Knots: Ethnography of the Moral in Culture and Social Thought

Knots are well known as symbols of moral relationships. This book develops an exciting new view of this otherwise taken-for-granted image and considers their metaphoric value in and for moral order. In chapters that focus on Japan, China, Europe, South America and in several Pacific Island societies, granular ethnography depicts how knots are deployed to express unity in daily and ritual embodiment, political authority and the cosmos, as well as in social thought. The volume will be of interest to anthropologists and other scholars concerned with metaphor and symbolism, material culture and technology.

David Lipset is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, USA.

Eric K. Silverman, former Professor of Anthropology at Wheelock College, is now Resident Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, USA.