Keane, Webb 1955-

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Keane, Webb 1955-

PERSONAL:

Born September 13, 1955. Education: Yale College, B.A., 1977; University of Chicago, A.M., 1984, Ph.D., 1990.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of Michigan, Department of Anthropology, 101 West Hall, 1085 S. University Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1107; fax: 734-763-6077. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Anthropologist, educator, writer, and editor. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, former faculty member; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, beginning 1997, became professor and director of graduate studies.

MEMBER:

University of Michigan Society of Fellows (senior fellow).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Henry Russel Award, University of Michigan, for scholarship and teaching, 2000. Also fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1993-94; Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, 1997-98; Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA, 2003-04; and John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (deferred).

WRITINGS:

Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1997.

(Editor, with Chris Tilley, Susanne Küchler, Michael Rowland, and Patricia Spyer) Handbook of Material Culture, Sage Press (Thousand Oaks, CA), 2006.

Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2007.

Contributor to books, including Conversion to Modernities: The Globalization of Christianity, edited by Peter van der Veer, Routledge (New York, NY), 1996; Border Fetishisms: Material Objects in Unstable Spaces, edeted Patricia Spyer, Routledge (New York, NY), 1998; Key Terms in Language and Culture, edited by Alessandro Duranti, Blackwell (Malden, MA), 2001; The Empire of Things: Regimes of Value and Material Culture, edited by Fred Myers, School of American Research Press (Santa Fe, NM), 2001; and Translation and Anthropology, edited by Paula Rubel and Abraham Rosman, Bers, 2003. Contributor to periodicals, including Art Tribal (Musée Barbier-Mueller), American Ethnologist, Man, Etnofoor, Cultural Anthropology, Annual Review of Anthropology, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Indonesia, Current Anthropology, Public Culture, Comparative Studies in Society and History, and Language and Communication.

SIDELIGHTS:

Webb Keane is an anthropologist and professor who has written about a wide range of topics in the areas of social and cultural theory and the philosophical foundations of social thought and the human sciences. Two years of fieldwork on the island of Sumba in eastern Indonesia led to his first book, Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society. In his ethnographic analyses, the author focuses on Anakalang, the spoken word in West Sumba, an area known for its complex traditions of repeated syntactical similarities in ritual speech used for rhetorical effect. According to Australian Journal of Anthropology contributor Adrian Vickers, the author "seeks to convey the performative elements of ritual speech." Vickers noted in the same article: "In describing various ceremonies Keane shows how words, couplets principally conveyed in rituals, are given and taken. That is he seeks to convey the ways in which intention, meaning and reception operate."

Based on the author's field work, the book includes theoretical and ethnographic background and an analysis of the interplay of the Anakalang language with material objects. This interplay is notable because performances of ritual speech in Sumba typically include a transfer of some type of material goods between participants or between participants and the spirits. Richard J. Parmentier, writing in Oceania, referred to the book as "a complex interpretive ethnography of Anakalang society." D. Miller wrote in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute: "Keane's highly original and insightful work should be recognized as a major contribution to a series of general issues of interest to anthropology as a whole and by no means limited to more parochial and regional studies."

For his book Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter, the author draws on both historical records and contemporary field work to discuss Dutch Calvinism from colonial mission to postcolonial church. This ethnographic study focuses on the century-long encounters of Calvinist missionaries, their converts, and those who resisted conversion. The author begins by explaining how Christianity attained a global influence and then shows how a segment of missionaries within Dutch Calvinism used certain strategies to reconcile their inward Christian faith with the ancient rituals practiced by the Sumbanese and others. "In his Christian Moderns … Keane offers a brilliant and richly textured meditation on the missionary encounter of Dutch Calvinists with the indigenous peoples of the island of Sumba, Indonesia," noted David Martin in a review in Books & Culture.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Ethnologist, August, 1999, Andrew Arno, review of Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society, p. 772.

Anthropological Quarterly, April, 1998, Rita Smith Kipp, review of Signs of Recognition, p. 100.

Asian Folklore Studies, April, 2000, Nakagawa Satoshi, review of Signs of Recognition, p. 265.

Australian Journal of Anthropology, April, 2000, Adrian Vickers, review of Signs of Recognition, p. 114.

Books & Culture, May 1, 2007, David Martin, "Anthropology's ‘Other,’" review of Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter, p. 20.

Choice, June, 1997, review of Signs of Recognition, p. 1706.

Current Anthropology, December, 1998, JoAnn W. Kealiinohomoku, review of Signs of Recognition, p. 737.

Journal of Asian Studies, August, 1998, Kathleen M. Adams, review of Signs of Recognition, p. 915.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, September 9, 1999, D. Miller, review of Signs of Recognition, p. 503.

Oceania, December, 1997, Richard J. Parmentier, review of Signs of Recognition, p. 142.

Pacific Affairs, summer, 1999, Gregory Forth, review of Signs of Recognition, p. 293.

Times Literary Supplement, June 8, 2007, Bernice Martin, "Mission Statements," review of Christian Moderns, p. 31.