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For the first time in over 30 years, a new ethnographic study emerges on the Bugkalot tribe, more widely known as the Ilongot of the northern Philippines. Exploring the notion of masculinity among the Bugkalot, Cutting Cosmos is not only an experimental, anthropological study of the paradoxes around which Bugkalot society revolves, but also a reflection on anthropological theory and writing. Focusing on the transgressive acts through which masculinity is performed, this book explores the idea of the cosmic cut, the ritual act that enables the Bugkalot man to momentarily hold still the chaotic flows of his world.
“…[an] intriguing study of masculinity and ritual transgressive events among the Bugkalot in the southern Sierra Madre Mountains in Luzon, the Philippines…[that] forces us to rethink relations between values and social life, about the relations between cosmology and rituals, between everyday life and spectacular events.” • The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
Despite the fact that the book addresses plenty of major topics for its capacity (e.g. equality, masculinity, cosmology, ideal), it nevertheless offers a perfectly readable and interesting discussion of issues of the egalitarian social order maintenance in a masculine dominated society. Especially with the perspectives on ‘transgressions’ as maintaining order and on "man" as self-sanction and social balance work expands the framework for all who know the most to the classical Western, hegemonic notion of masculinity, but would like to explore ‘men and masculinity’ through other understandings.” • Tidsskriftet Antropologi
”The ethnographic data are valuable and the theoretical discussion is well-set within a series of intellectually rigorous, philosophically informed anthropological frames.” • Maria D. Vesperi, New College of Florida
”Mikkelsen’s compelling writing and excellent fieldwork research adds effectively to the classic literature in social/cultural anthropology, renewing and extending the famous monographs of Michelle and Renato Rosaldo.” • George Marcus, University of California, Irvine
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. Of Mist and Men
Chapter 2. Impartial Man
Chapter 3. Chaosmology
Chapter 4. Ngayó
Chapter 5. Power without Chief
Bibliography
Index