Roger M Keesing
Biographic Data
| ID | 3581031 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Roger M Keesing |
| GIVEN NAMES | Roger M |
| FAMILY NAME | Keesing |
| SIGNATURE | KEESING R M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Australian National University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 88 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1055 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 88 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1966 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
The Lens of Enchantment
Une coquille vide: Une vision anthropologique sombre du développement non-viable du pacifique
Le développement à la mode occidentale a atteint les rivages des petites îles du Pacifique. En se servant de l’exemple des Iles Salomon, l’auteur évalue les impacts du développement sur le bien-être économique et social de ce petit pays. Il compare le modèle monolithique de développment à l’occidentale, basé sur l’exportation de ressources naturelles et de richesses, à une approche pleine de bon sens basée sur le savoir-faire et les qualification…
Teori-Teori Tentang Budaya
Saya pikir konsep budaya (culture)tidak punya satu arti yang benar, dikeramatkan dan tak pernah habis kita coba temukan. Tetapi, seperti halnya simbol-simbol lain, konsep ini mempunyai makna saat kita memakainya; dan sebagaimana konsep-konsep analitik lainnya, pemakai konsep ini harus membentuk-mencoba sedikitnya setuju pada-pengelompokan gejala alam, (dimana) konsep ini dapat diberi label secara sangat strategis...[...] Apakah konsep tentang bud…
On not understanding symbols: Toward an anthropology of incomprehension
Previous articleNext article FreeOn not understanding symbols Toward an anthropology of incomprehensionRoger M. KEESINGRoger M. KEESINGPDFPDF PLUSFull TextEPUBMOBI Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreA major thrust in contemporary social anthropology has been a deepened concern with meaning-with the ways in which "a particular system of symbols...confer…
Kwaio
Kastom and Anticolonialism on Malaita: "Culture" as Political Symbol
Most Melanesians invoking ideologies of kastom have, in becoming Christianized and partly Westernized, hearkened back to ways now lost or abandoned. But the Kwaio of Malaita are preoccupied with kastom, while traditional religion, social organization and exchange still prevail. Why and how? The Kwaio are compared with Kwara'ae and other Malaita peoples concerned with kastom - many Christianized, others clinging to old ways
Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective
Experienced Bodies as Contested Sites
From Fisin to Pijin: Creolization in process in the Solomon Islands
In a combination of ethnohistorical records and longitudinal data gathered over a period of 30 years, the development of Solomon Islands Pijin is documented and analyzed in light of the current debate surrounding creolization theory. Using a pragmatic definition of a Creole (Jourdan 1991), the authors argue that pidgins can be very elaborate codes even before they become the mother tongue of children, and that this elaboration is the result of th…
Métaphores conventionnelles et métaphysiques anthropologiques: La problématique de la traduction culturelle
L’examen des travaux récents sur la métaphore conventionnelle associés aux réinterprétations des études classiques portant sur « l’âme-substance » et le mana conduit à confirmer les dangers de la surinterprétation – de l’attribution de théologies et de métaphysiques fictives – chez les ethnographes. Ne sommes-nous pas enclins, dans notre entreprise de traduction culturelle, à prêter aux manières de parler des autres peuples une pertinence qui va …
Radical cultural difference: Anthropology's myth
Foraging in the urban jungle: Notes from the Kwaio underground
Keesing Roger M. Foraging in the urban jungle: notes from the Kwaio underground. In: Journal de la Société des océanistes, 99, 1994-2. pp. 167-175
Custom and Confrontation
Custom and Confrontation: The Kwaio Struggle for Cultural Autonomy
Colonial and Counter-Colonial Discourse in Melanesia
L'A. montre comment le discours colonial a impose des structures categoriques et des formes specifiques dans le discours contre-hegemonique de la resistance et de la decolonisation dans le Pacifique sud-ouest. Il developpe le cas des Kwaio de l'ile de Malaita (Iles Salomons) ou le discours anti-colonialiste a ete etabli selon les termes appartenant au colonialisme. La conceptualisation de la souverainete, le discours de la chretiente et la suprem…
‘Earth’ and ‘path’ as complex categories: Semantics and symbolism in Kwaio culture
In the last decade, sporadic attempts have been made to bridge the gulf between cognitive anthropology and various modes of symbolic/interpretative anthropology. It is no surprise that these efforts have achieved only limited success, given the seemingly irreconcilable differences between the philosophical/epistemological premises of scholars on each side of the divide. On one side, cognitive anthropologists mainly share with other cognitive rese…
Kastom re-examined
Custom and confrontation: The Kwaio struggle for cultural autonomy
Writing Kwaio Life Histories: Issues of Authorship and Politics
This article discusses the two ends of the life-history process: the reasons for its undertaking and the research assumptions these engender, and the impact of the published account on readers. In doing so, I draw on my own experience in the research and writing of Nan: The Life of an Irish Travelling woman (Gmelch, 1986/1991) and upon the responses of Traveller and non-Traveller readers to this life history. (Ethnographic research; life-history …
Melanesian Pidgin and the Oceanic Substrate
Some Problems in the Study of Oceanic Religion
The Expansion of Melanesian Pidgin: Further Early Evidence from the Solomons
A substantial pidgin text recorded in the western Solomons in 1893 is analyzed and placed in historical context. Showing complex syntactic pat-terns, the text is strikingly similar to twentieth century Solomons Pijin. It corresponds closely to an earlier text from the same area and to contem-poraneous texts from New Guinea, lending support to arguments for an early expansion of pidgin and for a monolectal origin for modern Melane-sian Pidgin dial…
Asian cultures
Experiments In Thinking About Ritual
L'A. s'interesse aux rituels en tant que mode de communication humaine et se demande comment on reconnait un rituel en tant que tel : il ne s'agit pas d'une simple repetition, il est gouverne, comme le jeu, par les premisses de l'imagination (« fictionality ») et dirige, a l'inverse du jeu, par un scenario (Bateson). L'A. s'interroge sur le sens des rituels et sur leurs « pouvoirs » en privilegiant une approche philosophico-linguistique. Une comp…
Kwara'ae Conceptions of Abu: A Further Note
Theories of Culture
Anthropology as Interpretive Quest [and Comments and Reply]
Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective
Theories Of Culture Revisited
"Rethinking "Mana
Comparative data are assembled to suggest that in Proto-Oceanic, mana was canonically a stative verb meaning 'be efficacious, be successful, be realized, "work.'" Where mana was used as a noun, it was (and in most daughter languages is) not a substantive but an abstract verbal noun: 'efficacy,' 'success,' 'potency.' Anthropological misinterpretations of mana from Codrington onward as a medium of power represent, for most daughter languages, perva…
Kwaio Women Speak: The Micropolitics of Autobiography in a Solomon Island Society
Attempts to elicit women's autobiographies among the Kwaio (Malaita, Solomon Islands) yielded little, seemingly confirming views that women's voices in tribal societies are "muted," women's views perspectival and partial. Further efforts yielded rich, insightful, self-accounts from 15 Kwaio women. The historical, ethnographic, and sexual-political contexts of these self-accounts are examined. What women can and will say about themselves and their…
Conventional Metaphors and Anthropological Metaphysics: The Problematic of Cultural Translation
Recent work on conventional metaphor together with reinterpretations of classic studies of "soul substance" and mana are examined to assess the dangers of overinterpretation--the attribution of nonexistent theologies and metaphysics--by ethnographers. In our project of cultural translation, are we prone to attribute deeper salience to other peoples' way of talk than they in fact imply
Exotic Readings of Cultural Texts [and Comments and Reply]
Shrines, Ancestors, and Cognatic Descent: The Kwaio and Tallensi1
Parallels between Kwaio (Solomon Islands) social structure and the system of ancestral cults and shrines are drawn. Kwaio distinguish between, and make important use of, agnatic descent, cognatic descent, and cognatic kinship, and each is reflected in ritual. Comparisons are drawn between Kwaio social structure, ancestors, and shrines, and those of the Tallensi. Remarkable similarities emerge. It is suggested that many facets of "complementary fi…
Is Anthropology Art or Science? [and Comments and Reply]
Kwaio religion: The living and the dead in a Solomon Island society
Paradigms Lost: The New Ethnography and the New Linguistics
The methodological premises and analytical models of "the new ethnography" represent an extension to cultural phenomena of the paradigm of pre-transformational linguistics. Thus "ethnoscience" has emphasized emic descriptions of cultural uniqueness, discovery procedures, phonological models, and a finite corpus. The linguistic foundations of these approaches to culture have been pulled away by the newer transformational paradigm. The implications…
New Perspectives in Cultural Anthropology
Statistical Models and Decision Models of Social Structure: A Kwaio Case
Anthropological models of social structure, however elegant, seldom ac? count for the complexities of social relations on the ground. A segmentary model of Nuer society, for instance, tells us much about Nuer political rela? tions and kinship ideology, but it does not account for patterns of residence or interaction in a Nuer settlement. Leach has recently suggested that the solution is to treat social structure statistically, in the genre of cla…
Measuring Patterns of Acquaintanceship [and Comments and Reply]
This paper examines some of the factors which determine how people know each other and is a preliminary attempt to discover the rules which govern such interactions. An informant-defined experiment was conducted to elicit the information about a person needed by individuals in a small U.S. university town to choose which of their acquaintances was most likely to know that person. We found, as with a previous experiment, that knowledge of the pers…
Linguistic Knowledge and Cultural Knowledge: Some Doubts and Speculations
The boundary between a speaker's knowledge of a language and his/her knowledge of the world poses deep and still unresolved analytical problems. Semantic systems and pragmatic rules build on and presuppose basic cultural assumptions about cosmology, time, causality-about the world described and manipulated by language. For a Western language, those assumptions are shared by speaker and linguist and need not be analyzed. But a non- Western languag…
Colonial and Counter-Colonial Discourse in Melanesia
L'A. montre comment le discours colonial a impose des structures categoriques et des formes specifiques dans le discours contre-hegemonique de la resistance et de la decolonisation dans le Pacifique sud-ouest. Il developpe le cas des Kwaio de l'ile de Malaita (Iles Salomons) ou le discours anti-colonialiste a ete etabli selon les termes appartenant au colonialisme. La conceptualisation de la souverainete, le discours de la chretiente et la suprem…
The Invention of Primitive Society: Transformation of an Illusion
This article critiques the concept of "primitive society" as a Western anthropological construct. Keesing and Kuper argue that the notion of a static, unchanging, and inherently different "primitive" society is a misrepresentation of the diverse and dynamic nature of human cultures. They trace the historical development of this concept, highlighting its roots in colonial ideologies and its perpetuation through anthropological theories. The author…
Kastom re-examined
Collective Representation in American Anthropological Conversations: Individual and Culture [and Comments and Reply]
The paper is an investigation into the conversational processes which lead to a peculiarly American appropriation of the holistic intuition into the nature of culture. The individualism of American culture is well known. The fact that one can find in the United States many statements that go beyond individualism (e.g., in the Pragmatist tradition) is either ignored or used as an argument for the impossibility of speaking of an "American" culture.…
Ethnographic Semantics: A Preliminary Survey [and Comments and Replies]
Ethnographic semantics is the description of semantic characteristics that are culturally revealing. In anthropology it has come to include a number of different types of analysis which have so far been used mostly in studies of kinship and folk science. These are contrast-level mapping, componential analysis, programmed specification, and various uses of semantic rules, notably reduction analysis. Contrast-level study is the mapping of native wo…
On Anthropology as Interpretive Quest
Killers, Big Men, and Priests on Malaita: Reflections on a Melanesian Troika System
One of the unfortunate distortions created by the elevation of the Big Man as anthropology's stereotyped Melanesian political leader has been a deflection of attention from warrior-leaders, .who in many parts of precolonial Melanesia had power and prestige greater than or coordinate with that of entrepreneurial leaders. Big Men have held center stage in the period of ethnographic observation partly because men whose prominence was achieved in war…
Nonunilineal Descent and Contextual Definition of Status: The Kwaio Evidence1
Kwaio Fosterage1
Fosterage is one important possible outcome when parental death disrupts the family developmental cycle among the Kwaio of the Solomon Islands. A model of alternative sequences of possible events and decision-making principles, portrayed with flow diagrams, is outlined. The significance of fosterage in generating Kwaio social alignments is examined, and the implications of this approach for the study of social structure are discussed
Ethnographic Semantics: A Preliminary Survey [and Comments and Replies]
Ethnographic semantics is the description of semantic characteristics that are culturally revealing. In anthropology it has come to include a number of different types of analysis which have so far been used mostly in studies of kinship and folk science. These are contrast-level mapping, componential analysis, programmed specification, and various uses of semantic rules, notably reduction analysis. Contrast-level study is the mapping of native wo…
General and Ethnology: Choiseul Island Social Structure. Harold W. SCHEFFLER
Descriptive Categories in the Analysis of Social Organization: A Rejoinder to Nelson
Kwaio Kindreds
Statistical Models and Decision Models of Social Structure: A Kwaio Case
Anthropological models of social structure, however elegant, seldom ac? count for the complexities of social relations on the ground. A segmentary model of Nuer society, for instance, tells us much about Nuer political rela? tions and kinship ideology, but it does not account for patterns of residence or interaction in a Nuer settlement. Leach has recently suggested that the solution is to treat social structure statistically, in the genre of cla…
Polynesian Culture History: Essays in Honor of Kenneth P. Emory . G enevieve A. H ighland , R oland W. F orce , A lan H oward , M arion K elly , and Y osihiko H. S inoto , eds
Chiefs in a Chiefless Society: The Ideology of Modern Kwaio Politics1
Step Kin, In-Laws, and Ethnoscience
This article explores the complexities of kinship terminology, particularly focusing on the distinctions and overlaps between terms for step-kin and in-laws across different cultures. Keesing argues that a strict separation between biological and social kinship is inadequate for understanding the nuances of these relationships. He utilizes ethnoscientific methods, drawing on examples from various societies, to demonstrate how kinship terms reflec…
Nonunilineal Descent and Contextual Definition of Status: The Kwaio Evidence1
On Descent and Descent Groups
General: Social Organization: Essays Presented to Raymond Firth. Maurice Freedman
On Quibblings over Squabblings of Siblings: New Perspectives on Kin Terms and Role Behavior
Anthropologists often claim that kin terms label behavioral roles as well as categories of kin. It is argued here that the closest relative in a category typically enacts not one role but several and that this coalescence of roles occurs only under typical or ideal circumstances. More distant kinsmen in a category may enact one or 2 of these roles, or none. Thus confusion results when the kin term is used to label the cluster of roles or when the…
Kwaio Fosterage1
Fosterage is one important possible outcome when parental death disrupts the family developmental cycle among the Kwaio of the Solomon Islands. A model of alternative sequences of possible events and decision-making principles, portrayed with flow diagrams, is outlined. The significance of fosterage in generating Kwaio social alignments is examined, and the implications of this approach for the study of social structure are discussed
Shrines, Ancestors, and Cognatic Descent: The Kwaio and Tallensi1
Parallels between Kwaio (Solomon Islands) social structure and the system of ancestral cults and shrines are drawn. Kwaio distinguish between, and make important use of, agnatic descent, cognatic descent, and cognatic kinship, and each is reflected in ritual. Comparisons are drawn between Kwaio social structure, ancestors, and shrines, and those of the Tallensi. Remarkable similarities emerge. It is suggested that many facets of "complementary fi…
Paradigms Lost: The New Ethnography and the New Linguistics
The methodological premises and analytical models of "the new ethnography" represent an extension to cultural phenomena of the paradigm of pre-transformational linguistics. Thus "ethnoscience" has emphasized emic descriptions of cultural uniqueness, discovery procedures, phonological models, and a finite corpus. The linguistic foundations of these approaches to culture have been pulled away by the newer transformational paradigm. The implications…
New Perspectives in Cultural Anthropology
Kwara?ae Ethnoglottochronology: Procedures Used by Malaita Cannibals for Determining Percentages of Shared Cognates1
How hungry Kwara?ae cannibals are to divide a slain relative poses a non-trivial formal problem for the savage mind. Here a mathematical model is proposed for the rigorous segmentation of a corpus-keeping in mind the highest ethnoscience standards of ethnographic rigor, psychological reality, methodological precision, explicitness, productivity, elegance, replicability, incomprehensibility, and irrelevance
Theories of Culture
General, Applied and Theoretical: General, Applied and Theoretical: Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. GREGORY Bateson
More on the Standard Ethnographic Sample
Transformational Linguistics and Structural Anthropology
The mysteries of the depths of mind remain vast and profound in contrast to men’s tentative explorations and mappings. However, two new paths for exploring these depths have been opened in recent years, and each- we are told- will lead deeper and enable us to map far more systematically than
Reply to Smith and Kushner
General and Theoretical: Structure and Transformation: Developmental and Historical Aspects. Klaus F. Riegel and George C. Rosenwald
The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers
Politico‐religious Movements and Anticolonialism on Malaita: Maasina Rule in Historical Perspective: Part I
Sociology (54 works) · History (43 works) · Philosophy (33 works) · Anthropology (30 works) · Computer Science (30 works) · History (29 works) · Library science (24 works) · Linguistics (20 works) · Citation (19 works) · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs (18 works)