Education
Born in South Africa, she attended school in Zambia, Zimbabwe, France (the Sorbonne) and the University of Toronto Canada.
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book
The Gift of Thanks: The Roots and Rituals of Gratitude
( Known as an ‘anthropologist of everyday life,’ Margaret...)
Known as an ‘anthropologist of everyday life,’ Margaret Visser has, in five award-winning books, uncovered and illuminated the intriguing and unexpected meanings of everyday objects and habits. Now she turns her keen eye to another custom so frequently encountered that it often escapes notice: saying ‘Thank you.’ What do we really mean by these two simple words? This fascinating inquiry into all aspects of gratitude ranges from the unusual determination with which parents teach their children to thank, to the difference between speaking the words and feeling them, to the ways different cultures handle the complex matters of giving, receiving, and returning favors and presents. Visser illuminates the fundamental opposition in our own culture between gift-giving and commodity exchange, and the similarities between gratitude and its opposite, vengefulness. The Gift of Thanks considers cultural history, including the modern battle of social scientists to pin down the notion of thankfulness and account for it, and the newly awakened scientific interest in the biological and evolutionary roots of emotions. With her engaging combination of curiosity and erudition, Visser once again reveals the extraordinary in the everyday.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0151013314/?tag=2022091-20
The Gift of Thanks: The Roots and Rituals of Gratitude by Margaret Visser (2009-11-19)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N914308/?tag=2022091-20
The Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church
(Margaret Visser has visited many more churches than most ...)
Margaret Visser has visited many more churches than most people, but like the rest of us, she began to tire of the slew of facts and lack of meaningful information available from guidebooks. The desire to find answers to her own questions -- as a traveler, a believer, and an insatiable anthropologist of the everyday -- led her to undertake this unique and revelatory book. More than any other kind of edifice, a church is intentionally meaningful in all its aspects, and Visser decided to find out what it was trying to express, in its nuances as well as in its grand gestures. She deliberately chose a relatively simple church just outside the walls of Rome, Sant'Agnese fuori le Mura, but she casts a wide net -- taking in history, theology, anthropology, and folklore, among other disciplines -- to illuminate its physical and spiritual architecture. As she guides us through the building, from apse to nave, catacombs to campanile, Visser explores the symbolism of lambs, the Christian fascination with virgins, the meanings of martyrdom, and the history of relics. At the same time, she moves back through the centuries to reveal Christianity in its earliest forms and purposes. The book ends at the church's beginning, with the grave of Agnes, a twelve-year-old girl who was murdered seventeen hundred years ago and whose remains lie buried beneath the altar. By then we have learned how to read any church building, how to interpret what it "does" and "says," whether we are of any faith or none.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0865476187/?tag=2022091-20
Margaret Visser
Edit ProfileCareer
Her subject matter is the history, anthropology, and mythology of everyday life. She taught Greek and Latin at York University north of Toronto for 18 years. Foreign several years Visser regularly appeared on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation"s popular radio program Morningside in conversations with Peter Gzowski.
Visser delivered the 2002 Canadian Broadcasting Company Massey Lectures.
Her topic was "Beyond Fate."
Visser is married to Colin Visser, professor emeritus of the English Department of the University of Toronto.
Achievements
Works
book
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The Gift of Thanks: The Roots and Rituals of Gratitude
( Known as an ‘anthropologist of everyday life,’ Margaret...)
-
The Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church
(Margaret Visser has visited many more churches than most ...)
- The Gift of Thanks: The Roots and Rituals of Gratitude by Margaret Visser (2009-11-19)
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The Gift of Thanks: The Roots and Rituals of Gratitude
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Born
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Nationality
South Africa