Discussions Around a Sand‐drawing: Creations of Agency and Society in Melanesia

Rio, Knut

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9655.2005.00243.x

Cited by 32 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Sand drawing embodies the very definition of diffusion itself as it was imagined in Cambridge in the 1920s: its transient nature necessitating the transferal of cultural knowledge between minds, mediated only by the temporary manifestation of images. I have argued elsewhere (Geismar : chapter 1) that sand drawing may also be seen as an indigenous theorization of connectivity and cultural entanglement, and it was certainly the recognition of the systematic yet transient nature of this cultural practice that inspired Deacon, and others, to link these images to other models of cultural transmission, such as kinship (see Rio ; Taylor ). Deacon photographed, sketched, and carefully drew the drawings, and he asked local people to draw them in chalk on blackboards that he then photographed (see Geismar :537–548).…”

Section: Sand Drawing Sketchesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drawing It Out

Geismar¹

2014

Visual Anthropology Review

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The fieldwork sketches of Arthur Bernard Deacon, made in Vanuatu in 1926-27, give us insight into the early methodologies of social anthropology and into the role of images in anthropological ways of thinking. Here I develop a perspective on field sketches that explores them not only as visual mediations of the fieldworker's subjectivity, but also as genre pieces that indicate very particular forms of training in "how to see." I draw out the visual conventions, ways of thinking and seeing, that underscore the different strategies that Deacon used in his drawing. [A. B. Deacon, drawing, Malakula, Vanuatu, visual culture] bs_bs_banner

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Section: Sand Drawing Sketchesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drawing It Out

Geismar¹

2014

Visual Anthropology Review

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“…The development of these cognitive tools would plausibly have been enhanced further as diagonal crosshatching designs were modified to loop back into the pattern, creating an integrated whole through interlacing lines. Anthropologists researching ritual knots and symmetrical sand-drawings in Vanuatu, for instance, suggest strong relationships between these designs and various cultural patterns, ranging from the sociohistorical to the sociopolitical [11,12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing Symmetrical Knot Tracing for Cognitive Priming Effects Rules out Analytic Analogy

et al. 2020

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Ritual knots are symmetrical crisscrossing designs that appear in distant cultures around the world. Their independent emergence is plausibly due to shared features of human cognition and experience that such patterns represent. Since empirical investigation of this possibility is lacking in the literature, our aim is to open up this research area. We do so by asking whether the cultural production and appreciation of ritual knots could be conditioned or motivated by alignments and affordances linked to creative human cognition—advanced analogical modeling processes that are themselves often discussed in terms of bidirectional blending and symmetrical mapping. If manual tracing of a traditional knot design had positive priming effects on such reasoning processes, as we hypothesize, this would suggest an explanatory link between the two. To begin testing this hypothesis, we selected a basic, traditional knot design from Tibet, along with three established measures of formal analogical reasoning and one original measure of syntactic preference involving reciprocal constructions. We then undertook a series of cognitive trials testing for potential cognitive benefits of manually tracing the design. We contrasted prime condition results with a control group and an anti-prime condition group. The data show observable effects of time across multiple measures but no significant effects of time or condition, controlling for reported mindfulness. While this rules out the short-term priming effects of enhanced analogical reasoning at the analytic level following brief manual tracing of this design, the research opens the way for further empirical experimentation on the nature and emergence of symmetrical knots and their potential relationships with patterns of human thought.

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“…Second, agency remains an important analytical term in anthropological research beyond Melanesia, notably in economic anthropology (see Maurer, Nelms, and Rea 2013). By retaining and developing the term further for research on human-animal relations, the possibility for cross-fertilization between this research and equally timely debates will be enhanced (see also Rio 2005).…”

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confidence: 99%

Pigs, Fish, and Birds: Toward Multispecies Ethnography in Melanesia

Schneider¹

2013

Environment and Society

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Th is article reviews two strengths of Melanesian anthropology that could make a signifi cant contribution to anthropological research on human-animal relations, specifi cally to multispecies ethnography. Th e fi rst strength is an analytical approach to comparative research on gender developed in response to challenges from feminist theory in the 1980s; the second is a wealth of ethnographic detail on human-animal relations, much of it contained in texts not explicitly concerned with them and thus largely inaccessible to nonspecialist readers. Th e article sets up an analogy between the challenges faced by feminist anthropologists and those currently faced by multispecies ethnographers. It demonstrates how pursuing the analogy allows multispecies ethnographers to draw together analytically, and to reinvestigate a broad range of ethnographic resources containing details on human-animal relations, whose convergence so far remains hidden by divergent theoretical interests.

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Discussions Around a Sand‐drawing: Creations of Agency and Society in Melanesia

Cited by 32 publications

References 29 publications

Drawing It Out

Drawing It Out

Testing Symmetrical Knot Tracing for Cognitive Priming Effects Rules out Analytic Analogy

Pigs, Fish, and Birds: Toward Multispecies Ethnography in Melanesia

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