Southern Perspectives» Anthropology http://www.southernperspectives.net A lateral dialogue of ideas Sun, 29 Aug 2010 12:40:12 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 After ‘Firstness’–the challenge of generative anthropology http://www.southernperspectives.net/field/anthropology/after-firstnessthe-challenge-of-generative-anthropology http://www.southernperspectives.net/field/anthropology/after-firstnessthe-challenge-of-generative-anthropology#comments Sat, 31 Jul 2010 04:09:09 +0000 admin http://www.southernperspectives.net/field/anthropology/after-firstnessthe-challenge-of-generative-anthropology Eric Gans represents a school of ‘generative anthropology’ that is concerned with the originary scene of culture in sacrifice and the invention of language. This field is informed particularly by the theories of scapegoating developed by Rene Girard. Gans coopts this approach to argue against ‘victimary’ thinking in Western liberalism. He defends the idea that the unique flame of civilisation was ignited by the Jewish religion, and subsequently carried by the West in the development of technology and market capitalism.

In a recent article about Bruno Latour, Haven’t we always been modern?, he argues for the privilege of ‘firstness’ shared by the ‘developed’ world.

The ‘developing’ world, whatever the varieties of its cultures, offers no alternative visions of nature, let alone modes of relating subject and object, to challenge the structures of modernity and its global marketplace. Its resentments of the ‘hegemonic’ West, justified or not, are wholly ethical.

While aligned with certain fundamentalist values, Gans sophisticated argument may be useful to further develop southern thinking. Is ‘firstness’ a unilateral status? Can the West be seen to represent a superior technological facility, but an inferior form of social cohesion? Can criticisms of the West be dismissed as merely ethical? Is not ethics a limiting condition on all systems?

]]> http://www.southernperspectives.net/field/anthropology/after-firstnessthe-challenge-of-generative-anthropology/feed 0 The Impact of the Antipodes on Anthropological Thought http://www.southernperspectives.net/notice/the-impact-of-the-antipodes-on-anthropological-thought http://www.southernperspectives.net/notice/the-impact-of-the-antipodes-on-anthropological-thought#comments Thu, 19 Mar 2009 07:35:34 +0000 admin http://www.southernperspectives.net/notice/the-impact-of-the-antipodes-on-anthropological-thought The Sydney Sawyer Seminar explores the history of how the Antipodes – and especially the Indo-Pacific lands and oceans – has constituted a laboratory for the Atlantic world over a broad intellectual, geographical and temporal scale. Our seminar covers three centuries from 1700 to 2009, and focuses on Atlantic-derived conceptions and experiences within the Antipodes that bear especially on the themes of humanity and cultures, of sovereignty and imperialism, and of environment and ecology.

Session One
The Impact of the Antipodes on Anthropological Thought: Histories of Human Order
Friday, 27 March 2009
1-5pm, Holme & Sutherland Rooms, Holme Building, Science Road, The University of Sydney
Convenor:     Jude Philp
Presenters:   

  • Elena Govor, Australian National University ‘Miklouho-Maclay and Russian anthropology’
  • Shino Konishi, Australian National University ‘The Slippery Native Tongue: Aborigines, explorers, and the eighteenth-century notion of a natural language’
  • Ron Day, Murray Island Community Council   ‘Meriam-le (Mer Islnders), Anthropologists and the idea of rational understanding’
  • Helen Gardner, Deakin University  ‘Out of site: missionary/anthropologists and their informants’
  • Jude Philp, University of Sydney  ‘Taking Torres Strait Islander culture to Cambridge University’
  • Discussant:    Warwick Anderson, University of Sydney, tbc

This session investigates the impact of the antipodes on anthropological thought through centring discussion on the disparate and extraordinarily diverse peoples of the Pacific region. The aim of many 18th-century European expeditions to the Pacific was to glean information about natural phenomena (geology, astronomy, cartography etc). The mediators of this information were the peoples indigenous to the many islands and lands spread across the Pacific Ocean. Rather than a laboratory of clinical and predetermined materials, the antipodean ‘laboratory’ was often treated as a marketplace where negotiation for access to resources necessarily involved the gathering of cultural knowledge, names, languages and cultural products. These chance purchases and notes were the beginnings of anthropological thought here.
RSVP to Katherine Anderson katherine.anderson@usyd.edu.au  or 02 9036 5347 by March 20.
For further information regarding the Mellon Sawyer Seminar series visit:
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/school/sophi/news_events/sawyer_seminar_series.shtml

]]> http://www.southernperspectives.net/notice/the-impact-of-the-antipodes-on-anthropological-thought/feed 0 Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences http://www.southernperspectives.net/book/journal-of-alternative-perspectives-in-the-social-sciences http://www.southernperspectives.net/book/journal-of-alternative-perspectives-in-the-social-sciences#comments Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:16:16 +0000 admin http://www.southernperspectives.net/?p=56 JAPSS Press, a branch of the Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences is calling for chapter proposals for an Edited Volume dealing with Regionalism and Development in the Asia Pacific Region. Some possible topics are the following:
- South to South Cooperation
- International Norms and Regionalism in the Asia Pacific Region
- Globalization and Regionalism
- Development
- Human Rights and Regionalism
- Cultural Change and Regionalism
The book will be published under the name of the Journal and will be distributed in the United States and the World. The expenses for this project will be covered by the Journal and its supporting organizations. Editorial work will be undertaken by qualified scholars affiliated with the Journal. This is a wonderful opportunity for junior scholars and scholars from the developing world to share their research with the wider academic community.
If interested please submit a short abstract of the proposed chapter in addition to a brief resume to the Editor in Chief of the Journal.
Otto F. von Feigenblatt,
Editor in Chief, Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences
Email: journalalternative@hotmail.com
Visit the website at http://www.japss.org

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