Marilyn Strathern
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View article: Uncertain Relations
Uncertain Relations Open
In 2023, the SIEF convenors set out the multivalent character of “uncertainty” as at once opening up terrains riddled by catastrophe, reminding us of a quality of everyday being, while also promising alternative paths and possibilities. Th…
View article: Crises in Time: Ethnographic Horizons in Amazonia and Melanesia
Crises in Time: Ethnographic Horizons in Amazonia and Melanesia Open
This book considers some of the ways in which time appears – and seemingly does it work – through moments of crisis. What can different concepts of time and diverse temporal frameworks tell us about how crises are configured and apprehende…
View article: Siempre relacionando
Siempre relacionando Open
This lecture digs into some of the back story to current anthropological interest in relations. It focuses on aspects of the British school of social anthropology, and on one of its enduring conundrums. In order to make its presentation at…
View article: Life with and without its antithesis
Life with and without its antithesis Open
The impetus for this reflection on well-being comes from the way the sustainability of life itself seems under threat from climate change. The terms of debate, what is meant by ‘life’, are ripe for re-imagining. When anthropologists take t…
View article: Editorial
Editorial Open
This issue of CJA—Technologies and Infrastructures of Trust—is guest edited by Anna Weichselbraun, Shaila Seshia Galvin and Ramah McKay, and features articles by Kate McClellan, Julie Billaud, Cal Biruk, Adela Zhang and Ramah McKay, plus a…
View article: Expectations of the Gift: Toward a Future-Oriented Taxonomy of Transactions
Expectations of the Gift: Toward a Future-Oriented Taxonomy of Transactions Open
People engage in transactions because they expect to bring about certain futures. This suggests replacing Marcel Mauss's three obligations of gift exchange—giving, taking, and returning—with the notion of expectations. From this perspectiv…
View article: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Open
Needless to say, all of its shortcomings are still my own fault.In Suriname, I wish to thank Gilbert Luitjes for vital introductions and logistical help; Otto Dunker, for flying beyond the call of duty, green vegetables and tales of the fr…
View article: Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements Open
now of Goldsmiths, University of London) for their valuable insights into different topics in my research, for the stimulating discussions
View article: Frontmatter
Frontmatter Open
Social Anthropology is a vibrant discipline of relevance to many areas -economics, politics, business, humanities, health and public policy.This series, published in association with the Cambridge William Wyse Chair in Social Anthropology,…
View article: Artefacts of history: Events and the interpretation of images
Artefacts of history: Events and the interpretation of images Open
By discussing the reactions of Melanesians to the arrival of Europeans, this article raises some queries against anthropological perceptions of historical process. In evoking Melanesian "images", a set of perceptions is presented, which po…
View article: Terms of engagement
Terms of engagement Open
Anthropology is nothing if it is not a particular way of describing the world. Yet what is most precious to it – the terms and concepts that mark it as a discipline – can also be the most tricky. When resurgent boundaries and exclusions tw…
View article: Reading and Remembering the Anthropologist James F. Weiner
Reading and Remembering the Anthropologist James F. Weiner Open
à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.
View article: The mediation of emotions
The mediation of emotions Open
This account dates from 1985, originally a companion piece to “Discovering ‘social control’” (1985), but not published in this form then. The ethnographic milieu is Hagen, in Papua New Guinea, under the colonial regime of the 1960s and 70s…
View article: What’s in an argument? Reflections on knowledge exchanges
What’s in an argument? Reflections on knowledge exchanges Open
This article draws on a turn of events in the speaker’s long association with Papua New Guinea in the Pacific. Pacific Island academics have made it clear that anthropologists should be explicit about ‘knowledge exchange’. Knowledge transf…
View article: Climate activism: afterword
Climate activism: afterword Open
A short �Afterword� commenting on the multidisciplinary nature of the articles, and their appropriateness to the multi-purposed orientations to be found in climate change activism. It touches on the importance of diverse frames of thought:…
View article: Reflecting back
Reflecting back Open
This invitation presents an opportunity to bring together older and newer strands of work on relations. The first fell back on an analytical notion of aesthetics to convey certain kinds of persuasive appearances: Melanesian ethnography emp…
View article: New and Old Worlds: A Perspective from Social Anthropology
New and Old Worlds: A Perspective from Social Anthropology Open
People build bridges in many ways, and not least over time, spanning the different epochs that define their lives. For social anthropologists, this process is far from self-evident. Diverse ways of thinking about transitions summon anthrop…
View article: Infrastructures in and of ethnography
Infrastructures in and of ethnography Open
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…
View article: Relations
Relations Open
To make a topic from one of anthropology's principal means and objects of study, investigating relations through relations, is offered in the spirit of reflexive enquiry. The entry is not confined to anthropological works, touching briefly…
View article: Portraits, characters and persons
Portraits, characters and persons Open
A recent experience of 'returning' photographs to acquaintances in Mt Hagen, Papua New Guinea, leads to questions about the recognition of character. People acknowledge characteristic ways of acting or behaving, but it is not at all clear …
View article: Gathered fields: A tale about rhizomes
Gathered fields: A tale about rhizomes Open
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 …
View article: Comment on Fochler and de Rijcke’s "Implicated in the indicator game? An experimental debate"
Comment on Fochler and de Rijcke’s "Implicated in the indicator game? An experimental debate" Open
Professor Marilyn Strathern reflects on the essays comprising the ESTS Thematic Collection, "Implicated in the Indicator Game? An Experimental Debate."
View article: Naturalism and the Invention of Identity
Naturalism and the Invention of Identity Open
Its author ever hopeful of abandoning nature-culture or nature-society, this brief sketch is an attempt to understand some part of the dyad. It fishes among materials on biological relatedness, ideas about reproduction, and configurations …
View article: Brexit Referendum: first reactions from anthropology
Brexit Referendum: first reactions from anthropology Open
Brexit Referendum: first reactions from anthropologyMy immediate reaction to the results of the British Referendum on leaving or remaining in the EU was to remember Alexei Yurchak's book, Everything was forever, until it was no more (Yurch…
View article: Before and After Gender: Sexual Mythologies of Everyday Life
Before and After Gender: Sexual Mythologies of Everyday Life Open
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 …