B Knauft
Biographic Data
| ID | 5518 |
|---|---|
| NAME | B Knauft |
| GIVEN NAMES | B |
| FAMILY NAME | Knauft |
| SIGNATURE | KNAUFT B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Emory University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5693-8511 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 675 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Whither Anthropology: Experience, Application, Reflexivity
In recent decades, anthropology has been characterized by an experiential turn that connects scholarship increasingly with practical application, on the one hand, and critical reflexivity, on the other. This article throws these trends into historical relief by synoptically considering past emphases in anthropology from the 1830s through the present. These prior developments contextualize recent trends vis-à-vis long-term patterns and permutation…
Anthropology Bright and Dark: Relativism, Value Pluralism, and the Comparative Study of the Good
In "Dark Anthropology," Sherry Ortner questions the critical potential of anthropological studies of ethics, and particularly of research focused on studying cultural articulations of the good. She promotes instead the study of people's critiques of the neoliberal darkness that besets their lives. Suggesting that critical, dark anthropology is handicapped by opposing itself to the study of the good, I reconsider the critical potential of the anth…
Good anthropology in dark times: Critical appraisal and ethnographic application
‘Dark Anthropology’ and its complementary ‘Anthropology of the Good’ have become influential and debated notions in anthropology in recent years. I here parse distinctive features of these emphases, address their relation to theory and to ethnography, and consider the stakes involved in concretely applying their conceptual designations. I discuss the general shift in anthropology from grand theory to key concept, and the topical delimitation of t…
Finding the good: Reactive modernity among the Gebusi, in the Pacific, and elsewhere
Conditions of being left behind in economic and political terms are keenly felt in many areas of Melanesia and the wider Pacific Islands—as is more generally the case in many developing and also developed countries. Insofar as modern expectations portend a future that should be improving, it is unsurprising that modern expectations or entitlements are throttled by economic and political downturns across many cultural and class conditions. Ensuing…
Self-possessed and Self-governed: Transcendent Spirituality in Tibetan Tantric Buddhism
Among Tibetan Buddhist tantric practitioners, including in the U.S., visualisation and incorporation of mandala deities imparts a parallel world against which conventional reality is considered impermanent and afflicted. Tantric adepts aspire through meditation, visualisation, and mind-training to dissolve normal selfhood and simultaneously embrace both 'conventional' and 'ultimate' reality. Ethics of compassion encourage efficient reengagement w…
On the Political Genealogy of Trump after Foucault
How would Foucault have viewed Trump as President, and Trumpism in the US more generally? More realistically, how can we discern and insightfully apply genealogical insights after Foucault to better comprehend and act in relation to our current political situation in the US? Questions of factuality across a base register of asserted falsehoods are now prominent in American politics in ways that put assertions of scholarly objectivity and interpre…
What Is Genealogy? An Anthropological/Philosophical Reconsideration
Genealogical analysis in the present begs reconsideration of Nietzschean and Foucauldian precursors in relation to the ethical subject position of the subject, on the one hand, and application to concrete contexts of lineal connection asserted diversely across cultural time and space, on the other. This paper considers how the relation between genealogy and history has emerged in anthropologically relevant ways since Foucault, including compariso…
On Mimicaian-dramaturgy and Anti-Modernity in Melanesianist Anthropology: On Mimicaian-dramaturgy and Anti-modernity in Melanesianist Anthropology
Genealogies for the Present in Cultural Anthropology
In the wake of tensions between modern and postmodern sensibilities, what larger directions now emerge in cultural anthropology? In this major work, Bruce Knauft takes stock of important recent initiatives in cultural and critical theory. By combining critical reviews and ethnographic engagements with fresh readings of major figures and approaches, the work develops a larger vantage point for considering the dispersing influence of practice theor…
New Directions in Western Pacific Ethnography
Beyond polarization and partition in Melanesian anthropology: A comment on Mosko's 'Partible penitents
South Coast New Guinea Cultures: History, Comparison, Dialectic
Provincializing America: Imperialism, Capitalism, and Counterhegemony in the Twenty-first Century
The global eminence of the United States is diminishing relative to non-Western economic, political, and cultural formations. Despite its unprecedented military superiority, its compromised recent attempts to assert dominance through armed occupation and economic pressure underscore the growing importance of non-Western cultures and political economics. Amid the proliferation and permutation of neoliberalism abroad-including alternative forms of …
Anthropology in the middle
During the last decade and a half, anthropologists have increasingly given up grand theoretical debates to pursue mid-level articulations that effectively cross many of the discipline's received divides and oppositions. In the process, a middle ground of increasing connections cross-cuts and cross-fertilizes academic theory and applied practice, regional and local scales of analysis, world areas, general structures and specific events, ethnograph…
What Ever Happened to Ritualized Homosexuality? Modern Sexual Subjects in Melanesia and Elsewhere
In this paper, I examine the legacy of ritualized homosexuality as a behavioral practice and as an analytic category of research in Melanesia since the early 1980s. A case study of striking change among the Gebusi of Papua New Guinea suggests that ritualized homosexuality and insemination of boys have become behaviorally vestigial or moribund and that characterizing sexual practices in these terms has been difficult to begin with (as the original…
Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies
An exploration of the meaning of modernity in contemporary ethnography
Experience and Diversity in Religious Practice: Mayotte and the Anthropology of Religion
Major issues in the anthropology of religious knowledge and practice are brought to center stage in Michael Lambek's monograph on Islam, sorcery, and spirit possession in Mayotte. Lambek's work continues a tradition of detailed ethnography of alternative religions and expands this horizon by examining the multistranded connections that actors have to different forms of religious knowledge within a local community. Important larger questions are r…
Theoretical Currents in Late Modern Cultural Anthropology: Toward a Conversation
Over the last decade, new ways of critically exploring culture and representation have energized and fragmented cultural anthropology. Can the range of perspectives influenced by these developments have a productive relationship with objectivist traditions of anthropological scholarship and ethnography? The present paper suggests how and why this question should be affirmatively answered
Gender Identity, Political Economy and Modernity in Melanesia and Amazonia
Classic studies in Melanesian and Amazonian ethnography attempted to link oppositions between men and women to the structural features of collective male bonding and to a psychology of male insecurity and resentment against women. This article juxtaposes such arguments with the contemporary relationship between gendered identity and appropriations of modernity in these world areas. Gendered identities nowadays engage with the importance of acquir…
Emergency Decisions, Cultural-Selection Mechanics, and Group Selection [and Comments and Reply]
"Articulating Change in the "Last Unknown
The Business of Marriage: Transformations in Oceanic Matrimony. Richard A. MARKSBURY, ed
South Coast New Guinea Cultures: History, Comparison, Dialectic
The Anthropology of Peace and Nonviolence
At a time when war and other forms of violence seem to be ubiquitous and increasing, this refreshing book provides some hope by looking at the brighter side of human nature. Though not ignoring violence and war, the authors focus on nonviolence and peace by analyzing a broad sample of indigenous societies. Included are the Mehinaku of Brazil, the Zapotec of Mexico, the Inuit of the Canadian Northwest Territories, the Semai of Malaysia, and the Ki…
Foucault Meets South New Guinea: Knowledge, Power, Sexuality
Egalitarian Behavior and Reverse Dominance Hierarchy [and Comments and Reply]
Violence and Sociality in Human Evolution [and Comments and Replies]
Reconsidering Violence in Simple Human Societies: Homicide among the Gebusi of New Guinea [and Comments and Reply]
Genealogies for the Present in Cultural Anthropology
In the wake of tensions between modern and postmodern sensibilities, what larger directions now emerge in cultural anthropology? In this major work, Bruce Knauft takes stock of important recent initiatives in cultural and critical theory. By combining critical reviews and ethnographic engagements with fresh readings of major figures and approaches, the work develops a larger vantage point for considering the dispersing influence of practice theor…
Ritual form and permutation in New Guinea: Implications of Symbolic Process for Socio-Political Evolution
Ritual and religion have had an important impact upon political dynamics and societal size in many Melanesian societies, especially prior to Western influence. In the Strickland-Bosavi area, the rituals of several societies appear as structural transformations of one another, but with crucial pragmatic differences. Ritual belief helped preclude some intergroup contacts, while facilitating others to the point of cultural amalgamation and political…
Gender Identity, Political Economy and Modernity in Melanesia and Amazonia
Classic studies in Melanesian and Amazonian ethnography attempted to link oppositions between men and women to the structural features of collective male bonding and to a psychology of male insecurity and resentment against women. This article juxtaposes such arguments with the contemporary relationship between gendered identity and appropriations of modernity in these world areas. Gendered identities nowadays engage with the importance of acquir…
Anthropology in the middle
During the last decade and a half, anthropologists have increasingly given up grand theoretical debates to pursue mid-level articulations that effectively cross many of the discipline's received divides and oppositions. In the process, a middle ground of increasing connections cross-cuts and cross-fertilizes academic theory and applied practice, regional and local scales of analysis, world areas, general structures and specific events, ethnograph…
Emergency Decisions, Cultural-Selection Mechanics, and Group Selection [and Comments and Reply]
On Human Egalitarianism: An Evolutionary Product of Machiavellian Status Escalation
Pushing Anthropology Past the Posts: Critical notes on cultural anthropology and cultural studies as influenced by postmodernism and existentialism
This article suggests that a critical analysis of postmodem and existentialist underpinnings reveals common political and ethical problems. These problems have an unsettling legacy in contemporary cultural anthro pology and cultural studies, especially for many of those who see themselves at the cutting edge of critically reflexive representations. Against this back ground, perspectives grounded in critical humanism are better at exposing and gra…
The New Guinea Highlands: Region, Culture Area, or Fuzzy Set? [and Comments and Reply]
On Reconsidering Violence in Simple Human Societies
Foucault Meets South New Guinea: Knowledge, Power, Sexuality
Text and Social Practice: Narrative "Longing" and Bisexuality Among the Gebusi of New Guinea
Anthropology Bright and Dark: Relativism, Value Pluralism, and the Comparative Study of the Good
In "Dark Anthropology," Sherry Ortner questions the critical potential of anthropological studies of ethics, and particularly of research focused on studying cultural articulations of the good. She promotes instead the study of people's critiques of the neoliberal darkness that besets their lives. Suggesting that critical, dark anthropology is handicapped by opposing itself to the study of the good, I reconsider the critical potential of the anth…
Beyond polarization and partition in Melanesian anthropology: A comment on Mosko's 'Partible penitents
Violence among Newly Sedentary Foragers
Provincializing America: Imperialism, Capitalism, and Counterhegemony in the Twenty-first Century
The global eminence of the United States is diminishing relative to non-Western economic, political, and cultural formations. Despite its unprecedented military superiority, its compromised recent attempts to assert dominance through armed occupation and economic pressure underscore the growing importance of non-Western cultures and political economics. Amid the proliferation and permutation of neoliberalism abroad-including alternative forms of …
Self-possessed and Self-governed: Transcendent Spirituality in Tibetan Tantric Buddhism
Among Tibetan Buddhist tantric practitioners, including in the U.S., visualisation and incorporation of mandala deities imparts a parallel world against which conventional reality is considered impermanent and afflicted. Tantric adepts aspire through meditation, visualisation, and mind-training to dissolve normal selfhood and simultaneously embrace both 'conventional' and 'ultimate' reality. Ethics of compassion encourage efficient reengagement w…
What Is Genealogy? An Anthropological/Philosophical Reconsideration
Genealogical analysis in the present begs reconsideration of Nietzschean and Foucauldian precursors in relation to the ethical subject position of the subject, on the one hand, and application to concrete contexts of lineal connection asserted diversely across cultural time and space, on the other. This paper considers how the relation between genealogy and history has emerged in anthropologically relevant ways since Foucault, including compariso…
Theoretical Currents in Late Modern Cultural Anthropology: Toward a Conversation
Over the last decade, new ways of critically exploring culture and representation have energized and fragmented cultural anthropology. Can the range of perspectives influenced by these developments have a productive relationship with objectivist traditions of anthropological scholarship and ethnography? The present paper suggests how and why this question should be affirmatively answered
South Coast New Guinea Cultures: History, Comparison, Dialectic
Cargo Cults and Relational Separation
Colonial disruption of indigenous norms of equivalence has caused se vere cultural stress in Melanesia. Decrease of culture contact highlights Melanesian dependence on Westerners and increases the indigenes' need to explain the origin of cargo. It is hypothesized that the disruption entailed by a cargo cult (as distinct from a cargo movement) varies di rectly with the degree to which indigenes became separated from agents of Western culture direc…
What Ever Happened to Ritualized Homosexuality? Modern Sexual Subjects in Melanesia and Elsewhere
In this paper, I examine the legacy of ritualized homosexuality as a behavioral practice and as an analytic category of research in Melanesia since the early 1980s. A case study of striking change among the Gebusi of Papua New Guinea suggests that ritualized homosexuality and insemination of boys have become behaviorally vestigial or moribund and that characterizing sexual practices in these terms has been difficult to begin with (as the original…
On Percussion and Metaphor
Cargo Cults and Relational Separation
Colonial disruption of indigenous norms of equivalence has caused se vere cultural stress in Melanesia. Decrease of culture contact highlights Melanesian dependence on Westerners and increases the indigenes' need to explain the origin of cargo. It is hypothesized that the disruption entailed by a cargo cult (as distinct from a cargo movement) varies di rectly with the degree to which indigenes became separated from agents of Western culture direc…
On Percussion and Metaphor
Ritual form and permutation in New Guinea: Implications of Symbolic Process for Socio-Political Evolution
Ritual and religion have had an important impact upon political dynamics and societal size in many Melanesian societies, especially prior to Western influence. In the Strickland-Bosavi area, the rituals of several societies appear as structural transformations of one another, but with crucial pragmatic differences. Ritual belief helped preclude some intergroup contacts, while facilitating others to the point of cultural amalgamation and political…
Text and Social Practice: Narrative "Longing" and Bisexuality Among the Gebusi of New Guinea
Reconsidering Violence in Simple Human Societies: Homicide among the Gebusi of New Guinea [and Comments and Reply]
Good Company and Violence: Sorcery and Social Action in a Lowland New Guinea Society
Good Company and Violence: Sorcery and Social Action in a Lowland New Guinea Society
Divergence between Cultural Success and Reproductive Fitness in Preindustrial Cities
Social/Cultural Anthropology: Sorcerer and Witch in Melanesia. Michele Stephen
On Reconsidering Violence in Simple Human Societies
Melanesian Warfare: A Theoretical History
The question of Ritualised homosexuality among the Kiwai of South New Guinea∗
Gilbert Herdt to designate institutionalised sexual practices among men docu mented in a range of pre-colonial Melanesian societies. These homosexual customs were typically implemented through initiation rites, constrained by broad cultural rules and social roles, and had great religious and cosmological significance. The notion that ritualised homosexuality was generally practised among the indigenous Kiwai of south New Guinea has been elaborate…
Violence among Newly Sedentary Foragers
Violence and Sociality in Human Evolution [and Comments and Replies]
Theoretical reconfiguration
What are the goals of comparative analysis, indeed, of ethnographic analysis in general? What is its purpose and justification? Anthropologists are increasingly cognizant that they are unlikely to predict future sociocultural developments with precision or exert great impact upon their general course of future development. Our role, rather, is as rigorous commentators on the past and present. In this regard, our goal should be to use the tools of…
Like Money You See in a Dream: Petroleum and Patrols in South New Guinea
The New Guinea Highlands: Region, Culture Area, or Fuzzy Set? [and Comments and Reply]
Egalitarian Behavior and Reverse Dominance Hierarchy [and Comments and Reply]
The Anthropology of Peace and Nonviolence
At a time when war and other forms of violence seem to be ubiquitous and increasing, this refreshing book provides some hope by looking at the brighter side of human nature. Though not ignoring violence and war, the authors focus on nonviolence and peace by analyzing a broad sample of indigenous societies. Included are the Mehinaku of Brazil, the Zapotec of Mexico, the Inuit of the Canadian Northwest Territories, the Semai of Malaysia, and the Ki…
Foucault Meets South New Guinea: Knowledge, Power, Sexuality
South Coast New Guinea Cultures: History, Comparison, Dialectic
Pushing Anthropology Past the Posts: Critical notes on cultural anthropology and cultural studies as influenced by postmodernism and existentialism
This article suggests that a critical analysis of postmodem and existentialist underpinnings reveals common political and ethical problems. These problems have an unsettling legacy in contemporary cultural anthro pology and cultural studies, especially for many of those who see themselves at the cutting edge of critically reflexive representations. Against this back ground, perspectives grounded in critical humanism are better at exposing and gra…
On Human Egalitarianism: An Evolutionary Product of Machiavellian Status Escalation
The Business of Marriage: Transformations in Oceanic Matrimony. Richard A. MARKSBURY, ed
South Coast New Guinea Cultures: History, Comparison, Dialectic
Sociology (38 works) · Anthropology (25 works) · History (24 works) · Philosophy (20 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (19 works) · Political science (18 works) · History (17 works) · Epistemology (14 works) · Law (14 works) · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies (14 works)