Marilyn Strathern
British anthropologist who analyzed kinship, gender, and property in Melanesia and Euro-American contexts.
Most quoted
"Anthropology is not just about understanding others; it is also about understanding ourselves through others."
— from Partial Connections, 1992
"The world is not simply 'out there' to be discovered; it is constantly being made and remade."
— from Partial Connections, 1991
"The anthropologist's task is not to explain away difference, but to render it intelligible."
— from Property, Substance and Effect: Anthropological Essays on Persons and Things, 1999
All quotes by Marilyn Strathern (107)
The world is not made up of discrete entities, but of relations.
The 'other' is not a blank slate, but a complex and active agent.
Anthropology is about making the familiar strange and the strange familiar.
The concept of 'evidence' is always shaped by theoretical frameworks.
The future is not predetermined; it is constantly being made through present actions.
The act of naming is an act of power.
The 'universal' is often a projection of the particular.
Anthropology is a constant negotiation between different ways of knowing.
The concept of 'agency' is not a fixed attribute, but a relational effect.
The 'real' is always mediated by our conceptual frameworks.
Kinship is not a natural fact but a cultural construction.
The gift is both a relation and an object.
Gender is a system of meanings.
In Melanesia, persons are dividuals, not individuals.
Partial connections allow us to see the whole.
Anthropology cuts across boundaries.
Reproduction is not just biological but social.
The future is made through kinship.
Property and persons are entangled.
Audit cultures transform knowledge.
Contemporaries of Marilyn Strathern
Other Anthropologys born within 50 years of Marilyn Strathern (1941).