Marilyn Strathern

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Dame Anne Marilyn Strathern (1941-present) is a British feminist anthropologist, who has worked largely with the natives of Papua New Guinea and dealt with issues in the UK of reproductive technologies. Born Ann Marilyn Evans in 1941, Marilyn Strathern is an internationally known anthropologist who has taught in England, United States, and Australia. Her work as a feminist anthropologist has pushed open doors and minds in thinking about the implications of new birthing technologies and gender roles in Melanesia and the United Kingdom ^[1].

Early Life

Marilyn Strathern was born to Eric Evans and Joyce Evans in Bromley Kent on March 6th, 1941. ^[1][2] She married fellow anthropologist Andrew Strathern in 1965 and they had three children together, before the marriage was dissolved. Her first school experience was in Crofton Lane Primary School which was followed by Bromley High School. She excelled in academics in both with great help from her mother who was a teacher by trade.^[1] Following in her mother’s footsteps, she enrolled in Girton College to study Archaeology and Anthropology. She then became a research student there^[3] and went on to obtain her PhD. in 1968.^[2]

Career

Strathern has held numerous positions over her long career. All of which involved her work with the Natives of Papua New Guinea and her expertize in feminist anthropology. Her extensive career began in 1970, when she was a Researcher for the New Guinea Research Unit of Australian University followed by a stint from 1976 to 1983 where she was a lecturer at Girton College and then Trinity College from 1984-1985, occasionally making guest lectures at the University of California, Berkeley in the United States ^[2], Europe and Australia.^[4] She then left Cambridge Colleges to become the Professor of Social Anthropology at Manchester University in 1985. She then returned to Cambridge for the final time to take the prestigious position of William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology until her retirement in 2008. During this time, she also held the position of Mistress of Girton College from 1998 to October 2009. ^[5][3] Strathern was also co-opted member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics while also chairing the Working Party on "Human bodies: donation for medicine and research" from 2000 to 2006 and 2010 until 2011.^[6]

Field Work in Papua New Guinea

Feminist anthropology is a form of classical anthropology of which Marilyn Strathern is a strong writer. From her doctoral thesis published in 1972 titled “Women in Between”^[5] to her more recent publications, Strathern is constantly challenging the definitions and social constructs of gender “norms”. In her piece “Self-Interest and the Social Good: Some Implications of Hagen Gender Imagery” (1981), Strathern notes that “[g]ender imagery is… a symbolic mechanism whereby “collective” and “personal” interests are made to seem to be of different orders”. ^[7] As editor of a collection of articles in "Dealing with Equality: Analysing gender relations in Melanesia and beyond", she also brings to the surface the issue of gender “equality” and what it really means, asking if the definitions of the Western world are in fact correct, or if there is still a sense of patriarchal dominance. ^[8]

Taking this approach when studying in such fields as patriarchal societies in Papua New Guinea has allowed Strathern to push the boundaries of thought on such topics as reproductive technology, intellectual property, and gender in both Melanesia and the United Kingdom.^[5]

Strathern has spent much time among the Hagen of Papua New Guinea.^[7] From here she has developed one of the main themes occurring across her work, that the world is ontologically multiple.^{[7][9][10][8]} The world is made up of identifiable parts; however, these parts are not separate from one another. She does not address society specifically, but rather looks at socially-constructed multiple realities which exist interdependently with one another.^[10]

Selected publications

Strathern is the author of numerous publications, including 44 single-authored journal articles, 57 book chapters, and over 15 books written alone or with another author.^[5] Her topics vary from Melanesian culture to the culture of the United Kingdom. Strathern’s publications on the Melanesian culture focus on gender relations, legal anthropology and feminist scholarship, while her publications on the culture of the United Kingdom lean towards kinship, audit culture, reproductive and genetic technologies.^[3] The book she enjoyed writing the most, according to an interview with the American Anthropological Association in 2011, was Partial Connection, written in 1991.^[4] Her most famous book, however, is The Gender of Gift published in 1988.^[2]

In The Gender of Gift, she uses a feminist approach in a new way to argue that Papuan women are not being exploited, but rather the definition is different. Gender, she notes, is defined differently there than it is in the United Kingdom.^[11] For Papuans, the body is made up of many gendered parts which all flow together, much like Strathern's notion of the ontologically multiple world. It places gender as more of an abstract notion and something that is appropriate in certain contexts rather than separate from them.^[12] Strathern also brings to the surface the fact that theories are dominating themselves and while she knows as an anthropologist, she cannot separate herself from them, she does state that she offers a “narrative” over an analysis of the situation.^[11]

Other Publications

• Self-Decoration in Mount Hagen (1971)
• Women in Between (1972)
• No Money on Our Skins: Hagen Migrants in Port Moresby (1975) ISBN 0-85818-027-8
• Kinship at the Core: an Anthropology of Elmdon, Essex (1981) ISBN 0-521-23360-7
• The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia (1988) ISBN 0-520-07202-2
• Partial connections. Savage, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield (1991). Re-issued by AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, CA. (2004)
• After Nature: English Kinship in the Late Twentieth Century (1992) ISBN 978-0-521-42680-0
• Property, substance and effect. Anthropological essays on persons and things. London: Athlone Press (1999) Collected essays, 1992-98 ISBN 0-485-12149-2
• Commons and borderlands: working papers on interdisciplinarity, accountability and the flow of knowledge (2004) ISBN 0-9545572-2-0
• (ed. with Eric Hirsch) Transactions and creations: property debates and the stimulus of Melanesia, Oxford: Berghahn.
• (ed) Audit Cultures. Anthropological studies in accountability, ethics and the academy. (2000) London: Routledge.
• Kinship, law and the unexpected: Relatives are often a surprise. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2005) ISBN 0-521-61509-7

Distinctions

Due to Strathern’s intensive work in her field, she had earned many honors and distinctions. Below are listed her awards:

• Rivers Memorial Medal, Royal Anthropologist Inst. (1976)^[3]
• Fellow of British Academy (1987)^[3]
• Honorary Degree Sc. Edinburgh (1993)^[3]
• Honorary Degree Sc. Copenhagen (1994)^[3]
• Foreign Honorary Member, American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1996)^[3]
• Dame Commander of the British Empire for services to Social Anthropology (2001)^[3]
• Viking Fund Medal, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (2003) (last awarded in 1972.^[4])
• Huxley Medal (2004)^[3]
• Honorary Degree Lit, Oxford (2004)^[3]
• 30th Anniversary Independence Medal, Papua New Guinea (2005)^[3]
• Honorary Degree Pol., Helsinki (2006)^[3]
• Honorary Degree, Panteion University, Athens (2006)^[3]
• Honorary Degree Sc., Durham (2007)^[3]
• Honorary Degree Philosophy, University Papua New Guinea (2009)^[3]
• Honorary Degree Social Sciences, Belfast (2009)^[3]

In 2000, artist Daphne Todd was commissioned by Girton College, Cambridge, to paint a portrait of Mistress Marilyn Strathern. This painting, which depicted Marilyn with two heads on separate panels, went on to win Todd the Royal Society of Portrait Painters’ Ondaatje for Portraiture in 2001.^[13][2]

References

External links

• Shayna Loree Collins, 'Marilyn Strathern 1941-'
• List of Strathern's recent publications
• 'A Community of Critics' R.A.I. Huxley Memorial Lecture, given at University College, London, 8th December 2004 (film)
• Marilyn Strathern interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 6th May 2009 (film)

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