The notion of ‘sociality’ is now widely used within the social sciences and humanities. However, what is meant by the term varies radically, and the contributors to this edited collection identify the strengths and weaknesses of current definitions and their deployment in the social sciences. By developing their own rigorous and innovative theory of human sociality, they re-set the framework of the debate and open up new possibilities for conceptualizing other forms of sociality, such as that of animals or materials.
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Writing
Nicholas J. Long and Henrietta L. Moore (eds) (2012) Sociality: New Directions. New York: Berghahn.
Art, Culture and Fantasy
What makes art valuable? Why in times of crisis do people buy contemporary art? This paper published in the Cardozo Law Review Vol 33 (6) discusses whether or not investment in art can ever be seen as rational, and explores how the contemporary art market is expanding to include not just works of art, but art as a form of cultural practice.
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What’s in an event?
Thinking about art events allows us to pose old questions in new ways: “what does art do for us”; “what do we expect from art”; “what do we hope for when we go to an art event”?
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LSE Review of Books: The books that inspired Henrietta Moore
In this new post for the LSE Review of Books, Henrietta Moore discusses the books that inspired her and awoke her interest in anthropology. It all started with stories, in particular Greek and Roman myths: “important for the not-yet-anthropologist was the idealisation of kinship, the hopeless question of family inheritance, the ties of loyalty and their relation to fealty. Can you know your true self and how much of the answer to that question is about origins?
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Understanding Global Sexualities (eds.) Peter Aggleton, Paul Boyce, Henrietta L. Moore, Richard Parker
Over the course of the past thirty years, there has been an explosion of work on sexuality, both conceptually and methodologically. From a relatively limited, specialist field, the study of sexuality has expanded across a wide range of social sciences. Yet as the field has grown, it has become apparent that a number of leading edge critical issues remain.
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Moore, Henrietta L. (2012) ‘Avatars and Robots: The Imaginary Present and the Socialities of the Inorganic’ Cambridge Anthropology, 30(1): 48-63.
In this paper I propose a new way of understanding how and why humans are social beings. Humans only become social within specific environments which always include non-human and in-human agents as well. I suggest that what marks human out is the virtual character of their selves and social relations. I end by discussing how robotics and virtual worlds both enhance and augment our exploration of specifically human forms of sociality.
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LSE Review of Books: Oedipus on Tour
Margherita Margiotti reviews Henrietta L. Moore’s The Subject of Anthropology: Gender, Symbolism and Psychoanalysis for the LSE Review of Books.
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Thinking about politics and the internet: time to update our perspective
In this piece for openDemocracy.net Henrietta L. Moore and Sabine Selchow introduce their reconceptualisation of the Internet as a set of interactions in process, turning away from mainstream understandings of it as a ‘tool’ and / or ‘space’ that enables political action. This reconceptualisation means that questions about what is happening ‘on’ the Internet, and how the internet is used, by whom, and with what impact on the ‘actual’ world no longer have sufficient analytical purchase.
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Moore, Henrietta L. and Sabine Selchow (2012). ‘Global Civil Society and the Internet 2012: Time to Update Our Perspective’ in: Kaldor, Mary, Henrietta L. Moore and Sabine Selchow (eds). Global Civil Society 2012: Ten Years of Crictial Reflection. Palgrave
This paper suggests an alternative understanding of the Internet and its role in contemporary politics. Rather than taking it as a tool or a space for politics, the paper concpetualises the Internet as a set of interactions in process that constitute the political, and indeed the social and the economic. As such it is not a tool or a space to enable life, but life itself.
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Kaldor, Mary, Henrietta L. Moore and Sabine Selchow (eds) (2012) Global Civil Society 2012: Ten Years of Critical Reflection. Palgrave Macmillan
In this anniversary edition of ‘Global Civil Society’, activists and academics look back on ten years of ‘politics from below’, and ask whether it is merely the critical gaze upon the concept that has changed – or whether there is something genuinely new in kind about the way in which civil society is now operating.
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Moore, Henrietta L. (2011) ‘Intangibles: Culture, Heritage and Identity’ in: Anheier, Helmut and Yudhishthir Raj Isar (eds). Heritage, Memory & Identity. London: Sage.
A rapid perusal of the usual sources provides definitions of ‘intangible’ as ‘incapable of being perceived by the sense of touch’;'incorporeal or immaterial’;'vague, elusive, fleeting’; ‘not definite to the mind’. Perhaps more arresting is the idea that intangibility applies to assets in the good will of a business. Amusingly, if you search for the term ‘intangible’ on Dictionnary.com, it offers you the option to ‘see images of intangible’. A quick click on that link gives you images relating to intangible cultural heritage in Estonia, Fiji and Vietnam, among other places. A series of further clicks on randomly chosen images from among the same set inevitably results in the response ‘website could not be found’! The intangible appears and disappears, but what remains is a series of questions worth exploring about the links between intangibility, culture, and assets.
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Moore, H. L. (2011). Still Life: Hopes, Desires and Satisfactions. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Ranging from African initiation rituals to Japanese anime, and from sex in virtual worlds to Schubert songs, Henrietta Moore focuses on how best we might approach the relationship between critical thought and politics, as well as the dynamics of intimacy and meaning in contemporary cultural and social life.
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Moore, Henrietta L. (2010). ‘It’s Not All Hardwired’ Prospect, 24 February, Issue 168.
We often imagine the brain as a sort of high-powered, superbly engineered evolutionary computer. But it is actually a wonderfully baroque structure, made up of incompletely integrated units. Read Henrietta L. Moore’s Prospect-article on neuroscience’s bold claims about human culture.
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Moore, H. L. (2009). ‘Epistemology and Ethics: Perspectives from Africa’ Social Analysis, 53(2): 207-218
This article discusses the recent conversion to radical Protestant beliefs in a community in northern Kenya that has resulted in new forms of knowledge and agency. The moral continuities and discontinuities between researcher and researched cannot in this situation be glossed by making the informants rational in context or by asserting the existence of culturally distinct worldviews.
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Moore, Henrietta L. and David Held (eds) (2008) Cultural Politics in a Global Age: Uncertainty, Solidarity, and Innovation. Oxford: One World.
This dazzling compendium of some of the world’s most prominent and diverse thinkers examines the question, ‘What is the future of culture in the age of globalization?’ These essays in this volume represent a major theoretical and methodological challenge to the social sciences, and question the nature of globalization and the culture of change
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Moore, H. L. (2007). The Subject of Anthropology: Gender, Symbolism and Psychoanalysis. Cambridge: Polity Press.
‘The Subject of Anthropology’ draws on anthropology, feminism and psychoanalysis to develop an original and provocative theory of gender and of how we become sexed beings. Arguing that the Oedipus complex is no longer the fulcrum of debate between anthropology and psychoanalysis, Moore demonstrates how recent theorizing on subjectivity, agency and culture has opened up new possibilities for rethinking the relationship between gender, sexuality and symbolism.
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Moore, Henrietta L. (2007) ‘The Failure of Pluralism’ in (eds) Y. Hernlund and B. Shell-Duncan Transcultural Bodies: Female Genital Cutting in Global Context. Rutgers University Press.
Bringing together thirteen essays, Transcultural Bodies provides an ethnographically rich exploration of FGC among African diasporas in the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia.
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Moore, Henrietta L. (2006) ‘The Future of Gender or the End of a Brilliant Career’ in Feminist Anthropology in (eds) P. Geller and M. Stockett. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Contributors in this edited volume examine what it means to practice feminist anthropology today, at a time when the field is perceived as fragmented and contentious.
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Moore, H. L. and T. Sanders (eds) (2005) Anthropology in Theory: Issues in Epistemology. Blackwell Publishing.
The book provides the most comprehensive selection of readings and insightful overview of anthropological theory available. It identifies crucial conceptual signposts and new theoretical directions for the discipline and discusses broader debates in the social sciences.
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Moore, Henrietta L. (2005) ‘Whatever happened to women and men? Gender and other crises in Anthropology’ in: Trabalhos de Antropologia e Etnologia, Vol. 45(1-2).
The 1970s were great years: Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, flared trousers, low-fat margarine, Charlie’s Angels and a wine that went by the name of Bull’s Blood.
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Moore, Henrietta L. (2004) ‘Global anxieties: concept-metaphors and pre-theoretical commitments in anthropology’. Anthropological Theory, Vol. 4(1): 71-88.
This article interrogates the problem of the global and the local in anthropology, and asks how their interconnections might be theorized. When anthropologists call for an examination of the global in concrete terms, they often fail to appreciate the place of ‘concept-metaphors’ whose purpose is to maintain ambiguity and a productive tension between universal claims and specific historical contexts.
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Moore, Henrietta L. (2004) ‘On Being Young’. Anthropological Quarterly, 77(4):735-746
“I want to suggest that there are three key areas of theoretical difficulty: how to theorise children’s agency, how to theorise their rights, and how to theorise the nature of the ‘child’ itself. These are not new theoretical questions. They are all interconnected, and they link to and underpin such diverse domains of enquiry as children and social policy, war trauma and child soldiers, cognitive development, language use, sexuality and labour.”
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Moore, Henrietta L. (2004) ‘The benefits of doubt’ in: Touching the State: What does it mean to be a citizen in the 21st Century? London: Design Council
Deep down we suspect that the State doesn’t really trust us, but nevertheless many individuals still think it’s important to do their ‘bit’ both nationally and internationally …
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Moore, Henrietta L. (2002) ‘The Business of Funding: Science, Social Science and Wealth in the United Kingdom’, Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 75(3): 527-536.
Two events loomed large in the imagination of those employed by universities in England this year: the publication of the Research Assessment Exercise results and the agreement on a new review system for quality assurance in Higher Education. [...]
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Moore, Henrietta L. and Ed Mayo (2001) The Mutual State and How to Build It. London: New Economics Foundation.
The debate between public and private ownership is going nowhere fast. But there is real energy and innovation in what we call social ownership, non-profit co-operative and voluntary sector models for running public services.
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Moore, Henrietta L. and D. T. Sanders (eds) (2001) Magical Interpretations, Material Realities: Modernity, Witchcraft and the Occult in Post Colonial Africa. London: Routledge
This volume sets out recent thinking on witchcraft in Africa, paying particular attention to variations in meanings and practices.
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Moore, Henrietta L. (2001) ‘Was ist eigentlich mit Frauen und Männern passiert? Gender und andere Krisen in der Anthropologie’ In (eds) D. Davis-Sulikowski and H. Gingrich Koerper, Religion und Macht Frankfurt: Campus Verlag
The 1970s were great years: Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, flared trousers, low-fat margarine, Charlie’s Angels and a wine that went by the name of Bull’s Blood.
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Moore, Henrietta L. (2000) ‘Ethics and ontology: why agents and agency matter’ In (eds) M-A. Dobres and J. Robb Agency and Archaeology. London: Routledge
Agency in Archaeology is the first critical volume to scrutinize the concept of human agency and to examine in depth its potential to inform our understanding of the past.
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Moore, Henrietta L, T. Sanders and B. Kaare (eds) (1999) Those who Play with Fire: Gender and Fertility in Africa. London: Athlone
This edited volume explores the ways in which gender categories permeate African systems of thought and ritual practices
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Moore, Henrietta L. (ed) (1999) Anthropological Theory Today. Cambridge: Polity
“There is much to consider in Moore’s substantial Introduction as she presents her view of fundamental questions regarding anthropology and theory and as she introduces the nine papers at some depth.” — Journal of Anthropological Research
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Moore, Henrietta L. (1996). Space, Text, and Gender. 2nd ed., Guilford Press.
This study focuses on the relationship between the organization of household space and gender relations, showing how that relation shifts due to changing social and economic conditions.
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Moore, Henrietta L. (1994) A Passion for Difference: Essays in Anthropology and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.
In A Passion for Difference Henrietta L. Moore examines the nature and limitations of the theoretical languages used by anthropologists and others to write about sex, gender and sexuality.
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Moore, Henrietta L. and and M.A. Vaughan (1994) Cutting Down Trees: Gender, Nutrition and Change in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1890-1990. New York: Heinemann.
Winner of the 1995 Herskovits Prize for the best book published on Africa, African Studies Association, USA
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Moore, Henrietta L. (1988) Feminism and Anthropology. Cambridge
This is the first book which examines the nature and significance of a feminist critique in anthropology. It offers a clear introduction to, and balanced assessment of, the theoretical and practical issues raised by the development of a feminist anthropology.
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