Roy Wagner
Biographic Data
| ID | 3586418 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Roy Wagner |
| GIVEN NAMES | Roy |
| FAMILY NAME | Wagner |
| SIGNATURE | WAGNER R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Virginia |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8764-819X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 86 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 553 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 85 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1967 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Against the Grain
Review Article| January 01 2020 Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott Scott, James C., Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), 336 pp. Roy Wagner Roy Wagner Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2020) 26 (1): 156a. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-7899659 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Sea…
As Wide As The World Is Wise
Review Article| January 01 2020 As Wide As The World Is Wise: Reinventing Philosophical Anthropology by Michael Jackson Jackson, Michael, As Wide As The World Is Wise: Reinventing Philosophical Anthropology (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 272 pp. Roy Wagner Roy Wagner Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2020) 26 (1): 189. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-7899940 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share…
O Parentesco Analógico
The Logic of Invention
Totemism
The word “totem,” which comes from the Objibway ( nindotem , “my totem”) has, as its most general meaning, a species of plant, animal, or some other symbolic token that stands for or identifies an individual or a social grouping, such as a clan, moiety, or descent line. As such, it forms a baseline for a great many extensions of human–natural relations including shamanism, ritual, and mythology, all of which were grouped together by early anthrop…
The reciprocity of perspectives
As a tactic of cognitive self‐awareness, the reciprocity of perspectives is not so much a subjective metric for intercultural comparison as it is an internalised property of human sentience, which I label as a subject/object shift: the transposition of ends and means. Understood most broadly as a universal application of the double proportional comparison, made famous by Claude Lévi‐Strauss as the canonical formula for myth, the reciprocity of pe…
Condensed Mapping
Ideology and Theory
Transcendentalising the State
How can one radically resist the state, where material and ideological circumstances foreclose a non-statist horizon?To tackle this question, the paper will rely on points of view of communities that know no stateless world, but still reject contemporary state governmentality as such, rather than just this or that government.The paper opens by fleshing out the claim that there is no "world" outside the state.Then it looks into Zapatista resistanc…
The Invention of Culture
Roy Wagner's The Invention of Culture, first published in 1975, has become a classic of anthropological thought. This revised and expanded edition brings the original text back into print and adds a new foreword by Tim Ingold, as well as two previously uncollected essays by Wagner. Wagner argues that what anthropologists call "culture" is not an objective reality but an invention of the anthropological observer. He challenges the conventional vie…
Relative Native
The rising ground
Comment on Kopenawa, Davi and Bruce Albert. 2013. The falling sky: Words of a Yanomami shaman. Translated by Nicholas Elliott and Alison Dundy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
The Lottery of Babylon, or, the Logic of Happenstance in Melanesia and Beyond
Are such things as luck, chance, and fortune 'given' or original proper ties of the natural order of things, or are they perverse consequences of some misguided attempt to find out whether they exist or not? Does God play dice, or do the dice merely play God? How is that a sense of supernatural power, which often accompanies 'uncannily' good luck, is discovered, known about, or activated in a society that may not have precise equivalents for our …
Figure-ground reversal among the Barok
Previous article FreeFigure-ground reversal among the BarokRoy WAGNERRoy WAGNERUniversity of Virginia Search for more articles by this author University of VirginiaPDFPDF PLUSFull TextEPUBMOBI Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreWhat is the relation of art, of thinking and feeling in images, to the form and being of a human culture? We in the modern Wes…
Automodelagem
Roy Wagner explora neste texto a noção matemática de automodelagem enquanto mecanismo de obviação operante em diferentes casos etnográficos. O esforço comparativo de larga escala aqui realizado serve à recusa de uma 'antropologia apropriacional', isto é, da ideia de que o antropólogo deveria ou poderia ser responsável pela modelagem da proficiência de visão de mundo e de tecnologia em suas populações-sujeito. Este texto, que corresponde ao capítu…
Luck in the double focus
This paper argues that the relevance of hospitality in Melanesia has been under-theorized. It does so by examining four cases of the hospitality motif: the idea of 'guests of the land' among the Daribi; the ritualized feasting and dispensation of 'containment' among the Usen Barok namedlak mamaran-'Godspeed', literally meaning 'luck in the double focus' (though the Barok language, lacking a word for 'luck', had to borrow one from English); the no…
Introduction
This introduction to the Common Knowledge symposium titled "Comparative Relativism" outlines a variety of intellectual contexts where placing the unlikely companion terms comparison and relativism in conjunction offers analytical purchase. If comparison, in the most general sense, involves the investigation of discrete contexts in order to elucidate their similarities and differences, then relativism, as a tendency, stance, or working method, usu…
Vújà De and the Quintessentialists' Guild
This essay asks: Is "culture" the subject of a communication among anthropologists, or are anthropologists subjects to a communication among cultures? Put more simply, is there only one culture, comprised of multiplex variations recovered from various parts of an ever-changing world, or are there a great many, all of them variations on a single theoretical insight, which anthropologists have made up in secret and carefully keep as a secret from t…
A pessoa fractal
Este artigo, uma tradução de um capítulo do livro "Big Men and Great Men: Personifications of Power in Melanesia", explora o conceito da "pessoa fractal" na Melanésia. Roy Wagner argumenta que a pessoa melanésia não é uma entidade individualista e isolada, mas sim uma construção social fragmentada e relacional. A individualidade é composta por partes de outras pessoas, incorporando relações e obrigações sociais. Essa perspectiva desafia as noções…
The chess of kinship and the kinship of chess
The real comparison between the anthropological study of kinship and the game of chess is not immediately apparent from their formal properties, and only becomes relevant when they are viewed as strategies, or patterns of events occurring in time. The single "proportion" that both share in common is a kind of cross-comparison between dualistic variables called a chiasmus, illustrated in kinship by the classic cross-cousin relationship, and in che…
O xadrez do parentesco e o parentesco do xadrez
A comparação real entre o estudo antropológico do parentesco e o jogo de xadrez não é imediatamente aparente a partir de suas propriedades formais, tornando-se relevante apenas quando ambos são vistos como estratégias ou como padrões de eventos acontecendo no tempo. A proporção simples de que ambos compartilham é um tipo de comparação cruzada entre variáveis dualísticas denominadas quiasmas, ilustradas no parentesco pela clássica relação de primo…
The Ends of Innocence
This article explores the complex interplay between cultural conceptions of innocence, seduction, and procreation among two distinct New Guinea societies: the Daribi of Karimui and the Barok of New Ireland. Roy Wagner challenges conventional anthropological understandings of kinship and social reproduction by examining how these cultures perceive the process of conception. He argues that the Western notion of innocence, often associated with virg…
Existem grupos sociais nas terras altas da Nova Guiné
.
Mathematical Marriages
This paper examines the interaction between Semiotic choices and the presentation and solution of a family of contemporary mathematical problems centred around the so-called 'stable marriage problem'. I investigate how a socially restrictive choice of signs impacts mathematical production both in terms of problem formation and of solutions. I further note how the choice of gendered language ends up constructing a reality, which duplicates the ver…
"The chess of kinship and the kinship of chess (Preface by Tony Crook and Justin Shaffner, Roy Wagner's "The chess of kinship
The real comparison between the anthropological study of kinship and the game of chess is not immediately apparent from their formal properties, and only becomes relevant when they are viewed as strategies, or patterns of events occurring in time. The single "proportion" that both share in common is a kind of cross-comparison between dualistic variables called a chiasmus, illustrated in kinship by the classic cross-cousin relationship, and in che…
Analogic Kinship
Kin relationship may be approached in the traditional manner as the classification or the sociopolitical "relating" of genealogically differentiated relatives, or it may be seen as the purposive differentiation of relational categories to compel a "flow" of analogical "relatedness" among them. Analysis of a New Guinea relational system in the latter terms, beginning with the "interdict" on relations with the wife's mother, reveals a set of operan…
Asiwinarong
Professor Wagner's study of Barok social and ritual life pays special attention to the men's-house feasting cycle. The kaba. or culminating death feast" of that cycle, is invoked by the word "asiwinarong," which symbolizes the leadership succession on which Barok claims to ethical integrity and precedence rest. Originally published in 1986. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously …
Anthropology of the Subject
An Anthropology of the Subject rounds out the theoretical-philosophical cosmos of one of the twentieth century's most intellectually adventurous anthropologists. Roy Wagner, having turned "culture" and "symbols" inside out (in The Invention of Culture and Symbols That Stand for Themselves, respectively), now does the same for the "subject" and subjectivity. In studying the human subject and the way human culture mirrors itself, Wagner has redefin…
The Invention of Culture
Roy Wagner's The Invention of Culture, first published in 1975, has become a classic of anthropological thought. This revised and expanded edition brings the original text back into print and adds a new foreword by Tim Ingold, as well as two previously uncollected essays by Wagner. Wagner argues that what anthropologists call "culture" is not an objective reality but an invention of the anthropological observer. He challenges the conventional vie…
The Curse of Souw
This article examines the principles underlying clan definition and alliance among the Daribi of New Guinea. It argues against a strictly descent-based model of clan structure, demonstrating how residence, marriage patterns, and the exchange of valuables, particularly in the context of warfare and compensation, play crucial roles in shaping clan identity and inter-clan relationships. The "curse of Souw," a mythical narrative involving the separat…
Introduction
This introduction to the Common Knowledge symposium titled "Comparative Relativism" outlines a variety of intellectual contexts where placing the unlikely companion terms comparison and relativism in conjunction offers analytical purchase. If comparison, in the most general sense, involves the investigation of discrete contexts in order to elucidate their similarities and differences, then relativism, as a tendency, stance, or working method, usu…
Incest and Identity
Asiwinarong
Professor Wagner's study of Barok social and ritual life pays special attention to the men's-house feasting cycle. The kaba. or culminating death feast of that cycle, is invoked by the word asiwinarong, which symbolizes the leadership succession on which Barok claims to ethical integrity and precedence restOriginally published in 1986.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of…
Socio-Ecological Change Among the Fore of New Guinea [and Comments and Replies]
Historical reconstruction based on contemporary evidence shows that adoption of the sweet potato by the Fore approximately a century ago set in motion a series of events that transformed their institutions and natural surroundings. As the consequences of this act unraveled, the Fore moved to virgin lands, their population increased, the character of the living space they occupied was altered, and they were confronted with new kinds of social and …
Figure-ground reversal among the Barok
Previous article FreeFigure-ground reversal among the BarokRoy WAGNERRoy WAGNERUniversity of Virginia Search for more articles by this author University of VirginiaPDFPDF PLUSFull TextEPUBMOBI Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreWhat is the relation of art, of thinking and feeling in images, to the form and being of a human culture? We in the modern Wes…
Death Rituals and Life in the Societies of the Kula Ring
Luck in the double focus
This paper argues that the relevance of hospitality in Melanesia has been under-theorized. It does so by examining four cases of the hospitality motif: the idea of 'guests of the land' among the Daribi; the ritualized feasting and dispensation of 'containment' among the Usen Barok namedlak mamaran-'Godspeed', literally meaning 'luck in the double focus' (though the Barok language, lacking a word for 'luck', had to borrow one from English); the no…
Asiwinarong
A pessoa fractal
Este artigo, uma tradução de um capítulo do livro "Big Men and Great Men: Personifications of Power in Melanesia", explora o conceito da "pessoa fractal" na Melanésia. Roy Wagner argumenta que a pessoa melanésia não é uma entidade individualista e isolada, mas sim uma construção social fragmentada e relacional. A individualidade é composta por partes de outras pessoas, incorporando relações e obrigações sociais. Essa perspectiva desafia as noções…
Existem grupos sociais nas terras altas da Nova Guiné
.
Ethnology
The chess of kinship and the kinship of chess
The real comparison between the anthropological study of kinship and the game of chess is not immediately apparent from their formal properties, and only becomes relevant when they are viewed as strategies, or patterns of events occurring in time. The single "proportion" that both share in common is a kind of cross-comparison between dualistic variables called a chiasmus, illustrated in kinship by the classic cross-cousin relationship, and in che…
Our Very Own Cargo Cult
Gabsongkeg '71
Pigs, Proteins, and People-Eaters
Vújà De and the Quintessentialists' Guild
This essay asks: Is "culture" the subject of a communication among anthropologists, or are anthropologists subjects to a communication among cultures? Put more simply, is there only one culture, comprised of multiplex variations recovered from various parts of an ever-changing world, or are there a great many, all of them variations on a single theoretical insight, which anthropologists have made up in secret and carefully keep as a secret from t…
The Ends of Innocence
This article explores the complex interplay between cultural conceptions of innocence, seduction, and procreation among two distinct New Guinea societies: the Daribi of Karimui and the Barok of New Ireland. Roy Wagner challenges conventional anthropological understandings of kinship and social reproduction by examining how these cultures perceive the process of conception. He argues that the Western notion of innocence, often associated with virg…
The Creation of Mythology
Automodelagem
Roy Wagner explora neste texto a noção matemática de automodelagem enquanto mecanismo de obviação operante em diferentes casos etnográficos. O esforço comparativo de larga escala aqui realizado serve à recusa de uma 'antropologia apropriacional', isto é, da ideia de que o antropólogo deveria ou poderia ser responsável pela modelagem da proficiência de visão de mundo e de tecnologia em suas populações-sujeito. Este texto, que corresponde ao capítu…
Mathematical Marriages
This paper examines the interaction between Semiotic choices and the presentation and solution of a family of contemporary mathematical problems centred around the so-called 'stable marriage problem'. I investigate how a socially restrictive choice of signs impacts mathematical production both in terms of problem formation and of solutions. I further note how the choice of gendered language ends up constructing a reality, which duplicates the ver…
General and Ethnology
The Curse of Souw
This article examines the principles underlying clan definition and alliance among the Daribi of New Guinea. It argues against a strictly descent-based model of clan structure, demonstrating how residence, marriage patterns, and the exchange of valuables, particularly in the context of warfare and compensation, play crucial roles in shaping clan identity and inter-clan relationships. The "curse of Souw," a mythical narrative involving the separat…
Ethnography and Ethnology
Pigs, Proteins, and People-Eaters
Mathematical Prediction of Polygyny Rates Among the Daribi of Karimui Patrol Post, Territory of Papua and New Guinea
General and Theoretical
Socio-Ecological Change Among the Fore of New Guinea [and Comments and Replies]
Historical reconstruction based on contemporary evidence shows that adoption of the sweet potato by the Fore approximately a century ago set in motion a series of events that transformed their institutions and natural surroundings. As the consequences of this act unraveled, the Fore moved to virgin lands, their population increased, the character of the living space they occupied was altered, and they were confronted with new kinds of social and …
Incest and Identity
Ethnology
Habu
Habu
General, Applied and Theoretical
The Island of Menstruating Men
The Invention of Culture
The Invention of Culture, one of the most important works in symbolic anthropology in recent years, argues that culture is not a given that shapes the lives of the people who share it. Rather, it is people who shape their culture by constantly manipulating conventional symbols taken from a variety of everchanging codes to create new meanings. Wagner sees culture arising from the dialectic between the individual and the social world; his analysis …
The Tribes of the Middle Ramu and the Upper Keram Rivers (North-East New Guinea)
Gabsongkeg '71
Ritual and Knowledge among the Baktaman of New Guinea
General and Theoretical
The Invention of Culture
Menschen und Kulturen in nordost-Neuguinea; gesammelte Aufsatze
The Invention of Culture
Speaking for others
comme la responsabilité de « parler pour autrui » et mis en rapport avec la conception du « moi ». Au contraire des personnes ordinaires qui perçoivent leur « moi » indirectement, par la médiation des autres, les médiums et les chamanes prennent une responsabilité directe pour l'« autre » par lequel leur moi est médiatisé. Le médium acquiert ainsi la faculté de construire sa propre persona, mais seulement à la condition de maintenir la persona de…
Television Productions
Analogic Kinship
Kin relationship may be approached in the traditional manner as the classification or the sociopolitical "relating" of genealogically differentiated relatives, or it may be seen as the purposive differentiation of relational categories to compel a "flow" of analogical "relatedness" among them. Analysis of a New Guinea relational system in the latter terms, beginning with the "interdict" on relations with the wife's mother, reveals a set of operan…
Lethal speech
Sociology (45 works) · Computer Science (35 works) · History (35 works) · Philosophy (26 works) · History (25 works) · Library science (22 works) · Citation (21 works) · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies (20 works) · Anthropology (17 works) · Art (16 works)