Faglige interesser
Papua Ny-Guinea, Global økonomi, Gaverelasjoner, Sosiale strukturer
Undervisning
Bakgrunn
Keir Martin er førsteamanuensis i sosialantropologi ved Universitetet i Oslo og er forfatter av en rekke faglige publikasjoner rettet mot forholdet mellom Papua New Guinea og den globale verdensøkonomien. Han arbeidet tidligere som foreleser i sosialantropologi ved Universitetet i Manchester. Han har mottatt Sutasomaprisen som deles ut i regi av Royal Antropologisk Institutt for fremragende bidrag til sosialantropologien.
Priser
Sutasomaprisen som deles ut i regi av The Royal Antropologisk Institute.
Emneord:
Papua New Guinea,
Global økonomi,
Sosial lagdeling,
Hierarkiske samfunnsstrukturer,
Klasse,
Gaveteori
Publikasjoner
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2025).
The individual and society in psychotherapy: Reflections from Anthropology.
European Journal of Psychotherapy & Councelling.
ISSN 1364-2537.
27(1-2),
s. 171–186.
doi:
10.1080/13642537.2025.2459375.
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Psychotherapy is often criticised for a Eurocentric focus on the individual person at the expense of an understanding of how problems might be caused by the wider society. ‘Society’ is however only one way in which the relational bonds within which we exist as humans might be conceptualised, and it is a conceptualisation that often has the paradoxical effect of strengthening the hold of the ‘individual’ as a category of analysis. In this paper, I argue that, far from simply being a site for the promotion of Western ‘bounded individualism, psychotherapy has often provided one of the most innovative and revolutionary grounds for questioning the origin and nature of the individual person. As psychotherapy becomes an increasingly global phenomenon, simply characterising it as ‘Western’ on the basis of its origins in Vienna, London or Chicago will become an increasingly difficult position to sustain.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2024).
Culture and class in contemporary Chinese psychotherapy.
Anthropology Today.
ISSN 0268-540X.
40(3),
s. 7–9.
doi:
10.1111/1467-8322.12891.
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Working with US-based psychoanalysts who instruct Chinese psychoanalytic trainees, some reject any discussion of ‘culture’ as a means by which patients avoid difficult material, whilst others draw a sharp contrast between ‘the Chinese mind’ and ‘the Western mind’. My discussion with Chinese psychoanalytic trainees suggests that although they often use a ‘China/West’ dichotomy to understand clinical work, they are more likely than their predominantly Euro-American analytic trainers to look at this distinction in fluid terms affected by other differences. They often draw attention to the ‘type’ of person who is the typical client of psychoanalytic therapy in contemporary China: young, urban, cosmopolitan and financially solvent. This article investigates how Chinese psychoanalytic trainees’ perceptions of relevant differences in their practice vary depending on the conversational context, challenging both the universalist claims of traditional psychoanalytic theory and the recent emphasis on cultural differences in the field.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2023).
Dreams and reality in the tubuan and the corporation.
Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology.
ISSN 0920-1297.
2023(97),
s. 103–116.
doi:
10.3167/fcl.2023.970109.
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Abstract Beginning with a dream encounter with the tubuan , an ancestral spirit in Papua New Guinea, this article questions conventional anthropological framings that posit a sharp distinction between Western humanist ontologies and non-Western or indigenous ontologies. The article argues that non-human entities essential for human existence come in and out of being across stereotypical cultural divides and that the creation and acknowledgment of non-human agents is as essential for capitalist modernity as it is for any other form of human existence. Non-human “Objects” as diverse as tubuans and corporations are essential for the construction of human subjectivity as much as they are its outcome. The perspectival construction of such different kinds of object is a process by which humans continuously refashion themselves into different kinds of Subjects.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2022).
Labour, Property and Persons: Reflections from Papua New Guinea.
I Kasmir, Sharryn & Gill, Lesley (Red.),
The Routledge Handbook of the Anthropology of Labor.
Routledge.
ISSN 9781003158448.
doi:
10.4324/9781003158448-4.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil; Wig, Ståle & Yanagisako, Sylvia
(2021).
Battlegrounds of dependence. Reconfiguring labor, kinship and relational obligation.
Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology.
ISSN 0920-1297.
2021(90),
s. 1–10.
doi:
10.3167/fcl.2021.900101.
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Interdependence is a fundamental characteristic of human existence. The way in which certain dependencies are acknowledged as opposed to those that are hidden, or the ways in which some are validated while others are denigrated, is central to how social inequalities are reproduced and recreated. In this introduction we explore how particular dependencies are categorized, separated, and made visible or invisible as part of their performative effect. In particular, we explore the distinction between wage labor and kinship as two forms of relatedness that are often separated in terms of the (in)dependence that they are seen to embody. Even though they are practically entangled, their conceptual separation remains important. These conceptual separations are central to how gender difference is imagined and constituted globally.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2021).
Wars of Dependence: Contested Histories Among Tolai People of Papua New Guinea.
Oceania.
ISSN 0029-8077.
doi:
10.1002/ocea.5307.
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In this article, I look at the ways in which a number of forms of providing for a livelihood have increased in importance in the region in this period and explore the ways in which they have created the possibility for new ascriptions of dependence and independence. I explore these issue with particular reference to Tolai people of Papua New Guinea's East New Britain province, where the wealth of ethnographic and archival material going back many decades provides the possibility for a particularly rich and deep historical perspective. Wage labour has increased in importance for many communities in the past few decades. Similarly, resource extraction and cash-cropping have also expanded in scale and importance in many parts of the region in recent decades. I argue that shifting evaluations of dependence come in and out of vision in relationship to these trends and these shifting evaluations are themselves central components of the construction of new hierarchies and relations of dependence.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2021).
Introduction: Dependence in Oceania.
Oceania.
ISSN 0029-8077.
doi:
10.1002/ocea.5313.
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It is nearly half a century from the wave of decolonisation and national independence that swept across the Pacific in the 1970s and early 1980s. Yet despite this, as across the rest of the world, issues of what can be considered appropriate dependence and independence are far from settled. From the achievement of political independence across much of Oceania onwards, debate raged as to whether or not ‘real’ independence had come with it. And alongside this ran a related controversy as to whether or not Oceanic societies had a greater tendency to valorise interpersonal interdependence than their former Western colonisers, and if this essential cultural difference really did exist, whether it was to be valorised and protected or to be denigrated and overcome. In the Introduction to this special issue, I argue, along with many of the papers in this collection, that although these two discussions are often treated separately, they are interlinked and that arguments over the appropriateness of (in)dependence in public debate and in academic discussion need to be seen in the context of global controversies on this subject.
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Leaver, Adam & Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2021).
Dams and Flows: Boundary Formation and Dislocation in the Financialised Firm.
Review of Evolutionary Political Economy (REPE).
ISSN 2662-6136.
doi:
10.1007/s43253-021-00057-0.
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Abstract Mainstream economic theories of the firm argue that the boundary between firm and market is determined by efficiency-enhancing logics which optimise coordination or bargaining outcomes. Drawing on social anthropological work, this paper critiques these accounts, arguing instead that firms are socially embedded and that firm boundary formation should therefore be understood as an attempt to fix the limits of certain relational rights and obligations that are moral in their conception. Consequently, boundaries are often contested and subject to renegotiation. We employ the parsimonious concepts of ‘dams and flows’ to examine how attempts to curtail the claims of some stakeholders and extend the claims of others at any one historical moment produce boundaries of different kinds. To illustrate this, we first trace the moral arguments used to advance limited liability rights to shareholders during the Companies Act in the mid-nineteenth century, which cut or ‘dammed’ obligations at a particular point and moment, directing new flows of obligation and wealth. We then explore the different moral reasoning of agency theory—the foundation of the financialised firm—which foregrounds the property rights of shareholder principles and obligations of managerial agents to them. We argue that this moral reasoning led to new dams and flows that have changed corporate governance and accounting practice, producing—counterintuitively—a reinvigorated form of managerialism, leaving the firm financially and morally unstable; its boundaries increasingly unable to contain its relational tensions.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2020).
Do you Want us to Feed you like a Baby? Ascriptions of Dependence in East New Britain.
Social Anthropology.
ISSN 0964-0282.
28(3).
doi:
10.1111/1469-8676.12916.
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This paper explores some accusations of wrongdoing in Papua New Guinea in the early 2000s. These accusations illustrate an ambiguous encouragement and discouragement of different kinds of perceived dependence as Papua New Guineans struggled with a growing disenchantment with their nation‐state and the withdrawal rather than expansion of state services and assistance. The paper explores the dynamics by which these accusations brought particular dependencies, cast as legitimate and illegitimate, in and out of view, and compares these with other instances in other parts of the world. Ascriptions of ‘dependence’ are shown not only to shift with context but also to be highly performative, being a central means by which persons engaged in highly entangled interdependent relations attempt to re‐shape the nature of those entanglements.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2020).
Stretching Bonds and Strengthening Ethics in Avoiding Giving.
Current Anthropology.
ISSN 0011-3204.
61(2),
s. 232–233.
doi:
10.1086/708068.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2019).
Transcultural Histories of Psychotherapy.
I Shamdasani, S & Loewenthal, D (Red.),
Exploring Transcultural Histories of Psychotherapy.
Routledge.
ISSN 9780367246860.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2019).
Therapy and the Rise of the Mulitcultural.
I Martin, Keir James Cecil (Red.),
Psychotherapy, Anthropology and the Work of Culture.
Routledge.
ISSN 9780367182458.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2019).
Introduction.
I Martin, Keir James Cecil (Red.),
Psychotherapy, Anthropology and the Work of Culture.
Routledge.
ISSN 9780367182458.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2019).
Hierarchy and Stratification in East New Britain.
Anthropological Forum: a journal of social anthropology and comparative sociology.
ISSN 0066-4677.
29(3),
s. 302–318.
doi:
10.1080/00664677.2019.1624500.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2019).
Tolai tabu as wealth and money:A shifting and unstable distinction.
I Rakopoulos, Theodoros & Rio, Knut (Red.),
Towards an Anthropology of Wealth: Imagination, Substance, Value.
Routledge.
ISSN 9780367180072.
s. 118–132.
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Aiming to redefine the concept of wealth, which has too often been reduced to merely ‘accumulated assets’, this book views wealth primarily as a question of reproduction, relational flows and life vitality. The authors therefore outline wealth as a triangular phenomenon between capital, the commons and power. Viewing wealth as firstly a product of relational capacities, the book explores the processes wherein it is constantly being pulled at from forces that demand appropriation, be that finance, community or state. The chapters tackle perceptions (and practices) of wealth in the commons, in mythical narrative, immaterial substance, aristocratic orders, antimafia, money real and imagined, and conspiracy theory, with contributions from Melanesia, Italy, Greece, India and Mongolia. The comparative perspective lies at the heart of the book, bringing together instances of commonwealth and the commons, as well as hierarchical, relational and substantial understandings of wealth. As the first collection in recent decades to address the anthropology of wealth openly in a comparative perspective, this book will spark discussions of the concept in anthropology, not least at the back of a renewed debate over it due to Piketty’s legacy. This book was originally published as a special issue of History & Anthropology.
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Remme, Jon Henrik Ziegler & Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2019).
The Ambiguities of Rituals: Introduction.
Ethnos.
ISSN 0014-1844.
s. 1–14.
doi:
10.1080/00141844.2019.1699142.
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That rituals are ambiguous phenomena has been long established in anthropology. However, while this ambiguity is often assumed to be resolved in one way or another through the course of a ritual and taken as contributing to the efficacy of rituals, we propose in this introduction that much can be gained by studying ritual ambiguity apart from its relevance for efficacy. We argue that while rituals often depend on and help create a sense of ambiguity, this ambiguity is far from always resolved. Rituals can instead highlight and intensify ambiguity, making it an enduring feature. While rituals often are seen as potential problem solvers, by participants and many anthropologists alike, we argue that much can be gained by looking at rituals as highly problematic phenomena.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2019).
Tabu and Bitcoin: Fluctuating (Im)materiality in Two Nonstate Media of Exchange.
I Harvey, Penny; Krohn-Hansen, Christian & Nustad, Knut Gunnar (Red.),
Anthropos and the Material.
Duke University Press.
ISSN 9781478002864.
s. 103–121.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2018).
Wage-labour and a double separation in Papua New Guinea and beyond.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
ISSN 1359-0987.
24(S1),
s. 89–101.
doi:
10.1111/1467-9655.12801.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2018).
Tolai tabu as wealth and money: A shifting and unstable distinction.
History and Anthropology.
ISSN 0275-7206.
29(3),
s. 392–406.
doi:
10.1080/02757206.2018.1458722.
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Distinctions between ‘wealth’ and ‘money’ such as the competing classifications of ‘bridewealth’ and ‘brideprice’ have a long pedigree in anthropology. Equally important has been the terminological struggle between ‘shell-money’ and ‘shellwealth’. In this paper, I explore the ways in which a well-known example, Tolai tabu, circulates in the twenty-first century. I argue that whilst describing it as a form of wealth (in contrast to market-based idioms such as ‘money’ or ‘price’) continues to make sense, this distinction only comes into being from certain perspectives. In an era of rapidly emerging socio-economic inequality, the best starting point is not an assumed holistic opposition between Western commodity idioms and their non-Western Other. Ethnographic observation reveals how perspectives on tabu that stress its difference and similarity from money come in and out of being in different conversational contexts as an attempt to shape the limits of future relations and obligations.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil & Krause-Jensen, Jakob
(2018).
Trickster’s Triumph: Donald Trump and the New Spirit of Capitalism.
I Moeran, Brian & Malefyt, Timothy de Waal (Red.),
Magical Capitalism: Enchantment, Spells, and Occult Practices in Contemporary Economies.
Palgrave Macmillan.
ISSN 9783319743974.
s. 89–113.
doi:
10.1007/978-3-319-74397-4_4.
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This volume of essays examines the ways in which magical practices are found in different aspects of contemporary capitalist societies. From contract law to science, by way of finance, business, marketing, advertising, cultural production, and the political economy in general, each chapter argues that the kind of magic studied by anthropologists in less developed societies – shamanism, sorcery, enchantment, the occult – is not only alive and well, but flourishing in the midst of so-called ‘modernity’. Modern day magicians range from fashion designers and architects to Donald Trump and George Soros. Magical rites take place in the form of political summits, the transformation of products into brands through advertising campaigns, and the biannual fashion collections shown in New York, London, Milan and Paris. Magical language, in the form of magical spells, is used by everyone, from media to marketers and all others devoted to the art of ‘spin’.
While magic may appear to be opposed to systems of rational economic thought, Moeran and Malefyt highlight the ways it may in fact be an accomplice to it.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2016).
Statistics, Sneers and Fears.
Social Anthropology.
ISSN 0964-0282.
24(4),
s. 494–495.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2016).
'We're Far Too Far Down This Road Now to Worry about Morals':The Destabilising of Football Fans'Identities in an Overheated World.
I Schober, Elisabeth & Eriksen, Thomas Hylland (Red.),
Identity Destabilised. Living in an overheated world..
Pluto Press.
ISSN 9780745399126.
s. 205–222.
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Leaver, Adam & Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2016).
Creating and dissolving social groups from New Guinea to New York: on the overheating of bounded corporate entities in contemporary global capitalism.
History and Anthropology.
ISSN 0275-7206.
27(5),
s. 585–601.
doi:
10.1080/02757206.2016.1222523.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2015).
Exchange and Corporate Forms Today.
I Kjaerulff, Jens (Red.),
Flexible Capitalism; Exchange and Ambiguity at Work.
Berghahn Books.
ISSN 9781782386155.
s. 261–276.
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Approaching “work” as at heart a practice of exchange, this volume explores sociality in work environments marked by the kind of structural changes that have come to define contemporary “flexible” capitalism. It introduces anthropological exchange theory to a wider readership, and shows how the perspective offers new ways to enquire about the flexible capitalism’s social dimensions. The essays contribute to a trans-disciplinary scholarship on contemporary economic practice and change by documenting how, across diverse settings, “gift-like” socialities proliferate, and even sustain the intensified flexible commoditization that more commonly is touted as tearing social relations apart. By interrogating a keenly debated contemporary work regime through an approach to sociality rooted in a rich and distinct anthropological legacy, the volume also makes a novel contribution to the anthropological literature on work and on exchange.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil & Flynn, Alex
(2015).
Anthropological theory and engagement: A zero-sum game?
Anthropology Today.
ISSN 0268-540X.
31(1),
s. 12–14.
doi:
10.1111/1467-8322.12153.
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Engagement with pressing social and political issues is often presented as a threat to the elaboration of sophisticated anthropological theory that needs to be protected from such concerns in order to flourish. However the history of anthropological theory demonstrates that some of the discipline's most important contributions have tended to arise as a result of its proponents' desire to engage in such debates. Although we cannot reproduce the cultural models of a previous generation of anthropologists, the future elaboration of ground-breaking anthropological theory depends upon a rediscovery of such engaged work that does not posit engagement versus theoretical development as a zero-sum game.
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Eriksen, Thomas Hylland; Laidlaw, James; Mair, Jonathan; Martin, Keir James Cecil & Venkatesan, Soumhya
(2015).
Debate: 'The concept of neoliberalism has become an obstacle to the anthropological understanding of the twenty-first century'.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
ISSN 1359-0987.
21(4),
s. 911–923.
doi:
10.1111/1467-9655.12294.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2014).
Afterword: Knot-work not networks, or anti-anti-antifetishism and the ANTipolitics machine.
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory.
4(3),
s. 99–115.
doi:
10.14318/hau4.3.009.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2014).
Knot-work not networks, or anti-anti-antifetishism and the ANTipolitics machine.
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory.
4(3),
s. 99–115.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2014).
Sovereignty and freedom in West Papua and beyond.
Oceania.
ISSN 0029-8077.
84(3),
s. 342–348.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2013).
The Death Of The Big Men And The Rise Of The Big Shots: Custom and Conflict in East New Britain.
Berghahn Books.
ISBN 9780857458728.
274 s.
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Review:
"A brilliant book - one of the best ethnographies to come out of PNG for decades, a classic exemplar of how a modern ethnography should be researched and written up. It breaks new ground." * Chris Gregory, Australian National University "[This book] is well written and readable [and] provides both a dense and nuanced ethnography that reveals important insights into - the radical cultural changes that follow from demographic change, land-conflicts and economic scarcity. The book manages to explore that development by continually engaging the writings of earlier anthropologists in the area, supported by rich empirical detail." * Knut Rio, University of Bergen
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2024).
Culture and Class in contemporary Chinese psychotherapy.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil; Khitrov, Arsenii; Rekhis, Mayssa & Gronseth, Anne-Sigfrid
(2024).
Undoing and redoing the Social in Psychotherapy.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2024).
Decolonisation beyond Independence: Reflections from the Papua New Guinea Experience — An Afterword.
Oceania.
ISSN 0029-8077.
doi:
10.1002/ocea.5409.
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Discussions of colonialism and decolonialism often take as a starting point an assumption that these processes can be defined in particular ways and consequently morally evaluated. Whilst defining terms can act as a theoretical or political simplification that is indispensable for certain kinds of discussion, it is important to remember that to evoke ‘colonialism’ is to make a claim about and on social relations and obligations. The papers in this collection draw our attention to the ways in which ‘colonialism’ was never a simply defined bilateral relationship between an easily defined coloniser and an equally easily defined colonised. The experience of PNG around the time of political independence instead draws our attention to the multiplicity of ways in which particular relations were described as or denied as being ‘colonial’. This historical re-examination acts as a useful nuance to contemporary discussions of decolonisation that potentially paradoxically reinscribe old colonial binaries.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2024).
The formation of culture in contemporary Chinese psychotherapy.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2023).
Culture and Class in Contemporary Chinese Psychotherapy.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2022).
'Keeping inner and outer reality separate yet interconnected' in contemporary China: psychotherapy clients' and trainees experiences of self-boundary making.
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Rakopoulos, Theodoros & Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2021).
Marshall Sahlins (1930-2021).
Jacobin.
ISSN 2158-2602.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2019).
Big Men, ceremonial exchange and lifecycle events.
I Hirsch, Eric & Rollason, Will (Red.),
The Melanesian World.
Routledge.
ISSN 9781138693715.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2014).
Stand-up for anthropology: Comedy and performing knowledge on stage.
Suomen Antropologi.
ISSN 0355-3930.
39(4),
s. 44–47.
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Martin, Keir James Cecil
(2014).
Review of Paik, Peter P. and Merry Wiesner-Hanks (eds.). 2013. Debt. Ethics, the Environ-ment, and the Economy. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 242.
Anthropological Notebooks.
ISSN 1408-032X.
20(2),
s. 161–162.
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Publisert
11. nov. 2014 09:37
- Sist endret
12. mars 2026 14:05