R A Wilson
Biographic Data
| ID | 58034 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R A Wilson |
| GIVEN NAMES | R A |
| FAMILY NAME | Wilson |
| SIGNATURE | WILSON R A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Alberta |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8034-0317 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 69 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 111 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 69 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1946 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Relations and Anthropological Knowledge
This chapter continues the discussion of the metaphysics and epistemology of relations from Chapter 3. It introduces and defends a view of relations, Dependentism, that sits between naïve realism and subjectivism. Dependentism makes sense of Sahlins’s views of the value of historical ethnography, illustrated here by the Dark Emu Debate (in contemporary Australian society) and the anthropological controversy between Sahlins and Obeyesekere over Ca…
Mindful Relations
Part I (Chapters 2 to 4) is an exploration of the nature of relations with an eye to integrating between philosophy and anthropology and across the fragile sciences—the cognitive, biological, and social sciences—in ways that strengthen the resistance to reductive visions and tendencies. Chapter 2 begins by recognizing the pervasiveness of relations across the fragile sciences and by showing how to move beyond predominant individualistic views. In…
The Ethnographic Argument
Chapter 9 critically examines the most influential argument against The Progenerative View of kinship, what I call The Ethnographic Argument. The basic idea of this argument is that the ethnographic record that documents variations in the practice of kinship and that serves as a kind of archive of human cultural diversity cannot be readily accommodated by The Progenerative View. Yet moving from this basic idea to more precisely complete The Ethno…
Kinship Past, Kinship Present, and Schneider’s Critique
Part III (Chapters 7 to 10) continues Kin Matters’ general, integrative methodology, attending to insights in one pocket of the fragile sciences to fruitfully inform debates and discussions in other, often-siloed parts of those sciences. It turns more explicitly to the study of kinship, its history, how that history has been narrativized, and contemporary and future kin matters. Chapter 7 concentrates on David Schneider’s influential critique of …
Kin Matters: Relational Beings in the Fragile Sciences
Kin and kinship matter to us. We are social creatures, and our kin or relatives are typically high on the list of those most important to us. Kin are those we care for and who care for us. Our family ties provide a sense of where and with whom we belong. Kin matters also impose boundaries on who we relate to and how, including in sexual and other intimate matters. The study of kinship has been a cornerstone of anthropology throughout its history,…
Uyghur identity and culture: A global diaspora in a time of crisis
Where next for global climate deliberation: From proof of concept to a role in transformation
Building on the proof of concept that was the 2021 Global Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Crisis, we explore an expanded and even institutionalized role for effective and consequential citizen deliberation in global climate governance. Such an expanded role could not just strengthen citizen voices in negotiations, but also counter vested interests, promote civic learning, enhance the legitimacy of governance, foster global solidarity, and …
Transdisciplinary Philosophy of Science: Meeting the Challenge of Indigenous Expertise
Transdisciplinary research knits together knowledge from diverse epistemic communities in addressing social-environmental challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate crises, food insecurity, and public health. This article reflects on the roles of philosophy of science in transdisciplinary research while focusing on Indigenous and other subjugated forms of knowledge. We offer a critical assessment of demarcationist approaches in philosophy of …
Ethnobiology, the Ontological Turn, and Human Sociality
The ontological turn (OT) is a loose cluster of theoretical approaches within cultural anthropology that advocates a synthetic, overarching way forward for ethnographically oriented cultural anthropology. We argue that in order to contribute substantively to ethnobiology the OT needs to distance itself from a long-standing tradition of thinking within ethnography that assumes some kind of fundamental divide between the natural and the social scie…
Philosophical silences: Race, gender, disability, and philosophical practice
Who is recognized as a philosopher and what counts as philosophy influence both the content of a philosophical education and academic philosophy’s continuing demographic skew. The ‘philosophical who’ and the ‘philosophical what’ themselves are a partial function of matters that have been passed over in collective silence, even if that now feels to some like a silence belonging to the distant past. This paper discusses some philosophical silences …
How to Think with the Global South
This innovative collection of twenty-six essays aims to contribute to the project of, as the title of the introduction suggests, reimagining epistemology and the philosophy of science from a global perspective. Rather than attempting to construct a volume that augments the coverage provided on traditional topics, such as explanation, laws, and reductionism, or that delivers an integrated global epistemology, the book explores how to think with th…
Confronting silences
This open-access editorial discusses confronting silences in different disciplinary contexts, such as science and technology studies, cultural anthropology, and philosophy. It has a focus on race and concludes with thoughts about Indigenous expertise, the Australian referendum on the Indigenous Voice, to parliament, and racism
Why kinship is progeneratively constrained: Extending anthropology
The conceptualisation of kinship and its study remain contested within anthropology. This paper draws on recent cognitive science, developmental cognitive psychology, and the philosophy of science to offer a novel argument for a view of kinship as progeneratively or reproductively constrained. I shall argue that kinship involves a form of extended cognition that incorporates progenerative facts, going on to show how the resulting articulation of …
Kinmaking, progeneration, and ethnography
Philosophers of biology and biologists themselves for the most part assume that the concept of kin is progenerative: what makes two individuals kin is a direct or indirect function of reproduction. Derivatively, kinship might likewise be presumed to be progenerative in nature. Yet a prominent view of kinship in contemporary cultural anthropology is a kind of constructivism or performativism that rejects such progenerativist views. This paper crit…
Oceania as Peril and Promise: Towards a Worlded Vision of Transpacific Ecopoetics”
Disturbed, muddy with conflict, vexed by latent animosities of history and regional struggle, the South China Sea has become "Asia's Roiling Sea" as a New York Times editorial has elaborated the stakes and danger: "The sea is not only an important trade route but is also rich in oil, natural gas, fishing and mineral resources. Nations are fighting over islands and even specks of rocks to stake their claims. " These Pacific Rim islands and their a…
Incest, Incest Avoidance, and Attachment: Revisiting the Westermarck Effect
This article defends a version of the Westermarck Effect, integrating existing clinical, biological, and philosophical dimensions to incest avoidance. By focusing on care-based attachment in primates, my formulation of the effect suggests the power of a phylogenetic argument widely accepted by primatologists but not by cultural anthropologists. Identifying postadoption incest as a phenomenon with underexplored evidential value, the article sketch…
Coming to Worlding Terms with “Trans”: Methodologies in Chadwick Allen's Trans-Indigenous
Codex 87 Coming to Worlding Terms with “Trans”: Methodologies in Chadwick Allen’s Trans-Indigenous Rob Wilson Comparative literature as a disciplinary frame comes down from the proto- global modernizing times of Goethe, Matthew Arnold, Margaret Fuller, Emerson, and Marx with embedded center- and- periphery dynamics as well as Euro-American assumptions and predispositions that go on structuring “comparison” as such into an implicit hierarchy …
Thinking about relations: Strathern, Sahlins, and Locke on anthropological knowledge
John Locke is known within anthropology primarily for his empiricism, his views of natural laws, and his discussion of the state of nature and the social contract. Marilyn Strathern and Marshall Sahlins, however, have offered distinctive, novel, and broad reflections on the nature of anthropological knowledge that appeal explicitly to a lesser-known aspect of Locke's work: his metaphysical views of relations. This paper examines their distinctive…
Kinship Past, Kinship Present: Bio-Essentialism in the Study of Kinship
In this article, I reconsider bio-essentialism in the study of kinship, centering on David Schneider's influential critique that concluded that kinship was "a non-subject" (1972:51). Schneider's critique is often taken to have shown the limitations of and problems with past views of kinship based on biology, genealogy, and reproduction, a critique that subsequently led those reworking kinship as relatedness in the new kinship studies to view thei…
Embodied cognition
Traditional views in philosophy of mind and cognitive science depict the mind as an information processor, one whose connections with the body and the world are of little theoretical importance. On the contrary, mounting empirical evidence shows that bodily states and modality‐specific systems for perception and action underlie information processing, and that embodiment contributes to various aspects and effects of mental phenomena. This article…
Meaning Making and the Mind of the Externalist
This chapter focuses on the “problem of intentionality” and how it affects the naturalistic view of the mind. The problem of intentionality is threefold: the concept of intentionality needed an explanation, there needed to be a delineation between objects with intentionality and those without, and an explanation was required on why objects had a particular type of intentionality. Of these tasks, the third is the core one, since it is important to…
Meaning Making and the Mind of the Externalist
Intentionality and the MindDuring the 1980s, many philosophers of mind, and even the occasional cognitive scientist, were very exercised about something called "the problem of intentionality."The problem was something like this.There are certain things in the world that appear to possess, through their operation and functioning, a special kind of property: intentionality.This is the property of being about something, of having content about that …
Before Masao and after Masao’: Remembering and celebrating the life and work of Masao Miyoshi (1928–2009)
On the Pacific Edge of Catastrophe, or Redemption: California Dreaming in Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice
Inherent Vice continues Thomas Pynchon's interrogation into California as American edge-site perpetually situated on the brink of catastrophe, metamorphosis, or redemption. In his latest novel, Pynchon labors in the time-honored generic trenches of American “hardboiled fiction” to elaborate the transformative energies of what California still stands for as worlding edge-space, as a temporal promise of social transformation and popular-cultural re…
Divorced and Separated Parents in Conflict: Results from a True Experiment Effect of a Court Mandated Parenting Education Program
This experiment investigated the effect of a parenting education program on separated or divorced parents who were court ordered to attend the Cooperative ParentingTM and Divorce program (Boyan & Termini, 1997). This program was designed to help parents reduce parental conflict and to educate them about the factors that influence their children's adjustment. Training consisted of six sessions lasting two hours each, one week apart. Random assignm…
Kinship Past, Kinship Present: Bio-Essentialism in the Study of Kinship
In this article, I reconsider bio-essentialism in the study of kinship, centering on David Schneider's influential critique that concluded that kinship was "a non-subject" (1972:51). Schneider's critique is often taken to have shown the limitations of and problems with past views of kinship based on biology, genealogy, and reproduction, a critique that subsequently led those reworking kinship as relatedness in the new kinship studies to view thei…
Anomie in the Ghetto: A Study of Neighborhood Type, Race, and Anomie
Three inner-city neighborhoods in varying stages of racial change were surveyed. Contrary to previous studies, it was found that the Negro ghetto exhibited lower anomie that two other areas which were undergoing racial transition. It is suggested that the pattern of social organization of the ghetto may foster a normative system which leads to feelings of relative well-being, reflected in low anomie scores
Part-time work and full-time higher education
This paper reports the results of a random sample survey of term-time employment amongst full-time undergraduates in four institutions. There is a belief that the incidence of employment is increasing, with detrimental effects for academic performance, but the supporting evidence is typically drawn from studies of specific institutions and/or specific groups of students. This paper offers a more widely-based estimate of the incidence of employmen…
Pluralism, Entwinement, and the Levels of Selection
This paper distinguishes and critiques several forms of pluralism about the levels of selection, and introduces a novel way of thinking about the biological properties and processes typically conceptualized in terms of distinct levels. In particular, “levels” should be thought of as being entwined or fused. Since the pluralism discussed is held by divergent theorists, the argument has implications for many positions in the debate over the units o…
Causal Depth, Theoretical Appropriateness, and Individualism in Psychology
Individualists claim that wide explanations in psychology are problematic. I argue that wide psychological explanations sometimes have greater explanatory power than individualistic explanations. The aspects of explanatory power I focus on are causal depth and theoretical appropriateness. Reflection on the depth and appropriateness of other wide explanations of behavior, such as evolutionary explanations, clarifies why wide psychological explanat…
Group-Level Cognition
David Sloan Wilson has recently revived the idea of a group mind as an application of group selectionist thinking to cognition. Central to my discussion of this idea is the distinction between the claim that groups have a psychology and what I call the social manifestation thesis —a thesis about the psychology of individuals. Contemporary work on this topic has confused these two theses. My discussion also points to research questions and issues …
Promiscuous Realism
This paper is a critical discussion of John Dupré's recent defence of promiscuous realism in Part 1 of his The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science. It also discusses some more general issues in the philosophy of biology and science. Dupré's chief strategy of argumentation appeals to debates within the philosophy of biology, all of which concern the nature of species. While the strategy is well motivated, I argu…
Staying on in Full-Time Education: The Educational Participation Rate of 16-Year-Olds
This paper presents a time-series analysis of the socioeconomic factors influencing the propensity of sixteen-year-olds to stay on in full-time education in England and Wales. The econometric methodology employed relies on cointegration and general to specific techniques. The results suggest that the main factors influencing staying on are the rate of return to education, changing social class structure, unemployment rates, and the introduction o…
Rates of Return: Some Further Results
Quantifying the employment effects of micro-electronics
Toward a Theory of Bail Risk
Criteria which are commonly employed in the assessment of the bail risk (failure to appear) are examined. based on samples of defendants released in Philadelphia, Delaware. and Delaware County, Pennsylvania. The original release on recognizance criteria offered by the Manhattan Bail Project is contrasted with a factor analytical model of bail risk produced through the present study. Counter to the original construct, community ties are reflected …
Transdisciplinary Philosophy of Science: Meeting the Challenge of Indigenous Expertise
Transdisciplinary research knits together knowledge from diverse epistemic communities in addressing social-environmental challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate crises, food insecurity, and public health. This article reflects on the roles of philosophy of science in transdisciplinary research while focusing on Indigenous and other subjugated forms of knowledge. We offer a critical assessment of demarcationist approaches in philosophy of …
Thinking about relations: Strathern, Sahlins, and Locke on anthropological knowledge
John Locke is known within anthropology primarily for his empiricism, his views of natural laws, and his discussion of the state of nature and the social contract. Marilyn Strathern and Marshall Sahlins, however, have offered distinctive, novel, and broad reflections on the nature of anthropological knowledge that appeal explicitly to a lesser-known aspect of Locke's work: his metaphysical views of relations. This paper examines their distinctive…
The Rate of Return to Becoming a Qualified Scientist or Engineer in Great Britain, 1966‐1976
Kinmaking, progeneration, and ethnography
Philosophers of biology and biologists themselves for the most part assume that the concept of kin is progenerative: what makes two individuals kin is a direct or indirect function of reproduction. Derivatively, kinship might likewise be presumed to be progenerative in nature. Yet a prominent view of kinship in contemporary cultural anthropology is a kind of constructivism or performativism that rejects such progenerativist views. This paper crit…
Test Cases, Resolvability, and Group Selection: A Critical Examination of the Myxoma Case
The evolution of the myxoma virus in Australia has been presented for many years as a test case for the hypothesis that group selection can function effectively ‘in the wild.’ This paper critically examines the myxoma case, and argues that its failure as a test case for this hypothesis has broader implications for debates over the levels of selection
Constitutional Proposals of the Sapru Committee
Journal Article Constitutional Proposals of the Sapru Committee Get access Constitutional Proposals of the Sapru Committee. Report compiled by the Right Honourable Tej Bahadur Sapru, M.A., LL.D., D.C.L., K.C.S.I., P.C., the Right Honourable M. R. Jayakar, M.A., LL.D., D.C.L., the Honourable M. R. Ayyangar, C.S.I., C.I.E., Kunwar Sir Jagdish Prasad, K.C.S.I., C.I.E., O.B.E. and “A Summary of the Report.” 1945. (Bombay : Padma Publications. 91⁄43 ×…
Where next for global climate deliberation: From proof of concept to a role in transformation
Building on the proof of concept that was the 2021 Global Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Crisis, we explore an expanded and even institutionalized role for effective and consequential citizen deliberation in global climate governance. Such an expanded role could not just strengthen citizen voices in negotiations, but also counter vested interests, promote civic learning, enhance the legitimacy of governance, foster global solidarity, and …
Philosophical silences: Race, gender, disability, and philosophical practice
Who is recognized as a philosopher and what counts as philosophy influence both the content of a philosophical education and academic philosophy’s continuing demographic skew. The ‘philosophical who’ and the ‘philosophical what’ themselves are a partial function of matters that have been passed over in collective silence, even if that now feels to some like a silence belonging to the distant past. This paper discusses some philosophical silences …
How to Think with the Global South
This innovative collection of twenty-six essays aims to contribute to the project of, as the title of the introduction suggests, reimagining epistemology and the philosophy of science from a global perspective. Rather than attempting to construct a volume that augments the coverage provided on traditional topics, such as explanation, laws, and reductionism, or that delivers an integrated global epistemology, the book explores how to think with th…
Why kinship is progeneratively constrained: Extending anthropology
The conceptualisation of kinship and its study remain contested within anthropology. This paper draws on recent cognitive science, developmental cognitive psychology, and the philosophy of science to offer a novel argument for a view of kinship as progeneratively or reproductively constrained. I shall argue that kinship involves a form of extended cognition that incorporates progenerative facts, going on to show how the resulting articulation of …
Regional Differences in Labour Market Participation of Young People in the European Union
The passage from education to employment is one of a number of ‘transitions’ experienced by young people. There was a tendency in the 1980s and 1990s for youth transitions to lengthen and become more diverse. It is now the norm for young people to undergo further education/training after the end of compulsory education. As a result, labour market entry has often been delayed, and has become more protracted and complex. Labour market participation…
Literary Vocation as Occupational Idealism: "The Example of Emerson's "American Scholar
he Emersonian strategy of the American literary intellectual may be so ingrained, so deeply organic to his or her sense of social self-positioning, that Ross Posnock, in Assessing the Oppositional: Contemporary Intellectual Strategies, can now accuse Jim Merod of an Emersonianism so unacknowledged that the latter need not even mention the Concord idealist in refiguring more responsible forms and affiliations of radical dissent. For whatever the i…
Rates of Return to Entering the Legal Profession: Some Further Evidence
Earlier work by Mulvey on the returns to entering the legal profession in Scotland is extended to cover the whole of Great Britain. These results are placed into historical perspective using data from various surveys conducted since 1955-56. The results support Mulvey's conclusions that rates of return are not very different for this group from those of many other professions, especially once appropriate adjustments are taken into account to refl…
A Longer Perspective on Rates of Return
Constitutional Proposals of the Sapru Committee
Journal Article Constitutional Proposals of the Sapru Committee Get access Constitutional Proposals of the Sapru Committee. Report compiled by the Right Honourable Tej Bahadur Sapru, M.A., LL.D., D.C.L., K.C.S.I., P.C., the Right Honourable M. R. Jayakar, M.A., LL.D., D.C.L., the Honourable M. R. Ayyangar, C.S.I., C.I.E., Kunwar Sir Jagdish Prasad, K.C.S.I., C.I.E., O.B.E. and “A Summary of the Report.” 1945. (Bombay : Padma Publications. 91⁄43 ×…
New Horizons
New Horizons *New Horizons. a Study of Australian-Indian Relations. By Stevens Bertram, Premier of New South Wales from 1932 to 1939, Australian Representative on Eastern Group Supply Council, 1941–42. 1946. (Sydney: Peter Huston. Published under the auspices of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, New South Wales Branch. 83⁄4′′ × 51⁄2′′. xix + 201 pp. Maps. 10s. 6d.) R. A. Wilson R. A. Wilson Search for other works by this author o…
Introduction to Indian Administration
Journal Article Introduction to Indian Administration Get access Introduction to Indian Administration. By M. R. Palande, K. T. Telang Gold Medallist; Sir William Wedderburn Scholar; Formerly Professor of History and Economics, M. T. B. College, Surat. Third Edition. 1944. (Indian Branch: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University, 71⁄4′′ × 5′′. x + 393 pp. Biblio. Rs. 3–4. 6s. 6d.) R. A. Wilson R. A. Wilson Search for other works by this author on: Oxf…
I. The Seitaisho: A Constitutional Experiment
With the formal abolition of the Tokugawa Shogunate on January 3, 1868, there was created in Japan a governmental void which was not filled finally and satisfactorily until 1889. The search of Japanese leaders for a satisfactory government structure for the new state was thus one of long duration. It did not begin seriously until the successful outcome of the military struggle with the Tokugawa forces in the early months of 1868 seemed assured
Democracy and the Party Movement in Prewar Japan: The Failure of the First Attempt
Japan Journal, 1855-1861
Journal Article Japan Journal, 1855–1861. By Henry Heusken. Trans. and ed. by Jeannette C. van der Corput and Robert A. Wilson. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1964. xviii + 247 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $6.00.) Get access Boleslaw Szczesniak Boleslaw Szczesniak University of Notre Dame Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 51, Issue 3, December 1964, Page…
China and the West
Black Ghetto Family in Therapy: A Laboratory Experience
Anomia and Militancy Among Urban Negroes: A Study of Neighborhood and Individual Effects
HISTORIANS AND SOCIAL scientists have usually concurred that one of the results of industrialization and urbanization is an increasing alienation of the individual from the community and society. Within the discipline of sociology a great deal of recent theory and research on alienation may be traced to Merton's meansends paradigm (Merton, 1963:161-194). Merton attributes one form of alienation, anomie, to a .. . breakdown in the cultural brought…
Anomie in the Ghetto: A Study of Neighborhood Type, Race, and Anomie
Three inner-city neighborhoods in varying stages of racial change were surveyed. Contrary to previous studies, it was found that the Negro ghetto exhibited lower anomie that two other areas which were undergoing racial transition. It is suggested that the pattern of social organization of the ghetto may foster a normative system which leads to feelings of relative well-being, reflected in low anomie scores
The Art of Black Africa
Some Traditional Family Variables and Their Correlations with Drug Use among High School Students
David A. Schulz, Robert A. Wilson, Some Traditional Family Variables and Their Correlations with Drug Use among High School Students, Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Nov., 1973), pp. 628-631
The Pentecostals: The Charismatic Movement in the Churches
Readings on the Changing Family
Author’s Note
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Urban Sociology
The Rate of Return to Becoming a Qualified Scientist or Engineer in Great Britain, 1966‐1976
Toward a Theory of Bail Risk
Criteria which are commonly employed in the assessment of the bail risk (failure to appear) are examined. based on samples of defendants released in Philadelphia, Delaware. and Delaware County, Pennsylvania. The original release on recognizance criteria offered by the Manhattan Bail Project is contrasted with a factor analytical model of bail risk produced through the present study. Counter to the original construct, community ties are reflected …
Issei, Nisei, and Sansei: Three Generations of Japanese Americans
Quantifying the employment effects of micro-electronics
The Macroeconomic Merits of a Marginal Employment Subsidy
Journal Article The Macroeconomic Merits of a Marginal Employment Subsidy Get access J. D. Whitley, J. D. Whitley University of Warwick Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar R. A. Wilson R. A. Wilson University of Warwick Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 93, Issue 372, 1 December 1983, Pages 862–880, https://doi.org/10.2307/2232751 Published: 0…
Rates of Return: Some Further Results
A Longer Perspective on Rates of Return
Rates of Return to Entering the Legal Profession: Some Further Evidence
Earlier work by Mulvey on the returns to entering the legal profession in Scotland is extended to cover the whole of Great Britain. These results are placed into historical perspective using data from various surveys conducted since 1955-56. The results support Mulvey's conclusions that rates of return are not very different for this group from those of many other professions, especially once appropriate adjustments are taken into account to refl…
Literary Vocation as Occupational Idealism: "The Example of Emerson's "American Scholar
he Emersonian strategy of the American literary intellectual may be so ingrained, so deeply organic to his or her sense of social self-positioning, that Ross Posnock, in Assessing the Oppositional: Contemporary Intellectual Strategies, can now accuse Jim Merod of an Emersonianism so unacknowledged that the latter need not even mention the Concord idealist in refiguring more responsible forms and affiliations of radical dissent. For whatever the i…
Sociology (34 works) · Philosophy (29 works) · Political science (29 works) · Epistemology (28 works) · Psychology (23 works) · Computer Science (22 works) · Law (19 works) · Law (13 works) · History (11 works) · Economics (10 works)