Distortion occurs between the intentions of actions and their outcomes. Escaping the bounds of relationality, of structuration and of systemics, distortion is a form of complex connectedness that has seldom been addressed in the social sciences as a phenomenon in its own right. This book argues that instances of distortion are an important and,

Nigel Rapport is Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews, UK.

1. Introduction: Conceptualizing the 'distortion of human social life' 2. Contorted environments and distorted being 3. A blind man's problem: Distortion and non-responsiveness; or, the construction of non-futures in Danish bureaucracy 4. Distortion and Stanley Spencer's life in art 5. The politics of paradox: Kierkegaardian theology and national conservatism in Denmark 6. 'Into the crack': Scottish agricultural revolutions and the art of moaning 7. Chains of distortion: Awkward relations and productive resistance in a Danish consulting company 8. 'Hello, can you hear me better now?' Mediatized acoustemologies and distortion on the radio 9. Epi-pro-logue: An anthropological theory of distortion