Robert J Gordon
Biographic Data
| ID | 92456 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert J Gordon |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert J |
| FAMILY NAME | Gordon |
| SIGNATURE | GORDON R J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Vermont |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0787-1234 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 90 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 764 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 86 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1968 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Introduction-Gluckman's relevance for South African anthropology
High Treason: The trial of the Bondelzwarts kaptein and the politics of settler self-delusion
This paper concerns official “truth-seeking” about the Bondelzwarts Rebellion and its brutal suppression in 1922 by the South African administration in its newly-mandated territory of South West Africa. These events generated a number of official accounts, namely the administrator’s report, the Report of the Commission of Inquiry and subsequent debates in the South African parliament and the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations.…
Chiefs of the Plantation: Authority and Contestation on the South African-Zimbabwe Border, by Lincoln Addison
O ne of the most significant developments in the South African agricultural sector in recent years has been the displacement of the "family" farm by agribusiness. This short, pithy ethnographic monograph provides valuable sociocultural insights into how these new institutions, which Lincoln Addison terms plantations, go about the business of trying to turn a profit. Treating these organizations as plantations immediately opens intriguing and comp…
South Africa's Dreams: Ethnologists and Apartheid in Namibia
How to Boost the Payoff from Innovation While Shrinking its Destructive Side Effects
Gather a group of economists together and ask what most concerns them, and a wide variety of topics would soon emerge: slowing economic growth in the rich nations, the inability of many poor nations to converge toward the rich, rising income and wealth inequality, the increasing dominance of superstar firms, growing profit margins and the decline in labor's income share, globalization and the human costs of outsourcing, deaths of despair, and the…
Declining American economic growth despite ongoing innovation
The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War
General editor’s introduction
The relationship between anthropology and imperialism has long been a subject of debate -at least from the years between the two world wars of the twentieth century.However, although anthropology has been seen to have its origins and development deeply implicated in the practice, performance and perceptions of imperial rule, it is far from being unique in this regard.The disciplines of Geography, Museology, Archaeology, Tropical Medicine and Agri…
Index
Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U. S. Standard of Living since the Civil War
How Good People Become Absurd: J.P. van S. Bruwer, the Making of Namibian Grand Apartheid and the Decline of Volkekunde
Perhaps the most co-ordinated and dramatic single attempt to impose ‘Grand Apartheid’ in southern Africa was the implementation of the Odendaal Commission recommendations in South West Africa. In this exercise, the role of the social anthropologist J.P. van S. Bruwer was crucial. His expertise was deployed not only in formulating the framework of the recommendations but also in its initial implementation. It was also used to try to convince an in…
"Taming" Bushman farm labour: A villeinous era in neo-feudal Namibia
This paper examines how "wild" Bushmen became "tame" farm labour in Namibia during a situation where policy encouraged massive white farm settlement while undergoing significant administrative personnel downscaling. Downscaling led to an increase in unrecorded informal violence because farmers were operating in what Moore calls "semi-autonomous fields." I suggest that Agamben's notion of état de siège and Weber's analysis of villeinage provide us…
Protecting the borders: Etiquette manuals and ethnology in the erstwhile South African Defence Force
This paper describes the rise and fall of the Ethnological Section of the South African Defence Force (SADF) and examines two inter-related conundra: Why were senior policy makers’ pleas for officers’ courses in ethnology unsuccessful when the SADF had large numbers of ethnologists in its employ? Second, why were they fixated on etiquette manuals which were, content-wise, often laughable? On the available evidence, I suggest that the raison d’êtr…
The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War
In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, motor vehicles, air travel, and television transformed households and workplaces. But has that era of unprecedented growth come to an end? Weaving together a vivid narrative, historical anecdotes, and economic analysis, The Rise and Fall of American Growth challenges the view that…
Sex Squad: Engaging humour to reinvigorate sexual health education
The Sex Squad is a collective of US-based college students, who create and perform monologues, scenes and musical parodies for ninth graders (ranging in age from 13 to 15). The Sex Squad is the central element in the AMP! programme for adolescent sexual health, developed at the University of California – Los Angeles in collaboration with the HIV/AIDS Prevention Unit of the Los Angeles Unified School District. In this case study, grounded primaril…
Moving targets: Hunting in contemporary Africa
A Population-Based Case-Control Study of Drinking-Water Nitrate and Congenital Anomalies Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to Develop Individual-Level Exposure Estimates
Animal studies and epidemiological evidence suggest an association between prenatal exposure to drinking water with elevated nitrate (NO3-N) concentrations and incidence of congenital anomalies. This study used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to derive individual-level prenatal drinking-water nitrate exposure estimates from measured nitrate concentrations from 140 temporally monitored private wells and 6 municipal water supplies. Cases of ma…
The Demise and Rise of the Coy San
Review Article: De Jongh, Michael (2012), Roots and Routes: Karretjie People of the Great Karoo: The Marginalisation of a South African First People , Pretoria: UNISA Press, ISBN 978-1-86888-665-4, 220 pp. Glyn, Patricia (2013), What Dawid Knew: A Journey with the Kruipers , Johannesburg: Picador, ISBN 978-1-77010-304-7, 256 pp. Myburgh, Paul John (2013), The Bushman Winter Has Come: The True Story of the Last Band of /Gwikwe Bushmen on the Great…
Inside African anthropology: Monica Wilson and her interpreters
2014). Inside African anthropology: Monica Wilson and her interpreters. Anthropology Southern Africa: Vol. 37, No. 1-2, pp. 135-138
On Burning One's Bridge: The Context of Gluckman's Zulu Fieldwork
Gluckman's 1940 essay "An Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand" (aka as "The Bridge") is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential in social anthropology for signalling a paradigm shift. This paper publishes a chapter of a previously unpublished, undated manuscript by Gluckman - probably from 1946 - describing how he did fieldwork in Zululand. A contextualizing essay discusses why Gluckman went to Zululand, what his preparat…
Macroeconomics: Pearson New International Edition
Germany's Genocide of the Herero. Kaiser Wilhelm II, His General, His Settlers, His Soldiers
Not Studying White, Up or Down, but around Southern Africa: A Response to Francis Nyamnjoh
The Last Drag: An Evaluation of an LGBT-Specific Smoking Intervention
Many studies in the past 20 years have documented that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals smoke at rates that exceed the general population, yet, there have been few reports of smoking cessation interventions targeting this population. This study reports on data from 233 participants in The Last Drag, a seven-session, six-week group education and support intervention tailored for LGBT smokers. Data on smoking rates were co…
Bitter Roots: The Ends of a Kalahari Myth by Adrian Strong
Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology
An alternative anthropology: exercising the preferential option of the poor / Leigh Binford
Does the "New Economy" Measure up to the Great Inventions of the Past
During the four years 1995-99 U.S. productivity growth experienced a strong revival and achieved growth rates exceeding that of the "golden age" of 1913-72. Accordingly many observers have declared the "New Economy" to be an Industrial Revolution even more important than the Second Industrial Revolution of 1860-1900, which made the golden age of productivity growth possible. This paper dissects the recent productivity revival, subtracts out a cyc…
The Macroeconomics of Low Inflation
The Macroeconomics of Low InflationTHE CONCEPT of a natural unemployment rate has been central to most modern models of inflation and stabilization.According to these models, inflation will accelerate or decelerate depending on whether unemployment is below or above the natural rate, while any existing rate of inflation will continue if unemployment is at the natural rate.The natural rate is thus the minimum, and only, sustainable rate of unemplo…
Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change
The essays in this volume explore experiential connections between political instability and social life.The contributors consider situations in which established social routines-including taken-for-granted understandings of society itself-have been altered by transformations of state power.In the absence of routines, other social connections and registers proliferate, some more productively than others.The authors' explorations of the agencies, …
Apartheid's Anthropologists: The genealogy of Afrikaner anthropology
The Estimation of Prewar Gross National Product: Methodology and New Evidence
This paper develops new methodology for the estimation of prewar gross national product (GNP), taps previously unused data sources, an d develops new estimates for the periods 1869-1908 and 1869-1928. Primary among the new data sources are direct measures of output in the transportation, communications, and construction sectors, and estimates of the consumer price index. New measures of real GNP, nominal GNP, and the GNP deflator are developed. T…
Ordering Africa: Anthropology, European imperialism and the politics of knowledge
The Bushman myth: The making of a Namibian underclass
Early social anthropology in South Africa
1990). Early social anthropology in South Africa. African Studies: Vol. 49, No. 1, pp. 15-48
The Measurement of Durable Goods Prices
Journal Article The Measurement of Durable Goods Prices Get access The Measurement of Durable Goods Prices. By ROBERT J. GORDON. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Pp. xviii+723. à à à à £67.95 hardback, US$97.75 hardback. ISBN o 226 30455 8.) Reg Ward Reg Ward Central Statistical Office Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 101, Issue 407, 1 July 1991, Pages 100…
The venal Hottentot Venus and the Great Chain of being
Price Inertia and Policy Ineffectiveness in the United States, 1890-1980
This paper introduces a new approach to the empirical testing of the Lucas-Sargent-Wallace (LSW) "policy ineffectiveness proposition," which compares the LSW hypothesis with an alternative that states that prices respond fully in the long run, but only gradually in the short run, to nominal aggregate demand disturbances. The empirical equations, estimated for a new set of quarterly data extending back to 1890, exhibit uniformly high responses of …
The Authentic (In)Authentic: Bushman Anthro-Tourism
Focusing on tourism ventures that market contact with so‐called bushmen, this paper examines some of the current dynamics and consequences of cultural tourism in Namibia, where the Government has instituted a series of progressive policies to promote local control over tourism development. While notions of primitive cultural otherness continue to feature centrally in tourist demand for contact with “bushmen,” the community‐based and collaborative…
Cultural Diversity among Twentieth-Century Foragers
Why U.S. Wage and Employment Behaviour Differs From That in Britain and Japan
Journal Article Why U.S. Wage and Employment Behaviour Differs From That in Britain and Japan Get access Robert J. Gordon Robert J. Gordon Northwestern University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 92, Issue 365, 1 March 1982, Pages 13–44, https://doi.org/10.2307/2232253 Published: 01 March 1982
The Time-Varying Nairu and its Implications for Economic Policy
The NAIRU, the unemployment rate consistent with a constant rate of inflation, is estimated, in this paper, as a parameter allowed to vary over time. Value is determined in an econometric model where the inflation rate depends on its past values, demand and supply shocks. The NAIRU estimated for the GDP deflator varies over the past forty years within 5.4 to 6.5 percent; its estimated value for the most recent quarter (1996:Q2) is 5.6 percent. Th…
Hiding in Full View: The “Forgotten” Bushman Genocides of Namibia
This article examines the Bushman genocide of 1912–1915 which, despite overwhelming evidence of its having occurred, has been largely ignored by both scholars and the local population. It invokes the Durkheimian distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions. Necessary conditions are akin to Marxian notions of ‘‘primitive accumulation’’ or Weberian ‘‘booty capitalism,’’ but in addition, the author emphasizes the demographics of the settl…
The rise of the Bushman penis: Germans, Genitalia and Genocide
1998). The rise of the Bushman penis: germans, genitalia and genocide. African Studies: Vol. 57, No. 1, pp. 27-54
The History of the Phillips Curve: Consensus and Bifurcation
While the early history of the Phillips curve up to 1975 is well known, less well understood is the post‐1975 fork in the road. The left fork developed a theory of policy responses to supply shocks in the context of price stickiness in the non‐shocked sector. Its econometric implementation interacts shocks with backward‐looking inertia. The right fork approach emphasizes forward‐looking expectations that can jump in response to anticipated policy…
The Last Drag: An Evaluation of an LGBT-Specific Smoking Intervention
Many studies in the past 20 years have documented that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals smoke at rates that exceed the general population, yet, there have been few reports of smoking cessation interventions targeting this population. This study reports on data from 233 participants in The Last Drag, a seven-session, six-week group education and support intervention tailored for LGBT smokers. Data on smoking rates were co…
Challenges for Anthropology in the 'African Renaissance: A Southern African Contribution
Debie Lebeau and Robert J. Gordon (eds), Challenges for Anthropology in the 'African Renaissance': a Southern African contribution. Windhoek: University of Namibia Press (paperback £23.95, US $39.95, ISBN 99916 59 42 0), distributed by the African Books Collective, London. 2002, 307 pp. - Volume 74 Issue 2
Persistent Popular Images of Pastoralists
Pastoralists have long been recurrent figures in visual images and other representations of Africa and Africans. Whether seen in positive or negative terms, pastoralists have provided means for thinking about and imaging cultural difference and identity, with considerable continuity in representational forms and themes. As popular visual media proliferated and changed over the past two centuries--from postcards, trade cards, and live shows to Hol…
The Bushman Myth: The Making of a Namibian Underclass
"The Making of the "Bushmen
The image of the Bushmen has altered several times over the last 150 years. These alterations reflect fluctuations in the relationship between power and knowledge rather than ethnographic realities. Some mid-Victorian scholars did not distinguish Bushmen from Khoi pastoralists. When Bushmen posed an impediment to German ambitions in Southwest Africa, they came to be represented as remnants of a pri mordial race, either dangerously bastardized or …
Marginalia on 'Grensliteratuur: Or how/why is terror culturally constructed in Northern Namibia
There are many humorous things in the world; among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than other savages. (Mark Twain). How does it happen that civilized and Christian men, when brought, (as settlers in new countries), into direct contact with savage races, seem invariably to lay aside not merely the tender mercies of Christianity, but the sentiments of chivalrous magnanimity and become at times little less fierce, vindictive and …
A New View of Real Investment in Structures, 1919-1966
N ONE of the procedures used in the measurement of investment has generated more controversy than the deflation of construction expenditures, for the measured rate of growth of real investment in structures in the United States varies over a wide range depending on which price index is chosen. Deflators proposed for United States construction range from the official Department of Commerce Cost (CCC) used in the United States National Accounts, wh…
The Brookings Model in Action: A Review Article
Challenges to Interdependent Economies: The Industrial West in the Coming Decade
Mines, Masters, and Migrants: Life in a Namibian Compound
Films: Nlai, The Story of a !Kung Woman. 1980
Price Inertia and Policy Ineffectiveness in the United States, 1890-1980
This paper introduces a new approach to the empirical testing of the Lucas-Sargent-Wallace (LSW) "policy ineffectiveness proposition," which compares the LSW hypothesis with an alternative that states that prices respond fully in the long run, but only gradually in the short run, to nominal aggregate demand disturbances. The empirical equations, estimated for a new set of quarterly data extending back to 1890, exhibit uniformly high responses of …
Why U.S. Wage and Employment Behaviour Differs From That in Britain and Japan
Journal Article Why U.S. Wage and Employment Behaviour Differs From That in Britain and Japan Get access Robert J. Gordon Robert J. Gordon Northwestern University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 92, Issue 365, 1 March 1982, Pages 13–44, https://doi.org/10.2307/2232253 Published: 01 March 1982
The Decline of the Kiapdom and the Resurgence of ‘Tribal Fighting’ in Enga
Mind Your Colour: The “Coloured” Stereotype in South African Literature. V. A. February
Books/Livres
Nama/Namibia: Diary and Letters of Nama Chief Hendrik Witbooi, 1884-1894
Remembering Agnes Winifred Hoernle
Apartheid's Anthropologists: The genealogy of Afrikaner anthropology
Sport in Africa: Essays in Social History. William J. Baker and James A. Mangan
The Estimation of Prewar Gross National Product: Methodology and New Evidence
This paper develops new methodology for the estimation of prewar gross national product (GNP), taps previously unused data sources, an d develops new estimates for the periods 1869-1908 and 1869-1928. Primary among the new data sources are direct measures of output in the transportation, communications, and construction sectors, and estimates of the consumer price index. New measures of real GNP, nominal GNP, and the GNP deflator are developed. T…
The American Business Cycle: Continuity and Change
Journal Article The American Business Cycle: Continuity and Change Get access The American Business Cycle: Continuity and Change. Edited by J. GORDON ROBERT. (Chicago ancl London: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Pp. xiv + 868. £66.25 hardback. ISBN 0 226 30452 3.) M. Landesmann M. Landesmann University of Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 99, Issue 397, 1 September 1…
Early social anthropology in South Africa
1990). Early social anthropology in South Africa. African Studies: Vol. 49, No. 1, pp. 15-48
The Measurement of Durable Goods Prices
Journal Article The Measurement of Durable Goods Prices Get access The Measurement of Durable Goods Prices. By ROBERT J. GORDON. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Pp. xviii+723. à à à à £67.95 hardback, US$97.75 hardback. ISBN o 226 30455 8.) Reg Ward Reg Ward Central Statistical Office Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 101, Issue 407, 1 July 1991, Pages 100…
Marginalia on 'Grensliteratuur: Or how/why is terror culturally constructed in Northern Namibia
There are many humorous things in the world; among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than other savages. (Mark Twain). How does it happen that civilized and Christian men, when brought, (as settlers in new countries), into direct contact with savage races, seem invariably to lay aside not merely the tender mercies of Christianity, but the sentiments of chivalrous magnanimity and become at times little less fierce, vindictive and …
"The Making of the "Bushmen
The image of the Bushmen has altered several times over the last 150 years. These alterations reflect fluctuations in the relationship between power and knowledge rather than ethnographic realities. Some mid-Victorian scholars did not distinguish Bushmen from Khoi pastoralists. When Bushmen posed an impediment to German ambitions in Southwest Africa, they came to be represented as remnants of a pri mordial race, either dangerously bastardized or …
The venal Hottentot Venus and the Great Chain of being
Southern Africa Revisited
Art, Music & Cinema
Studies in the Targum to the Twelve Prophets: From Nahum to Malachi
This volume is concerned with the origin and development of the Targum to the Prophets, focusing for this purpose upon the Twelve Prophets (from Nahum to Malachi). A wide-ranging introductory chapter sets current research in context by surveying almost two centuries of Targumic study. It is argued that the evidence in the extant text for a Second Commonwealth phase in the Targum's history is meagre and that, in particular, the Qumran Habakkuk pes…
The impact of the Second World War on Namibia
This paper should be read as a prospectus for a study on the impact of the Second World War on Namibia. It isolates and abductively suggests possible linkages between a number of broad areas of enquiry: the role of Nazism in Namibia; the establishment of a system for recruiting black volunteers to serve in the South African Defence Force (SADF); the operation of this recruitment system; the reasons for its premature closure and discharge of volun…
History (40 works) · Political science (40 works) · Sociology (39 works) · History (26 works) · Law (20 works) · Economics (19 works) · Anthropology (18 works) · Art (16 works) · Computer Science (16 works) · Law (14 works)