M W Scott
Biographic Data
| ID | 11269 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M W Scott |
| GIVEN NAMES | M W |
| FAMILY NAME | Scott |
| SIGNATURE | SCOTT M W |
| AFFILIATIONS | London School of Economics and Political Science |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2301-6924 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 192 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The snake-daughter’s tears: Reversive poly-historicity in southeast Solomon Islands
François Hartog argues that different social collectives experience historicity differently, and advocates comparative study of different ‘regimes of historicity’, different weightings of the relative importance of past, present, and future. Drawing on my own and earlier ethnography of southeast Solomon Islands, I contend that different regimes of historicity correlate with different ontologies discernible in different cosmogonic traditions. I de…
Religence: Conceptualising Posthuman Religion
In this article I contribute to posthuman anthropology by developing two lines of thought. I first suggest that the post-Cartesian ontology integral to posthumanism accommodates a new scientifically informed version of negative theology. I then explore how this new negative theology implies a posthuman religion. By analysing Michel Serres's reconceptualisation of religion as the opposite of negligence and engaging with efforts to build on this th…
Christian Politics in Oceania
The phrase “Christian politics” evokes two meanings: political relations between denominations in one direction, and the contributions of Christian churches to debates about the governing of society. The contributors to this volume address Christian politics in both senses and argue that Christianity is always and inevitably political in the Pacific Islands. Drawing on ethnographic and historical research in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Van…
Moro and the Weather Coast: A Revitalization Movement in the Solomon Islands
How the Missionary got his Mana: Charles Elliot Fox and the Power of Name‐Exchange in Solomon Islands
Charles Elliot Fox (1878–1977) was one of the Anglican Melanesian Mission's most emblematic figures, extending its reputation for scholarship and respect for Pacific traditions. Uniquely among the Mission's European figures, however, Fox is also credited with exceptional powers ( mana ). Based on archival research and ethnographic fieldwork among the Arosi (Makira, Solomon Islands), I argue that Fox's name‐exchanges with Makirans have contributed…
God is other(s): Anthropological pietism and the beings of metamorphosisRejoinder to Willerslev, Rane, and Christian Suhr. 2018. “Is there a place for faith in anthropology? Religion, reason, and the …
Rejoinder to Willerslev, Rane, and Christian Suhr. 2018 . “Is there a place for faith in anthropology? Religion, reason, and the ethnographer’s divine revelation.” Hau : Journal of Ethnographic Theory 8 (1): 65–78
Getting more real with wonder: An afterword
This Afterword is part apologia for an ontology-centred approach to the anthropology of wonder, part diplomatic mission to bring the articles in this special issue into dialogue to yield new insights about wonder. The latter endeavor identifies five key areas in which the articles enhance understanding about wonder. First, they help to clarify the relationship between wonder and socio-political change. Second, they present ethnographic examples o…
To be Makiran is to see like Mr Parrot: The anthropology of wonder in Solomon Islands
This article lays out a general thesis for the development of a comparative ethnographic approach to the anthropology of wonder. It suggests that wonder is both an index and a mode of challenge to existing ontological premises. Through analytical engagement with the theme of wonder in Western philosophy and the anthropology of ontology, it extends this thesis to include the corollary that different ontological premises give rise to different wond…
Cosmogony Today: Counter-Cosmogony, Perspectivism, and the Return of Anti-biblical Polemic
In this article I review critical thought about cosmogony in the social sciences and explore the current status of this concept. The latter agenda entails three components. First, I argue that, even where cosmogony is not mentioned, contemporary anthropological projects that reject the essentialist ontology they ascribe to Western modernity in favor of analytical versions of relational non-dualism thereby posit a 'counter-cosmogony' of eternal re…
An Otago Storeman in Solomon Islands: The diary of William Crossan, copra trader, 1885–86
An Otago Storeman in Solomon Islands: the diary of William Crossan, copra trader, 1885–86. Edited by Tim Bayliss-Smith and Judith A. Bennett. Canberra, ANU E-Press, 2012. ix + 95 pp., notes, photos
The Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory (GDAT), The University of Manchester: The 2011 annual debate - Non-dualism is philosophy not ethnography
Does the concept of non-dualism have ethnographic purchase or is it mainly of philosophical interest? This article comprises the edited presentation and discussions of the 2011 GDAT debate on the motion 'Non-dualism is Philosophy not Ethnography'. The debaters proposing the motion were Michael Scott and Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov. They were opposed by Christopher Pinney and Joanna Cook. Marilyn Strathern acted as jester - playfully and rigorously eng…
The anthropology of ontology (religious science)
Through engagement with a range of recent publications, this article offers a mini-ethnography of wonder discourses in the anthropology of ontology, leading to a rethink of the concept of religion. It has sometimes been suggested that science and religion are antithetical orientations to the experience of wonder: whereas science seeks to banish wonder by replacing it with knowledge, religion remains open to wonder in the face of the unknowable. W…
The Matter of Makira: Colonialism, Competition, and the Production of Gendered Peoples in Contemporary Solomon Islands and Medieval Britain
Since civil tension disrupted Solomon Islands between 1998 and 2003, the Arosi of Makira have elaborated discourses according to which their island contains a secret and preternaturally powerful subterranean army base. These discourses have clear antecedents in Maasina Rule, a post-World War II socio-political movement sometimes analysed as a "cargo cult". Offering an alternative interpretation, I compare Arosi discourses about the Makiran underg…
Book and Film Reviews
BIELO, James S., Words Upon the Word: An Ethnography of Evangelical Group Bible Study, x, 187 pp., notes, references, index. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Paperback, $21. ISBN 9780814791226. BLACKBURN, Anne M., Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka, xxii, 237 pp., figures, bibliographical references. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Cloth, $45. ISBN 9780226055077. BRUCE, Steve, Paisley: Religion and…
Neither ‘New Melanesian History’ nor ‘New Melanesian Ethnography: Recovering Emplaced Matrilineages in Southeast Solomon Islands
For two decades, Melanesianists have sought to reconcile what Robert Foster (1995) termed the ‘New Melanesian History’ and the ‘New Melanesian Ethnography’. The former describes historically oriented studies that critique representations of Melanesian custom as recent objectifications of strategically positioned discourses and practices. The latter describes culturally oriented, particularist studies that characterize Melanesian sociality as an u…
I Was Like Abraham: Notes on the anthropology of Christianity from the Solomon Islands
This article offers a detailed exegesis of what I term the ethno-theology of Timothy Karu, a Solomon Islands Anglican whose understanding of the nature of his matrilineage is informed by the Pauline account of the election of Israel. The analysis suggests a non-essentialising treatment of Christianity that nevertheless demonstrates how Solomon Islanders engage simultaneously with multiple interlocking macro and micro Christian logics in ways that…
Hybridity, Vacuity, and Blockage: Visions of Chaos from Anthropological Theory, Island Melanesia, and Central Africa
Marshall Sahlins (1996) argues that anthropology has been the bearer of a 'bourgeoisified' Judeo-Christian cosmology according to which an original state of chaos, akin to the Hobbesian state of nature, gives way to the order of society or the state. The central conundrum that this anthropology has sought to explain is how fallen and needy individuals come together in cooperative organization. Sahlins furthermore contends that, by universalizing …
Emplaced Myth: Space, Narrative, and Knowledge in Aboriginal Australia and Papua New Guinea
Emplaced Myth: Space, Narrative, and Knowledge in Aboriginal Australia and Papua New Guinea. Alan Rumsey and James F. Weiner. eds. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 2001. vii. 281 pp. figures, references, index
The anthropology of ontology (religious science)
Through engagement with a range of recent publications, this article offers a mini-ethnography of wonder discourses in the anthropology of ontology, leading to a rethink of the concept of religion. It has sometimes been suggested that science and religion are antithetical orientations to the experience of wonder: whereas science seeks to banish wonder by replacing it with knowledge, religion remains open to wonder in the face of the unknowable. W…
I Was Like Abraham: Notes on the anthropology of Christianity from the Solomon Islands
This article offers a detailed exegesis of what I term the ethno-theology of Timothy Karu, a Solomon Islands Anglican whose understanding of the nature of his matrilineage is informed by the Pauline account of the election of Israel. The analysis suggests a non-essentialising treatment of Christianity that nevertheless demonstrates how Solomon Islanders engage simultaneously with multiple interlocking macro and micro Christian logics in ways that…
To be Makiran is to see like Mr Parrot: The anthropology of wonder in Solomon Islands
This article lays out a general thesis for the development of a comparative ethnographic approach to the anthropology of wonder. It suggests that wonder is both an index and a mode of challenge to existing ontological premises. Through analytical engagement with the theme of wonder in Western philosophy and the anthropology of ontology, it extends this thesis to include the corollary that different ontological premises give rise to different wond…
Hybridity, Vacuity, and Blockage: Visions of Chaos from Anthropological Theory, Island Melanesia, and Central Africa
Marshall Sahlins (1996) argues that anthropology has been the bearer of a 'bourgeoisified' Judeo-Christian cosmology according to which an original state of chaos, akin to the Hobbesian state of nature, gives way to the order of society or the state. The central conundrum that this anthropology has sought to explain is how fallen and needy individuals come together in cooperative organization. Sahlins furthermore contends that, by universalizing …
The Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory (GDAT), The University of Manchester: The 2011 annual debate - Non-dualism is philosophy not ethnography
Does the concept of non-dualism have ethnographic purchase or is it mainly of philosophical interest? This article comprises the edited presentation and discussions of the 2011 GDAT debate on the motion 'Non-dualism is Philosophy not Ethnography'. The debaters proposing the motion were Michael Scott and Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov. They were opposed by Christopher Pinney and Joanna Cook. Marilyn Strathern acted as jester - playfully and rigorously eng…
The Matter of Makira: Colonialism, Competition, and the Production of Gendered Peoples in Contemporary Solomon Islands and Medieval Britain
Since civil tension disrupted Solomon Islands between 1998 and 2003, the Arosi of Makira have elaborated discourses according to which their island contains a secret and preternaturally powerful subterranean army base. These discourses have clear antecedents in Maasina Rule, a post-World War II socio-political movement sometimes analysed as a "cargo cult". Offering an alternative interpretation, I compare Arosi discourses about the Makiran underg…
Cosmogony Today: Counter-Cosmogony, Perspectivism, and the Return of Anti-biblical Polemic
In this article I review critical thought about cosmogony in the social sciences and explore the current status of this concept. The latter agenda entails three components. First, I argue that, even where cosmogony is not mentioned, contemporary anthropological projects that reject the essentialist ontology they ascribe to Western modernity in favor of analytical versions of relational non-dualism thereby posit a 'counter-cosmogony' of eternal re…
Neither ‘New Melanesian History’ nor ‘New Melanesian Ethnography: Recovering Emplaced Matrilineages in Southeast Solomon Islands
For two decades, Melanesianists have sought to reconcile what Robert Foster (1995) termed the ‘New Melanesian History’ and the ‘New Melanesian Ethnography’. The former describes historically oriented studies that critique representations of Melanesian custom as recent objectifications of strategically positioned discourses and practices. The latter describes culturally oriented, particularist studies that characterize Melanesian sociality as an u…
Getting more real with wonder: An afterword
This Afterword is part apologia for an ontology-centred approach to the anthropology of wonder, part diplomatic mission to bring the articles in this special issue into dialogue to yield new insights about wonder. The latter endeavor identifies five key areas in which the articles enhance understanding about wonder. First, they help to clarify the relationship between wonder and socio-political change. Second, they present ethnographic examples o…
Emplaced Myth: Space, Narrative, and Knowledge in Aboriginal Australia and Papua New Guinea
Emplaced Myth: Space, Narrative, and Knowledge in Aboriginal Australia and Papua New Guinea. Alan Rumsey and James F. Weiner. eds. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 2001. vii. 281 pp. figures, references, index
God is other(s): Anthropological pietism and the beings of metamorphosisRejoinder to Willerslev, Rane, and Christian Suhr. 2018. “Is there a place for faith in anthropology? Religion, reason, and the …
Rejoinder to Willerslev, Rane, and Christian Suhr. 2018 . “Is there a place for faith in anthropology? Religion, reason, and the ethnographer’s divine revelation.” Hau : Journal of Ethnographic Theory 8 (1): 65–78
Emplaced Myth: Space, Narrative, and Knowledge in Aboriginal Australia and Papua New Guinea
Emplaced Myth: Space, Narrative, and Knowledge in Aboriginal Australia and Papua New Guinea. Alan Rumsey and James F. Weiner. eds. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 2001. vii. 281 pp. figures, references, index
I Was Like Abraham: Notes on the anthropology of Christianity from the Solomon Islands
This article offers a detailed exegesis of what I term the ethno-theology of Timothy Karu, a Solomon Islands Anglican whose understanding of the nature of his matrilineage is informed by the Pauline account of the election of Israel. The analysis suggests a non-essentialising treatment of Christianity that nevertheless demonstrates how Solomon Islanders engage simultaneously with multiple interlocking macro and micro Christian logics in ways that…
Hybridity, Vacuity, and Blockage: Visions of Chaos from Anthropological Theory, Island Melanesia, and Central Africa
Marshall Sahlins (1996) argues that anthropology has been the bearer of a 'bourgeoisified' Judeo-Christian cosmology according to which an original state of chaos, akin to the Hobbesian state of nature, gives way to the order of society or the state. The central conundrum that this anthropology has sought to explain is how fallen and needy individuals come together in cooperative organization. Sahlins furthermore contends that, by universalizing …
Neither ‘New Melanesian History’ nor ‘New Melanesian Ethnography: Recovering Emplaced Matrilineages in Southeast Solomon Islands
For two decades, Melanesianists have sought to reconcile what Robert Foster (1995) termed the ‘New Melanesian History’ and the ‘New Melanesian Ethnography’. The former describes historically oriented studies that critique representations of Melanesian custom as recent objectifications of strategically positioned discourses and practices. The latter describes culturally oriented, particularist studies that characterize Melanesian sociality as an u…
Book and Film Reviews
BIELO, James S., Words Upon the Word: An Ethnography of Evangelical Group Bible Study, x, 187 pp., notes, references, index. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Paperback, $21. ISBN 9780814791226. BLACKBURN, Anne M., Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka, xxii, 237 pp., figures, bibliographical references. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Cloth, $45. ISBN 9780226055077. BRUCE, Steve, Paisley: Religion and…
The Matter of Makira: Colonialism, Competition, and the Production of Gendered Peoples in Contemporary Solomon Islands and Medieval Britain
Since civil tension disrupted Solomon Islands between 1998 and 2003, the Arosi of Makira have elaborated discourses according to which their island contains a secret and preternaturally powerful subterranean army base. These discourses have clear antecedents in Maasina Rule, a post-World War II socio-political movement sometimes analysed as a "cargo cult". Offering an alternative interpretation, I compare Arosi discourses about the Makiran underg…
An Otago Storeman in Solomon Islands: The diary of William Crossan, copra trader, 1885–86
An Otago Storeman in Solomon Islands: the diary of William Crossan, copra trader, 1885–86. Edited by Tim Bayliss-Smith and Judith A. Bennett. Canberra, ANU E-Press, 2012. ix + 95 pp., notes, photos
The Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory (GDAT), The University of Manchester: The 2011 annual debate - Non-dualism is philosophy not ethnography
Does the concept of non-dualism have ethnographic purchase or is it mainly of philosophical interest? This article comprises the edited presentation and discussions of the 2011 GDAT debate on the motion 'Non-dualism is Philosophy not Ethnography'. The debaters proposing the motion were Michael Scott and Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov. They were opposed by Christopher Pinney and Joanna Cook. Marilyn Strathern acted as jester - playfully and rigorously eng…
The anthropology of ontology (religious science)
Through engagement with a range of recent publications, this article offers a mini-ethnography of wonder discourses in the anthropology of ontology, leading to a rethink of the concept of religion. It has sometimes been suggested that science and religion are antithetical orientations to the experience of wonder: whereas science seeks to banish wonder by replacing it with knowledge, religion remains open to wonder in the face of the unknowable. W…
Cosmogony Today: Counter-Cosmogony, Perspectivism, and the Return of Anti-biblical Polemic
In this article I review critical thought about cosmogony in the social sciences and explore the current status of this concept. The latter agenda entails three components. First, I argue that, even where cosmogony is not mentioned, contemporary anthropological projects that reject the essentialist ontology they ascribe to Western modernity in favor of analytical versions of relational non-dualism thereby posit a 'counter-cosmogony' of eternal re…
To be Makiran is to see like Mr Parrot: The anthropology of wonder in Solomon Islands
This article lays out a general thesis for the development of a comparative ethnographic approach to the anthropology of wonder. It suggests that wonder is both an index and a mode of challenge to existing ontological premises. Through analytical engagement with the theme of wonder in Western philosophy and the anthropology of ontology, it extends this thesis to include the corollary that different ontological premises give rise to different wond…
Getting more real with wonder: An afterword
This Afterword is part apologia for an ontology-centred approach to the anthropology of wonder, part diplomatic mission to bring the articles in this special issue into dialogue to yield new insights about wonder. The latter endeavor identifies five key areas in which the articles enhance understanding about wonder. First, they help to clarify the relationship between wonder and socio-political change. Second, they present ethnographic examples o…
God is other(s): Anthropological pietism and the beings of metamorphosisRejoinder to Willerslev, Rane, and Christian Suhr. 2018. “Is there a place for faith in anthropology? Religion, reason, and the …
Rejoinder to Willerslev, Rane, and Christian Suhr. 2018 . “Is there a place for faith in anthropology? Religion, reason, and the ethnographer’s divine revelation.” Hau : Journal of Ethnographic Theory 8 (1): 65–78
How the Missionary got his Mana: Charles Elliot Fox and the Power of Name‐Exchange in Solomon Islands
Charles Elliot Fox (1878–1977) was one of the Anglican Melanesian Mission's most emblematic figures, extending its reputation for scholarship and respect for Pacific traditions. Uniquely among the Mission's European figures, however, Fox is also credited with exceptional powers ( mana ). Based on archival research and ethnographic fieldwork among the Arosi (Makira, Solomon Islands), I argue that Fox's name‐exchanges with Makirans have contributed…
Christian Politics in Oceania
The phrase “Christian politics” evokes two meanings: political relations between denominations in one direction, and the contributions of Christian churches to debates about the governing of society. The contributors to this volume address Christian politics in both senses and argue that Christianity is always and inevitably political in the Pacific Islands. Drawing on ethnographic and historical research in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Van…
Moro and the Weather Coast: A Revitalization Movement in the Solomon Islands
Religence: Conceptualising Posthuman Religion
In this article I contribute to posthuman anthropology by developing two lines of thought. I first suggest that the post-Cartesian ontology integral to posthumanism accommodates a new scientifically informed version of negative theology. I then explore how this new negative theology implies a posthuman religion. By analysing Michel Serres's reconceptualisation of religion as the opposite of negligence and engaging with efforts to build on this th…
The snake-daughter’s tears: Reversive poly-historicity in southeast Solomon Islands
François Hartog argues that different social collectives experience historicity differently, and advocates comparative study of different ‘regimes of historicity’, different weightings of the relative importance of past, present, and future. Drawing on my own and earlier ethnography of southeast Solomon Islands, I contend that different regimes of historicity correlate with different ontologies discernible in different cosmogonic traditions. I de…
Philosophy (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Anthropology (9 works) · History (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Ethnography (8 works) · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs (8 works) · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies (8 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (7 works) · Epistemology (7 works)