Section: Staff Profiles

Magnus Course

Name
Dr Magnus Course
Title
Lecturer
Organisation
Social Anthropology, School of Social and Political Science
University of Edinburgh
Address
5.23 Chrystal Macmillan Building 15a George Square Edinburgh UK EH8 9LD
Telephone
+44 (0)131 651 3893
E-Mail
URL
http://www.san.ed.ac.uk/staff/course_magnus
Magnus Course

Office Hours:

Mondays, 12-2

Research Interests:

  • kinship, personhood, and ritual in comparative perspective
  • the role of language in Amerindian life
  • the role of language in anthropological representations
  • semiotic ideologies
  • Mapuche people and the Chilean state

PhD Supervision:

I would be interested in supervising projects relating to:

  • Language and social life
  • Latin America
  • Native American ontologies and cosmologies
  • Kinship and personhood
  • Symbolic and semiotic approaches to human life

Biographical Statement:

Magnus Course's research is concerned with the relations between kinship, personhood, power and language in the context of Native South American socialities. He completed his PhD on kinship and personhood among the Mapuche of southern Chile at the London School of Economics in 2005, and the ensuing monograph was published by University of Illinois Press in 2011 as Becoming Mapuche: Person and Ritual in Indigenous Chile. He subsequently completed a British Academy-funded project entitled The Changing Value of Linguistic Forms among the Mapuche of Southern Chile which combined insights from both social and linguistic anthropology in the analysis of Mapuche sociality. In addition to finishing articles on clowns, cider, language, and sacrifice he is working on two edited collections, one (with Suzanne Oakdale) on indigenous autobiographies in lowland South America, the other (with Maya Mayblin) on new anthropological approaches to sacrifice.

Selected Publications:

Books & Special Issues: 

2011. Becoming Mapuche: Person and Ritual in Indigenous Chile. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

In preparation. Fluent Selves: Autobiography and Personhood in Lowland South America. (with Suzanne Oakdale).

In preparation. The Other Side of Sacrifice: New Anthropological Approaches. (with Maya Mayblin).

Articles:

Under review. The Clown Within: becoming white and Mapuche ritual clowns. Comparative Studies in Society and History. 

Under review. Speaking the Devil's Language: ontological challenges to Mapuche intersubjectivity. Language and Communication.

Forthcoming (2012). The Birth of the Word: Language, Force, and Mapuche Ritual Authority. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory.

Forthcoming (2013). The Apple is Grown, The Grape is Given: Two Modes of Mapuche Exchange. Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology. 

2012. Comment on "On the Importance of Visions among the Amazonian Shuar" by Steven Rubenstein. Current Anthropology, Vol.53, No.1: 39-79. 

2011. O Nascimento da Palavra: Linguagem, Força e Autoridade Ritual Mapuche. Revista de Antropologia (Sao Paulo) Vol.54, No.2. 

2010. Of Words and Fog: Linguistic Relativity and Amerindian Ontology. Anthropological Theory, Vol.10, No.3: 247-263.

2010. Making Friends, Making Oneself: Friendship and the Mapuche Person. In The Social Uses of Friendship: An Anthropological Exploration (eds) A. Desai & E. Killick. London: Berghahn Press.

2010. Los Generos Sobre el Pasado en la Vida Mapuche Rural. Revista Chilena de Antropologia, Vol.21: 39-58.

2009. Why Mapuche Sing. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Vol. 15, No.2: 295-313

2008.  Estruturas de diferenca no palin, esporte Mapuche. Mana: Estudos de Antropologia Social  Vol.14, No.2: 299-328.

2007. Death, Biography, and the Mapuche Person. Ethnos, Vol. 72, No.1: 77-101.

2005. Borges, the Mapuche, and the Mother's Brother's Son. Cambridge Anthropology, Vol. 25, No.1: 11-30.

Topics interested in supervising

I would be interested in supervising projects relating to: Language and social life; Latin America; Native American ontologies and cosmologies; Kinship and personhood; Symbolic and semiotic approaches to human life.

This page was published on 27 April 2012


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