In many societies and for many people, religiosity is only incidentally connected with texts or theologies, church or mosque, temple or monastery. Drawing on a lifetime of ethnographic work among people for whom religion is not principally a matter of faith, doctrine, or definition, Michael Jackson turns his attention to those situations in life where we come up against the limits of language, our strength, and our knowledge, yet are sometimes thrown open to new ways of understanding our b...

Recent world-wide political developments have persuaded many people that we are again living in what Hannah Arendt called “dark times.” Jackson’s response to this age of uncertainty is to remind us how much experience falls outside the concepts and categories we habitually deploy in rendering life manageable and intelligible. Drawing on such critical thinkers as Hannah Arendt, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Karl Jaspers, whose work was profoundly influenced by the catastrophes that o...

Michael Jackson has spent much of his career elaborating his rich conception of lifeworlds, mining his ethnographic and personal experience for insights into how our subjective and social lives are mutually constituted.In How Lifeworlds Work, Jackson draws on years of ethnographic fieldwork in West Africa to highlight the dynamic quality of human relationships and reinvigorate the study of kinship and ritual. How, he asks, do we manage the perpetual process of accommodatio...

The Paper Nautilus is about loss – the forms it takes, how we go on living in the face of it, and the mysterious ways that new life and new beginnings are born of brokenness. The paper nautilus provides a vivid image of this interplay of death and rebirth since, for new life to begin, the angelically beautiful but fragile shell that sustained a former life must be shattered. Michael Jackson has recourse to his ethnographic fieldwork among the Kuranko of Sierra Leone, as well as autobiograp...

Michael Jackson's Lifeworlds is a masterful collection of essays, the culmination of a career aimed at understanding the relationship between anthropology and philosophy. Seeking the truths that are found in the interstices between examiner and examined, world and word, and body and mind, and taking inspiration from James, Dewey, Arendt, Husserl, Sartre, Camus, and, especially, Merleau-Ponty, Jackson creates in these chapters a distinctive anthropological pursuit of existential in...

Internationally-acclaimed anthropologist and poet Michael Jackson travels his natal New Zealand, reflecting on the idea of origins. Visiting old haunts and old friends, he ponders the hold our histories have over us, and the enduring power of our first experiences in life. Jackson reflects on the ways we tell our life stories, write our national histories, assign value, allocate blame, and determine cause. His recurring theme is the tension between the forces that shape us and our freedom...

Journeys through the Congo, Sierra Leone and Outback Australia in an inventive memoir by a Commonwealth Poetry Prize-winning ethnographer. The Accidental Anthropologist is a fascinating, impeccably written memoir, or more accurately, a series of fragments. Compelling and absorbing as well as intense and insightful, Jackson writes a far from classically autobiographical text. There is nothing predictable about the mode or incidents he has chosen to write about: thi...

What does it take to turn an idea into a brand that lasts?In From Vision to Identity, Alex Michael Jackson an entrepreneur, creative director, and former professional athlete, shares the lessons he learned from building a fashion house and shows how those same principles can be applied to streetwear, fitness, or lifestyle brands.Blending personal experience with practical guidance, Jackson breaks down the essential steps of brand creation: defining vision, shaping ...

Following Queen Elizabeth II's historic Diamond Jubilee in 2012, there is renewed interest in the institution of the Crown in Canada and the roles of the queen, governor general, and lieutenant governor. Author D. Michael Jackson traces the story of the monarchy and the Crown and shows how they are integral to Canada's parliamentary democracy. His book underscores the Crown's key contribution to the origins, evolution, and successful functioning of Canadian federalism, while the place of t...

(Vocal Selections). Winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical, Michael R. Jackson's Pulitzer Prize-winning blisteringly funny masterwork exposes the heart and soul of a young artist grappling with desires, identity, and instincts he boths loves and loathes. This collection features 15 songs from the show arranged for vocal line with piano accompaniment. Songs include: Boundaries * Didn't Want Nothin' * Exile in Gayville * Inner White Girl * Intermission Song * Inwood Daddy * Memory Song * ...

This book, originally published in 1974, examines the changes that took place in the market position of the coal industry in the twentieth century. It examines in detail the position of the industry during the two World Wars, the problems of the inter-war years, the effects of nationalisation and the coal shortage after the Second World War, the decline of the markets in the 1960s and the consequences of the energy crisis of the early 1970s. The book analyses what problems the changes caus...

You might not see yourself as particularly special in any way. But you possess something no one else has. In Success is Within You: Creating Your Own Destiny, author Michael W. Jackson reveals that by discovering and reconnecting with your “true” inner self, you won’t be a victim of circumstances. Utilizing the creative power of your mind, you can transform yourself and manifest your world as you envision it. Each chapter concludes with creative exercises encouraging you to implement the a...