E.T. Culture: Anthropology in Outerspaces

by Christopher F. Roth and Debbora Battaglia

Anthropologists have long sought to engage and describe foreign or "alien" societies, yet few have considered the fluid communities centered around a shared belief in alien beings and UFO sightings and their effect on popular and expressive culture. Opening up a new frontier for anthropological study, the contributors to E.T. Culture take these communities seriously. They demonstrate that an E.T. orientation toward various forms of visitation--including...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822336219
• ISBN13: 9780822336211
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A wonderful and innovative collection

This is a wonderful and innovative collection. The various authors look at different ways that people talk about aliens and extraterrestrials and use these case studies to examine some important issues about contemporary culture, like (1) ideas about what it means to be "human," (2) notions of "visitors" and "encounters," and (3) ideas of "here" and "elsewhere." It's read to teach with (students love talking about UFOs!) and also good as a source of ideas of all kinds. There's a whole emerging literature in anthropology and other disciplines tackling these kinds of topics, and much of it is quite exciting and provocative - certainly true for this volume!