Michael Jackson (anthropologist)

New Zealand poet and anthropologist

Michael Jackson

Born| 1940 (age 84–85)

Nelson, New Zealand

Education| Victoria University of Wellington (BA)
University of Auckland (MA)
Cambridge University (PhD)
Occupation(s)| Anthropologist, poet, philosopher, teacher
Employer| Harvard Divinity School

Michael D. Jackson (born 1940) is a New Zealand poet and anthropologist who has taught in anthropology departments at Massey University, the Australian National University, Indiana University Bloomington, and the University of Copenhagen. He is currently distinguished professor of world religions at Harvard Divinity School.

## Career

[edit]

Jackson is the founder of existential anthropology, a non-traditional sub-field of anthropology using ethnographic methods and drawing on traditions of phenomenology, existentialism, and critical theory, as well as American pragmatism, in exploring the human condition from the perspectives of both lifeworlds and worldviews, histories and biographies, collective representations and individual realities.

The struggle for being involves a struggle to reconcile shared and singular experiences, acting and being acted upon, being for others and being for oneself. But rather than polarise subject and object, Jackson emphasises the intersubjective negotiations at the heart of all relationships – whether between persons, persons and things, persons and language – and shows that being-in-the-world consists of endless dilemmas and constant oscillations in consciousness that admit of only temporary, imagined, narrative or ritualised resolutions. Insofar as anthropological understanding is attained through conversations and events in which the ethnographer's prejudices, ontological assumptions, and emotional dispositions are at play, the ethnographer cannot pretend to be an impartial observer, producing objective knowledge. Jackson's published work fully discloses the contexts in which understandings are negotiated, arrived at, or, in some instances, unattainable.[1]

Jackson's recent books have explored diverse topics such as well-being in one of the world's poorest societies (Life Within Limits), the relation between religious experience and limit situations (The Palm at the End of the Mind), the interplay between egocentric and sociocentric modes of being (Between One and One Another), and writing as a technology for creating connections that transcend the limits of ordinary communication (The Other Shore).

## Fieldwork

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He has conducted fieldwork among the Kuranko of Sierra Leone from 1969, among the Warlpiri of Australia's Northern Territory between 1989 and 1991, and among the Kuku Yalangi of Cape York Peninsula in 1993 and 1994.[2]

His poetry has appeared in Poetry NZ.[3] and in the Poetry Archive (UK). One critic wrote: In Dead Reckoning, Jackson deploys "a navigator’s term for estimating one’s location based upon extrapolations of distance and direction from one’s last-known position. The eponymous poem cements the metaphor’s connection to personal identity..."[4] In Being of Two Minds (2012), Jackson explores the existential quandaries of being torn between seemingly irreconcilable affections, identifications, and places of personal anchorage. The critic Vincent O'Sullivan writes, "What one hears in his readings is the modest, confidant, international voice that drives his poems, the conversing of a man who, as ever, is on one road to find another."[5]

## Education

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Jackson holds a Bachelor of Arts from Victoria University of Wellington, a Master of Arts (postgraduate) from the University of Auckland, and a Doctor of Philosophy from Cambridge University.

## Awards

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* 1981 New Zealand Book Award for Poetry for Wall
* 1982 Katherine Mansfield Fellowship[6]
* 1995 Montana New Zealand Book Award for Pieces of Music

## Bibliography

[edit]

* Latitudes of Exile: Poems 1965–1975 (1976)
* The Kuranko: Dimensions of Social Reality in a West African Society (1977)
* Wall: Poems 1976–1979 (1980)
* Allegories of the Wilderness: Ethics and Ambiguity in Kuranko Narratives (1982)
* Going On (1985)
* Barawa, and the Ways Birds Fly in the Sky (1986)
* Rainshadow (1988)
* Paths Towards a Clearing (1989)
* Duty Free: Selected Poems 1965–1988 (1989)
* Personhood and Agency: The Experience of Self and Other in African Cultures (1990)
* Pieces of Music (1994)
* At Home in the World (1995)
* Things As They Are: New Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology (1996)
* The Blind Impress (1997)
* Antipodes (1997)
* Minima Ethnographica (1998) Review
* The Politics of Storytelling: Violence, Transgression, and Intersubjectivity (2002)
* In Sierra Leone (2004)
* Existential Anthropology (2005) Review
* Dead Reckoning (2006)
* The Accidental Anthropologist: a Memoir (2006)
* Excursions (2007)
* The Palm at the End of the Mind: Relatedness, Religiosity, and the Real (2009)
* Life Within Limits: Well-being in a World of Want (2011)
* Between One and One Another (2013)
* Road Markings: An Anthropologist in the Antipodes (2012)
* The Other Shore: Essays on Writers and Writing (2013)
* Being of Two Minds (2012)
* Lifeworlds: Essays in Existential Anthropology (2013)
* Midwinter at Walden Pond (2013)
* The Wherewithal of Life: Ethics, Migration and the Question of Wellbeing (2013)
* Harmattan: A Philosophical Fiction (2015)
* Critique of Identity Thinking (2019)
* Dowsing (2021)
* The Genealogical Imagination: Two Studies of Life over Time (2021)

* Worlds Within and Worlds Without: Field Guide to an Intellectual Journey (2023)
* Friendship (2023)

## See also

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* Philosophical anthropology

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Personal page on Harvard Divinity School
2. ^ "New Zealand Book Council". New Zealand Book Council. Retrieved 16 January 2016.
3. ^ "Poetry New Zealand: Issue 49". Poetry NZ. 17 September 2014. Retrieved 16 January 2016.
4. ^ "Recent poetry from Michael Jackson and David Beach.", The Listener, Hugh Roberts
5. ^ [1] Archived 22 March 2013 at the Wayback Machine
6. ^ "Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship". Arts Foundation of New Zealand. Retrieved 8 September 2019.

## External links

[edit]

* Jackson, Michael (2005). Existential Anthropology: Events, Exigencies and Effects. Methodology and History in Anthropology. Oxford: Berghahn Books. ISBN 1-57181-476-0. Many pages online accessible. See also a short annotation.
* "Michael Jackson", New Zealand Literature File, University of Auckland
* Jackson, Michael. "The Philosopher Who Would Not Be King". Harvard Divinity Bulletin. 38, Nos. 3 & 4 (Summer/Autumn 2010). Retrieved 17 March 2021.
* Harvard Divinity School Faculty Page
* Michael D. Jackson

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Katherine Mansfield Menton fellows

* 1970 Owen Leeming
* 1971 Margaret Scott
* 1972 C. K. Stead
* 1973 James McNeish
* 1974 Janet Frame
* 1975 David Mitchell
* 1976 Michael King
* 1977 Barry Mitcalfe
* 1978 Spiro Zavos
* 1979 Philip Temple
* 1980 Marilyn Duckworth
* 1981 Lauris Edmond
* 1982 Michael Jackson
* 1983 Allen Curnow
* 1984 Rowley Habib
* 1985 Michael Gifkins
* 1986 Michael Harlow
* 1987 Russell Haley
* 1988 Louis Johnson
* 1989 Lloyd Jones
* 1990 Lisa Greenwood
* 1991 Nigel Cox
* 1992 Maurice Gee
* 1993 Witi Ihimaera
* 1994 Vincent O’Sullivan
* 1995 Fiona Farrell
* 1996 Owen Marshall
* 1997 Roger Hall
* 1998 Maurice Shadbolt
* 1999 Elizabeth Knox
* 2000 Stephanie Johnson
* 2001 Catherine Chidgey
* 2002 Jenny Bornholdt
* 2003 Tessa Duder
* 2004 Bill Manhire
* 2005 Ian Wedde
* 2006 Fiona Kidman
* 2007 Stuart Hoar
* 2008 Damien Wilkins
* 2009 Jenny Pattrick
* 2010 Ken Duncum
* 2011 Chris Price
* 2012 Justin Paton
* 2013 Greg McGee
* 2014 Mandy Hager
* 2015 Anna Jackson
* 2016 Kate Camp
* 2017 Carl Nixon
* 2019 Paula Morris
* 2020 Sue Wootton
* 2024 Charlotte Grimshaw
* 2025 Selina Tusitala Marsh

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