Paul Kockelman
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 92043 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Paul Kockelman |
| NOMBRES | Paul |
| APELLIDO | Kockelman |
| FIRMA | KOCKELMAN P |
| AFILIACIONES | Yale University |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 39 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 610 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 38 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 3 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2003 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2024 |
| ÍNDICE H | 14 |
Ontologies and Worlds
The first part of this article lays out what ontologies are and how they should be studied—in ways that precede, supersede, and otherwise route around not just the “ontological turn” but also its critics. The second part of this article offers an anthropological critique of Quine’s influential account of ontological commitment and a Quinean critique of certain anthropological commitments as to the existence and nature of possible worlds. As will …
The Anthropology of Intensity
What counts as too close for comfort? How can an entire room suddenly feel restless at the imminence of a yet unknown occurrence? And who decides whether or not we are already in an age of unliveable extremes? The anthropology of intensity studies how humans encounter and communicate the continuous and gradable features of social and environmental phenomena in everyday interactions. Focusing on the last twenty years of life in a Mayan village in …
The Epistemic and Performative Dynamics of Machine Learning Praxis
This article is about machine learning as it relates to classic concerns in anthropology and the social sciences, regarding meaning, value, and culture, as well as agency, power and performativity. It focuses on the role of machine learning, with its peculiar manner of modeling phenomena, in mediating: (i) the sensibilities and assumptions agents have (qua interpretive grounds and algorithmic models) insofar as these mediate their actions, infere…
Dual Operators, and Their Doubling, in Q'eqchi' (Maya)
This article is about four aspectual adverbs in Q’eqchi’ (Maya), which may be loosely glossed as ak ‘already’, maaji’ ‘not yet’, toj ‘still’, and ink’a’ chik ‘no longer’. The author shows the presupposition and assertion structure of these forms in unmarked usage (as sentential operators acting on imperfective predicates) and argues that they constitute a dual group in the tradition of Loebner (1989), who worked on similar operators in German. Th…
The Role of Mas ( Más ) in Q’eqchi
This essay analyzes the history and usage of degree modifiers and comparative constructions in Q’eqchi’ (Maya). It focuses on the role of mas (< Sp. más) and the function of the modern comparative construction (long thought to be a calque of its Spanish equivalent). In contrast to previous analyses, it shows that Q’eqchi’ mas does not function as a comparative (unlike Spanish más), but rather as a degree modifier, indefinite quantity, and differe…
Being multiversed in the multiverse
First citation in articleGoogle Scholar
Distributed Agency
Distributed Agency
" Distributed Agency presents an interdisciplinary inroad into the latest thinking about the distributed nature of agency: what it's like, what are its conditions of possibility, and what are its consequences. The book's 25 chapters are written by a wide range of scholars, from anthropology, biology, cognitive science, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, geography, law, economics, and sociology. While each chapter takes up different materials us…
Time and replacement among the Q'eqchi' Maya
Among speakers of Q'eqchi' Maya, replacement (-eeqaj) refers to activities as disparate as house-building, civil-religious elections, vengeance, loans, illness cures, adultery, and namesakes. Such practices involve the substitution of one entity for another entity, insofar as these entities have shared properties, and insofar as they hold a role in an obligatory position. For example, one man may substitute his labor for another man's labor insof…
The Chicken and the Quetzal
Meeting the Universe Two-Thirds of the Way (Witchful Thinking)
What is the relation between wishes and witches, between Grice and Freud, between political repression and scientific rendering? What is the relation between ideational and affective phenomena (such as desire and jealousy) and material processes (such as particle scattering and diffusion barriers)? This article demonstrates the broad similarities underlying conversational implicature and dream interpretation, focusing on the use of communicative …
Grading, gradients, degradation, grace
This article has two overarching and intertwined themes. The first is the social and semiotic mediation of "comparative grounds"-in particular, the way people come to understand, and alter, the relative intensity of entities and events. The second is the social and semiotic mediation of "causal grounds"-in particular, the way people come to understand, and alter, the sequencing of events, or the channeling of forces. Focusing on the multiple proc…
Four Theories of Things
This essay is about the relation between meaning and materiality. It offers careful and coherent, albeit noncanonical, readings of particular themes in Aristotle, Marx, Heidegger, and Peirce. And it does this in order to draw together some classic understandings of value: use value, in particular, but also exchange value, truth value, and moral value (and much else besides). Originating as a series of lecture notes offered to students interested …
The Chicken and the Quetzal
In The Chicken and the Quetzal Paul Kockelman theorizes the creation, measurement, and capture of value by recounting the cultural history of a village in Guatemala's highland cloud forests and its relation to conservation movements and ecotourism. In 1990 a group of German ecologists founded an NGO to help preserve the habitat of the resplendent quetzal-the strikingly beautiful national bird of Guatemala-near the village of Chicacnab. The ecotou…
The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology
The field of linguistic anthropology looks at human uniqueness and diversity through the lens of language, our species' special combination of art and instinct. Human language both shapes, and is shaped by, our minds, societies, and cultural worlds. This state-of-the-field survey covers a wide range of topics, approaches and theories, such as the nature and function of language systems, the relationship between language and social interaction, an…
Information is the enclosure of meaning
Huckleberry Finn takes the Turing test
The anthropology of an equation
This article undertakes the anthropology of an equation that constitutes the essence of an algorithm that underlies a variety of computational technologies-most notably spam filters, but also data-mining tools, diagnostic tests, predictive parsers, risk assessment techniques, and Bayesian reasoning more generally. The article foregrounds the ways ontologies are both embodied in and transformed by such algorithms. And it shows the stakes such onto…
Agent, Person, Subject, Self
Figures Tables 1. Semiotic Ontologies 1. Signs, Minds, and Meaning-in-the-World 2. Ontology, Interaction, and Infrastructure 2. Biosemiosis, Technocognition, and Sociogenesis 1. Relations between Relations 2. Significance and Selection 3. Communication between Conspecifics 4. The Organization of Cognitive Processes 5. Framing 6. Artificial and Natural Selection, Sieving and Serendipity 7. Lawn-Mowers and Logic Gates 8. Relations between Relations…
Semiotic technologies, temporal reckoning, and the portability of meaning. Or
This essay is about meaning and measurement, with particular emphasis on the relation between semiotic technologies and temporal reckoning. It begins by theorizing four ways of framing time. Temporality as metricality focuses on the repetition of tokens of common types. Temporality as performativity focuses on the roots and fruits of a given event. Temporality as reckoning focuses on how one determines when an event occurred or how long an event …
Stance
A Mayan ontology of poultry
This article has three key themes: ontology (what kinds of beings there are in the world), affect (cognitive and corporeal attunements to such entities), and selfhood (relatively reflexive centers of attunement). To explore these themes, I focus on women's care for chickens among speakers of Q'eqchi' Maya living in the cloud forests of highland Guatemala. Broadly speaking, I argue that these three themes are empirically, methodologically, and the…
Biosemiosis, Technocognition, and Sociogenesis
This essay theorizes significance in conjunction with selection and thereby provides a general theory of meaning. It treats processes of significance and selection in conjunction with processes of sieving and serendipity and thereby systematically interrelates the key factors underlying emergent forms of organized complexity. It theorizes codes in conjunction with channels and thereby links shared cultural representations and networked social rel…
Introduction
Value is life under an interpretation
This essay unfolds the critical and conceptual implications of a particular metaphor - theorizing value in terms of the relation between maps, terrains, and travelers. It synthesizes some ideas from Charles Sanders Peirce, Max Weber, Martin Heidegger, and Charles Taylor. In particular, a terrain turns on social relations and cognitive representations. A map figures such a terrain in terms of differentially weighted origins, paths, and destination…
Agency
Using a Peircean theory of meaning, agency may be theorized in terms of flexibility and accountability, on the one hand, and knowledge and power, on the other. In this theory, residential agency, which is closest to notions such as "power" and "choice," is the degree to which one can control the expression of a sign, compose a sign-object relation, and commit to an interpretant of this sign-object relation. Representational agency, which is close…
Enemies, Parasites, and Noise
This essay outlines some common properties of channels, infrastructure, and institutions. It analyzes the tense relation between channels and codes, on the one hand, and circulation and interpretation, on the other. It compares the assumptions and interventions of three traditions: cybernetics (via Claude Shannon), linguistic anthropology (via Roman Jakobson), and actor-network theory (via Michel Serres). By developing the relation between Serres…
A Semiotic Ontology of the Commodity
The commodity is analyzed from a semiotic stance. Rather than systematically unfold a subject-object dichotomy (via Hegel's history as dialectic), it systematically deploys a sign-object-interpretant trichotomy (via Peirce's logic as semiotic). Rather than conflate economic value and linguistic meaning through the lens of Saussure s semiology, it uses Peirce's semiotic to provide a theory of meaning that is general enough to include commodities a…
Stance and Subjectivity
Stance may be understood as the semiotic means by which we indicate our orientation to states of affairs, usually framed in terms of evaluation (e.g., moral obligation and epistemic possibility) or intentionality (e.g., desire and memory, fear and doubt). Using data from Q'eqchi'-Maya and English, stance is operationalized in terms of complement-taking predicates and the grammatical category of status. Using frameworks from Goffman and Jakobson, …
The semiotic stance
This essay argues that the pervasive twentieth century understanding of meaning - a sign stands for an object - is incorrect. In its place, it offers the following definition, which is framed not in terms of a single relation (of standing for), but in terms of a relation (of correspondence) between two relations (of standing for): a sign stands for its object on the one hand, and its interpretant on the other, in such a way as to make the interpr…
Introduction
Grading, gradients, degradation, grace
This article has two overarching and intertwined themes. The first is the social and semiotic mediation of "comparative grounds"-in particular, the way people come to understand, and alter, the relative intensity of entities and events. The second is the social and semiotic mediation of "causal grounds"-in particular, the way people come to understand, and alter, the sequencing of events, or the channeling of forces. Focusing on the multiple proc…
The anthropology of an equation
This article undertakes the anthropology of an equation that constitutes the essence of an algorithm that underlies a variety of computational technologies-most notably spam filters, but also data-mining tools, diagnostic tests, predictive parsers, risk assessment techniques, and Bayesian reasoning more generally. The article foregrounds the ways ontologies are both embodied in and transformed by such algorithms. And it shows the stakes such onto…
The Meanings of Interjections in Q'eqchi' Maya
In Western philosophy and linguistic theory, interjectionsthat is, words like oof, ouch, and bleahhave traditionally been understood to indicate emotional states. This article offers an account of interjections in Qeqchi Maya that illuminates their social and discursive functions. In particular, it discusses the grammatical form of interjections, both in Qeqchi and across languages, and characterizes the indexical objects and pragmatic functions …
Biosemiosis, Technocognition, and Sociogenesis
This essay theorizes significance in conjunction with selection and thereby provides a general theory of meaning. It treats processes of significance and selection in conjunction with processes of sieving and serendipity and thereby systematically interrelates the key factors underlying emergent forms of organized complexity. It theorizes codes in conjunction with channels and thereby links shared cultural representations and networked social rel…
Inalienable possession and personhood in a Q'eqchi'-Mayan community
This essay interprets the relation between inalienable possessions and personhood among speakers of Q'eqchi'-Maya living in the cloud forests of Guatemala. In the broadest sense, inalienable possessions are things that are inherently possessed by human beings, such as arms and legs, mothers and fathers, hearts and names. The relation between inalienable possessions and human possessors is analyzed across a variety of domains, ranging from grammat…
Semiotic technologies, temporal reckoning, and the portability of meaning. Or
This essay is about meaning and measurement, with particular emphasis on the relation between semiotic technologies and temporal reckoning. It begins by theorizing four ways of framing time. Temporality as metricality focuses on the repetition of tokens of common types. Temporality as performativity focuses on the roots and fruits of a given event. Temporality as reckoning focuses on how one determines when an event occurred or how long an event …
From status to contract revisited
Using Henry Sumner Maine's text Ancient Law as a starting point, this article theorizes the relation between value, circulation, subjectivity and temporality. Merging the interactional framework of Erving Goffman with the political economy of Karl Marx, it introduces a metalanguage for describing transformations in subjectivity that occurred with the transition to capitalist modernity. In doing so, it unites the foundational concerns of British s…
A Mayan ontology of poultry
This article has three key themes: ontology (what kinds of beings there are in the world), affect (cognitive and corporeal attunements to such entities), and selfhood (relatively reflexive centers of attunement). To explore these themes, I focus on women's care for chickens among speakers of Q'eqchi' Maya living in the cloud forests of highland Guatemala. Broadly speaking, I argue that these three themes are empirically, methodologically, and the…
Value is life under an interpretation
This essay unfolds the critical and conceptual implications of a particular metaphor - theorizing value in terms of the relation between maps, terrains, and travelers. It synthesizes some ideas from Charles Sanders Peirce, Max Weber, Martin Heidegger, and Charles Taylor. In particular, a terrain turns on social relations and cognitive representations. A map figures such a terrain in terms of differentially weighted origins, paths, and destination…
Enclosure and Disclosure
Research Article| May 01 2007 Enclosure and Disclosure Paul Kockelman Paul Kockelman Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Public Culture (2007) 19 (2): 303–305. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-2006-037 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Paul Kockelman; Enclosure and Disclosure. Public Culture 1 May 2007; 19 (2): 303–305. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-200…
Four Theories of Things
This essay is about the relation between meaning and materiality. It offers careful and coherent, albeit noncanonical, readings of particular themes in Aristotle, Marx, Heidegger, and Peirce. And it does this in order to draw together some classic understandings of value: use value, in particular, but also exchange value, truth value, and moral value (and much else besides). Originating as a series of lecture notes offered to students interested …
The Chicken and the Quetzal
In The Chicken and the Quetzal Paul Kockelman theorizes the creation, measurement, and capture of value by recounting the cultural history of a village in Guatemala's highland cloud forests and its relation to conservation movements and ecotourism. In 1990 a group of German ecologists founded an NGO to help preserve the habitat of the resplendent quetzal-the strikingly beautiful national bird of Guatemala-near the village of Chicacnab. The ecotou…
The Interclausal Relations Hierarchy in Q'eqchi' Maya
The interclausal relations hierarchy describes the systematic correlations that exist between the semantic structure of complement‐taking predicates and the morphosyntactic structure of their complements. In particular, the closer the semantic relation between the narrated events denoted by a predicate and its complement, the more the morphosyntactic encoding of the predicate–complement construction appears as a single clause. In this article, I …
Information is the enclosure of meaning
Residence in the world
This essay brings Peirce's understanding of meaning to bear on Heidegger's critique of mind, thereby articulating being-in-the-world in terms of semiosis. Using ideas developed in ‘The semiotic stance’ (2005), it theorizes five interrelated semiotic processes — heeding affordances, wielding instruments, undertaking actions, performing roles, and filling identities — that constitute the key modes of non-linguistic and/or non-representational meani…
Agent, person, subject, self
Building on ideas developed in ‘The semiotic stance’ (2005), this essay outlines a social and semiotic theory of four seemingly human-specific and individual-centric capacities that, while essential for understanding modern social processes, are often confused and conflated. Loosely speaking, agency is a causal capacity: say, the relatively flexible wielding of means towards ends. Subjectivity is a representational capacity: say, the holding of i…
Stance
The Epistemic and Performative Dynamics of Machine Learning Praxis
This article is about machine learning as it relates to classic concerns in anthropology and the social sciences, regarding meaning, value, and culture, as well as agency, power and performativity. It focuses on the role of machine learning, with its peculiar manner of modeling phenomena, in mediating: (i) the sensibilities and assumptions agents have (qua interpretive grounds and algorithmic models) insofar as these mediate their actions, infere…
Psychological depth is the internalization of dialogical breadth
The Interclausal Relations Hierarchy in Q'eqchi' Maya
The interclausal relations hierarchy describes the systematic correlations that exist between the semantic structure of complement‐taking predicates and the morphosyntactic structure of their complements. In particular, the closer the semantic relation between the narrated events denoted by a predicate and its complement, the more the morphosyntactic encoding of the predicate–complement construction appears as a single clause. In this article, I …
The Meanings of Interjections in Q'eqchi' Maya
In Western philosophy and linguistic theory, interjectionsthat is, words like oof, ouch, and bleahhave traditionally been understood to indicate emotional states. This article offers an account of interjections in Qeqchi Maya that illuminates their social and discursive functions. In particular, it discusses the grammatical form of interjections, both in Qeqchi and across languages, and characterizes the indexical objects and pragmatic functions …
Stance and Subjectivity
Stance may be understood as the semiotic means by which we indicate our orientation to states of affairs, usually framed in terms of evaluation (e.g., moral obligation and epistemic possibility) or intentionality (e.g., desire and memory, fear and doubt). Using data from Q'eqchi'-Maya and English, stance is operationalized in terms of complement-taking predicates and the grammatical category of status. Using frameworks from Goffman and Jakobson, …
The semiotic stance
This essay argues that the pervasive twentieth century understanding of meaning - a sign stands for an object - is incorrect. In its place, it offers the following definition, which is framed not in terms of a single relation (of standing for), but in terms of a relation (of correspondence) between two relations (of standing for): a sign stands for its object on the one hand, and its interpretant on the other, in such a way as to make the interpr…
Representations of the world
‘Mental states’ are retheorized from the standpoint of social statuses (qua commitments and entitlements to signify and interpret in particular ways) and speech acts (qua signs with propositional contents). Using ideas developed in ‘The semiotic stance’ (2005a), it theorizes five interrelated semiotic processes that are usually understood in a psychological idiom: memories, perceptions, beliefs, intentions, and plans. It uses this theory to accou…
Residence in the world
This essay brings Peirce's understanding of meaning to bear on Heidegger's critique of mind, thereby articulating being-in-the-world in terms of semiosis. Using ideas developed in ‘The semiotic stance’ (2005), it theorizes five interrelated semiotic processes — heeding affordances, wielding instruments, undertaking actions, performing roles, and filling identities — that constitute the key modes of non-linguistic and/or non-representational meani…
Agent, person, subject, self
Building on ideas developed in ‘The semiotic stance’ (2005), this essay outlines a social and semiotic theory of four seemingly human-specific and individual-centric capacities that, while essential for understanding modern social processes, are often confused and conflated. Loosely speaking, agency is a causal capacity: say, the relatively flexible wielding of means towards ends. Subjectivity is a representational capacity: say, the holding of i…
Psychological depth is the internalization of dialogical breadth
A Semiotic Ontology of the Commodity
The commodity is analyzed from a semiotic stance. Rather than systematically unfold a subject-object dichotomy (via Hegel's history as dialectic), it systematically deploys a sign-object-interpretant trichotomy (via Peirce's logic as semiotic). Rather than conflate economic value and linguistic meaning through the lens of Saussure s semiology, it uses Peirce's semiotic to provide a theory of meaning that is general enough to include commodities a…
Inalienable possession and personhood in a Q'eqchi'-Mayan community
This essay interprets the relation between inalienable possessions and personhood among speakers of Q'eqchi'-Maya living in the cloud forests of Guatemala. In the broadest sense, inalienable possessions are things that are inherently possessed by human beings, such as arms and legs, mothers and fathers, hearts and names. The relation between inalienable possessions and human possessors is analyzed across a variety of domains, ranging from grammat…
Enclosure and Disclosure
Research Article| May 01 2007 Enclosure and Disclosure Paul Kockelman Paul Kockelman Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Public Culture (2007) 19 (2): 303–305. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-2006-037 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Paul Kockelman; Enclosure and Disclosure. Public Culture 1 May 2007; 19 (2): 303–305. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-200…
From status to contract revisited
Using Henry Sumner Maine's text Ancient Law as a starting point, this article theorizes the relation between value, circulation, subjectivity and temporality. Merging the interactional framework of Erving Goffman with the political economy of Karl Marx, it introduces a metalanguage for describing transformations in subjectivity that occurred with the transition to capitalist modernity. In doing so, it unites the foundational concerns of British s…
Number, unit, and utility in a Mayan community
Rather than asking how two use-values can have the same exchange-value, this article asks how two distinct entities can have the same use-value. Among the Q'eqchi'-Maya, substitution (eeqaj) refers to activities as disparate as house-building, civil-religious elections, vengeance, loans, illness cures, adultery, and namesakes. Such practices involve the exchange of one entity for another entity, insofar as these entities have shared properties, a…
Agency
Using a Peircean theory of meaning, agency may be theorized in terms of flexibility and accountability, on the one hand, and knowledge and power, on the other. In this theory, residential agency, which is closest to notions such as "power" and "choice," is the degree to which one can control the expression of a sign, compose a sign-object relation, and commit to an interpretant of this sign-object relation. Representational agency, which is close…
Inalienable possession as grammatical category and discourse pattern
This essay analyzes the grammatical category of inalienable possession by examining the interaction of morphosyntatic forms, semantic features, pragmatic functions, and discourse frequencies. Using data from Q’eqchi’-Maya, it is argued that inalienable possession may be motivated relative to two dimensions: (1) whatever any person is strongly presumed to possess (identifiability); (2) whatever such personal possessions are referred to frequently …
Introduction
Value is life under an interpretation
This essay unfolds the critical and conceptual implications of a particular metaphor - theorizing value in terms of the relation between maps, terrains, and travelers. It synthesizes some ideas from Charles Sanders Peirce, Max Weber, Martin Heidegger, and Charles Taylor. In particular, a terrain turns on social relations and cognitive representations. A map figures such a terrain in terms of differentially weighted origins, paths, and destination…
Enemies, Parasites, and Noise
This essay outlines some common properties of channels, infrastructure, and institutions. It analyzes the tense relation between channels and codes, on the one hand, and circulation and interpretation, on the other. It compares the assumptions and interventions of three traditions: cybernetics (via Claude Shannon), linguistic anthropology (via Roman Jakobson), and actor-network theory (via Michel Serres). By developing the relation between Serres…
A Mayan ontology of poultry
This article has three key themes: ontology (what kinds of beings there are in the world), affect (cognitive and corporeal attunements to such entities), and selfhood (relatively reflexive centers of attunement). To explore these themes, I focus on women's care for chickens among speakers of Q'eqchi' Maya living in the cloud forests of highland Guatemala. Broadly speaking, I argue that these three themes are empirically, methodologically, and the…
Biosemiosis, Technocognition, and Sociogenesis
This essay theorizes significance in conjunction with selection and thereby provides a general theory of meaning. It treats processes of significance and selection in conjunction with processes of sieving and serendipity and thereby systematically interrelates the key factors underlying emergent forms of organized complexity. It theorizes codes in conjunction with channels and thereby links shared cultural representations and networked social rel…
Agent, Person, Subject, Self
Figures Tables 1. Semiotic Ontologies 1. Signs, Minds, and Meaning-in-the-World 2. Ontology, Interaction, and Infrastructure 2. Biosemiosis, Technocognition, and Sociogenesis 1. Relations between Relations 2. Significance and Selection 3. Communication between Conspecifics 4. The Organization of Cognitive Processes 5. Framing 6. Artificial and Natural Selection, Sieving and Serendipity 7. Lawn-Mowers and Logic Gates 8. Relations between Relations…
Semiotic technologies, temporal reckoning, and the portability of meaning. Or
This essay is about meaning and measurement, with particular emphasis on the relation between semiotic technologies and temporal reckoning. It begins by theorizing four ways of framing time. Temporality as metricality focuses on the repetition of tokens of common types. Temporality as performativity focuses on the roots and fruits of a given event. Temporality as reckoning focuses on how one determines when an event occurred or how long an event …
Stance
Information is the enclosure of meaning
Huckleberry Finn takes the Turing test
Philosophy (30 obras) · Epistemology (27 obras) · Sociology (25 obras) · Linguistics (20 obras) · Computer Science (18 obras) · Philosophy (15 obras) · Semiotics (14 obras) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (12 obras) · Psychology (12 obras) · Aesthetics (7 obras)