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The concept of relation holds a privileged place in how
anthropologists think and write about the social and cultural lives
they study. In Relations, eminent anthropologist Marilyn Strathern
provides a critical account of this key concept and its usage and
significance in the English-speaking world. Exploring relation's
changing articulations and meanings over the past three centuries,
Strathern shows how the historical idiosyncrasy of using an
epistemological term for kinspersons ("relatives") was bound up
with evolving ideas about knowledge-making and kin-making. She
draws on philosophical debates about relation-such as Leibniz's
reaction to Locke-and what became its definitive place in
anthropological exposition, elucidating the underlying assumptions
and conventions of its use. She also calls for scholars in
anthropology and beyond to take up the limitations of Western
relational thinking, especially against the background of present
ecological crises and interest in multispecies relations. In
weaving together analyses of kin-making and knowledge-making,
Strathern opens up new ways of thinking about the contours of
epistemic and relational possibilities while questioning the limits
and potential of ethnographic methods.
If cultures are always in the making, this book catches one kind of culture on the make. Academics will be familiar with audit in the form of research and teaching assessments - they may not be aware how pervasive practices of 'accountability' are or of the diversity of political regimes under which they flourish. Twelve social anthropologists from across Europe and the Commonwealth chart an influential and controversial cultural phenomenon. The challenge is that these new accountabilities are at once obstructive and enabling of good practice. Through accountability the financial and the moral meet in the twinned precepts of economic efficiency and ethical practices. Audit practices have direct consequences, and in the view of many dire ones, for intellectual production.Yet audit is almost impossible to critique in principle - after all, it advances values that academics generally hold dear, such as responsibility, openness of enquiry and widening of access. The volume therefore examines some of the parameters of professional ethics. Audit Cultures provides an excellent opening for future debate on the 'culture' of management and accountability. It will be an essential resource for students of social anthropology and management.
Procreation is not just about how human beings come into being - it is also about how relationships come into being. Consequently changes in procreative practice will have repercussions for thinking about the formation of such relationships. What are the cultural and anthropological understandings of new reproductive technologies? Using evidence from cross-disciplinary research carried out in 1990-1991 this work tackles key debates relating to the concept of kinship. When first published in 1993, Technologies of Procreation introduced many new insights into the anthropological issues associated with these new technologies. In what way do they affect society? What are the effects of the embryo's recent treatment as an individual? What does it mean to be 'interfering with nature'? What are the consequences of an increase in multiple births? This book successfully bridges the gap between medical technology and cultural values. Now available in paperback, it is a welcome addition to the growing field of medical anthropology. This book will prove invaluable to academics and practitioners alike interested in the current debates surrounding recent technologies in assisted conception.
Procreation is not just about how human beings come into being - it
is also about how relationships come into being. Consequently
changes in procreative practice will have repercussions for
thinking about the formation of such relationships. What are the
cultural and anthropological understandings of new reproductive
technologies? Using evidence from cross-disciplinary research
carried out in 1990-1991 this text tackles debates relating to the
concept of kinship. When first published in 1993, "Technologies of
Procreation" introduced many new insights into the anthropological
issues associated with these new technologies. In what way do they
affect society? What are the effects of the embryo's recent
treatment as an individual? What does it mean to be "interfering
with nature"? What are the consequences of an increase in multiple
births? This text aims to bridge the gap between medical technology
and cultural values.
To suppose anthropological analysis can shift between global and
local perspectives may well imply that the two co-exist as broader
and narrower horizons or contexts of knowledge. The proof for this
can be found in ethnographic accounts where contrasts are
repeatedly drawn between the encompassing realm and everyday life,
or in value systems which simultaneously trivialize and aggrandize,
or in shifts between what pertains to the general or to the
particular.
"Shifting Contexts" offers an original critique of current Western
thinking: it does not take for granted that "global" and "local"
indicate orders of magnitude or scales of importance. Rather, it
addresses the techniques by which people shift the contexts of
their knowledge and thus endow phenomena with local or global
significance. It is an unusual and original collection of essays by
seven leading anthropologists, in the company of two specialists in
research policy.
This book will appeal to anthropologists and all those working in
areas such as the philosophy of social science, cultural studies
and comparative sociology.
To suppose anthropological analysis can shift between global and
local perspectives may well imply that the two co-exist as broader
and narrower horizons or contexts of knowledge. The proof for this
can be found in ethnographic accounts where contrasts are
repeatedly drawn between the encompassing realm and everyday life,
or in value systems which simultaneously trivialize and aggrandize,
or in shifts between what pertains to the general or to the
particular.
"Shifting Contexts" offers an original critique of current Western
thinking: it does not take for granted that "global" and "local"
indicate orders of magnitude or scales of importance. Rather, it
addresses the techniques by which people shift the contexts of
their knowledge and thus endow phenomena with local or global
significance. It is an unusual and original collection of essays by
seven leading anthropologists, in the company of two specialists in
research policy.
This book will appeal to anthropologists and all those working in
areas such as the philosophy of social science, cultural studies
and comparative sociology.
In the early 21st century, intellectual and cultural resources
emerge on all sides as candidates for ownership claims. Members of
an anthropological research team investigating emergent economic
relations in a part of the world renowned for its innovative
approach to resources and transactions, wish to open up the
vocabulary. In this unique volume, they bring an unexpected
comparative perspective to global debates on intellectual and
cultural property rights (IPR and CPR). The contributors bring from
Melanesia their collective experience of people initiating,
limiting and rationalizing claims through transactions in ways that
challenge many of the assumptions behind the international
language. In a bold theoretical move, "property" is put alongside
two other terms: "transactions" and "creations." The former have a
place in the anthropological tradition that now needs to be brought
into the foreground. In turn, increasing interest in protecting
intellectual and cultural resources means that questions about
creativity have suddenly become pertinent to what is or is not
being transacted. Yet is creativity a special preoccupation of
modernity? How are we to talk about people's creative practices,
when innovation becomes the basis for ownership claims? This book
is full of surprises
In the early 21st century, intellectual and cultural resources
emerge on all sides as candidates for ownership claims. Members of
an anthropological research team investigating emergent conomic
relations in a part of the world renowned for its innovative
approach to resources and transactions, wish to open up the
vocabulary. In this unique volume, they bring an unexpected
comparative perspective to global debates on intellectual and
cultural property rights (IPR and CPR). The contributors bring from
Melanesia their collective experience of people initiating,
limiting and rationalizing claims through transactions in ways that
challenge many of the assumptions behind the international
language. In a bold theoretical move, "property" is put alongside
two other terms: "transactions" and "creations." The former have a
place in the anthropological tradition that now needs to be brought
into the foreground. In turn, increasing interest in protecting
intellectual and cultural resources means that questions about
creativity have suddenly become pertinent to what is or is not
being transacted. Yet is creativity a special preoccupation of
modernity? How are we to talk about people's creative practices,
when innovation becomes the basis for ownership claims? This book
is full of surprises!
The concept of relation holds a privileged place in how
anthropologists think and write about the social and cultural lives
they study. In Relations, eminent anthropologist Marilyn Strathern
provides a critical account of this key concept and its usage and
significance in the English-speaking world. Exploring relation's
changing articulations and meanings over the past three centuries,
Strathern shows how the historical idiosyncrasy of using an
epistemological term for kinspersons ("relatives") was bound up
with evolving ideas about knowledge-making and kin-making. She
draws on philosophical debates about relation-such as Leibniz's
reaction to Locke-and what became its definitive place in
anthropological exposition, elucidating the underlying assumptions
and conventions of its use. She also calls for scholars in
anthropology and beyond to take up the limitations of Western
relational thinking, especially against the background of present
ecological crises and interest in multispecies relations. In
weaving together analyses of kin-making and knowledge-making,
Strathern opens up new ways of thinking about the contours of
epistemic and relational possibilities while questioning the limits
and potential of ethnographic methods.
Norway, it is claimed, has the most social anthropologists per
capita of any country. Well connected and resourced, the discipline
– standing apart from the British and American centres of
anthropology – is well placed to offer critical reflection. In
this book, an inclusive cast, from PhDs to professors, debate the
complexities of anthropology as practised in Norway today and in
the past. Norwegian anthropologists have long made public
engagement a priority – whether Carl Lumholz collecting for
museums from 1880; activists protesting with the Sámi in 1980; or
in numerous recent contributions to international development.
Contributors explore the challenges of remaining socially relevant,
of working in an egalitarian society that de-emphasizes difference,
and of changing relations to the state, in the context of a turn
against multi-culturalism. It is perhaps above all a commitment to
time-consuming, long-term fieldwork that provides a shared sense of
identity for this admirably diverse discipline.
C A Gregory's Gifts and Commodities is one of the undisputed
classics of economic anthropology. On its publication in 1982, it
spurred intense, ongoing debates about gifts and gifting, value,
exchange, and the place of political economy in anthropology. Gifts
and Commodities is, at once, a critique of neoclassical economics
and development theory, a critical history of colonial Papua New
Guinea, and a comparative ethnography of exchange in Melanesian
societies. This new edition includes a new foreword by
anthropologist Marilyn Strathern that discusses the ongoing
response to the book and the debates it has engendered, debates
that have only become more salient in our ever-more-neoliberal and
ever-more-globalized era.
Written in the early 1970s amidst widespread debate over the causes
of gender inequality, Marilyn Strathern's Before and After Gender
was intended as a widely accessible analysis of gender as a
powerful cultural code and sex as a defining mythology. But when
the series for which it was written unexpectedly folded, the
manuscript went into storage, where it remained for more than four
decades. This book finally brings it to light, giving the long-lost
feminist work--accompanied here by an afterword from Judith
Butler--an overdue spot in feminist history. Strathern incisively
engages some of the leading feminist thinkers of the time,
including Shulamith Firestone, Simone de Beauvoir, Ann Oakley, and
Kate Millett. Building with characteristic precision toward a bold
conclusion in which she argues that we underestimate the
materializing grammars of sex and gender at our own peril, she
offers a powerful challenge to the intransigent mythologies of sex
that still plague contemporary society. The result is a sweeping
display of Strathern's vivid critical thought and an important
contribution to feminist studies that has gone unpublished for far
too long.
Updated with a new Preface, this seminal work challenges the
routine ways in which anthropologists have thought about the
complexity and quantity of their materials. Marilyn Strathern
focuses on a problem normally regarded as commonplace; that of
scale and proportion. She combines a wide-ranging interest in
current theoretical issues with close attention to the cultural
details of social life, attempting to establish proportionality
between them. Strathern gives equal weight to two areas of
contemporary debate: The difficulties inherent in anthropologically
representing complex societies, and the future of cross-cultural
comparison in a field where 'too much' seems known. The
ethnographic focus of this book emphasizes the context through
which Melanesianists have managed the complexity of their own
accounts, while at the same time unfolding a commentary on
perception and the mixing of indigenous forms. Revealing unexpected
replications in modes of thought and in the presentation of
ambiguous images, Strathern has fashioned a unique contribution to
the anthropological corpus. This book was originally published
under the sponsorship of the Association for Social Anthropology in
Oceania.
In Commons and Borderlands a leading social anthropologist examines
early twenty-first- century interests in interdisciplinarity, with
particular attention to the conjunction of science and society.
Interdisciplinary practice has become well entrenched in any number
of scientific disciplines, or disciplines from the humanities or
from social science for that matter. This does not deter current
rhetoric which sees new opportunities in new combinations of
interests. One arresting strand is the promise that in a strong
form - transdisciplinarity - 'science' might thereby be brought
into 'society'. Marilyn Strathern's questioning of this process
addresses the challenge that notions of property ownership pose to
the expected flow of knowledge. As is fitting for a consideration
of the flow and transformational properties of knowledge, the
contents of this collection are knowingly designated 'working
papers', left as open, unfinished statements to highlight their
future and the work they may still do. Marilyn Strathern is William
Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge.
Contents Preface; Introduction - In crisis mode: a comment on
interculturality; Chapter One - Knowledge on its travels: Dispersal
and divergence in the make-up of communities; Chapter Two - Commons
and borderland; Chapter Three - Who owns academic knowledge?;
Chapter Four - Accountability across disciplines; Endnote -
Re-describing society. Also of Interest Lawrence Kalinoe and James
Leach, Rationales of Ownership: Transactions and Claims to
Ownership in Contemporary Papua New Guinea (January 2004 ISBN
0-9545572-0-4/Hardback $54.99 ISBN 0-9545572-1-2/Paperback: $20.99)
In the most original and ambitious synthesis yet undertaken in
Melanesian scholarship, Marilyn Strathern argues that gender
relations have been a particular casualty of unexamined assumptions
held by Western anthropologists and feminist scholars alike. The
book treats with equal seriousness - and with equal good humor -
the insights of Western social science, feminist politics, and
ethnographic reporting, in order to rethink the representation of
Melanesian social and cultural life. This makes "The Gender of the
Gift" one of the most sustained critiques of cross-cultural
comparison that anthropology has seen, and one of its most spirited
vindications.
In the fifteenth century, the princess Chokyi Dronma was told by
the leading spiritual masters of her time that she was the
embodiment of the ancient Indian tantric deity Vajravarahi, known
in Tibetan as Dorje Phagmo, the Thunderbolt Female Pig. After
suffering a great personal tragedy, Chokyi Dronma renounced her
royal status to become a nun, and, in turn, the tantric consort of
three outstanding religious masters of her era. After her death,
Chokyi Dronma's masters and disciples recognized a young girl as
her reincarnation, the first in a long, powerful, and influential
female lineage. Today, the twelfth Samding Dorje Phagmo leads the
Samding monastery and is a high government cadre in the Tibet
Autonomous Region. Hildegard Diemberger builds her book around the
translation of the first biography of Chokyi Dronma recorded by her
disciples in the wake of her death. The account reveals an
extraordinary phenomenon: although it had been believed that women
in Tibet were not allowed to obtain full ordination equivalent to
monks, Chokyi Dronma not only persuaded one of the highest
spiritual teachers of her era to give her full ordination but also
established orders for other women practitioners and became so
revered that she was officially recognized as one of two principal
spiritual heirs to her main master. Diemberger offers a number of
theoretical arguments about the importance of reincarnation in
Tibetan society and religion, the role of biographies in
establishing a lineage, the necessity for religious teachers to
navigate complex networks of political and financial patronage, the
cultural and social innovation linked to the revival of ancient
Buddhist civilizations, and the role of women in Buddhism. Four
introductory, stage-setting chapters precede the biography, and
four concluding chapters discuss the establishment of the
reincarnation lineage and the role of the current incarnation under
the peculiarly contradictory communist system.
In the village of Elmdon in north-west Essex, members of certain
families are distinguished from other residents as being real
Elmdon'. Through a detailed ethnography of the structure of the
village, and the interrelationships between its various families,
work patterns and community activities, Marilyn Strathern provides
an understanding of the characteristics of those who most
vehemently claim to be 'real' village people. Yet this account goes
far beyond ethnographic description. Its inspiration lies with Dr
Audrey Richards, a distinguished anthropologist whose most
substantial contribution has been in Africa, while Dr Strathern
herself has had many years' field experience in Papua New Guinea.
As 'outsiders' they bring a fresh approach to English village
studies. The book takes the idea of 'village' not for granted, but
as a dogma to be accounted for. Dr Strathern argues that in order
to appreciate why the village should be so salient a reference
point in people's self-classifications, it is necessary to
understand what the village stands for in their ideas of the world.
The societies of Melanesia have been a constant stimulus to
anthropological theory. In this collection of essays,
anthropologists who have worked in all parts of the Melanesian
region of the Pacific bring their expertise to bear on a single
theoretical issue. This is a hypothesis formulated by Maurice
Godelier concerning the relationship between power, kinship and
wealth. Although tightly focused on Godelier's work, the book opens
up a major enquiry into the constitution of society in a part of
the world where men of prominence come to personify the nature of
power. 'Big men', entrepreneurs of exchanges, and 'great men', who
flourish in societies characterised by restricted exchanges and
ritual complexity, appear to belong to quite different systems.
This book considers how substantial the difference between them
really is.
Updated with a new Preface, this seminal work challenges the
routine ways in which anthropologists have thought about the
complexity and quantity of their materials. Marilyn Strathern
focuses on a problem normally regarded as commonplace; that of
scale and proportion. She combines a wide-ranging interest in
current theoretical issues with close attention to the cultural
details of social life, attempting to establish proportionality
between them. Strathern gives equal weight to two areas of
contemporary debate: The difficulties inherent in anthropologically
representing complex societies, and the future of cross-cultural
comparison in a field where 'too much' seems known. The
ethnographic focus of this book emphasizes the context through
which Melanesianists have managed the complexity of their own
accounts, while at the same time unfolding a commentary on
perception and the mixing of indigenous forms. Revealing unexpected
replications in modes of thought and in the presentation of
ambiguous images, Strathern has fashioned a unique contribution to
the anthropological corpus. This book was originally published
under the sponsorship of the Association for Social Anthropology in
Oceania.
How can we hold in the same view both cultural or historical
constructs and generalities about social existence? Kinship, Law
and the Unexpected takes up an issue at the heart of studies of
society - the way we use relationships to uncover relationships.
Relationality is a phenomenon at once contingent (on certain ways
of knowing) and ubiquitous (to social life). The role of relations
in western (Euro-American) knowledge practices, from the scientific
revolution onwards, raises a question about the extent to which
Euro-American kinship is the kinship of a knowledge-based society.
The argument takes the reader through current issues in
biotechnology, new family formations and legal interventions, and
intellectual property debates, to matters of personhood and
ownership afforded by material from Melanesia and elsewhere. If we
are often surprised by what our relatives do, we may also be
surprised by what relations tells us about the world we live in.
How can we hold in the same view both cultural or historical
constructs and generalities about social existence? Kinship, Law
and the Unexpected takes up an issue at the heart of studies of
society - the way we use relationships to uncover relationships.
Relationality is a phenomenon at once contingent (on certain ways
of knowing) and ubiquitous (to social life). The role of relations
in western (Euro-American) knowledge practices, from the scientific
revolution onwards, raises a question about the extent to which
Euro-American kinship is the kinship of a knowledge-based society.
The argument takes the reader through current issues in
biotechnology, new family formations and legal interventions, and
intellectual property debates, to matters of personhood and
ownership afforded by material from Melanesia and elsewhere. If we
are often surprised by what our relatives do, we may also be
surprised by what relations tells us about the world we live in.
In 1971 Marilyn Strathern provided what has now become a classic
ethnographic text, Women In Between. Significantly, this pioneering
contribution to feminist anthropology focuses on gender relations
rather than on women alone. Re-issued now, Women in Between
examines the attitudes of the Hagen people and analyzes the power
of women in their male-dominated system. Strathern cites case
studies of marriage arrangements, divorce, and traditional
settlement disputes to illustrate women's status in Hagen society.
The question of 'equality' between the sexes has long been of
long-standing interest among anthropologists. Originally published
in 1987, this volume sets out not to dispose of the question, but
rather to examine how to debate it. It recognises that inequality
as a theoretical and practical concern is rooted in Western ideas
and concepts, but also that there are palpable differences in power
relations existing between men and women in non-Western societies
that are otherwise, in world terms, 'egalitarian', and that these
need to be accounted for. This volume comprises ten essays by
anthropologists who discuss the nature of social inequality between
the sexes in societies they know through first-hand fieldwork,
mostly, though not exclusively, in Melanesia. This regional focus
gives an important coherence to the volume, and highlights the
different analytical strategies that the contributors employ for
accounting gender inequality. The volume will be provocative
reading for anthropologists.
Questions the proposition that people in western societies universally make a distinction between that which is natural and that which is cultural, and that there is a universal equation between female and nature and male and culture.
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