Astray: A History of Wandering

(Hardback)

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Description

This book explores how, far from being limited to deviation from known pathways or desirable plans of action, wandering is an abundant source of meaning, as intimately involved in the history of our universe as it will be in the future of our planet. In ancient Australian Aboriginal cosmology, in works about the origins of democracy and surviving disasters in ancient Greece, in Eurasian steppe nomadic culture, in the lifeways of the Rom, in the movements of today's refugees and in our attempts to preserve spaces of untracked online freedom, wandering is the means by which creativity and skills of adaptation are preserved in the interests of ongoing life. Astray is an enthralling look at belonging, and at notions of alienation and hope.

Reviews

"Moving from the ancient Aboriginal cosmology and Eurasian steppe nomadic culture to the Romany peoples and the movements of today's refugees, this alluring-sounding history examines ideas of belonging, alienation and hope."-- "Bookseller"

Author Bio

Eluned Summers-Bremner is Senior Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is the author of Insomnia: A Cultural History (Reaktion, 2007).