Gísli Pálsson
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 79303 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Gísli Pálsson |
| NOMBRES | Gísli |
| APELLIDO | Pálsson |
| FIRMA | PÁLSSON G |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Iceland |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3545-0522 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 101 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 1192 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 96 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 6 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1982 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2023 |
| ÍNDICE H | 16 |
Anthropologies of extinction
This guest editorial reflects on the relevance of anthropology for extinction concerns, a rapidly expanding practical, ethnographic and theoretical space at a time of impending mass extinction. While biological extinction is necessarily a multispecies development (usually implicating humans), traditional species talk - focused on taxonomies, collections and classification - needs critical rethinking as it necessarily diverts attention from the vi…
The Grass Roots and the State
Re-purposing Excavation Database Content as Paradata
Although data reusers request information about how research data was created and curated, this information is often non-existent or only briefly covered in data descriptions. The need for such contextual information is particularly critical in fields like archaeology, where old legacy data created during different time periods and through varying methodological framings and fieldwork documentation practices retains its value as an important info…
A Lockpick's Guide to dataARC
The North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) community initiated dataARC to develop digital research infrastructures to support their work on long-term human-ecodynamics in the North Atlantic. These infrastructures were designed to address the challenges of sharing research data, the connections between those data and high-level interpretations, and the interpretations themselves. In parallel, they were also designed to support the reuse of…
Ethnography Beyond the Human
Recent calls for 'other-than-human' ethnographies draw attention to dimensions of life that have allegedly been overlooked or marginalised in anthropological writings. We take such critique as an opportunity to reconsider selected ethnographic accounts asking: What was the role of animals and plants in these accounts, and what 'hidden stories' may be discerned in texts and images? What might an informed and careful reading teach us about relation…
Beyond Boundaries
Beyond Boundaries
Introduction
This book discusses the issue of understanding and translation from different theoretical as well as ethnographic perspectives. For quite some time, anthropology has been regarded as an ‘art of translation’, a textual exercise, facilitating understanding across boundaries of time and culture. One problem is that discussions of boundaries and the category of ‘the foreign’ tend to be heavily ideological and rhetorical in tone. Anthropology involves…
Cutting the Network, Knotting the Line
Network methods have seen a rapid rise in archaeology in recent years. There are still concerns regarding how well formal networks are able to effectively model local interaction. These are often present in the so-called qualitative network approaches—studies that tend to be based on close readings of relations between entities and the way they form dynamic networks of agents. Such studies have demonstrated the value in scrutinizing the way in wh…
Dépister l'ancestralité
Les vingt dernières années ont vu émerger des « machines généalogiques » qui promettent de révolutionner les recherches sur l'histoire familiale. Cet article examine les pratiques de traçage qui s'articulent autour de ces technologies, et leur impact sur le façonnement des concepts actuels de parenté, en s'appuyant sur deux études de cas. L'une se réfère aux efforts déployés par les descendants d'Islandais en Amérique du Nord en vue de s'insérer …
Domination, Subsistence, and Interdependence
Tilsetter Commissarii Islande, vid Arne Magnusson og Paall Jonsson Widalin, girum hier med kunnigt, ad medal annara erenda, sem haehstnefnd Kongleg Maiestat ockur allra ndugast befalad hefur hier i lande ad utrietta, er ad samanntaka eina rigtuga
Episcopal Economics
It has been common to view the Icelandic economy either from the perspective of the individual farm in terms of its productivity or at the national scale in terms of trade and the role of imports/exports. Given the fact that the economy was largely a tenant-based system with a small number of landowners, there is an important middle ground between the household economics of individual farms and the state-sanctioned trade structures that needs to …
Paul T.W. Baxter
This article revisits the work of the late anthropologist, Paul T.W. Baxter, re-reading his photographs and writing on pastoralism in northern Kenya through the prism of contemporary interest in anthropology in the ‘other-than-human’. It contextualises Baxter’s work within a wider school of anthropology of pastoralism, and his photography within wider photographic practice in anthropology and in the region of Kenya where he worked in the 1950s. W…
"Animismo" Revisitado
O animismo se projeta na literatura como uma religião simples e uma epistemologia falha, em grande medida porque até hoje foi visto a partir perspectivas modernistas. Neste artigo, teorias da antropologia, das clássicas às mais contemporâneas, são criticadas. A partir do caso etnográfico de um povo caçador coletor, explora-se como funcionam as ideias animistas no contexto das práticas sociais, com atenção às construções locais de pessoa relaciona…
Corporate skin
Modern orthopaedic prosthetics imitate biological organs or their functions, interacting with the body of amputees, and are designed and manufactured corporately. Thus, prosthetics constitute a privileged vantage point to witness the intermingling of society and nature, as well as how biosocial relations and institutions are understood, negotiated, and constituted. We develop methodologies of apprenticeship with a worldwide corporate leader in th…
From Enslavement to Emancipation
In most contexts, personal names function as identifiers and as a locus for identity. Therefore, names can be used to trace patterns of kinship, ancestry, and belonging. The social power of naming, however, and its capacity to shape the life course of the person named, becomes most evident when it has the opposite intent: to sever connections and injure. Naming in slave society was primarily practical, an essential first step in commodifying huma…
Archaeological Imprints
In this visual essay we discuss the role of creative practices in archaeology by examining the relationships between linotype printing and archaeological practices. We suggest that the two follow a shared trajectory: the way in which we interpret, follows and traces several kinds of interfaces. Our imprinted archaeology explores the implications of different acts of marking, cutting, and revealing the uncanny. Thus, we bring attention to the exch…
Storied Lines
It is a truism nowadays to say that an archaeological site is embedded in extensive networks of relations. Connectivity has played a role in archaeological thinking for a considerable amount of time, and the adoption by archaeologists of both theoretical and methodological frameworks centring connectivity has become widespread. One such example is network analysis, which has seen a significant surge in interest within the field over the past two …
Nature, Concepts of
The concept of nature plays a major role in contemporary popular culture and many fields of scholarship. While historically it has tended to refer to a fixed state, some kind of essence or baseline, it has always remained complex. This complexity is reflected in both biological/physical and cultural/social anthropology. For long, nature was seen as part of a dual pair, rigidly separating nature from culture, society, and nurture. Recently the rel…
En-Counter-Maps
A journal for exploring creative engagement with the past, especially through digital means. It publishes primarily what might be thought of as â paradataâ or artistâ s statements that accompany playful and unfamiliar forms of singing the past into existence
Afterword
Water futures, biosociality, and other-wise agency
This article maps the confluence of biosocial relations through the agential networks of water. In the language of the environmental humanities and social sciences, such relations and networks are biosocial and sacralised (Meloni, Williams, and Martin 2016; Mangiameli 2013). The self-organisation of aquatic environments in these relations towards humans is engaged in an ongoing process of entanglement and adaptation in parallel with human underst…
Textual life of the savants
From sagas to society
The Man Who Stole Himself
Nature, Culture, and Society
Life is currently one of the most active zones of politics and economic production, as biological material is increasingly the subject of engineering, banking, reproduction, and exchange. These developments represent some of the most challenging issues facing humanity in the twenty-first century and call for new forms of engagement - and new anthropologies of life. Reflecting upon the changing human condition, Palsson addresses various conflated …
Reconceptualizing the 'Anthropos' in the Anthropocene
Nature and Society
Enskilment at Sea
L'A. tente de demontrer, a partir de son experience de la peche en Islande, que l'acquisition personnelle de savoir-faire, a la fois dans la peche et dans le travail ethnographique, ne signifie pas l'integration mecanique d'un corpus de connaissances mais plutot une interaction active du sujet avec l'environnement. Une telle perspective - qui se nourrit de theories de la pratique - a des correspondances dans quelques aspects du discours islandais…
Contested Commodities
This article discusses cross-cultural parallels in moral debates about the expansion of market relations to new areas of social life, with particular reference to our ethnographic work on the commoditization of resource rights in Iceland. Expanding a theoretical approach introduced by other scholars, we propose that spatial metaphors can provide an effective means of conceptualizing the anthropological study of commoditization. By attending to th…
Down to Earth
Nature” and “social life” tended to be separated by Enlightenment thinkers, setting the stage for a long-standing tension between geology and social-cultural theory. Such a division suppressed the liveliness that humans have often attributed to material things. Several scholars and artists, many of whom would advocate new materialisms, have attempted to recapture this liveliness. Drawing upon these developments, we use the notion of “geosocialiti…
Ownership at Sea
By showing that small-scale fishermen practice a number of forms of self-regulation, among them some that many have referred to as "property" at sea, anthropologists have challenged the assumptions of the "tragedy of the commons" model-that unregulated harvesting of a common-property resource is the cause of depletion of sea resources. Some have been inspired by ecological models of territoriality developed to explain the behavior of human forage…
Ethnography Beyond the Human
Recent calls for 'other-than-human' ethnographies draw attention to dimensions of life that have allegedly been overlooked or marginalised in anthropological writings. We take such critique as an opportunity to reconsider selected ethnographic accounts asking: What was the role of animals and plants in these accounts, and what 'hidden stories' may be discerned in texts and images? What might an informed and careful reading teach us about relation…
For Whom the Cell Tolls
In this article we situate the recent debates over the genetic, genealogical, and medical databases that are being constructed for the population of Iceland in their domestic context, focusing on the contribution of anthropology to the understanding of central issues at the intersection of biomedicine and society. Modern biotechnology and bioinformatics have opened up an entirely new world in which a multitude of different kinds of human body com…
Iceland
L'Islande a ete le lieu d'evenements complexes et controverses entre 1996 et 1999 : DeCode Genetics, une institution de recherche genetique a eu le projet de dresser une carte des genomes des populations et de mettre en place une base de donnees medicale afin de relever les maladies, les avancees cliniques depuis 1915 et d'enregistrer les donnees genealogiques. Les AA. ont etudie le developpement et l'expansion de cette institution, la constructi…
After Writing Culture
Biosocial Relations of Production
Nowadays, life itself is one of the most active zones of capitalist production. Not only has biology been upgraded to Big Science, biological material and information are increasingly the subject of engineering, banking, reproduction, and exchange. The description and broad implications of the refiguring of life itself and its intrusion into economics and politics represent some of the most important issues on the academic agenda at the beginning…
Genomic Anthropology
By rendering obsolete the theoretical opposition of nature and culture, the study of the human genome has given rise to fresh networks among anthropologists and other scholars. These developments, in turn, invite a refashioning of anthropology. Because genomic studies are directly concerned with the constitution of personhood, they must engage with local notions of personhood and belonging, thus undermining the distinction between experts and lay…
The Problem of Nature
Finding Fish
We discuss the literature on decision making in fishing and describe several objective factors related to Icelandic fishing skippers' behavior regarding times and destinations of their fishing trips. We argue that the information available to them and the knowledge and theories they have developed often can lead them to several different conclusions. They therefore follow hunches and other processes of decision making. We develop a statistical an…
Icelandic foremen and skippers
There are two folk models to explain differential fishing success in Iceland. One applies to the short term and is based on material factors; the other refers to the long term of seasons and careers and centers on the personal qualities of skippers, or the skipper effect. We show first that the skipper effect cannot account for differential fishing success. We then develop a sociological explanation for the ideology of the skipper effect and show…
MtDNA variation in Inuit populations of Greenland and Canada
We examined 395 mtDNA control‐region sequences from Greenlandic Inuit and Canadian Kitikmeot Inuit with the aim of shedding light on the migration history that underlies the present geographic patterns of genetic variation at this locus in the Arctic. In line with previous studies, we found that Inuit populations carry only sequences belonging to haplotype clusters A2 and D3. However, a comparison of Arctic populations from Siberia, Canada, and G…
Systems of Production and Social Discourse
We have argued that differences in success in Icelandic fishing are statistically explained more by technical and ecological factors than by personal qualities of skippers, the "skipper effect." Research by other scholars has reopened the discussion of the skipper effect. We assess some of the statistical arguments, pointing out that while there may be a strong skipper effect in some societies, in other societies it is weak or negligible. We sugg…
To Dream of Fish
Contrary to the folk image that skippers are important in determining fishing success, we conclude that the skipper effect is a myth. We reach this conclusion by three converging analyses: (1) we show that the size of fishing boats and the number of trips account for most of the variance in catch, leaving very little unexplained variance to be explained by a skipper effect; (2) we show that there is no relationship between experience and success;…
Decode Me
With the advancement of genomic research, the issue of human variation has been redefined. Genomic anthropology has played an important role, drawing on and expanding anthropological understanding of human genomes and their differences. Focusing on the deCODEme and 23andMe projects, which offer personal services to people who wish to assess genetic risks for common diseases and to explore geographies of ancestry, in this article I discuss some of…
Riddles of Herring and Rhetorics of Success
We test the speculations of Barth (1966) and Heath (1976) about the success of Norwegian herring skippers against ethnographic and statistical data and conclude that their analyses are incorrect on virtually every point. We then show that the individual differences among skippers are not significant. Although we can account for virtually all of the variance in catches of cod, we cannot account for some 60 percent of the variance in herring catche…
Shifting Contexts
One way in which different orders of knowledge are brought together is through the transformation of context. This book is concerned with contexts of a particular kind. Claims to know 'more' or see 'further' or to be able to encompass local facts by a global perspective take on a special meaning in the world-view of societies, such as those of the west, that imagine they are part of a life that is itself global in scale. Shifting Contexts offers …
The life of family trees and the Book of Icelanders
This article discusses the tracing of family histories and competing assumptions about identities and relatedness in the era of biotechnology and biopower. Although the fascination with genealogical trees and family histories is common throughout the West, in Iceland this attraction is extreme. A genealogical database for most of the Icelandic population, the so-called Book of Icelanders, is being constructed as part of a larger biogenetic enterp…
These Are Not Old Ruins
Schooling and Skipperhood
Focusing on data relating to Iceland, we examine differences in the performance of fishing skippers both in and out of school and explore the development of dexterity and the connections among fishing practice, schooling, and fishing success.Our ethnographic and statistical analyses indicate that, contrary to the prevailing assumption of many educators, skippers' performance in marine school has little direct relation to success in fishing. We co…
Policy, Processors, and Boats
We argue that to understand fishing in modern Iceland, it must be contexualized in terms of a system which includes three subsystems: (1) production–catching and processing, (2) distribution–selling processed fish internationally, (3) policy–establishing fishing areas, gear, periods, prices, quotas, and attempts to influence policy. We briefly outline the components of this system in contemporary Iceland. We conclude that if comparative studies o…
To Dream of Fish
Contrary to the folk image that skippers are important in determining fishing success, we conclude that the skipper effect is a myth. We reach this conclusion by three converging analyses: (1) we show that the size of fishing boats and the number of trips account for most of the variance in catch, leaving very little unexplained variance to be explained by a skipper effect; (2) we show that there is no relationship between experience and success;…
Territoriality among Icelandic Fishermen
The article discusses the nature and significance of strategies of managing access to fishing territories. The data relate to the indigenous and private strategies used by Icelandic fishermen Such strategies vary with time and with fishing technology. The article discusses changes in the control of access and their implications for the management of information among skippers. Several scholars have reported claims of territoriality among fisherme…
Icelandic foremen and skippers
There are two folk models to explain differential fishing success in Iceland. One applies to the short term and is based on material factors; the other refers to the long term of seasons and careers and centers on the personal qualities of skippers, or the skipper effect. We show first that the skipper effect cannot account for differential fishing success. We then develop a sociological explanation for the ideology of the skipper effect and show…
Riddles of Herring and Rhetorics of Success
We test the speculations of Barth (1966) and Heath (1976) about the success of Norwegian herring skippers against ethnographic and statistical data and conclude that their analyses are incorrect on virtually every point. We then show that the individual differences among skippers are not significant. Although we can account for virtually all of the variance in catches of cod, we cannot account for some 60 percent of the variance in herring catche…
Reply to Gatewood
Reply to Steven L. McNabb
Peasants, entrepreneurs and companies
Finding Fish
We discuss the literature on decision making in fishing and describe several objective factors related to Icelandic fishing skippers' behavior regarding times and destinations of their fishing trips. We argue that the information available to them and the knowledge and theories they have developed often can lead them to several different conclusions. They therefore follow hunches and other processes of decision making. We develop a statistical an…
Ownership at Sea
By showing that small-scale fishermen practice a number of forms of self-regulation, among them some that many have referred to as "property" at sea, anthropologists have challenged the assumptions of the "tragedy of the commons" model-that unregulated harvesting of a common-property resource is the cause of depletion of sea resources. Some have been inspired by ecological models of territoriality developed to explain the behavior of human forage…
Anthropology and Fisheries Management
Maritime Institutions in the Pacific. KENNETH RUDDLE and TOMOYA AKIMICHI, eds.Atlantic Fisheries and Coastal Communities: Fisheries Decision-Making Case Studies. CYNTHIA LAMSON and ARTHUR J. HANSON, eds.Kan Fiskerinæringa styres? (Is Fisheries Management Possible?) BIÖRN HERSOUG, ed
Systems of Production and Social Discourse
We have argued that differences in success in Icelandic fishing are statistically explained more by technical and ecological factors than by personal qualities of skippers, the "skipper effect." Research by other scholars has reopened the discussion of the skipper effect. We assess some of the statistical arguments, pointing out that while there may be a strong skipper effect in some societies, in other societies it is weak or negligible. We sugg…
Icelandic Dialogues
Anthropologists can no longer pass over indigenous criticisms of their work, nor can they ignore the critique of their colleagues. As a result, they frequently find themselves arguing with their "informants" and their fellow ethnographers. This article discusses Icelandic notions of individual differences, anthropological analyses of Icelandic discourse, and criticisms of these analyses. It is imperative, we suggest, that anthropologists develop …
Social/Cultural Anthropology
Rhetorics of Skill and Skillful Rhetorics
Enskilment at Sea
L'A. tente de demontrer, a partir de son experience de la peche en Islande, que l'acquisition personnelle de savoir-faire, a la fois dans la peche et dans le travail ethnographique, ne signifie pas l'integration mecanique d'un corpus de connaissances mais plutot une interaction active du sujet avec l'environnement. Une telle perspective - qui se nourrit de theories de la pratique - a des correspondances dans quelques aspects du discours islandais…
Creativity/Anthropology
The Anthropology of Iceland
Historical Ecology
Beyond Boundaries
Reconstructing nature
The Problem of Nature
Images of Contemporary Iceland
Anthropology of presents the first perspectives on Icelandic anthropology from both Icelandic and foreign anthropologists. The thirteen essays in this volume are divided into four themes: ideology and action; kinship and gender; culture, class, and ethnicity; and the Commonwealth period of circa 930 to 1220, which saw the flowering of sagas. Insider and outsider viewpoints on such topics as the Icelandic women's movement, the transformation of th…
The Textual Life of Savants
Contested Commodities
This article discusses cross-cultural parallels in moral debates about the expansion of market relations to new areas of social life, with particular reference to our ethnographic work on the commoditization of resource rights in Iceland. Expanding a theoretical approach introduced by other scholars, we propose that spatial metaphors can provide an effective means of conceptualizing the anthropological study of commoditization. By attending to th…
Sociology (56 obras) · Philosophy (40 obras) · History (33 obras) · Political science (32 obras) · Geography (31 obras) · Anthropology (29 obras) · Philosophy (28 obras) · Epistemology (22 obras) · History (22 obras) · Law (22 obras)