Stephen M Lyons
Biographic Data
| ID | 75174 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stephen M Lyons |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stephen M |
| FAMILY NAME | Lyons |
| SIGNATURE | LYONS S M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Durham University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3249-3853 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 29 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Giving Up the Field: When Friendships Outweigh Scholarship
Iain Ross Edgar (1948-2021)
Kinship, Factions and Survival in Pakistani Politics
Pakistan’s political volatility is well known and oft cited as a cause for concern both regionally and internationally. The state is accused of adopting duplicitous tactics and fostering violent paramilitary organizations in its efforts to undermine Indian hegemony and internal opposition. From the outside, the persistent functioning of the state can sometimes appear to be a mystery. Managing chronic conflicting adversarial relations over a susta…
Challenging the landed elite in contemporary Pakistani politics
Since independence in 1947, highly politicised kinship practices have shaped the country from rural agricultural villages to the highest legislative and executive branches of government and the military. Ideal models of patrilineal affiliation have defined and guided patterns of factional loyalties. Although my earlier work has principally focused on village networks and politics, the same patterns of factional alliances can be seen at national l…
What's the Point of Sections
Conflict and Security
Conflict and security, although related, imply different domains. Conflict has long been a preoccupation of anthropology. Underlying assumptions about how best to understand conflict have shifted over the years, but it is probably fair to say that anthropologists have been at the forefront of challenging accepted wisdom about meanings and practices associated with conflict since its earliest days. Security, on the other hand, is a more recent int…
Addressing #MeToo and Exploitation in Anthropology
Frembgen, Jürgen Wasim: The Closed Valley. With Fierce Friends in the Pakistani Himalayas
Anthropos , Seite 254 - 255
Ties That Bind: Marital Networks and Politics in Punjab, Pakistan
Pakistani politics are characterised by strong corporate social links through kinship and caste that impose reciprocal obligations and rights. Marital maps enable allow for accurate prediction of allegiances and decision making and contribute to a transparent assessment of political processes in the country. While much of the focus on reciprocal relations has understandably been on descent relations (dynasties), the complex network of marital all…
The Co-Construction of Energy Provision and Everyday Practice: Integrating Heat Pumps in Social Housing in England
Challenges of energy security, low carbon transitions, and electricity network constraints have led to a shift to new, efficient technologies for household energy services. Studies of such technological innovations usually focus on consumer information and changes in behaviour to realise their full potential. We suggest that regarding such technologies in existing energy provision systems opens up questions concerning how and why such interventio…
Persistent Cultures: Miskitu Kinship Terminological Fluidity
Kinship is understood dynamically and processually but kinship terminologies are remarkably stable idea systems. They provide cultural continuity over time and are more resistant to modification than many types of cultural instantiations. Miskitu speakers in Nicaragua, however, have adopted new kin terms that appear to have fundamentally changed the idea system used to generate their kin terms historically. The shape of the changes that have occu…
Impossible Citizens: Dubai's Indian Diaspora
Citizenship is a broad and varying concept. There are apparently simple rules for inclusion laid out by states, which allow some people to be categorized as citizen or non-citizen. There are common
Responses to Ageeth Sluis and Elise Edwards, ‘Rethinking combined departments: An argument for History and Anthropology’, published in Learning and Teaching 6.1
The choice of interdisciplinarities Stephen M. Lyon Multidisciplinarity as a necessity and challenge: the Department of General Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague (FHS UK) Yasar Abu Ghosh, Pavel Himl, Tereza Stöckelová and Lucie Storchová Response to Sluis and Edwards, 'Rethinking combined departments' Robert Gibb Response to Sluis and Edwards, 'Rethinking combined departments' Jakob Krause-Jensen Response to Sluis …
Changing of the Guard
As I prepare to hand over the responsibility for History and Anthropology to my successor, David Henig, I am acutely aware that
Localizing the Internet: An anthropological account by Postill, John
Paper as a seriousmethodof concern
Comment on Hull, Matthew. 2012. Government of paper: The materiality of bureaucracy in urban Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press
Networks and Kinship: Formal Models of Alliance, Descent, and Inheritance in a Pakistani Punjabi Village
Pakistani Punjabi landlords use marriage both strategically as well as affectively. That is to say, they seek maximal political advantage and minimal household disruption with marriage arrangements. Using a set of formal networks analyses tools, this article examines two hundred years of marriage decisions for one Punjabi landlord family. The radical shift in marriage decisions beginning from the 1920s is the result of an earlier shift in inherit…
Harmonizing Diversity: Tuning Anthropological Research to Complexity 1
The contributions in this issue of Social Science Computer Review represent a range of computational approaches to theoretical and disciplinary specializations in anthropology that reflect on and expand the future orientation and practice of the formal and comparative agenda in the context of an increasing emphasis on complexity in anthropology as a discipline. Themes covered in this issue include kinship, funerary burials, urban legends, eye tra…
Dunbar's Number: Group Size and Brain Physiology in Humans Reexamined
Popular academic ideas linking physiological adaptations to social behaviors are spreading disconcertingly into wider societal contexts. In this article, we note our skepticism with one particularly popular-in our view, problematic-supposed causal correlation between neocortex size and social group size. The resulting Dunbar's Number, as it has come to be called, has been statistically tested against observed group size in different primate speci…
Language, Space, and Social Relationships: A Foundational Cultural Model in Polynesia
Motivation and Justification from Dreams: Muslim Decision-Making Strategies in Punjab, Pakistan
Dreams may serve to justify or motivate decisions. This paper examines two dream incidents in Pakistan which have implications for the study of decision making processes. In the first incident, the centrality of the dream is questionable in the decision making process, while the second incident suggests that dreams may be more than justificatory props that enable people to do what they had already decided. If dreams play a motivational role in th…
Oak Park Stories Directed by Jay Ruby
2005 and 2006 , color. Distributed by Documentary Education Resources, 101 Morse Street , Watertown, MA 02472 , http://www.der.org Jay Ruby's Oak Park study 4 CD+1 DVD sets out to produce a novel ethnography for the 21st century through a series of character-driven vignettes. Ruby's aim is to examine a social experiment in liberal multicultural urban development based in Oak Park, Illinois, an upper middle-class suburb of Chicago. In keeping with…
Society for Anthropological Sciences
Society for Anthropological Sciences
SASci Annual Meeting •Member Gives Congressional Testimony •New Resources
Section for Anthropological Sciences
Dunbar's Number: Group Size and Brain Physiology in Humans Reexamined
Popular academic ideas linking physiological adaptations to social behaviors are spreading disconcertingly into wider societal contexts. In this article, we note our skepticism with one particularly popular-in our view, problematic-supposed causal correlation between neocortex size and social group size. The resulting Dunbar's Number, as it has come to be called, has been statistically tested against observed group size in different primate speci…
Networks and Kinship: Formal Models of Alliance, Descent, and Inheritance in a Pakistani Punjabi Village
Pakistani Punjabi landlords use marriage both strategically as well as affectively. That is to say, they seek maximal political advantage and minimal household disruption with marriage arrangements. Using a set of formal networks analyses tools, this article examines two hundred years of marriage decisions for one Punjabi landlord family. The radical shift in marriage decisions beginning from the 1920s is the result of an earlier shift in inherit…
Anthropology and Displacement: Culture, Communication and Computers Applied to a Real World Problem
Displacement following natural disasters brings about both short- and long-term issues that urban planners must address. While we recognize that many (though not all) aspects of the short-term plans may not require extensive anthropological insights, the long-term plans, on the contrary, do. We suggest in this article that one of the most important contributions anthropologists can make is producing formal models of indigenous knowledge systems (…
Ties That Bind: Marital Networks and Politics in Punjab, Pakistan
Pakistani politics are characterised by strong corporate social links through kinship and caste that impose reciprocal obligations and rights. Marital maps enable allow for accurate prediction of allegiances and decision making and contribute to a transparent assessment of political processes in the country. While much of the focus on reciprocal relations has understandably been on descent relations (dynasties), the complex network of marital all…
Impossible Citizens: Dubai's Indian Diaspora
Citizenship is a broad and varying concept. There are apparently simple rules for inclusion laid out by states, which allow some people to be categorized as citizen or non-citizen. There are common
Paper as a seriousmethodof concern
Comment on Hull, Matthew. 2012. Government of paper: The materiality of bureaucracy in urban Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press
Kinship, Computing, and Anthropology
This article proposes two important points about genealogical software: (a) Not all such software need necessarily be complicated or address high level theoretical issues, and (b) diversity of data, processing, and infrastructure means that it is particularly desirable that scholars begin to understand software tools as utilities that should have flexibility, including platform independence built into the design from the outset. Following a discu…
Persistent Cultures: Miskitu Kinship Terminological Fluidity
Kinship is understood dynamically and processually but kinship terminologies are remarkably stable idea systems. They provide cultural continuity over time and are more resistant to modification than many types of cultural instantiations. Miskitu speakers in Nicaragua, however, have adopted new kin terms that appear to have fundamentally changed the idea system used to generate their kin terms historically. The shape of the changes that have occu…
Harmonizing Diversity: Tuning Anthropological Research to Complexity 1
The contributions in this issue of Social Science Computer Review represent a range of computational approaches to theoretical and disciplinary specializations in anthropology that reflect on and expand the future orientation and practice of the formal and comparative agenda in the context of an increasing emphasis on complexity in anthropology as a discipline. Themes covered in this issue include kinship, funerary burials, urban legends, eye tra…
Language, Space, and Social Relationships: A Foundational Cultural Model in Polynesia
Motivation and Justification from Dreams: Muslim Decision-Making Strategies in Punjab, Pakistan
Dreams may serve to justify or motivate decisions. This paper examines two dream incidents in Pakistan which have implications for the study of decision making processes. In the first incident, the centrality of the dream is questionable in the decision making process, while the second incident suggests that dreams may be more than justificatory props that enable people to do what they had already decided. If dreams play a motivational role in th…
Oak Park Stories Directed by Jay Ruby
2005 and 2006 , color. Distributed by Documentary Education Resources, 101 Morse Street , Watertown, MA 02472 , http://www.der.org Jay Ruby's Oak Park study 4 CD+1 DVD sets out to produce a novel ethnography for the 21st century through a series of character-driven vignettes. Ruby's aim is to examine a social experiment in liberal multicultural urban development based in Oak Park, Illinois, an upper middle-class suburb of Chicago. In keeping with…
Kinship, Computing, and Anthropology
This article proposes two important points about genealogical software: (a) Not all such software need necessarily be complicated or address high level theoretical issues, and (b) diversity of data, processing, and infrastructure means that it is particularly desirable that scholars begin to understand software tools as utilities that should have flexibility, including platform independence built into the design from the outset. Following a discu…
Celebrating 20 years of the Lake District Pakistan Workshop
This special issue of Contemporary South Asia celebrates 20 years of the annual Pakistan Workshop held in the Lake District of England. This event, the primary raison d'être for the Pakistan Studies Group, has consistently provided a forum for researchers of Pakistan, the Pakistani Diaspora, and Muslim groups of other South Asian countries to meet and exchange ideas. The main impetus for the Workshop has always come from anthropologists, but repr…
Anthropology and Displacement: Culture, Communication and Computers Applied to a Real World Problem
Displacement following natural disasters brings about both short- and long-term issues that urban planners must address. While we recognize that many (though not all) aspects of the short-term plans may not require extensive anthropological insights, the long-term plans, on the contrary, do. We suggest in this article that one of the most important contributions anthropologists can make is producing formal models of indigenous knowledge systems (…
Society for Anthropological Sciences
Society for Anthropological Sciences
SASci Annual Meeting •Member Gives Congressional Testimony •New Resources
Section for Anthropological Sciences
Oak Park Stories Directed by Jay Ruby
2005 and 2006 , color. Distributed by Documentary Education Resources, 101 Morse Street , Watertown, MA 02472 , http://www.der.org Jay Ruby's Oak Park study 4 CD+1 DVD sets out to produce a novel ethnography for the 21st century through a series of character-driven vignettes. Ruby's aim is to examine a social experiment in liberal multicultural urban development based in Oak Park, Illinois, an upper middle-class suburb of Chicago. In keeping with…
Motivation and Justification from Dreams: Muslim Decision-Making Strategies in Punjab, Pakistan
Dreams may serve to justify or motivate decisions. This paper examines two dream incidents in Pakistan which have implications for the study of decision making processes. In the first incident, the centrality of the dream is questionable in the decision making process, while the second incident suggests that dreams may be more than justificatory props that enable people to do what they had already decided. If dreams play a motivational role in th…
Dunbar's Number: Group Size and Brain Physiology in Humans Reexamined
Popular academic ideas linking physiological adaptations to social behaviors are spreading disconcertingly into wider societal contexts. In this article, we note our skepticism with one particularly popular-in our view, problematic-supposed causal correlation between neocortex size and social group size. The resulting Dunbar's Number, as it has come to be called, has been statistically tested against observed group size in different primate speci…
Language, Space, and Social Relationships: A Foundational Cultural Model in Polynesia
Networks and Kinship: Formal Models of Alliance, Descent, and Inheritance in a Pakistani Punjabi Village
Pakistani Punjabi landlords use marriage both strategically as well as affectively. That is to say, they seek maximal political advantage and minimal household disruption with marriage arrangements. Using a set of formal networks analyses tools, this article examines two hundred years of marriage decisions for one Punjabi landlord family. The radical shift in marriage decisions beginning from the 1920s is the result of an earlier shift in inherit…
Harmonizing Diversity: Tuning Anthropological Research to Complexity 1
The contributions in this issue of Social Science Computer Review represent a range of computational approaches to theoretical and disciplinary specializations in anthropology that reflect on and expand the future orientation and practice of the formal and comparative agenda in the context of an increasing emphasis on complexity in anthropology as a discipline. Themes covered in this issue include kinship, funerary burials, urban legends, eye tra…
Localizing the Internet: An anthropological account by Postill, John
Paper as a seriousmethodof concern
Comment on Hull, Matthew. 2012. Government of paper: The materiality of bureaucracy in urban Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press
Responses to Ageeth Sluis and Elise Edwards, ‘Rethinking combined departments: An argument for History and Anthropology’, published in Learning and Teaching 6.1
The choice of interdisciplinarities Stephen M. Lyon Multidisciplinarity as a necessity and challenge: the Department of General Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague (FHS UK) Yasar Abu Ghosh, Pavel Himl, Tereza Stöckelová and Lucie Storchová Response to Sluis and Edwards, 'Rethinking combined departments' Robert Gibb Response to Sluis and Edwards, 'Rethinking combined departments' Jakob Krause-Jensen Response to Sluis …
Changing of the Guard
As I prepare to hand over the responsibility for History and Anthropology to my successor, David Henig, I am acutely aware that
The Co-Construction of Energy Provision and Everyday Practice: Integrating Heat Pumps in Social Housing in England
Challenges of energy security, low carbon transitions, and electricity network constraints have led to a shift to new, efficient technologies for household energy services. Studies of such technological innovations usually focus on consumer information and changes in behaviour to realise their full potential. We suggest that regarding such technologies in existing energy provision systems opens up questions concerning how and why such interventio…
Persistent Cultures: Miskitu Kinship Terminological Fluidity
Kinship is understood dynamically and processually but kinship terminologies are remarkably stable idea systems. They provide cultural continuity over time and are more resistant to modification than many types of cultural instantiations. Miskitu speakers in Nicaragua, however, have adopted new kin terms that appear to have fundamentally changed the idea system used to generate their kin terms historically. The shape of the changes that have occu…
Impossible Citizens: Dubai's Indian Diaspora
Citizenship is a broad and varying concept. There are apparently simple rules for inclusion laid out by states, which allow some people to be categorized as citizen or non-citizen. There are common
Frembgen, Jürgen Wasim: The Closed Valley. With Fierce Friends in the Pakistani Himalayas
Anthropos , Seite 254 - 255
Ties That Bind: Marital Networks and Politics in Punjab, Pakistan
Pakistani politics are characterised by strong corporate social links through kinship and caste that impose reciprocal obligations and rights. Marital maps enable allow for accurate prediction of allegiances and decision making and contribute to a transparent assessment of political processes in the country. While much of the focus on reciprocal relations has understandably been on descent relations (dynasties), the complex network of marital all…
Conflict and Security
Conflict and security, although related, imply different domains. Conflict has long been a preoccupation of anthropology. Underlying assumptions about how best to understand conflict have shifted over the years, but it is probably fair to say that anthropologists have been at the forefront of challenging accepted wisdom about meanings and practices associated with conflict since its earliest days. Security, on the other hand, is a more recent int…
Addressing #MeToo and Exploitation in Anthropology
Challenging the landed elite in contemporary Pakistani politics
Since independence in 1947, highly politicised kinship practices have shaped the country from rural agricultural villages to the highest legislative and executive branches of government and the military. Ideal models of patrilineal affiliation have defined and guided patterns of factional loyalties. Although my earlier work has principally focused on village networks and politics, the same patterns of factional alliances can be seen at national l…
What's the Point of Sections
Sociology (20 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Anthropology (11 works) · History (11 works) · Law (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · History (8 works) · Kinship (8 works) · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture (7 works) · Epistemology (7 works)