal and straight. The very first page sets the tone and the book is true to that. The Well wasn't my way to the Internet, but the 17-year arc of the story made me feel my mortality.

my community - not entirely virtual; not especially virtuous.......2001-04-27

[Full disclosure: I am a member of the Well and have been for almost seven years as of the publication of this book.]

It's always been difficult for me to describe the Well to my non-Well friends, because there are so few virtual places that even approximate it, and they're even smaller, and practically no one knows what they're like either. "Computer conferencing" is what I say to my friends in business. "On-line community" is what I say to the people I think Might Get It. I also call it "the Peyton Place of cyberspace" and that metaphor (small town where everyone knows everyone else's history of indiscretions FAR TOO WELL) might be the most apt of the three, at least in my own experience.

Like any big amorphous concept, the Well is difficult to write about for a general audience. So Katie chose a story -- with love and friendship and grief and humor and all the other elements that make up a good story -- to carry her narrative. She chose a good one. Of course there are others. But this book (and before it, the WIRED article the book is based upon) comes closer to conveying the essence of the Well than anything else I've ever seen or read.

When the WIRED article was published I gave a copy to my mother, just to help her understand how it was that I had dozens of close friends I had never met. For a reader who wants to understand the astonishing power of true online community, in the light of human nature in all its ornery glory, I can't think of a better introduction.

A remarkable book.......2001-04-26

This is a terrific book. I appreciate that Katie Hafner understands her strength to be narrative. Limiting the focus of her narrative to the lives of a few of the core founders and early pioneers of the Well allows her to reach the sort of depth I recall experiencing there when I was a "Well being" for a time in the late eighties. I mostly hung out in the Parenting conference, because I was the father of teenage children and our family seemed to reel from one crisis to another during those years. The support and love I found there was extraordinary, and I have found it nowhere else since, except within my own dear family. Hafner succeeds remarkably in capturing the intangible essence of the Well, the special human warmth that no one could have predicted or planned ... and no one has succeeded in duplicating since.

Hafner also deals with the core issue of community, an issue central to the Well's success, and possibly central to it's eventual - what? - transformation. I was about to say, "dissolution," but an incarnation of some sort of Well lives on at Salon.com. The early Well, the one I knew, was a pioneering online community, before that phrase became today's buzzword meaning little more than a chat room. The online community was the core of a larger, real-life, flesh-and-blood community, in which people truly lived and loved and became sick and got well, and sometimes died.

Everyone who hungers for community - and that means everyone awake to the grief of modern life - should read this book. Most of us understand true community by its absence. My most vivid and unexpected realization about the meaning of community occurred many years ago, when our children were still little. We lived for a time in an Eichler suburb in Mountain View, California. Each house on our block was surrounded by a high fence. After some months of living there, we hadn't met a single neighbor. I was out mowing the lawn one sunny Saturday morning, with no one in sight, and I suddenly understood in a way I never had before that our commercial culture has a vested interest in the destruction of community. Without community, each of us becomes a consuming atom, each with our own lawnmower, each with our own set of tools, each with our own copy of every trinket. In a true community we would be sharing tools and sharing labor. GNP is maximized by eroding community. Our commercial culture has a vested interest in the destruction of community. And conversely, true community subverts this culture.

It's because of this paradoxical dynamic that the Well - to the extent that it *was* a true community - could not retain its character while evolving as a commercial enterprise. This is part of the story.

Read this book. Let it provoke you to examine the role of community in your own life.

Is it about the Well? Well, it's well-written. :-).......2001-04-17

Katie is a wonderful writer full of inspirational sparks. If anyone can write without leaving a trace of writing, she would be that person.

I remember being struck dumb after spotting her cover story about the WELL in Wired, which served as the ground for this book. It's such an astonishing and compelling story.

As a guest professor in Berkeley, she has led me into a new world, through the WELL. The Well is probably the most influential online community in the world and a pool for talents, weird but wonderful. Want to know the secret of it?

Book Description

eyewitness account of army attack, tr V Perera

Customer Reviews:

REVIEW QUOTES.......2001-09-06

TESTIMONY: DEATH OF A GUATEMALAN VILLAGE is an eyewitness account by a Guatemalan primary school teacher detailing one instance of violent conflict between the indigenous Maya people and the army. An accidental clash between the village's "civil patrol" and a Guatemalan army troop leads to the execution or imprisonment of many villagers. Written in clear, direct prose, this account reads like an adventure story while conveying an historical reality.

"Victor Montejo writes vividly, with a translator of distinction, about another Latin American reality." --The Guardian

"Montejo has first-hand involvement with the violence that Didion both mystifies and, in a morbid way, romanticizes. He conveys a rare sense of the lived reality in Central America, in a clear storytelling voice that makes it chillingly human."
--San Francisco Sun

A fast, powerful read, Testimony is a superior work!.......1998-12-08

Although it is a fast, exciting read, Montejo's Testimony is an extremely powerful, raw book. It realistically depicts the genocide occurring in Guatemala between 1980-82. He is brutally graphic, but touches one in such a manner that one is compelled to pursue the subject. This personal, heart-wrenching story is a moving experience for anyone, especially those interested in Guatemala and Central America.

Victor endures unbearable pain yet maintains hope........1998-11-28

A poignant message to those who will see. Using his own words (translated from his Mayan dialect), Victor Montejo paints a picture of endurance, pain, and hopelessness for the Mayans of his homeland--Guatemala. His ability to endure and survive the abuses of the Kaibiles (Mayan soldiers hell bent on destruction and murder) allows a ray of hope to pierce the seeming hopelessness. Separated from his family, friends, and students, Victor maintains a Christian ethic--he does not believe in murder. In fact, he faces his oppressors with dignity and responds with kindness even when it seems all is lost. To discover the outcome of Victor's painful trials--you must read this suspense-filled, non-fiction book.

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Heavenly!
A Must Read
Earthly Delight
The Heavenly Village
nic rocks and his la class loves him!!!!!!!

The Heavenly Village
Cynthia Rylant
Manufacturer: Scholastic Paperbacks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0439231493

Book Description

Here is Cynthia Rylant's most memorable writing yet -- a spiritual novel about the wonders of life and the afterlife. In this book, a series of touching vignettes, she paints a moving picture of the stopping place between heaven and earth -- and in the process, she reminds us that life is an extraordinary gift, and that those we love are never really far away.

Customer Reviews:

Heavenly!.......2007-05-17

I love this book! It is a book about a Heavenly Village for people who pass on who aren't finished with their "earth things" and still have "half a heart in heaven and half a heart on earth". The people in the city stay in the village for different reasons until they are ready to move on and they resolve their unfinished business. It is a very positive, touching and reassuring book as I find all of Cynthia Rylant's books to be. I would reccommend all her books.

A Must Read.......2007-01-11

This book is my daughters favorit book. She is 15 yrs. old and although she first read it 4 years ago it continues to be a book she picks up and reads over and over again

Earthly Delight.......2006-11-08

Soothing and sympathetic to those who are grieving, yet possessing humor and whimsy. Might be a great jumping off point for discussion with kids in event of a death of loved one...or just because!

The Heavenly Village.......2006-02-28

This book is about people on earth that die and go up to heaven. The people that die didn't finish there story and need more memories or they are waiting for someone like a person or a pet. So God sends them to live in The Heavenly Village. some people stay there a short time untill they are ready to go. One person was waiting for his son he didn't have man memories so when he got to heaven he could only say " My son! " he was very sad so God sent him to the heavenly village and every night God let him go down to earth right in time for dinner. After dinners over the man talk to to his wife [but] she can't hear him. Then he goes spends time with his son and watchs t.v. or reads him a book or plays with him and his bear! This book is so sweet and i would diffently read it over and over again. It is a book that should inspire you and it did me! I like this book and can't wait to tell my friends about this book!!

nic rocks and his la class loves him!!!!!!!.......2005-06-09

The book I read for LA, The Heavenly Village by Cynthia Rylant, was the most amazingly, outstandingly, unbelievably BORING book I've read this year. I could not believe that this book was ever written. The book is about some accountant who never believed in the heaven idea so when he dies he goes to the heavenly village because he is "not quite ready for heaven". In this village he becomes the timekeeper, which is a very special job that not just any one can do but he gets to because he's so gosh-darn good at math.This book was the most I've read about nothing in my life. Rylant's description of the accountant going to the village was random and insensible. Now, when anyone describes the experience of traveling to heaven, it is hard and almost takes energy to not make it sound at least a little moving and touching, but this book destroys the whole concept of it. I mean, you mine as well read a description of the perfect utopia... by Edger Allan Poe. Cynthia Rylant ruined the idea of this heavenly village that could have been some of an idea. I would recommend this book to no one on earth for no one; and I mean no one, deserves this amount of boredom that I had to experience. This book should have never been written.

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You'll Find Out How a Village Can Die . . . Very Interesting!
Light but always enjoyable books
Best book of the series
Like The Mystical Art on Her Book Jackets, Beaton's Hamish Opens a Gateway To The Craved High Magic of Irish Village Life
I love Hamesh, but this one didn't do it for me

Death of a Village
M. C. Beaton
Manufacturer: Grand Central Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0446613711

Book Description

Intent on having a quiet time by just sitting in a deck chair in his garden, Hamish Macbeth is quite disturbed when a very agitated Elspeth Grant, Loch- dubh's local reporter and astrologer, arrives. It seems that three citizens of nearby Stoyre have moved to Loch- dubh-but they are quite unwilling to offer Elspeth any facts as to why, causing the reporter in her to suspect they were frightened out of their former village. So now it's up to constable Hamish Macbeth to step into the case and take a small trip to investigate the goings-on in Stoyre. After many frights and dangers, Hamish soon discovers that a sunken German ship from World War I and its cache of gold bullion are the key to solving the strange demise of the once lively village.

Customer Reviews:

You'll Find Out How a Village Can Die . . . Very Interesting!.......2007-06-08

Death of a Village has to be the most intriguing title in the Hamish Macbeth series. In all of the other titles, there's a reference to a death of a single person . . . who can be spotted in the first few pages of the book. In this case, you'll have a strong suspicion which village is doomed . . . but you won't know what's coming until it happens.

Normally, Hamish Macbeth manages to solve one major crime during the course of a book. Well, in Death of a Village, Hamish is a positive crime-stopping superman . . . with a little help from his friends.

The book opens in an odd fashion: Hamish makes a rare visit to off-the-beaten-path Stoyre and finds a curious quiet and reticence in the town. But he's even more amazed to find that the church is full for services during the day on a Monday. That's some religious revival!

Intrigued by the change, Hamish recruits local reporter, horoscope writer, and frustrated Hamish-chaser, Elspeth Grant, to help him find out what's going on. Nosing around and taking in Sunday services reveals nothing out of the ordinary . . . except to confirm the curious quiet and reticence that Hamish spotted on the first visit. But, before long, there's a surprise in Stoyre. Hamish eventually decides to take a holiday and spend it in Stoyre to get the lay of the land.

His concern is quickly distracted by a break-in at the grocery in Braikie, where all the wine and spirits have been taken. But Hamish senses that something funny is going on. Using his initiative, Hamish checks out the records of the grocer's supplier and makes several surprising finds. But the success backfires when Hamish adds to his local reputation as a woman chaser.

Before the first case is done, he gets a call from a frightened Bella Comyn and her fear of her husband. Pretty soon, the husband is missing and Hamish is puzzled by odds and ends of the case. Sleuthing again leads to unexpected evidence.

A visit to a Lochdubh widow, Mrs. Annie Docherty, leads Hamish to hear a surprising accusation which he decides to investigate with Mrs. Docherty's help. It quickly becomes curiouser and curiouser.

Through all of these investigations, Hamish achieves successes that are quite impressive. Once again, promotion threatens and Hamish has to pull out all the stops to derail being uprooted from his beloved Lochdubh.

M. C. Beaton packed enough mysteries and action into this story to make three regular Hamish Macbeth stories.

If you like Hamish Macbeth, you'll love Death of a Village.

Highly recommended.

Light but always enjoyable books.......2007-02-23

The Hamish MacBeth stories are always good for pleasent, light reading.

Best book of the series.......2006-08-18

This book is my favorite in the Hamish MacBeth series.

Unlike the previous books where there is one person or incident that is odd and needs investigating, in this book, it's an entire village that seems strange.

The citizens of the seaside town of Storye are acting quite odd. They are silent, avoidant, and are inexplicably flocking to religious revivals led by a suprisingly uncharismatic minister. In addition, a cottage in the village belonging to a retired Army Major has been blown up and nobody in the town claims to have seen or heard anything, nor do they have any interest in the matter.

Hamish realizes something is very "off" and, with the help of Elspeth Grant, a local reporter, starts to get to the bottom of it. There is more than one mystery in this book (the village of Storye isn't the only thing that's weird) and the plots intertwine very nicely. There is a very good twist towards the end that I did not see coming.

Hamish is the same guy we all know and love: he still has lousy luck with women, he's still treated terribly by boorish Inspector Blair who's still jealous of him, and he's still content to lead a simple and quiet life with his dog, Lugs. And as usual, he takes all the craziness in stride and does his job with humor, courage, ingenuity, and a strong sense of loyalty to his weird neighbors.

Like The Mystical Art on Her Book Jackets, Beaton's Hamish Opens a Gateway To The Craved High Magic of Irish Village Life.......2005-11-25

In the process of reading this book I felt the tug to return to its Highland villages; I felt like I lived there and didn't want to finish the read and have to leave. That was enough reason to continue on in this series.

Hamish is my type of hero. I warmed right into M.C. Beaton's drawing of his character to appear, and be called, lazy, while she subtly portrayed him, through sauntering village vignettes as the best type of hero. He's a man who gets done whatever needs doing; a constable who gets to the bottom of issues, corruption, and life's daily problems of his constituents. During all that, he unravels mysteries of deep malice and cooks for his dog, Lugs. At the end of the day, or at sunrise or noon, I wouldn't call that lazy.

Ironically (or maybe sanely), Hamish accomplishes all this because of, rather than in spite of his methodical sleuthing, his stepping around the maniacal push of wheel spinning, which we humans have come in recent decades to see as being award-winningly purposeful. The term "looking busy" didn't get coined for nothing. And it can't pay dues for anything, though it is sometimes a necessary (and wise) maneuver.

The easy ways Hamish repeatedly gets around the faultless facades of Detective Chief Inspector Blair, and the ale-bubbling, bumbling boot-dragging of cohort-friend Jimmy Anderson is genius, endearing and simple.

If most people are like me, they read escape fiction of this type to regain and remember what Hamish has never forgotten, never lost; an ability, more like a stubborn commitment, to live in the moment, to see (not flit through, or slide/slither around) what's going on in his world. And based on his slowly, carefully gathered observations, he repairs the off-base while he ferrets and flounders the bountiful wrongs in life. He's not only a true hero; he's a true man and a true village constable. What a guy.

My favorite vignettes were the shenanigans of the geriatric couple sleuthing around on their knees in the wet grass outside the window of their nursing home rooms, struggling to catch, tie, and disable the red hands of evil. Beaton's characterization of this mix-matched pair was as heartwarming and cheer inducing as a fiction world can get. Move over Cocoon, step aside Cuckoo's Nest, we're flying over the Highlands with one (actually a couple of Energizer Bunny oldies in this case) of the best.

Beaton's resolutions are pondering-ly, somewhat playfully, poignant, rather than being painted in over-the-rainbow, Kansas type sunset hues. But, as Hamish sets down his pipe (does he actually smoke one?) and pampers his dog at the end of a day or at the summing of a saga, solitude may twinge with a lonely edge, but the rightness of personal space never felt so cozy. Of course Hamish's spicy, feisty relationship with Elspeth may not have lost its embers.

Throughout the story I wondered WHY Lugs disliked Elspeth with such growling gusto. Was he chust jealous? Or was there something deep, dark and sinister running through her DNA? (Loved the way Hamish scowled and said so in observation of Elspeth's garish dress code, which changed styles subtly yet blatantly through the plots and subplots.)

I feel literally blessed to know that any time I need to settle for a while into a sane, slow, sensual world, and share a mystery beside a roaring, steady fire in a Highland's hearth, I can pick up another novel from MC Beaton's Hamish-Macbeth-Gateway-to-Ireland.

One of the best parts? I don't have to toss my fingernail clippers out of my purse to get through security checks at airports, don't have to slug through jet-lag, and don't have to drag dead-on-my-feet a few days to get there and back.

Easy chair, stay poofed. Lamp be clicked. We are soooo lucky to have these types of books.

Linda G. Shelnutt

P.S. I do like to fly places in reality once in a while instead of exclusively using the ozone.

I love Hamesh, but this one didn't do it for me.......2005-01-19

Rather than reading this book, I listened to the unabridged version. Perhaps that affected my reaction to the book, but the Hamesh MacBeth formula just seemed to be getting stale -- brilliant but much-maligned Hamesh solves cases despite interference from colleagues at head office. There were a lot of subplots going on in this mystery so there were a lot of mini-cases being solved. Because of this, there were a number of plots, but the main plot (from which the title comes) involves a very out of the way Scottish coastal town where some sort of religious revival is underway. Hamesh MacBeth, unambitious but brilliant police constable for the area, has a hunch that something sinister is going on, and starts trying to figure out what it is in between solving various cases despite the handicap of having to deal with the rest of the police force -- there is, for example, an insurance fraud case that has no bearing on the central plot, as nearly as I can figure out.

I think the book would have been better if the author had adhered more closely to a central mystery (as she has in previous books). At times, this book seemed like a collection of stories -- each entertaining, but hearing one after another story of clever Hamesh didn't work for me. I preferred Hamesh when he was a little less heroic and more down to earth.

That said, on the whole, this is a great series. And I love the Highland Scottish setting.

Torregreca: Life, Death, and Miracles in a Southern Italian Village (Italia Series)

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Historical Perspective of Southern ITalian Town
Disapointing

Torregreca: Life, Death, and Miracles in a Southern Italian Village (Italia Series)
Ann Cornelisen
Manufacturer: Steerforth Italia
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1586420445
Release Date: 1998-06-01

Book Description

IN 1959 ANN CORNELISEN came to the impoverished region of Basilicata. A young, unmarried Protestant woman, she found herself in a tradition-bound, male-dominated Catholic world. She smoked, drove a car, occasionally drank at the village bar, and quickly became the object of disapproving gossip. With aplomb and tough-minded determination, Cornelisen established a school and gained the acceptance, if not always the approval, of the community. In this absorbing memoir, she renders the people, landscape, and vexing social ills of her adopted home with candor and compassion.

Customer Reviews:

Historical Perspective of Southern ITalian Town.......2002-11-06

This very graphic and descriptive book opened up my eyes to the realities that many of our ancestors faced in their lives.
This compassionate woman described her time in a small town
in Italy in a sharp contrast to most books on the subject,
perhaps somewhat like "Christ Stopped in Eboli"
For the person interested in Recent Italian history, this book
will greatly enlarge your understanding of the plight of the southern italian.
if you are looking for romantic fluff, don't read this book.

Disapointing.......2002-08-29

I was misled by Frances Mayes' name listed next to the author's.
She wrote only the introduction. This was not a colaboration.
The book itself was basically dry, boring, dated, plot-less and less than wonderful.
I think it was reprinted to "jump on the "Tuscany" bandwagon" of popularity. I could not recommend this book.

Art and Death in a Senufo Village (Traditional arts of Africa)

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Art and Death in a Senufo Village (Traditional arts of Africa)
Anita J. Glaze
Manufacturer: Indiana Univ Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Murder at the manor.
The best of British style mysteries

A Fine Place for Death
Ann Granger
Manufacturer: St Martins Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0312117876

Customer Reviews:

Murder at the manor........2005-07-04

Two teenagers turn up missing, then dead, in separate incidents in this quiet English village. One is the daughter of the lord of the manor. The other comes from a working class broken home. Is there a serial killer on the loose? Are the girls as innocent as they seem? Are their murders even connected? What about the ensuing deaths? Meredith does some amateur sleuthing, and CID officer Markby, who wants to marry her, wishes she'd just keep out of it. But the evidence she discovers proves invaluable, so much so that she nearly ends up dead as well. What's a copper to do?
This somewhat slow-moving mystery sustains interest with its settings (a 200 year-old mausoleum, for one), and its colorful cast of supporting characters (the village drinker, not an alcoholic, mind you, the insane lady of the manor, the man-hunting American secretary), and its Englishness. Granger is a decent writer and a good storyteller.

The best of British style mysteries.......1998-10-05

Ann Granger is one of the few authors around today who still knows how to write an authentic British mystery. She is one of the best.

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Death Speaks Softly
Anthea Fraser
Manufacturer: Doubleday Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 038524147X

Placing the Dead: Tombs, Ancestral Villages, and Kinship Organization in Madagascar

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Placing the Dead: Tombs, Ancestral Villages, and Kinship Organization in Madagascar
Maurice Bloch
Manufacturer: Waveland Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Book Description

Now available from Waveland Press, the first detailed ethnographic study of the dominant cultural group in Madagascar, the Merina- -a society of over one million of South East Asian origin. Placing the Dead contains the first full-length study of the two most famous aspects of the culture of Madagascar: the existence of massive megalithic tombs and the complex funerary rituals, which involve the exhumation of the recently dead. Both of these aspects are explained in terms of their place in the belief system and social organization of the Merina people. The funerary rituals serve to reincorporate the Merina who have died--away from the traditional homeland-- into what they believe is the society of the ancestors by placing them in the tombs that stand on this traditional homeland. This reincorporation of the dead into an unchanging order based on kinship and traditional territorial association is the answer of the living to the precariousness of contractual ties in everyday political and economic life. Naturally, this study raises an interesting question: how do bilateral descent groups combine the element of choice with notions of descent? A close study of the relationship to tombs and the reinterpretive power of ritual provides the answer for the Merina case.

3 Titles By M.C. Beaton Hamish MacBeth Series : Death of a Hussy - Death of a Snob - Death of a Village

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3 Titles By M.C. Beaton Hamish MacBeth Series : Death of a Hussy - Death of a Snob - Death of a Village
M.C. Beaton
Manufacturer: various
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000VTECHW

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