Todd Sanders
Biographic Data
| ID | 196463 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Todd Sanders |
| GIVEN NAMES | Todd |
| FAMILY NAME | Sanders |
| SIGNATURE | SANDERS T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Duisburg-Essen |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0880-8843 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 381 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
A Puzzle About Anti-Factives
The starting point for this article is Holton’s (2017) claim that there are no anti-factive attitude verbs (in Indo-European languages). In a first step, I argue that the German verb “wähnen” (as used by Frege and his contemporaries) is a counter-example. However, it seems as though anti-factives are rarer than factives, which raises the question of how to account for that observation. Since Holton’s explanation, as well as a seemingly promising …
A hint as to my grounds for judgement
Frege’s Begriffsschrift account of modality involves both a negative and a positive claim. The negative claim is that modal notions are logically insignificant; the positive claim is that modals convey a ‘hint’ (Wink) as to the speaker’s grounds for judgement. This paper is about Frege’s positive claim, which has not received much attention. I explain in detail the Fregean notion of hinting and how to distinguish hints from conceptual contents, a…
Meaning without content
What, exactly, is the difference between words such as ‘dead’ and ‘deceased’? In this paper, I argue that such differences in register, or style, ought to be construed as genuine differences in non-truth-conditional meaning. I also show that register cannot plausibly accounted for in terms of either presupposition or conventional implicature. Register is, rather, an instance of what I call pure use-conditional meaning. In the case of register, a …
What a jerk
I argue that “general pejoratives” such as “jerk” or “bastard” differ crucially from items such as “that damn N”. While items such as the latter typically serve to give vent to one's attitudes, general pejoratives essentially involve judgments about a person's behaviour or character. This is particularly evident in cases where pejoratives occur not as epithets, but as predicate nominals. If we want to account for the overall contribution of words…
Challenging non-at-issue contents
This paper is a critique of what has become a widespread view of non-at-issue (NAI) contents. On this view, NAI contents are particularly well suited as instruments of manipulation since they are especially difficult to challenge and have a direct effect on the common ground. I argue by contrast, first, that challenging NAI contents is not significantly harder than challenging asserted contents. And second, I show that asserted and NAI contents h…
Retooling US Settler-Colonialism
Returning Life in Tanzania
Fregean Side-Thoughts
This paper offers a detailed reconstruction of Frege’s theory of side-thoughts (Nebengedanken) and its relation to other parts of his pragmatics, most notably to the notion of colouring (Färbung), to the notion of presupposition (Voraussetzung), and to his implicit notion of multi-propositionality. I also highlight some important differences between the subsemantic categories employed by Frege and those used in contemporary pragmatics
The Myth of Epistemic Implicata
Quite a few scholars claim that many implicata are propositions about the speaker's epistemic or doxastic states. I argue, on the contrary, that implicata are generally non‐epistemic. Some alleged cases of epistemic implicature are not implicatures in the first place because they do not meet Grice's non‐triviality requirement, and epistemic implicata in general would infringe on the maxim of quantity. Epistemic implicatures ought to be construed …
Openness
(En)Gendering the Weather
The aim of this chapter is to come to terms with those two sticks or, more broadly stated, to delve into the relationship between the cultural construction of gender, sexuality, and rainmaking rites and beliefs in Ihanzu. Most anthropologists concerned with rainmaking in Africa, as good empiricists, have noted the centrality of gender and sexual symbolism in these rites and beliefs. Rainmaking in Africa has long interested Western observers, acad…
Understanding Frege’s notion of presupposition
Why did Frege offer only proper names as examples of presupposition triggers? Some scholars claim that Frege simply did not care about the full range of presuppositional phenomena. This paper argues, in contrast, that he had good reasons for employing an extremely narrow notion of ‘Voraussetzung’. On Frege’s view, many devices that are now construed as presupposition triggers either express several thoughts at once or merely ‘illuminate’ a though…
Power Revealed and Concealed in the NewWorld Order
Those Who Play with Fire
Invisible Hands and Visible Goods
Two Misconstruals of Frege's Theory of Colouring
Many scholars claim that Frege's theory of colouring (Färbung) is committed to a radical form of subjectivism or emotivism. Some other scholars claim that Frege's concept of colouring is a precursor to Grice's notion of conventional implicature. I argue that both of these claims are mistaken. Finally, I propose a taxonomy of Fregean colourings: for Frege, there are (1) purely aesthetic colourings, (2) communicative colourings or hints, (3) non-co…
Fracking Big Ben
Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Katherine O'Donnell, Gretchen M. Herrmann, Jan Peter Laurens Loovers, Jamie San Andrés, Julie Raymond, Elizabeth F. Hall, Todd Sanders, Elisabet Dueholm Rasch, Michiel Köhne, Alexander Ervin, Julie Maldonado, Betsy Taylor, Mary Hufford, …
Action
Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Katherine O'Donnell, Gretchen M. Herrmann, Jan Peter Laurens Loovers, Jamie San Andrés, Julie Raymond, Elizabeth F. Hall, Todd Sanders, Elisabet Dueholm Rasch, Michiel Köhne, Alexander Ervin, Julie Maldonado, Betsy Taylor, Mary Hufford, …
The pendulum swings
Comment on Bubandt, Nils. 2014. The empty seashell: Witchcraft and doubt on an Indonesian island. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press
Accountability and the academy
Calls for accountability and 'impactful' research are fundamentally reshaping the academy, giving rise to a large, critical scholarship on neoliberal regimes of accountability and their pernicious effects. But these calls also animate other institutional forms and practices that have received less critical attention. These include new forms of science that promise accountability through interdisciplinarity, collaborating with stakeholders, and ad…
Realismus
Erkenntnis/Erkenntnistheorien
Wahrheit
Beyond Bodies
For over a century, the Ihanzu of north-central Tanzania have conducted rainmaking rites. As with similar rites found across sub-Saharan Africa, these rites are replete with gender, sexual, and fertility motifs. Social scientists have typically explained such things as symbolizing human bodies and the act of procreation. But what happens when our interlocutors deny such symbolic explanations, when they insist that rain rites and the gender and se…
Buses in Bongoland
It is now common for anthropologists to argue that the occult is adequately explained as an oblique, metaphysical critique of the now, the new, the neoliberal. Indeed, such understandings have come to form a deep-seated anthropological analytic. Yet while this analytic has proved productive, the explanations it invites often hinge more on theoretical expectation than empirical demonstration. This may disable the very politics and ethics anthropol…
Transparency and Conspiracy
Transparency has, in recent years, become a watchword for good governance. Policymakers and analysts alike evaluate political and economic institutions—courts, corporations, nation-states—according to the transparency of their operating procedures. With the dawn of the New World Order and the “mutual veil dropping” of the post–Cold War era, many have asserted that power in our contemporary world is more transparent than ever. Yet from the perspec…
Reconsidering Witchcraft
African notions of witchcraft are neither archaic nor static but are highly flexible and deeply attuned to the conundrums of our contemporary world. Many anthropologists have recently argued that notions of the African witch provide commentaries on the meaning and merit of modernity as experienced in different historical and cultural settings. By exploring one particular type of witchcraft -that involving rain-amongst the lhanzu of Tanzania, this…
Imperfect Interpreters
Those Who Play with Fire
Whether initiating girls or healing cattle, bringing rain or protesting taxation, many in Africa share a vision of a world where the cultural, symbolic and cosmic categories of 'male' and 'female' serve, through ritual, to both reimagine and transform the world. Those Who Play With Fire introduces recent gender theory to the analysis of African ethnography, exploring the ways in which ideational gender categories permeate African systems of thoug…
Accountability and the academy
Calls for accountability and 'impactful' research are fundamentally reshaping the academy, giving rise to a large, critical scholarship on neoliberal regimes of accountability and their pernicious effects. But these calls also animate other institutional forms and practices that have received less critical attention. These include new forms of science that promise accountability through interdisciplinarity, collaborating with stakeholders, and ad…
Buses in Bongoland
It is now common for anthropologists to argue that the occult is adequately explained as an oblique, metaphysical critique of the now, the new, the neoliberal. Indeed, such understandings have come to form a deep-seated anthropological analytic. Yet while this analytic has proved productive, the explanations it invites often hinge more on theoretical expectation than empirical demonstration. This may disable the very politics and ethics anthropol…
The Quest for Fruition through Ngoma
Introduction - beyond the confinement of affliction a discursive field of experience, Rijk van Dijk, Ria Reis, Marja Spierenburg kings, spirits and brides in Tanzania, Henny Blokland gender and ngoma - the power of drums in Eastern Zambia, Annette Drews the wounded healer as ideology - the work of ngoma in Swaziland, Ria Reis social commentaries and the influence of the clientele - the case of the Mhondoro cult in Dande, Zimbabwe, Marja Spierenbu…
Beyond Bodies
For over a century, the Ihanzu of north-central Tanzania have conducted rainmaking rites. As with similar rites found across sub-Saharan Africa, these rites are replete with gender, sexual, and fertility motifs. Social scientists have typically explained such things as symbolizing human bodies and the act of procreation. But what happens when our interlocutors deny such symbolic explanations, when they insist that rain rites and the gender and se…
Making children, making chiefs
This article explores indigenous notions of power and chiefly legitimacy among the Ihanzu, a relatively small Bantu-speaking community located in north central Tanzania. Particular attention is paid to local ideas and ideals of gender-that is, the cultural categories 'male' and 'female', as well as the relationship between them-in an effort to show the complex ways in which gender categories, when combined, are powerful and capable of effecting t…
The pendulum swings
Comment on Bubandt, Nils. 2014. The empty seashell: Witchcraft and doubt on an Indonesian island. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press
Rains gone bad, women gone mad
This article reconsiders the argument that 'rituals of rebellion' be seen as women's ritual response to everyday patriarchal structures - an argument originally suggested by Gluckman, but recently evoked by Spencer, the Creiders, and others - in light of recent anthropological theorizing on gender. Using as an example one such women's ritual among the Ihanzu of Tanzania, I show how this particular formulation reduces complex notions of gender and…
Two Misconstruals of Frege's Theory of Colouring
Many scholars claim that Frege's theory of colouring (Färbung) is committed to a radical form of subjectivism or emotivism. Some other scholars claim that Frege's concept of colouring is a precursor to Grice's notion of conventional implicature. I argue that both of these claims are mistaken. Finally, I propose a taxonomy of Fregean colourings: for Frege, there are (1) purely aesthetic colourings, (2) communicative colourings or hints, (3) non-co…
Reflections on Two Sticks
Réflexions sur « deux bouts de bois ». Genre, sexualité et rites d’obtention de la pluie. – Tous les chercheurs qui ont étudié les croyances et les rites d’obtention de la pluie ont noté à leur propos la prééminence du symbolisme sexuel. Troublés par ce phénomène, ils se sont tournés vers les aspects sociaux, politiques et économiques de ces rites. À l’inverse, la perspective adoptée ici privilégie l’analyse des interprétations locales des rites …
The Modernity of Witchcraft
Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology
Imperfect Interpreters
Making children, making chiefs
This article explores indigenous notions of power and chiefly legitimacy among the Ihanzu, a relatively small Bantu-speaking community located in north central Tanzania. Particular attention is paid to local ideas and ideals of gender-that is, the cultural categories 'male' and 'female', as well as the relationship between them-in an effort to show the complex ways in which gender categories, when combined, are powerful and capable of effecting t…
Own or Other Culture
Own or Other Culture. JUDITH OKELY. New York: Routledge, 1996. + 244 pp., figures, references, notes, indexes
The Modernity of Witchcraft
Rains gone bad, women gone mad
This article reconsiders the argument that 'rituals of rebellion' be seen as women's ritual response to everyday patriarchal structures - an argument originally suggested by Gluckman, but recently evoked by Spencer, the Creiders, and others - in light of recent anthropological theorizing on gender. Using as an example one such women's ritual among the Ihanzu of Tanzania, I show how this particular formulation reduces complex notions of gender and…
Those Who Play with Fire
Whether initiating girls or healing cattle, bringing rain or protesting taxation, many in Africa share a vision of a world where the cultural, symbolic and cosmic categories of 'male' and 'female' serve, through ritual, to both reimagine and transform the world. Those Who Play With Fire introduces recent gender theory to the analysis of African ethnography, exploring the ways in which ideational gender categories permeate African systems of thoug…
Those Who Play with Fire
The Quest for Fruition through Ngoma
Introduction - beyond the confinement of affliction a discursive field of experience, Rijk van Dijk, Ria Reis, Marja Spierenburg kings, spirits and brides in Tanzania, Henny Blokland gender and ngoma - the power of drums in Eastern Zambia, Annette Drews the wounded healer as ideology - the work of ngoma in Swaziland, Ria Reis social commentaries and the influence of the clientele - the case of the Mhondoro cult in Dande, Zimbabwe, Marja Spierenbu…
Reflections on Two Sticks
Réflexions sur « deux bouts de bois ». Genre, sexualité et rites d’obtention de la pluie. – Tous les chercheurs qui ont étudié les croyances et les rites d’obtention de la pluie ont noté à leur propos la prééminence du symbolisme sexuel. Troublés par ce phénomène, ils se sont tournés vers les aspects sociaux, politiques et économiques de ces rites. À l’inverse, la perspective adoptée ici privilégie l’analyse des interprétations locales des rites …
Magical Interpretations, Material Realities
Transparency and conspiracy
Power Revealed and Concealed in the New World Order
Invisible Hands and Visible Goods
Invisible Hands and Visible Goods
Magical Interpretations, Material Realities
Magical interpretations and material realities - an introduction, Henrietta L. Moore and Todd Saunders. Delusions of development and the enrichment of witchcraft discourses in Cameroon, Francis B. Nyamnjoh. Cannibal transformations - colonialism and commodification in the Sierra Leone hinterland, Rosalind Shaw. Vulture men, campus cultists and teenaged witches - modern magics in Nigerian popular media, Misty L. Bastian. Witchcraft and scepticism …
Transparency and Conspiracy
Transparency has, in recent years, become a watchword for good governance. Policymakers and analysts alike evaluate political and economic institutions—courts, corporations, nation-states—according to the transparency of their operating procedures. With the dawn of the New World Order and the “mutual veil dropping” of the post–Cold War era, many have asserted that power in our contemporary world is more transparent than ever. Yet from the perspec…
Africanizing Anthropology
Africanizing Anthropology: Fieldwork, Networks, and the Making of Cultural Knowledge in Central Africa. Lyn Schumaker. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001. 376 pp
Reconsidering Witchcraft
African notions of witchcraft are neither archaic nor static but are highly flexible and deeply attuned to the conundrums of our contemporary world. Many anthropologists have recently argued that notions of the African witch provide commentaries on the meaning and merit of modernity as experienced in different historical and cultural settings. By exploring one particular type of witchcraft -that involving rain-amongst the lhanzu of Tanzania, this…
Beyond Bodies
For over a century, the Ihanzu of north-central Tanzania have conducted rainmaking rites. As with similar rites found across sub-Saharan Africa, these rites are replete with gender, sexual, and fertility motifs. Social scientists have typically explained such things as symbolizing human bodies and the act of procreation. But what happens when our interlocutors deny such symbolic explanations, when they insist that rain rites and the gender and se…
Buses in Bongoland
It is now common for anthropologists to argue that the occult is adequately explained as an oblique, metaphysical critique of the now, the new, the neoliberal. Indeed, such understandings have come to form a deep-seated anthropological analytic. Yet while this analytic has proved productive, the explanations it invites often hinge more on theoretical expectation than empirical demonstration. This may disable the very politics and ethics anthropol…
Realismus
Erkenntnis/Erkenntnistheorien
Wahrheit
Accountability and the academy
Calls for accountability and 'impactful' research are fundamentally reshaping the academy, giving rise to a large, critical scholarship on neoliberal regimes of accountability and their pernicious effects. But these calls also animate other institutional forms and practices that have received less critical attention. These include new forms of science that promise accountability through interdisciplinarity, collaborating with stakeholders, and ad…
Sociology (18 works) · Philosophy (16 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (14 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Linguistics (8 works) · Anthropology (7 works) · Ethnology (7 works) · Geography (7 works)