Artifacts of history: events and the interpretation of images

Amongst other things, this paper argues that a kind of anthropology, referred to by Strathern as modernist anthropology, has no reason to refer to artifacts except as illustrations. They are merely useful examples to illustrate information the anthropologist has provided about a given social/cultural context, e.g. to illustrate a worldview

Property, Substance, and Effect

This title draws on Strathern‚Äôs interest in the reification of social relations. If the world is shrinking in terms of resources and their access, it is expanding in terms of new candidates for proprietorship. How new relations come into being is among the many questions about property, ownership, and knowledge brought together here. Twenty years have not diminished interest in the book‚Äôs opening challenge: if one were inventing a method of enquiry by which to configure the complexity of social life, one might wish to invent something like the anthropologist‚Äôs ethnographic practice. A wide range of studies deliberately brings into conversation claims people make on one another through relations imagined in the form of body-substance along with the increasing visibility of conceptual or intellectual work as property. Wherever one lives, categories of knowledge are being dissolved and reformed at a tempo that calls for the lateral reflection afforded through the ‚Äúethnographic effect.‚Ä

Comparing Concerns—Some issues in organ and other donations: Edvard Westermarck Memorial Lecture:

In an information society, where overload has become a problem, might anthropology’s comparative method find a new lease of life? This Lecture sets out to test the hunch that it might. A field ever more densely populated with information is that of organ and tissue donation, and the debates to which current practices give rise. Donation is only one of several modes of procurement, organs only one kind of body part that can be donated, and people offer comparisons just as commentators do. Perhaps here is an answer to the question of how to make a reasonable account out of a fraught and infinitely expandable nexus of public concerns. Is it possible to conserve the complexity of the issues while not letting the sheer quantity of information run away with  itself? Would following through the comparisons do the trick

Gathered fields: A tale about rhizomes

A return to Deleuze and Guattari’s famous figure of the rhizome, this paper turns the philosophical idea around by asking what we might learn, from their openended exposition of it, about plants. The account at once reduces the rhizome to its cultivated varieties and enlarges the notion of a plant by the people joined to it. A stimulus comes from the recent World Heritage designation of a site in Mt Hagen, Papua New Guinea, for its evidence of the prehistoric cultivation of plants preferentially propagated by vegetative means. Following Haudricourt’s early exposition of the yam and the implications of cloning as a way of life (as well as a way of thought), the paper elaborates on what is indissolubly tied to the rhizome as a cultivated plant, people’s actions. Rhizomic plants are well described as multiplicities. Some questions are asked about the nature of diverse contrasts that are or are not implied. The burden of ethnographic demonstration is with the Papua New Guinean material; the provisional nature of the rest will be apparent.Riprendendo la celebre figura del rizoma elaborata da Deleuze e Guattari, questo articolo capovolge l’idea filosofica per chiedersi cosa si possa imparare da questa riflessione aperta riguardo alle piante. Allo stesso tempo, il resoconto riduce il rizoma alle sue varietà coltivate e allarga la nozione di pianta alle persone ad essa associate. Uno stimolo proviene dalla recente designazione di Patrimonio dell’umanità di un sito del Monte Hagen, Papua Nuova Guinea, per aver fornito la prova della coltivazione preistorica di piante riprodotte principalmente attraverso modalità vegetative. Seguendo la precorritrice descrizione di Haudricourt sull’igname, e le implicazioni sulla clonazione come stile di vita (oltre che come modo di pensare), l’articolo riflette su un tema che è indissolubilmente legato al rizoma inteso come pianta coltivata: le azioni della gente. Le piante rizomatiche sono descritte accuratamente come molteplicità. Alcuni interrogativi posti riguardano la natura dei diversi contrasti che sono o non sono implicati. L’onere della dimostrazione etnografica riposa su materiale proveniente da Papua Nuova Guinea, mentre la natura provvisoria del resto risulterà evidente

Property, Substance, and Effect

This title draws on Strathern‚Äôs interest in the reification of social relations. If the world is shrinking in terms of resources and their access, it is expanding in terms of new candidates for proprietorship. How new relations come into being is among the many questions about property, ownership, and knowledge brought together here. Twenty years have not diminished interest in the book‚Äôs opening challenge: if one were inventing a method of enquiry by which to configure the complexity of social life, one might wish to invent something like the anthropologist‚Äôs ethnographic practice. A wide range of studies deliberately brings into conversation claims people make on one another through relations imagined in the form of body-substance along with the increasing visibility of conceptual or intellectual work as property. Wherever one lives, categories of knowledge are being dissolved and reformed at a tempo that calls for the lateral reflection afforded through the ‚Äúethnographic effect.‚Ä

Gênero de uma perna só

Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology, Cambridge University, is (Hon.) Life President of the UK Association of Social Anthropologists (ASA).  She is probably best known for The gender of the gift (1988), a critique of theories of society and gender relations applied to Melanesia, which she pairs with After nature (1992), a comment on the UK under Thatcher.  Her most recent book, Before and after gender (2016), is also one of her first, unpublished since the early 1970s. Papua New Guinea is never far from her concerns, the last visit to Mt Hagen being in 2015. Translation Bruno Pereira de AraújoNeste artigo, Marilyn Strathern busca construir uma teoria visual melanésia focando nos efeitos de tipos particulares de exibição, tais como práticas que acompanham iniciações ou trocas cerimoniais, tendo em vista que nesses contextos há um investimento na manipulação das formas por parte das pessoas. A autora busca responder, a partir dos matérias melanésios, o que seria ver para essas pessoas e que tipo de corpo é engendrado por uma prática visual em que o que se vê é deliberadamente tornado incompleto.  

Infrastructures in and of ethnography

This contribution invites reflection on some of the conditions under which ethnographic enquiry is carried forward. Taking its cue from the concept of infrastructure, commonly understood as the practical supports underpinning an enterprise, it extends the notion to include ideas or assumptions that may be sustaining the purpose of enquiry. It thus takes practical and ideational supports in tandem. Intermittently visible, falling beyond the purview of the topics being investigated, and thus rather less than explicit contexts for research, the infrastructures of ethnographic work afford some insight into its changing circumstances. Importantly, these include changing orientations towards or conceptualizations of the kinds of objects of knowledge regarded as its ultimate aim. The reflections are exercised on materials from Oceania, from both the beginning and the end of the century that Bronisław Malinowski inaugurated upon his arrival in the Trobriand district of Kiriwina in 1915

Cortando a Rede

Novas tecnologias estimularam a retomada de velhos debates sobre o que é novo e o que é velho nas descrições da vida social. Este artigo considera alguns dos usos correntes dos conceitos de “híbrido” e “rede” e pode ser visto como atendendo ao chamado de Latour para uma antropologia simétrica, que reúne formas modernas e não-modernas de conhecimento. No processo, o artigo reflete sobre o poder das narrativas analíticas de se extender infindavelmente, e no lugar interessante da que a proprieda..