University of St Andrews

Prof Christina Toren

Professor

Academic qualifications

1979 - B.Sc. (Hons) 1st Class in Psychology, University College, London.

1986 - Ph.D in Social Anthropology, London School of Economics. Awarded the Robert Mackenzie Prize.

Selected publications

Books:

Making Sense of Hierarchy.  Cognition as social process in Fiji, London School of Economics, Monographs in Social Anthropology, 61, London, The Athlone Press, 1990.
Mind, Materiality and History. Explorations in Fijian Ethnography, London: Routledge, 1999.

 

Selected papers since 2001:

2001. The child in mind. In H.Whitehouse (ed.) The Debated Mind: Evolutionary Psychology versus Ethnography, London, Berg, pp155-179.
2002. Comparison and ontogeny. In Richard Fox and Andre Gingrich (eds) Anthropology, By Comparison, London, Routledge, pp 118-203.
2002. Space-time coordinates of shame in Fiji. In G.Bennardo (ed) Representing Space in Oceania, a special issue of Pacific Linguistics, pp 215-231.
2002. Anthropology as the whole science of what it is to be human. In R. Fox and B. King (eds) Anthropology Beyond Culture, London, Berg, pp 105-124.
2004. Becoming a Christian in Fiji: an ethnographic study of ontogeny. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, (N.S.) 10, 222-240.
2004. Crença e historicidade. In Fernando Gil, Pierre Livet and João de Pina Cabral (eds) O Processo da Crença. Lisboa, Gravida.
2005. Laughter and truth in Fiji: what we may learn from a joke. Oceania75:268-283.
2006. Introduction to Mind, Materiality and History. In Henrietta L. Moore & Todd Sanders (eds) Anthropology in Theory: Issues in Epistemology, Oxford, Blackwell.
2006. The effectiveness of ritual. In F.Cannell (ed.) The Anthropology of Christianity, Duke University Press. Pp185-210.
2006. Como sabemos o que é verdade? O caso do mana em Fiji. MANA. Estudos de Antropologia Social, 12(2):449-477

Research interests

As an anthropologist, I am fascinated by the extraordinary variety and complexity of human beings. What interests me is how we become who we are - each one of us uniquely ourselves - and how the history of our relations with others informs this process of becoming ourselves.

Fieldwork, Sawaieke, Gau, Fiji 1981-83, 1990, 1993, 2005.

My area interests focus on Fiji and the Pacific, and Melanesia. My theoretical interests include: exchange processes; spatio-temporality as a dimension of human being; sociality, kinship and ideas of the person; the analysis of ritual; epistemology; ontogeny as an historical process.

My work is informed by the idea that the primary duty of the anthropologist as analyst is to produce richly detailed ethnography that is able to throw light on the human condition, even while it deals with the historical specificity that is evinced in any given case. Excellent ethnography is founded in long-term participant observer fieldwork and this is the case whether one is working ‘at home’ or abroad – an observation that is borne out by the work done by my research students. My book Mind Materiality and History: Explorations in Fijian Ethnography, gives a good idea of the range of my work.

Research students

Philip Kao

Teaching

SA2002: Ethnographic Encounters

SA3050: Interpreting Social and Cultural Phenomena

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