Lars Rodseth
Biographic Data
| ID | 3616540 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lars Rodseth |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lars |
| FAMILY NAME | Rodseth |
| SIGNATURE | RODSETH L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Utah |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 341 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The Fragmentary Frontier
Untaming the Frontier in Anthropology, Archaeology, and History
Despite a half century of attempts by social scientists to compare frontiers around the world, the study of these regions is still closely associated with the nineteenth-century American West and the work of Frederick Jackson Turner. As a result, the very concept of the frontier is bound up in Victorian notions of manifest destiny and rugged individualism. The frontier, it would seem, has been tamed. This book seeks to open a new debate about the…
Reality remodeled
Most ethnographers have little use for models and other formal abstractions, yet even a staunch empiricist such as Franz Boas could appreciate the “aesthetic” advantages of idealization and simplification. These advantages have been largely ignored in recent decades, as anthropologists have come to favor ever more intricate and encompassing accounts. The resulting “ethnographic involution,” I suggest, has steadily diminished anthropology as a sou…
Hegemonic Concepts of Culture
This article traces a genealogy of the culture concept, starting with the way it is presented in Sherry Ortner's account of "dark anthropology" (2016) and working back to the interpretations offered by Clifford Geertz, Raymond Williams, and Antonio Gramsci. Of particular interest is the shifting historical relationship between "culture" and its dark counterpart, "hegemony," which Ortner describes as "the dominant version of the culture concept in…
Back to Boas, Forth to Latour
How could Franz Boas, trained in physics and geography in Bismarck's Germany, carry any weight for twenty-first century anthropology, given the theoretical upheavals of the past few decades? As early as 1887, I argue, Boas foreshadowed certain theoretical innovations of recent years, especially Bruno Latour's ethnographic and philosophical analysis of science and modern society. My thesis is that Latourian and Boasian anthropologies are surprisin…
From Bachelor Threat to Fraternal Security
Remembering Mountain Meadows
The concept of social memory has generated a large literature, much of which focuses on the trauma of collective violence. Yet we need to know more about how narratives of violent and traumatic events influence social loyalties and how such narratives are managed or manipulated. Here we focus on the 1857 Mountain Meadows massacre, in which some 120 Arkansas emigrants were murdered in southwestern Utah. Our aim is not to establish "what really hap…
Human Kinship
Our aim in this chapter is to describe and analyze the most common patterns of human kinship. In the anthropological literature, these patterns are often overshadowed by the enormous diversity of ethnographic cases. Human societies vary widely in the terms by which kin are classified, the rules that govern behavior toward kin in different categories, prohibitions on (or preferences for) marriage between kin, norms of residence, succession, and in…
When
For decades now culture has been a topic anthropologists argue about: WHAT it does or does not mean, IF it should or should not constitute a central concept of the discipline. This essay steps outside these arguments to rephrase the issue and our approach to it. It explores WHEN it makes sense to use the cultural concept: Should we proceed inductively or deductively in constructing connections between the concept and our data? And instead of asse…
The social modes of men
Mystics against the Market
This article asks what might be learned about Western cosmology by focusing on religious traditions that originated in the United States and have developed outside the mainstream of Christianity. Mormonism and other American religions, we argue, carry a hidden repertoire of mystical and communal themes that directly conflict with the Western 'market mentality' as often described in the anthropological literature. These religions, furthermore, hav…
Constructing Tibetan Culture
Constructing Tibetan Culture: Contemporary Perspectives. Frank J. Korom. ed. St-Hyacinthe, Quebec: World Heritage Press, 1997. 230 pp
Distributive Models of Culture
The Boasian conception of culture has been roundly criticized in recent years for its essentialist, or even racist, implications. Yet an alternative model that avoids these implications was proposed in the 1930s by Boas student Edward Sapir. Having long survived on the margins of anthropological theory, Sapir's "distributive" concept of culture is now entering the theoretical mainstream through recent developments in both psychological and "postm…
Charles Darwin Voyaging
Charles Darwin Voyaging:. Biography, Janet Browne Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. 605 pp
The Human Community as a Primate Society [and Comments]
Violence and Sociality in Human Evolution [and Comments and Replies]
On the Human Community as a Primate Society
The Human Community as a Primate Society [and Comments]
Violence and Sociality in Human Evolution [and Comments and Replies]
Distributive Models of Culture
The Boasian conception of culture has been roundly criticized in recent years for its essentialist, or even racist, implications. Yet an alternative model that avoids these implications was proposed in the 1930s by Boas student Edward Sapir. Having long survived on the margins of anthropological theory, Sapir's "distributive" concept of culture is now entering the theoretical mainstream through recent developments in both psychological and "postm…
When
For decades now culture has been a topic anthropologists argue about: WHAT it does or does not mean, IF it should or should not constitute a central concept of the discipline. This essay steps outside these arguments to rephrase the issue and our approach to it. It explores WHEN it makes sense to use the cultural concept: Should we proceed inductively or deductively in constructing connections between the concept and our data? And instead of asse…
From Bachelor Threat to Fraternal Security
Untaming the Frontier in Anthropology, Archaeology, and History
Despite a half century of attempts by social scientists to compare frontiers around the world, the study of these regions is still closely associated with the nineteenth-century American West and the work of Frederick Jackson Turner. As a result, the very concept of the frontier is bound up in Victorian notions of manifest destiny and rugged individualism. The frontier, it would seem, has been tamed. This book seeks to open a new debate about the…
Hegemonic Concepts of Culture
This article traces a genealogy of the culture concept, starting with the way it is presented in Sherry Ortner's account of "dark anthropology" (2016) and working back to the interpretations offered by Clifford Geertz, Raymond Williams, and Antonio Gramsci. Of particular interest is the shifting historical relationship between "culture" and its dark counterpart, "hegemony," which Ortner describes as "the dominant version of the culture concept in…
Back to Boas, Forth to Latour
How could Franz Boas, trained in physics and geography in Bismarck's Germany, carry any weight for twenty-first century anthropology, given the theoretical upheavals of the past few decades? As early as 1887, I argue, Boas foreshadowed certain theoretical innovations of recent years, especially Bruno Latour's ethnographic and philosophical analysis of science and modern society. My thesis is that Latourian and Boasian anthropologies are surprisin…
On the Human Community as a Primate Society
The social modes of men
Remembering Mountain Meadows
The concept of social memory has generated a large literature, much of which focuses on the trauma of collective violence. Yet we need to know more about how narratives of violent and traumatic events influence social loyalties and how such narratives are managed or manipulated. Here we focus on the 1857 Mountain Meadows massacre, in which some 120 Arkansas emigrants were murdered in southwestern Utah. Our aim is not to establish "what really hap…
Mystics against the Market
This article asks what might be learned about Western cosmology by focusing on religious traditions that originated in the United States and have developed outside the mainstream of Christianity. Mormonism and other American religions, we argue, carry a hidden repertoire of mystical and communal themes that directly conflict with the Western 'market mentality' as often described in the anthropological literature. These religions, furthermore, hav…
Charles Darwin Voyaging
Charles Darwin Voyaging:. Biography, Janet Browne Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. 605 pp
The Human Community as a Primate Society [and Comments]
Violence and Sociality in Human Evolution [and Comments and Replies]
On the Human Community as a Primate Society
Charles Darwin Voyaging
Charles Darwin Voyaging:. Biography, Janet Browne Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. 605 pp
Distributive Models of Culture
The Boasian conception of culture has been roundly criticized in recent years for its essentialist, or even racist, implications. Yet an alternative model that avoids these implications was proposed in the 1930s by Boas student Edward Sapir. Having long survived on the margins of anthropological theory, Sapir's "distributive" concept of culture is now entering the theoretical mainstream through recent developments in both psychological and "postm…
Constructing Tibetan Culture
Constructing Tibetan Culture: Contemporary Perspectives. Frank J. Korom. ed. St-Hyacinthe, Quebec: World Heritage Press, 1997. 230 pp
The social modes of men
Mystics against the Market
This article asks what might be learned about Western cosmology by focusing on religious traditions that originated in the United States and have developed outside the mainstream of Christianity. Mormonism and other American religions, we argue, carry a hidden repertoire of mystical and communal themes that directly conflict with the Western 'market mentality' as often described in the anthropological literature. These religions, furthermore, hav…
When
For decades now culture has been a topic anthropologists argue about: WHAT it does or does not mean, IF it should or should not constitute a central concept of the discipline. This essay steps outside these arguments to rephrase the issue and our approach to it. It explores WHEN it makes sense to use the cultural concept: Should we proceed inductively or deductively in constructing connections between the concept and our data? And instead of asse…
Human Kinship
Our aim in this chapter is to describe and analyze the most common patterns of human kinship. In the anthropological literature, these patterns are often overshadowed by the enormous diversity of ethnographic cases. Human societies vary widely in the terms by which kin are classified, the rules that govern behavior toward kin in different categories, prohibitions on (or preferences for) marriage between kin, norms of residence, succession, and in…
Remembering Mountain Meadows
The concept of social memory has generated a large literature, much of which focuses on the trauma of collective violence. Yet we need to know more about how narratives of violent and traumatic events influence social loyalties and how such narratives are managed or manipulated. Here we focus on the 1857 Mountain Meadows massacre, in which some 120 Arkansas emigrants were murdered in southwestern Utah. Our aim is not to establish "what really hap…
From Bachelor Threat to Fraternal Security
Back to Boas, Forth to Latour
How could Franz Boas, trained in physics and geography in Bismarck's Germany, carry any weight for twenty-first century anthropology, given the theoretical upheavals of the past few decades? As early as 1887, I argue, Boas foreshadowed certain theoretical innovations of recent years, especially Bruno Latour's ethnographic and philosophical analysis of science and modern society. My thesis is that Latourian and Boasian anthropologies are surprisin…
Hegemonic Concepts of Culture
This article traces a genealogy of the culture concept, starting with the way it is presented in Sherry Ortner's account of "dark anthropology" (2016) and working back to the interpretations offered by Clifford Geertz, Raymond Williams, and Antonio Gramsci. Of particular interest is the shifting historical relationship between "culture" and its dark counterpart, "hegemony," which Ortner describes as "the dominant version of the culture concept in…
Reality remodeled
Most ethnographers have little use for models and other formal abstractions, yet even a staunch empiricist such as Franz Boas could appreciate the “aesthetic” advantages of idealization and simplification. These advantages have been largely ignored in recent decades, as anthropologists have come to favor ever more intricate and encompassing accounts. The resulting “ethnographic involution,” I suggest, has steadily diminished anthropology as a sou…
The Fragmentary Frontier
Untaming the Frontier in Anthropology, Archaeology, and History
Despite a half century of attempts by social scientists to compare frontiers around the world, the study of these regions is still closely associated with the nineteenth-century American West and the work of Frederick Jackson Turner. As a result, the very concept of the frontier is bound up in Victorian notions of manifest destiny and rugged individualism. The frontier, it would seem, has been tamed. This book seeks to open a new debate about the…
Sociology (13 works) · History (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Anthropology (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (6 works) · History (6 works) · Archaeology (5 works) · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (5 works)