Signe Howell
Biographic Data
| ID | 3589385 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Signe Howell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Signe |
| FAMILY NAME | Howell |
| SIGNATURE | HOWELL S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oslo |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 386 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
The Kinning of Foreigners
Since the late nineteen sixties, transnational adoption has emerged as a global phenomenon. Due to a sharp decline in infants being made available for adoption locally, involuntarily childless couples in Western Europe and North America who wish to create a family, have to look to look to countries in the poor South and Eastern Europe. The purpose of this book is to locate transnational adoption within a broad context of contemporary Western life…
The Anthropology of Moralities
Anthropologists have been keenly aware of the tension between cultural relativism and absolute norms, and nowhere has this been more acute than with regards to moral values. Can we study the Other’s morality without applying our own normative judgments? How do social anthropologists keep both the distance required by science and the empathy required for the analysis of lived experiences? The plurality of moralities has not received an explicit an…
‘May Blessings Come, May Mischiefs Go!’ Living Kinds as Agents of Transitions and Transformation in an Eastern Indonesian Setting
On the third day of the elaborate nine-day annual pre-planting ceremonies performed by the northern Lio on the island of Flores in Indonesia, the priest-leaders of the ceremonial houses of a core village initiate one sequence to be completed on the following day. Several anthropologists have recently argued that it is analytically illegitimate to search for commonalities in perceptions and values about the world. Bloch has argued recently that mu…
The Interface between Kinship and Politics in Three Different Social Settings
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De las estructuras hacia la ética y la moral
Eu o conheci pela primeira vez há 32 anos, quando me ofereceram o cargo de førseamanuensis (professor associado) no Departamento de Antropologia. Eu não tinha certeza de aceitar, porque meu trabalho em Edimburgo parecia bastante seguro. Eu não conhecia ninguém aqui, mas quando Eduardo (Archetti) me ligou para falar comigo sobre a oferta, ele insistiu que eu viesse conhecer todos antes de tomar uma decisão. Fiz isso e fui tratado com a hospitalida…
Ethnography
Ethnographic fieldwork, carried out according to the method of long-term participant-observation, is what defines social anthropology. The method is inductive and open-ended. As such, the method directs the anthropologist to study that which is of significance to the community studied rather than test a number of hypotheses formulated in advance of the fieldwork. Anthropology is a comparative discipline, seeking to unravel the complexity and vari…
Different Knowledge Regimes and Some Consequences for ‘Sustainability’
Sustainability was effectively put on the map in the Brundtland Report, Our Common Future (1987). According to the report ‘sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. Further, it is argued that the environment is ‘something beyond physicality, to include social and political atmospheres and circumstances’. Despite the enthusiasm with wh…
Rules without rulers
Comment on Sahlins, Marshall. 2017. "The original political society." Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7 (2): 91-128
Two or three things I love about ethnography
I argue that anthropology and ethnography are two sides of the same coin. Anthropology is nothing without ethnography and ethnography is just an empty practice without a concern for the disciplinary debates in anthropology departments. A number of other disciplines have taken to use "ethnographic" or "ethnographic fieldwork" as their method. Most social anthropologists would be very skeptical to the kind of methodology that is proposed under that…
Battle of Cosmologies
Based on ethnography from Lio, Indonesia, I explore effects on values, categories, and practices that followed the introduction of Catholicism to the area. Hierarchy is treated both as a model of value, conveyed through asymmetrical relations, and as a system of social organization. Hierarchy is employed as a way to order elements of value, to include the social-political sphere of stratification, and as a conceptual tool to analyze the relations…
Politics of appearances
REDD + (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) started as a global project aimed at reducing CO 2 emissions by protecting tropical forests. At the same time, several so‐called co‐benefits were listed in the original documents, such as biodiversity and other environmental services, poverty reduction and sustainable livelihoods, and good governance. I argue that REDD + quickly became a project in which these co‐benefits have …
Antropologi - et verneverdig fag
No RIGHTS–No Redd’
REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) is a new and very ambitious global programme which seeks to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering performance-based payment to reduce CO2 emissions from forested lands. From an initial perception of REDDF+ as a relatively straightforward forestry project, it has turned into one that is increasingly focusing on the rights of t…
Knowledge, Morality, and Causality in a 'Luckless' Society
In the absence of concepts that correspond to those of chance, luck, or fortune, how do people account for seemingly random desirable or undesirable events that occur? In this article, an examination is made of the Chewong—a hunting, gathering, shifting, and cultivating group of people in the Malaysian rain forest—and their theory of causality. It is argued that cause is a universal category of human understanding, but that an understanding of ca…
Obituary for Aud Talle (1944-2011)
Antropologiens uutholdelige letthet
Norwegian Academic Anthropologists in Public Spaces
There is a long-standing tradition among social anthropologists in Norwegian universities of participation in debates about current social, cultural, and political issues. I shall examine some of the background to why anthropologists have chosen to play this role and consider some of the practical, professional, and ethical aspects of "engaged anthropology." I shall also consider why the Norwegian public is so open to anthropological comments. A …
European Kinship in the Age of Biotechnology
La voix du sang
L'expression « la voix du sang est la plus forte » est attestée dans de nombreuses langues européennes, le norvégien compris. La filiation fondée sur les liens du sang a été, et demeure, un indicateur d'inclusion et d'exclusion, que ce soit au niveau personnel, ethnique ou national. Dans une optique comparative, cet article interroge la pertinence actuelle, en Norvège, de la métaphore du sang dans les attitudes envers deux groupes d'immigrés réce…
Adoption of the Unrelated Child
Adoption of children born by others is practiced in some form or another in all known societies. Although ethnographic monographs from all over the world have made numerous brief references to local adoption and/or fostering practices, very little sustained interpretative interest has, until recently, been directed at this social phenomenon. With the sudden and rapid increase in transnational adoption-people in Western Europe and North America ad…
Global styringsmentalitet og begreper om rettferdighet
Race, Ethnicity, and Nation
Nesting, eclipsing and hierarchy. Processes of gendered values among Lio
The Kinning of Foreigners
Returns to the field
Preface Introduction Signe Howell and Aud Talle Part 1. Change and Continuity in Long-term Perspective 1. Forty-five Years with the Kayapo Terence Turner 2. Soon we will be spending all our time at funerals: Yolngu Mortuary Rituals in an Epoch of Constant Change Frances Morphy and Howard Morphy 3. Returns to the Maasai: Long-term Fieldwork and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge Aud Talle 4. Contingency, Collaboration, and the Unimagined …
Kinning
With empirical material obtained from a study of transnational adoption in Norway, an argument is made for the concept of kinning. By this is meant a process by which a foetus, new-born child, or any previously unconnected person, is brought into a significant and permanent relationship that is expressed in a kin idiom. Through a focus on adoption within a cultural setting that emphasizes the flesh and blood metaphor as central for kinship, the a…
Society and cosmos
Adoption of the Unrelated Child
Adoption of children born by others is practiced in some form or another in all known societies. Although ethnographic monographs from all over the world have made numerous brief references to local adoption and/or fostering practices, very little sustained interpretative interest has, until recently, been directed at this social phenomenon. With the sudden and rapid increase in transnational adoption-people in Western Europe and North America ad…
Of Persons and Things
Two or three things I love about ethnography
I argue that anthropology and ethnography are two sides of the same coin. Anthropology is nothing without ethnography and ethnography is just an empty practice without a concern for the disciplinary debates in anthropology departments. A number of other disciplines have taken to use "ethnographic" or "ethnographic fieldwork" as their method. Most social anthropologists would be very skeptical to the kind of methodology that is proposed under that…
For the Sake of Our Future
To kin a transnationally adopted child in Norway and Spain
Transnational adoption has become a major means for involuntarily childless people to become a family, and for people who do not want to go through the 'normal' procedures to obtain a child. In this paper we present a comparative analysis of some pertinent features pertaining to the understanding of kinship that arise out of the practice of transnational adoption in Norway and Spain. For a variety of reasons, these two countries have achieved a l…
Norwegian Academic Anthropologists in Public Spaces
There is a long-standing tradition among social anthropologists in Norwegian universities of participation in debates about current social, cultural, and political issues. I shall examine some of the background to why anthropologists have chosen to play this role and consider some of the practical, professional, and ethical aspects of "engaged anthropology." I shall also consider why the Norwegian public is so open to anthropological comments. A …
No RIGHTS–No Redd’
REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) is a new and very ambitious global programme which seeks to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering performance-based payment to reduce CO2 emissions from forested lands. From an initial perception of REDDF+ as a relatively straightforward forestry project, it has turned into one that is increasingly focusing on the rights of t…
Many Contexts, Many Meanings? Gendered Values Among the Northern Lio of Flores, Indonesia
On retrouve dans un certain nombre de travaux anthropologiques recents l'idee que tout contexte socio-culturel est forme d'une multiplicite d'attributs, qualites et valeurs marques par la difference sexuelle. L'A. se propose de passer ces theories au test de la realite ethnographique en les appliquant au cas des Lios de l'Indonesie orientale. Il montre que chez les Lios les contextes peuvent etre constitues selon le mode de socialite masculine, o…
Singing to the Spirits and Praying to the Ancestors
Howell Signe. Singing to the Spirits and Praying to the Ancestors : A Comparative Study of Chewong and Lio Invocations. In: L'Homme, 1994, tome 34 n°132. Anthropologie de la prière. pp. 15-34
Husband/wife or brother/sister as the key relationship in Lio Kinship and Sociosymbolic relations
Societies that adhere to a patrilineal ideology of asymmetric prescriptive cross-cousin marriage are usually analysed in terms of the affinal relationship. Women are interpreted in their roles as wives. Taking the Lio of eastern Indonesia as an ethnographic example, it is argued that consanguinity may represent a higher ideal than affinity, that wife-givers stand for the whole, and that the brother-sister relationship is the most important cross-…
Rules without rulers
Comment on Sahlins, Marshall. 2017. "The original political society." Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7 (2): 91-128
Politics of appearances
REDD + (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) started as a global project aimed at reducing CO 2 emissions by protecting tropical forests. At the same time, several so‐called co‐benefits were listed in the original documents, such as biodiversity and other environmental services, poverty reduction and sustainable livelihoods, and good governance. I argue that REDD + quickly became a project in which these co‐benefits have …
Formal Speech Acts as One Discourse
Society and Cosmos
Antropologiens uutholdelige letthet
Battle of Cosmologies
Based on ethnography from Lio, Indonesia, I explore effects on values, categories, and practices that followed the introduction of Catholicism to the area. Hierarchy is treated both as a model of value, conveyed through asymmetrical relations, and as a system of social organization. Hierarchy is employed as a way to order elements of value, to include the social-political sphere of stratification, and as a conceptual tool to analyze the relations…
Rethinking the mother's brother
(1995). Rethinking the mother's brother: Gendered aspects of kinship and marriage among the Northern Lio, Indonesia. Indonesia Circle. School of Oriental & African Studies. Newsletter: Vol. 23, No. 67, pp. 293-317
Hierarchy and value
Noone of the Ulu
La voix du sang
L'expression « la voix du sang est la plus forte » est attestée dans de nombreuses langues européennes, le norvégien compris. La filiation fondée sur les liens du sang a été, et demeure, un indicateur d'inclusion et d'exclusion, que ce soit au niveau personnel, ethnique ou national. Dans une optique comparative, cet article interroge la pertinence actuelle, en Norvège, de la métaphore du sang dans les attitudes envers deux groupes d'immigrés réce…
The Real and Imagined Role of Culture in Development
Nesting, eclipsing and hierarchy. Processes of gendered values among Lio
Societies at Peace
Society and Cosmos
Women and Development in South-East Asia, I. Papers
Noone of the Ulu
Formal Speech Acts as One Discourse
Society and cosmos
The Real and Imagined Role of Culture in Development
Of Persons and Things
On the Road to Tribal Extinction
Husband/wife or brother/sister as the key relationship in Lio Kinship and Sociosymbolic relations
Societies that adhere to a patrilineal ideology of asymmetric prescriptive cross-cousin marriage are usually analysed in terms of the affinal relationship. Women are interpreted in their roles as wives. Taking the Lio of eastern Indonesia as an ethnographic example, it is argued that consanguinity may represent a higher ideal than affinity, that wife-givers stand for the whole, and that the brother-sister relationship is the most important cross-…
Hierarchy and value
Societies at Peace
Taming the Wind of Desire
Singing to the Spirits and Praying to the Ancestors
Howell Signe. Singing to the Spirits and Praying to the Ancestors : A Comparative Study of Chewong and Lio Invocations. In: L'Homme, 1994, tome 34 n°132. Anthropologie de la prière. pp. 15-34
About the House
The domestic unit is inseparable from its homestead, and the 'house', at once a physical place and a social unit, is often also a unit of production and consumption, a cult group, and even a political faction. Inspired by Lévi-Strauss's suggestion that the multi-functional noble houses of medieval Europe were simply the best-known examples of a widespread social institution, the contributors to this collection analyse 'house' systems in Southeast…
Rethinking the mother's brother
(1995). Rethinking the mother's brother: Gendered aspects of kinship and marriage among the Northern Lio, Indonesia. Indonesia Circle. School of Oriental & African Studies. Newsletter: Vol. 23, No. 67, pp. 293-317
Many Contexts, Many Meanings? Gendered Values Among the Northern Lio of Flores, Indonesia
On retrouve dans un certain nombre de travaux anthropologiques recents l'idee que tout contexte socio-culturel est forme d'une multiplicite d'attributs, qualites et valeurs marques par la difference sexuelle. L'A. se propose de passer ces theories au test de la realite ethnographique en les appliquant au cas des Lios de l'Indonesie orientale. Il montre que chez les Lios les contextes peuvent etre constitues selon le mode de socialite masculine, o…
For the Sake of Our Future
Self-Conscious Kinship
“We People Belong in the Forest”
Nesting, eclipsing and hierarchy. Processes of gendered values among Lio
L'A. s'attache a montrer qu'une multiplicite de discours et de pratiques coexiste dans chaque societe pour aborder les memes enjeux et que celle-ci peut etre constituee par l'entremise de relations symetriques et asymetriques. Reprenant certaines des suggestions faites par Alfred Gell sur la nature des relations sociales, l'A. les applique au concept d'androgynie. Il entend par la que certaines personnes (mais pas toutes) et que certains themes (…
Redaksjonelt
Frem og tilbake er ikke alltid like langt
Redaksjonelt
Nature in culture or culture in nature? Chewong ideas of ‘humans’ and other species
In western moral philosophy since Classical times, humans have been set apart from-and above-all other animals according to some essential criteria (e.g. Ingold 1988). This separation has been justified on grounds of moral superiority and reinforced by the Cartesian separation between mind and body, associated with thinking and feeling, respectively. The properties of these dualities have not been held to be of equal value: humans are superior to…
Kinning
With empirical material obtained from a study of transnational adoption in Norway, an argument is made for the concept of kinning. By this is meant a process by which a foetus, new-born child, or any previously unconnected person, is brought into a significant and permanent relationship that is expressed in a kin idiom. Through a focus on adoption within a cultural setting that emphasizes the flesh and blood metaphor as central for kinship, the a…
Sociology (29 works) · Political science (21 works) · Anthropology (19 works) · Geography (14 works) · History (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (11 works) · Asian Studies and History (11 works) · History (10 works) · Law (10 works)