Suchergebnisse

International audience ; Maurice Godelier has become one of the major anthropologists of the second half of the 20 th and of the 21 st centuries. Often too quickly categorised as a Marxist anthropologist, his research and publications have in fact with perseverance investigated the complex relationship between the material conditions of existence, the social relationships that organise access to and control of these resources, and the imaginary rationales (and symbolic bodies) that articulate and legitimise these relationships. From La production des Grands Hommes (1982), his major ethnographic monograph on the Baruya of Papua New-Guinea, to L'idéel et le materiel (1984) where his conclusions are formulated into much wider applicable theoretical suggestions, or L'énigme du don (1996), Métamorphoses de la parenté (2004), Au fondement des societies humaines (2007), and Lévi-Strauss (2013), to quote just a few, Godelier has gradually evolved in the ways he articulates the relationship between the fundamental triad mentioned above. To make a long story short, while in earlier works he suggested that kinship and gender relationships are fundamental in the ways in which societies organise their access to resources and define the ways in which they conceive themselves as an entity of belonging, in his latest contributions he gradually moved the perspective to an upper level considering that it is the articulation of power relationships with belief systems within the political-religious domain that are universally at the core of social reality and cultural diversity, as well as of their historical evolution. Through this trajectory, Godelier has also used, coined or redefined notions that have become part of his theoretical toolbox in the analysis of these political-religious systems.

International audience ; Elicitation of Unacceptable. — Sorcery has remained an important issue in Melanesia countries, in particular in Papua New Guinea and in Vanuatu. It has become a concern for policy makers, legislators and NGOs, and is considered a central practice among many local peoples. Researchers interested in the question of sorcery tend to compartmentalize the analysis favoring an approach that considers sorcery to be an indicator of economic and political postcolo- nial changes. Others, less frequently, study witchcraft as being disconnected from its his- torical and political contexts and attempt to analyze its rationale in terms of cultural representations. The discussion of a recent case of sorcery in the south of the island of Malekula in Vanuatu shows that these approaches are in fact complementary. A clear distinction between magic and sorcery is difficult in Vanuatu because the technical means available to both are identical. The basis for such a distinction is rather the act of accusation, that is, the verbalization of alle- ged practices that, while drawing their means from a recognized and acceptable repertoire, are thought to constitute a form of resistance to an emerging social order. These verbaliza- tions, which consist of elicitations of forma- lized values, are moments where being together and being alike are revealed through the distinction of what is acceptable from what is not. Elicitations are here opportuni- ties for explanation, for confirmation and for transformation of social values that define membership and expose the collective. In this context, accusations of sorcery and the identification of alleged sorcerers become simultaneously a means to act on, and a way of thinking the world. It is because sorcery allows all of this that not only has it remai- ned relevant in Melanesian countries and beyond, but that it also continues to be so central to the lives of the people of Malekula. ; Laurent Dousset, La sorcellerie en Mélanésie :élicitation de l'inacceptable. — La ...

International audience ; Elicitation of Unacceptable. — Sorcery has remained an important issue in Melanesia countries, in particular in Papua New Guinea and in Vanuatu. It has become a concern for policy makers, legislators and NGOs, and is considered a central practice among many local peoples. Researchers interested in the question of sorcery tend to compartmentalize the analysis favoring an approach that considers sorcery to be an indicator of economic and political postcolo- nial changes. Others, less frequently, study witchcraft as being disconnected from its his- torical and political contexts and attempt to analyze its rationale in terms of cultural representations. The discussion of a recent case of sorcery in the south of the island of Malekula in Vanuatu shows that these approaches are in fact complementary. A clear distinction between magic and sorcery is difficult in Vanuatu because the technical means available to both are identical. The basis for such a distinction is rather the act of accusation, that is, the verbalization of alle- ged practices that, while drawing their means from a recognized and acceptable repertoire, are thought to constitute a form of resistance to an emerging social order. These verbaliza- tions, which consist of elicitations of forma- lized values, are moments where being together and being alike are revealed through the distinction of what is acceptable from what is not. Elicitations are here opportuni- ties for explanation, for confirmation and for transformation of social values that define membership and expose the collective. In this context, accusations of sorcery and the identification of alleged sorcerers become simultaneously a means to act on, and a way of thinking the world. It is because sorcery allows all of this that not only has it remai- ned relevant in Melanesian countries and beyond, but that it also continues to be so central to the lives of the people of Malekula. ; Laurent Dousset, La sorcellerie en Mélanésie :élicitation de l'inacceptable. — La sorcellerie demeure d'une grande actualité dans les pays de la Mélanésie, tout particulièrement en Papouasie Nouvelle-Guinée et au Vanuatu. Elle préoccupe les décideurs politiques, les législateurs et les organisations non gouver- nementales, et elle reste une pratique consi- dérée comme importante parmi de nom- breuses populations locales. Les chercheurs qui s'intéressent à ces faits sociaux ont ten- dance à cloisonner l'analyse et à privilégier une approche qui considère la sorcellerie comme un indicateur de mutations éco- nomiques et politiques postcoloniales. D'autres, plus rares, étudient la sorcellerie en la déconnectant des contextes historiques et politiques des pays en question pour y trou- ver des logiques de représentations cultu- relles. L'analyse d'un cas de sorcellerie récent dans le sud de l'île de Malekula au Vanuatu montre que ces approches sont pourtant complémentaires. La distinction entre magie et sorcellerie est difficile au Vanuatu, car les moyens techniques à disposition sont iden- tiques. Ce qui fonde une telle distinction est l'accusation, c'est-à-dire la verbalisation d'actes présumés qui, tout en puisant leurs sources dans un répertoire reconnu comme acceptable, sont pensées être une forme de résistance à un ordre social qui émerge. Ces moments de verbalisation, véritables élicita- tions de paroles formalisées, sont des lieux où l'être ensemble et l'être pareil se révèlent parce qu'ils permettent de distinguer l'accep- table de l'inacceptable. Ces élicitations se présentent comme des moments d'explica- tion, d'affirmation et de transformation de valeurs sociales jugées fonder l'appartenance et révéler le collectif. L'accusation de sorcelle- rie et l'identification du sorcier présumé constituent ainsi simultanément un procédé pour agir sur le monde et un moyen pour le penser. C'est parce que la sorcellerie fait et permet tout cela en même temps que, non seulement elle reste actuelle dans les pays de Mélanésie et au-delà, mais aussi qu'elle conti- nue à être si centrale dans la vie des habitants de Malekula.

International audience ; In this chapter I would like to further explore the anthropology of legitimacy and attempt to combine it with Deleuze and Guattari's (1983, 1987) suggestion that sorcery embodies the permeability of constant becoming and changing. Despite the distressing situations sorcery often engenders in communities, my aim is to escape the scientific moralism mentioned above and engage local ethnography in more general and constructive considerations. I suggest that sorcery is a place where belonging and being are reconfigured and therefore where notions of the 'person', the 'group', 'ethnicity' or 'power' are redefined and adapted to changing historical and material conditions. I thus consider that the particular local conditions trigger and frame the processes of social reconfiguration, but that it is in and through sorcery that the cognitive and social schema of such change can take place, because sorcery is inherently a means of shifting borders. The supernatural points to a not-yet-redefined humanity, and sorcery is a vehicle through which the uncertain contours of humanity are simultaneously expressed and resolved. These hypotheses will be illustrated using the ethnography of recent sorcery accusations in the south of Malekula, one of the main islands in the archipelago of Vanuatu.

This paper compares the rationale of parallel-cross neutralizations and skewing in Australian Aboriginal kinship systems and suggests that these Dravidian-like but nevertheless different systems indicate strategic and adaptative usages of kinship terminologies.

Some of the most prominent social and cultural anthropologists have come together in this volume to discuss Maurice Godelier's work. They explore and revisit some of the highly complex practices and structures social scientists encounter in their fieldwork. From the nature-culture debate to the fabrication of hereditary political systems, from transforming gender relations to the problems of the Christianization of Indigenous peoples, these chapters demonstrate both the diversity of anthropological topics and the opportunity for constructive dialogue around shared methodological and theoretica

Résumé La nécessité de démontrer une « continuité culturelle » dans le cadre des revendications autochtones devant les tribunaux est devenue une des tâches importantes de l'anthropologie en Australie. L'article présente et discute ces procédures de revendication et souligne deux problèmes de celles-ci : la valorisation des sources dites anciennes au détriment des observations contemporaines, et l'intégration dans la jurisprudence d'un modèle anthropologique peu applicable aux diversités culturelles australiennes.