Robert Parkin
Biographic Data
| ID | 3584670 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert Parkin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert |
| FAMILY NAME | Parkin |
| SIGNATURE | PARKIN R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 49 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 130 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 48 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
A Further Note on Geg Marriages
Marriages between groups of siblings-in-law, which, using kinship conventions, I call ‘GEG marriages’, resemble cross-cousin marriage or prescriptive alliance but lack the repeatability of such alliances in the immediately following generation(s). Although mentioned in passing quite frequently in ethnographic accounts, theory explaining them is largely lacking. Building on previous work, in this note I address the possible reasons for such marria…
Matriliny as an archaeological problem. The view from social anthropology
Louis Dumont and Hierarchical Opposition
The work of Louis Dumont, who died in 1998, on India and modern individualism represented certain theoretical advances on the earlier structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss. One such advance is Dumont's idea of hierarchical opposition, which he proposed as a truer representation of indigenous ideologies than Lévi-Strauss's binary opposition. In this book the author argues that, although structuralism is often thought to have gone out of fashion, Du…
A History of Oxford Anthropology
List of Figures List of Contributors Preface Introduction Peter Riviere Chapter 1. Origins and Survivals: Tylor, Balfour and the Pitt Rivers Museum and their Role within Anthropology in Oxford 1883-1905 Christopher Gosden, Frances Larson and Alison Petch Chapter 2. The Formative Years: the Committee for Anthropology 1905-38 Peter Riviere Chapter 3. How All Souls got its Anthropologist John Davis Chapter 4. A Major Disaster to Anthropology? Oxford…
Revisiting Kohler, Gifford and Rivers: Secondary marriages and Crow-Omaha terminologies
It is now well over a century since Gifford (1916) and Rivers (1914) invoked certain second marriages as an explanation for Crow-Omaha (C-O) terminologies, and even further from Josef Kohler's initial attempt (1897; translated 1975) to marshal such an explanation for the Omaha themselves. In this paper, I wish to revisit these ideas with reference to a wider body of literature. This literature has only appeared since these three scholars wrote, t…
Arranged marriages: Whose choice and why? Reflections on the principles underlying spouse selection worldwide
Although arranged or forced marriages have come under fire in the west for being associated with certain societies of immigrant origin, especially from South Asia or the Middle East and North Africa, and especially Muslim immigrants, in fact they are widespread among many so-called ‘tribal’ societies around the world. In fact, marriage by choice, for example, based on notions of romantic love, might well be in the minority globally, though they d…
Substitutability of Kin and the Crow-Omaha Problem
The reasons for the existence of Crow-Omaha terminologies have long been debated because of difficulties in associating them with specific features of social organization or practice. However, by going back to the theories of earlier authorities like Josef Kohler, Radcliffe-Brown and Lévi-Strauss and using them to interpret some key ethnographies, it is possible to suggest why they exist. That is, from ego’s perspective, the vertical equations th…
Marriage
It not easy to define marriage in a universally appropriate manner. In the great majority of societies, however, it can be regarded as involving some cultural restriction on human sexual relations, perhaps restricting access for each individual to a limited number of other individuals—not always just one—or directing access toward specific categories of suitable spouses. At the same time, pre‐ and extramarital affairs need not be regarded as wron…
Why Do Societies Abandon Cross‐Cousin Marriage
Afterword
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Religious Sites and Sacred Spaces in Lithuania and Poland: A Comparison between the Šiluva Complex and the Świebodzin Statue of Jesus
This paper compares two religious sites associated with the Catholic Church: iluva in Lithuania, where a religious complex has existed for several centuries because of visions of the Virgin Mary seen there in 1608; and the much more recent statue of Jesus Christ erected earlier this century in the town of wiebodzin in western Poland. It is argued that, unlike the former, a central site where religious devotion comes together with expressions of L…
The Evolution of Kinship Terminologies: Nonprescriptive Forms of Asymmetric Alliance in Indonesia
Thomas Trautmann has recently suggested that kinship terminologies with Crow-Omaha equations may derive historically from asymmetric prescriptive terminologies on the basis of very similar vertical equations. This argument is likely not applicable to eastern Indonesia and parts of Sumatra, where asymmetric prescriptive terminologies are well known. First, they have their own nonprescriptive variants of the latter, from which they may have develop…
How Did Durkheim Die
As we are commemorating the centenary of Durkheim’s death in this issue, it seems appropriate to reflect on what we know about it. We know, of course, that he died on 15 November 1917 at the age of 59 – not a young age at which to die a hundred years ago, but not an old one, either. Also, we know that he died during World War I, but in his bed, unlike many of his younger colleagues, who died on the battlefield, including his own son
Debaene, Vincent: Far Afield. French Anthropology between Science and Literature
Anthropos , Seite 610 - 611
Oxford University
What Kinship Is—And Is Not by Marshall Sahlins (review)
Reviewed by: What Kinship Is—And Is Not by Marshall Sahlins Robert Parkin Marshall Sahlins, What Kinship Is—And Is Not. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. 102 pp. Marshall Sahlins is one of the great names of modern anthropology, but thus far he has not counted as one of the key figures in the study of kinship. This is despite his demolition of the pretensions of early socio-biology in The Use and Abuse of Biology (1976), which heavily f…
The Dark Side of Humanity: The Work of Robert Hertz and Its Legacy
Robert Parkin's book gives a reading of each of these texts before going on to show their subsequent influence on anthropologists in particular. Hertz's activities as reviewer and phamphleteer are also covered. The introductory biographical chapter drawing on Hertz's surviving papers in the Collège de France, shows his own ambivalence towards his academic career and it also attempts to clarify the circumstances leading up to his apparently gratui…
Kinship
Kinship has traditionally been one of the key topics in social and cultural anthropology. There are two principal reasons for this: First, although not all human groups are constituted on the basis of kinship, all humans have kinship as individuals and are related to other individuals through it. Second, for the sorts of “tribal,” classless, economically unspecialized societies that anthropologists have mostly—though no longer exclusively—studied…
Out of the Study and Into the Field: Ethnographic theory and practice in French anthropology/edited by Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales
Outside France, French anthropology is conventionally seen as being dominated by grand theory produced by writers who have done little or no fieldwork themselves, and who may not even count as anthropologists in terms of the institutional structures of French academia. This applies to figures from Durkheim to Derrida, Mauss to Foucault, though there are partial exceptions, such as Lévi-Strauss and Bourdieu. It has led to a contrast being made, es…
What Shapiro and McKinnon are all about, and why kinship still needs anthropologists: Why Kinship Still Needs Anthropologists
The article takes the form of a critical comment on Warren Shapiro's recent defence of approaches to kinship from evolutionary psychology against Susan McKinnon's attact on them from a position of cultural constructivism, but it also takes issue with some of McKinnon's own arguments, as well as reflecting critically on the assumptions of evolutionary psychology itself. Although far apart theoretically, Shapiro and McKinnon share a flawed understa…
Suffering and Evil: The Durkheimian Legacy
On the definition of prescription: The problem of Germanic kinship terminologies
Response to Pfeffer
An Introduction to Two Theories of Social Anthropology: Descent Groups and Marriage Alliance
Louis Dumont, who died in 1998, was one of the most important figures in post-war French anthropology. He is well-known for his early work on India, which culminated in Homo Hierarchicus (1966; in English 1972, 1980), an anthropological account of the caste system. He later extended this work into a comparison of the values of Indian and western society in works like Essays on Individualism (1986) and German ideology: From France to Germany and B…
Together with prostate cancer
One Discipline, Four Ways: British, German, French, and American Anthropology
One Discipline, Four Ways offers a unique comparative perspective on the history and current state of anthropology. Four prominent anthropologists-Fredrik Barth, Andre Gingrich, Robert Parkin, and Sydel Silverman-present their views on the discipline as it has developed in their respective intellectual traditions: British, German, French, and American. Each author traces the historical development of anthropology in their country, highlighting th…
The Dark Side of Humanity: The Work of Robert Hertz and Its Legacy
Robert Parkin's book gives a reading of each of these texts before going on to show their subsequent influence on anthropologists in particular. Hertz's activities as reviewer and phamphleteer are also covered. The introductory biographical chapter drawing on Hertz's surviving papers in the College de France, shows his own ambivalence towards his academic career and it also attempts to clarify the circumstances leading up to his apparently gratui…
Genealogy and Category: An Operational View
Parkin Robert J. Genealogy and Category : An Operational View. In: L'Homme, 1996, tome 36 n°139. pp. 87-108
Representing Kinship: Simple Models of Elementary Structures
This article presents a formal method for analyzing kinship terminologies, focusing on the representation of elementary structures. Parkin and Tjon Sie Fat argue that many existing models are either too complex or too limited in their scope. They propose a simpler, more flexible approach based on a limited set of generating relations, allowing for a more systematic and comparative analysis of kinship systems across cultures. The authors demonstra…
Revitalization or Continuity in European Ritual? The Case of San Bessu
This article argues against Boissevain's thesis that many European rituals have recently undergone revitalization after a post-war period of deritualization. We analyse, as a counter-example to Boissevain's thesis, a ritual which has displayed a remarkable degree of continuity over the last eighty years. We suggest that this counter-example is not an isolated one, and that Boissevain's position only appears convincing because it relies on excessi…
Sin and Expiation in Primitive Societies
The Munda of Central India: An Account of Their Social Organization
Ladders and Circles: Affinal Alliance and the Problem of Hierarchy
The Dark Side of Humanity. The Work of Robert Hertz and Its Legacy
Reincarnation and Alternate Generation Equivalence in Middle India
The recent demonstration by Trautmann and Tyler of a distinction between North and Central Dravidian and South Dravidian kinship terminologies--the former having alternate generation equations, the latter not--left unresolved the problem of deciding which situation was present in Proto-Dravidian. With the help of other data and some recent theory, it is shown that this equivalence is just one expression of a principle of alternation underlying th…
On Dumont's 'affinal terms: Comment on Rudner
David Rudner a recemment mene une inquisition sur la relation entre le modele de parente dravidienne de Dumont et les donnees sur les termes de parente que Dumont rapporta lui-meme du terrain (Rudner 1990). Rudner a fait la remarque que Dumont a rapporte un certain nombre de termes purement affins, compromettant ainsi le modele de parente dravidienne qu'il avait publie auparavant, dont l'une des principales caracteristiques est precisemment l'abs…
Kin Classification in the Karakorum
Munda Kinship Terminologies
This article examines the kinship terminologies of the Munda languages, a subgroup of the Austroasiatic language family spoken in India. Parkin analyzes the structural features of these terminologies, focusing on the principles of classification and the semantic distinctions they encode. He argues that Munda kinship systems reflect a complex interplay of Dravidian and Indo-Aryan influences, challenging earlier assumptions about their purely Austr…
A History of Oxford Anthropology
List of Figures List of Contributors Preface Introduction Peter Riviere Chapter 1. Origins and Survivals: Tylor, Balfour and the Pitt Rivers Museum and their Role within Anthropology in Oxford 1883-1905 Christopher Gosden, Frances Larson and Alison Petch Chapter 2. The Formative Years: the Committee for Anthropology 1905-38 Peter Riviere Chapter 3. How All Souls got its Anthropologist John Davis Chapter 4. A Major Disaster to Anthropology? Oxford…
The Evolution of Kinship Terminologies: Nonprescriptive Forms of Asymmetric Alliance in Indonesia
Thomas Trautmann has recently suggested that kinship terminologies with Crow-Omaha equations may derive historically from asymmetric prescriptive terminologies on the basis of very similar vertical equations. This argument is likely not applicable to eastern Indonesia and parts of Sumatra, where asymmetric prescriptive terminologies are well known. First, they have their own nonprescriptive variants of the latter, from which they may have develop…
Wiener Volkerkunde Im Nationalsozialismus: Ansatze zu einer NS-Wissenschaft
Terminology and Alliance in India: Tribal Systems and the North-South Problem
Matriliny as an archaeological problem. The view from social anthropology
What Kinship Is—And Is Not by Marshall Sahlins (review)
Reviewed by: What Kinship Is—And Is Not by Marshall Sahlins Robert Parkin Marshall Sahlins, What Kinship Is—And Is Not. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. 102 pp. Marshall Sahlins is one of the great names of modern anthropology, but thus far he has not counted as one of the key figures in the study of kinship. This is despite his demolition of the pretensions of early socio-biology in The Use and Abuse of Biology (1976), which heavily f…
Tribal Kinship in Central India. A Reply Article
Anthropos , Seite 567 - 570
Munda Kinship Terminologies
This article examines the kinship terminologies of the Munda languages, a subgroup of the Austroasiatic language family spoken in India. Parkin analyzes the structural features of these terminologies, focusing on the principles of classification and the semantic distinctions they encode. He argues that Munda kinship systems reflect a complex interplay of Dravidian and Indo-Aryan influences, challenging earlier assumptions about their purely Austr…
Tibeto-Burman and Indo-European loans in Burushaski Kinship terminology
Burushaski consists of two dialects spoken respectively in the Hunza and Nagir valleys (the dialect most usually called Burushaski; henceforward Bu.) and the Yasin valley (Wershikwar, henceforward Wk.) in the Northern Areas of Pakistani Kashmir. Although the language is genetically an isolate, it contains a considerable number of loans from the unrelated languages with which it is in contact, chiefly Indo-European (IE) Shina, Khowar and Dumaki, a…
Kin Classification in the Karakorum
Contexts and Levels: Anthropological Essays on Hierarchy
Die Vāḍabalija in Andhra Pradesh und in Orissa: Aspekte der Wirischaftlichen und sozialen Organisation einer maritimen Gesellschaft. Von Elisabeth Schömbucher. (Beiträge zur Südasienforschung, Südasie…
Die Vāḍabalija in Andhra Pradesh und in Orissa: Aspekte der Wirischaftlichen und sozialen Organisation einer maritimen Gesellschaft. Von Elisabeth Schömbucher. (Beiträge zur Südasienforschung, Südasien-Institut, Universität Heidelberg, Bd. 108.) pp. ix, 253, illus., map. Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH, 1986. DM 48. - Volume 120 Issue 1
Reincarnation and Alternate Generation Equivalence in Middle India
The recent demonstration by Trautmann and Tyler of a distinction between North and Central Dravidian and South Dravidian kinship terminologies--the former having alternate generation equations, the latter not--left unresolved the problem of deciding which situation was present in Proto-Dravidian. With the help of other data and some recent theory, it is shown that this equivalence is just one expression of a principle of alternation underlying th…
Some comments on Brahui kinship terminology
Some comments on Brahui kinship terminology
Terminology and Alliance in India: Tribal Systems and the North-South Problem
Verwandtschaftsterminologie und Sozialorganisation: Einige ethnosoziologische Interpretationen der Crow/Omaha-Systeme
Ladders and Circles: Affinal Alliance and the Problem of Hierarchy
Representing Kinship: Simple Models of Elementary Structures
This article presents a formal method for analyzing kinship terminologies, focusing on the representation of elementary structures. Parkin and Tjon Sie Fat argue that many existing models are either too complex or too limited in their scope. They propose a simpler, more flexible approach based on a limited set of generating relations, allowing for a more systematic and comparative analysis of kinship systems across cultures. The authors demonstra…
The Munda of Central India: An Account of Their Social Organization
Wiener Volkerkunde Im Nationalsozialismus: Ansatze zu einer NS-Wissenschaft
On Dumont's 'affinal terms: Comment on Rudner
David Rudner a recemment mene une inquisition sur la relation entre le modele de parente dravidienne de Dumont et les donnees sur les termes de parente que Dumont rapporta lui-meme du terrain (Rudner 1990). Rudner a fait la remarque que Dumont a rapporte un certain nombre de termes purement affins, compromettant ainsi le modele de parente dravidienne qu'il avait publie auparavant, dont l'une des principales caracteristiques est precisemment l'abs…
Genealogy and Category: An Operational View
Parkin Robert J. Genealogy and Category : An Operational View. In: L'Homme, 1996, tome 36 n°139. pp. 87-108
Sin and Expiation in Primitive Societies
Revitalization or Continuity in European Ritual? The Case of San Bessu
This article argues against Boissevain's thesis that many European rituals have recently undergone revitalization after a post-war period of deritualization. We analyse, as a counter-example to Boissevain's thesis, a ritual which has displayed a remarkable degree of continuity over the last eighty years. We suggest that this counter-example is not an isolated one, and that Boissevain's position only appears convincing because it relies on excessi…
The Dark Side of Humanity: The Work of Robert Hertz and Its Legacy
Robert Parkin's book gives a reading of each of these texts before going on to show their subsequent influence on anthropologists in particular. Hertz's activities as reviewer and phamphleteer are also covered. The introductory biographical chapter drawing on Hertz's surviving papers in the College de France, shows his own ambivalence towards his academic career and it also attempts to clarify the circumstances leading up to his apparently gratui…
The Dark Side of Humanity. The Work of Robert Hertz and Its Legacy
Adam's rib and the Brahman's womb: Louis Dumont and hierarchical opposition
"The work of Louis Dumont, who died in 1998, on India and modern individualism represented certain theoretical advances on the earlier structuralism of Claude Levi-Strauss. One such advance is Dumont's idea of hierarchical opposition, which he proposed as a truer representation of indigenous ideologies than Levi-Strauss's binary opposition. In this book the author argues that, although structuralism is often thought to have gone out of fashion, D…
Louis Dumont and Hierarchical Opposition
The work of Louis Dumont, who died in 1998, on India and modern individualism represented certain theoretical advances on the earlier structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss. One such advance is Dumont's idea of hierarchical opposition, which he proposed as a truer representation of indigenous ideologies than Lévi-Strauss's binary opposition. In this book the author argues that, although structuralism is often thought to have gone out of fashion, Du…
Together with prostate cancer
Tribal Kinship in Central India. A Reply Article
Anthropos , Seite 567 - 570
One Discipline, Four Ways: British, German, French, and American Anthropology
One Discipline, Four Ways offers a unique comparative perspective on the history and current state of anthropology. Four prominent anthropologists-Fredrik Barth, Andre Gingrich, Robert Parkin, and Sydel Silverman-present their views on the discipline as it has developed in their respective intellectual traditions: British, German, French, and American. Each author traces the historical development of anthropology in their country, highlighting th…
Sociology (27 works) · History (26 works) · Anthropology (19 works) · Philosophy (19 works) · Genealogy (14 works) · History (14 works) · Kinship (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Law (9 works)