Laurent Dousset

Laurent Dousset
University of Lucerne · Department of Anthropology

PhD and Habilitation
Independent Researcher & Honorary Professor at The University of Lucerne

About

126
Publications
34,463
Reads
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461
Citations
Introduction
Former professor of anthropology at the EHESS, France, I am now independent researcher also lecturing at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland. Regional specialities: Aboriginal Australia, Vanuatu, Island Melanesia. — Topical specialities: Social and political organisation, kinship and land tenure, historical reconstructions, environnemental change, uncertainty and risk, deep history
Additional affiliations
January 2003 - present
School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences
Position
  • Professor
Description
  • Elicitation and social values
January 2000 - December 2002
University of Western Australia
Position
  • PostDoc Position
Education
September 2013 - June 2014
University of Strasbourg
Field of study
  • Social and Cultural Anthropology
September 1994 - December 1999
School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences
Field of study
  • Social and Cultural Anthropology
September 1993 - September 1994
School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences
Field of study
  • Social and Cultural Anthropology

Publications

Publications (126)
Article
Full-text available
Based on previous work on uncertainty as a heuristic tool, this paper wants to extend the theoretical and empirical framework to include the analysis of intangible agents. Certainty, which is never absolute, is nevertheless a social necessity because it allows for anticipation, and thus social interaction. It is founded on specific regimes of truth...
Preprint
Fondé sur des travaux antérieurs sur l'incertitude en tant qu'outil heuristique, cet article souhaite étendre le cadre théorique et empirique pour inclure l'analyse des agents intangibles. La certitude, qui n'est jamais absolue, est néanmoins une nécessité sociale car elle permet l'anticipation, et donc l'interaction. Elle est fondée sur des régime...
Article
Dans le Pacifique Sud, la période reproductive du ver marin Palola viridis constitue pour de nombreuses sociétés un marqueur temporel et cérémoniel important. Cet article discute l’ethnographie des usages et représentations relatifs à cet événement annuel concernant la région de Malekula, Vanuatu. Il met en parallèle les données recueillies à Atchi...
Article
Migration and exchange, as well as the circulation and diffusion of cultural, material and linguistic traits are dependent on the technical means, the environmental conditions and the human capacity to actually navigate and reach distant islands and coastal areas. Simulations of the navigational travel potential of Pacific Islanders have been under...
Article
Migration and exchange, as well as the circulation and diffusion of cultural, material and linguistic traits are dependent on the technical means, the environmental conditions and the human capacity to actually navigate and reach distant islands and coastal areas. Simulations of the navigational travel potential of Pacific Islanders have been under...
Preprint
Full-text available
Soumis pour parution dans : Durand, Marie, Eric Wittersheim et Monika Stern (eds), Le Vanuatu dans tous ses états, Marseille : pcp Reconstruire l'histoire des sociétés à grades au Vanuatu, Pacifique. Mots clés: Sociétés à grades, Namangi / Namangki, société secrètes, Pacifique, Migrations, Préhistoire, Histoire, Organisation politique
Preprint
Full-text available
In the Pacific context particularly, migration, as well as exchange, circulation and diffusion of cultural, material and linguistic traits are dependent on technical means, environmental conditions and human capacity to actually navigate and to reach distant islands and new coastal areas, or to regularly revisit known places and exchange partners....
Preprint
Les théories autochtones du vivant, notamment celle concernant l'engendrement des êtres humains, doivent avoir la capacité de répondre à deux exigences fondamentales. La première, de nature générale, interroge le rapport entre l'humanité et le reste du vivant. En observant des formes et des processus apparentés, il lui faudra oeuvrer à distinguer l...
Article
Full-text available
Abstract: The notion of risk (or perception of risk) is complex because it intrinsically refers to specific ethnographic presents that make the comparative approach difficult. The perception of risk is the consequence of social rationales and dynamics from which a contextual consensus have merged. This paper investigates these processes of emergenc...
Article
Full-text available
From Uncertainty to Risk : A Heuristic Device Abstract: The notion of risk (or perception of risk) is complex because it intrinsically refers to specific ethnographic presents that make the comparative approach difficult. The perception of risk is the consequence of social rationales and dynamics from which a contextual consensus have merged. This...
Chapter
This chapter discusses the ethnography and the archaeological data that enables the authors to first characterize what they mean by “closed systems” and “open systems”, and second, to propose a model of the social organization of the first Sahul occupants by articulating the principles of adaptive strategies identified so far. In other words, it di...
Book
L’analyse de la parenté constitue un enjeu majeur de l’anthropologie sociale. Cependant, le triomphe intellectuel du structuralisme l’a transformée en une tour d’ivoire et l’hégémonie méthodologique du fonctionnalisme lui a interdit toute compétence historique.Parenté, écologie et histoire dénonce ces bornes anciennes et pourtant tenaces. Il réinve...
Book
Full-text available
Throughout the Pacific region, people are faced with dramatic changes, often described as processes of "glocalization"; individuals and groups espouse multilayered forms of identity, in which global modes of thinking and doing are embedded in renewed perceptions of local or regional specificities. Consequently, new forms of resistance and resilienc...
Book
Full-text available
Cet ouvrage étudie les enjeux et les échelles du politique dans trois pays de la Mélanésie contemporaine : Fidji, le Vanuatu et la Nouvelle-Calédonie. Les formes de médiation entre les logiques politiques locales et les institutions supra-locales qui cherchent à les englober constituent la trame générale de l’ouvrage. De l’analyse des reconfigurati...
Article
Structuralist theories of gender or sex are generally based on, or attempt to demonstrate, a relationship that is expressed in terms of the structural formula: men are to culture what women are to nature, or men are to women what culture is to nature. In continuity with the former functionalist approaches, which saw gender difference as a consequen...
Article
Kinship terminologies, a set of words of a language that reflects genealogical connections in culturally specific ways, were among the first cultural elements that held early anthropologists' attention and remained central to the discipline until the 1970s. Like language in general, terminologies are thought to be structured and to reflect peoples'...
Article
The relationship between the anthropological study of gender and that of kinship has undergone complex transformations over time. While the comparative analysis of kinship systems was at the core of the discipline, it generally neglected the sociocultural and historical dimensions of social categories as they are defined from an emic perspective. T...
Article
The Dravidian system of kinship is a relationship terminology with implications for the way in which people are classified into kinship categories. It has consequences on prescriptions or preferences for marriage partners and is based on the genealogically unlimited application of the bifurcate‐merging principle.
Article
Endogamy, sometimes also called “inbreeding” and literally meaning “marrying in” or “within,” is the sociocultural prescription or practice according to which people (must) find their marriage partner within a certain group. The notion of endogamy, unfrequently used, needs to be understood as the counterpart of the concept and practice of exogamy,...
Article
The concept of the exchange of women is a pivot of the French structuralist approach to the anthropology of kinship. A consequence of the incest prohibition, it denotes the idea that marriage, in particular through the circulation of women, is the elementary means by which social groups are bound to each other in order to constitute lasting societi...
Article
Exogamy is the prescription, custom, or practice of marrying outside a certain group. Sometimes also called “outbreeding,” it is generally understood as the positive expression of the incest prohibition. There are, however, other forms of exogamic prescription or practices not related to genealogical connections, such as local, linguistic, or socia...
Article
Sections and subsections are social category systems predominantly found in Aboriginal Australia and to some extent in other areas (Ambrym in Vanuatu, ancient China, Panoan speakers in South America). They divide society into an even number of absolute categories that stand in particular relationship to each other (father–child, mother–child, cross...
Article
Full-text available
L’ignorance peut-elle être un objet de l’anthropologie ? Elle l’est en effet lorsqu’on s’intéresse, à travers ce terme, au phénomène de l’accès inégal à des ensembles de connaissances, qui caractérise tous les groupes humains. Si, à l’inverse, l’ignorance n’est pas pensée comme un critère ou un moyen de distinction propre mais est mobi- lisée dans...
Article
Full-text available
Laurent Dousset, Sorcery in Melanesia : 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 questio...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Chapter
Full-text available
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...
Chapter
Full-text available
Ce chapitre aborde quelques considérations générales au sujet de l’interprétation de la notion de propriété foncière afin de la replacer dans son contexte sociohistorique. Il illustre ensuite la difficulté de généraliser la notion à d’autres sociétés dont les systèmes de valeurs et les cosmogonies sont différentes par un exemple australien du Déser...
Book
Full-text available
Cet ouvrage est l'un des résultats de la première conférence LBSHS, avant même que notre réseau adopte le nom d'e-toile Pacifique, en 2010. Les sciences humaines et sociales dans le Pacifique Sud : Terrains, questions et méthodes est une introduction générale à l'étude des sociétés océaniennes et un état des lieux des recherches les plus avancées d...
Article
Full-text available
Australian Aboriginal Western Desert society has in the past caused considerable problems to anthropology. Solving these has shown that boundedness, closure, and exclusion are inappropriate concepts and processes to describe this area, where openness, diversification of relationships, and inclusion are dominant. However, new problems emerge: if the...
Article
Full-text available
http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/4fr203tx
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The first AustKin project (AustKin I) collected a large database of kinship terms from Aboriginal languages all over Australia, endeavouring to maintain standards of spelling, kin formulae and group identities, without losing the details of original sources used. An online geospatial interface has been used to map distributions of forms of terms an...
Book
Full-text available
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 tran...
Chapter
Full-text available
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.
Article
Full-text available
In some remote Australian communities, in particular those that have entered only late in contact with the western world, Aboriginal people abandon and neglect housing built by the Australian administration and prefer to live in temporary camps. This paper shows that these practices allow for a reconciliation of the new and imposed residential comm...
Book
Full-text available
Since the very early years of anthropology, Australian Aboriginal kinship has fascinated researchers in the field as well as theorists. Its complexity is considerable and, as some have remarked, its mechanical and logical beauty is astonishing. This complexity has however discouraged many scholars, students and people working in Aboriginal communit...
Book
L'ouvrage fait le récit d'un premier contact hors du commun entre des colons occidentaux et les membres d'une société aborigène située dans le Désert de l'Ouest, une étendue aussi gigantesque que peu accueillante au cœur du continent austral. Contact hors du commun pour deux raisons au moins. D'abord car il eut lieu en 1956 seulement, il y a donc à...
Chapter
This article provides an overview on a few central concepts and processes that are required in the investigation of human kinship. The most classic and better-defined examples for the kinds of groups or categories that constitute a social organization are clans and lineages. A society, tribe, or ethnic group may be divided into a number of groups t...
Article
La reconnaissance des Aborigènes d'Australie: problèmes juridiques, problèmes culturels
Article
This paper attempts to participate in the reconciliation between ‘modern’ and cultural studies styles of approaches to kinship, and the more formal and structural analyses of the ‘classical’ type. It is argued that it is the methodological combination of these approaches that produces intelligible descriptions of social structure and process in rel...

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