Anthropology and Beauty

Organised around the theme of beauty, this innovative collection offers insight into the development of anthropological thinking on art, aesthetics and creativity in recent years. The volume incorporates current work on perception and generative processes, and seeks to move beyond a purely aesthetic and relativist stance. The chapters invite readers to consider how people sense and seek out beauty, whether through acts of human creativity and production; through sensory experience of sound, light or touch, or experiencing architecture; visiting heritage sites or ancient buildings; experiencing the environment through ‘places of outstanding natural beauty’; or through cooperative action, machine-engineering or designing for the future. <p><strong>1. </strong>Introduction <strong>2. </strong>The problem with beauty: an anthropological perspective <strong>3. </strong>The material labour of artful mathematics <strong>4. </strong>With beauty all around me, I walk <strong>5. </strong>The unexpected gift of beauty <strong>6. </strong>Beauty and captivation: Fuyuge <i>gab </i>and Gell’s anthropological theory of art 7.<strong> </strong>The continual changes: transforming art styles in Enlightenment Scotland and beyond <strong>8. </strong>Grace in moving and joy in sharing: the intrinsic Beauty of communicative musicality from birth <strong>9. </strong>The Favourite Sounds Project <strong>10. </strong>Colour palettes and beauty <strong>11. </strong>Aso iyi, aso eye: resplendence and the Yoruba prestige textile <i>aso-oke <strong> </strong></i><strong>12. </strong>Beauty as a capacity: a study of hands-in-craft <strong>13. </strong>Cinematographers’ skilled vision and aesthetic praxis <strong>14. </strong>Beauty as skill and ‘common sensing’ <strong>15. </strong>Fleshly beauty: an anthropological perspective <strong>16. </strong>Beauty in motion: collective creativity in contemporary dance <strong>17.</strong> Surprised by beauty: <i>Imagining Autism </i><strong>18. </strong>Threshold and temporality in architecture: practices of movement in Japanese architecture <strong>19. </strong>Carbuncles, surfaces and beautiful built environments <strong>20. </strong>Paradigms of transmission: aesthetic affinities and intertextualities in the art of Will Maclean <strong>21. </strong>Beauty and belonging <strong>22. </strong>Beauty and economy <strong>23. </strong>Mysterious equations: formulating good design for <i>Textiles U.S.A. <strong> 2</strong></i><strong>4. </strong>Engineering as a process of beauty <strong>25. </strong>Collaborative forms <strong>26. </strong>Appropriation, imitation and creation: glass beadwork among Panará people <strong>27. </strong>The beauty of sand-drawing in Vanuatu: kinship and continuity on Paama Island <strong>28. </strong>The beautiful and the blessed: brightness, balance and bones in Kyrgyz <i>shyrdak </i>felt <strong>29. </strong>From the North with my cello, or, five propositions on beauty</p>