Roger Keesing

Professor Roger Martin Keesing (16 May 1935 – 7 May 1993) was a linguist and anthropologist, noted for his fieldwork on the Kwaio people of Malaita in the Solomon Islands, and his writings on a wide range of topics including kinship, religion, politics, history, cognitive anthropology and language. He was the son of Felix Keesing, another distinguished anthropologist with an interest in the South Pacific.

Keesing studied at Stanford and Harvard and began work in 1965 at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1974 he became a professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra, heading the Department of Anthropology from 1976. In 1990 he moved to McGill University in Montreal.

In 1974 he wrote a famous article, one of around a hundred published over the course of his career, defining and specifying a view of culture inspired by linguistics and Marxian thinking. He also wrote several books, and is perhaps best known among students of anthropology as the author of Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective, regarded as one of the most authoritative general introductory works on the subject. This was based on a book originally authored by his father, and was extensively revised by Keesing over the course of many years, beginning with an updated edition of the original in 1971, and continuing with a full rewrite in 1976, revised further in 1981. Since Keesing's death this task was taken up by Dr Andrew Strathern, and the book remains popular.

Keesing died suddenly of a heart attack in 1993, and his ashes were transferred to the Solomon Islands, where the families of his Kwaio associates accord him the status of an andalo or ancestral spirit.

Partial bibliography

• Kwaio descent groups. University of California, 1966.
• New Perspectives in Cultural Anthropology. Holt, Rineheart and Winston, 1971 (co-authored with Felix M. Keesing). ISBN 0030854865.
• Paradigms lost: The new ethnography and the new linguistics. Bobbs-Merrill, 1972.
• Kin Groups and Social Structure. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975. Rpt. Thomson Learning, 1985. ISBN 0030128463.
• Kwaio dictionary. Australian National University, 1975. ISBN 0858831201.
• Explorations in role analysis. P. De Ridder, 1975.
• Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976. 2nd ed. CBS College Publishing, 1981. ISBN 0030462967. 3rd ed. Wadsworth, 1997 (edited by Andrew Strathan). ISBN 0030475821.
• Elota's Story: The Life and Times of a Solomon Islands Big Man. St. Martin's Press; University of Queensland Press, 1978. Rpt. Thomson Learning, 1983. ISBN 0030628970.
• Lightning Meets the West Wind: Malaita Massacre. OUP Australia and New Zealand, 1980 (co-authored with Peter Corris). ISBN 0195542231.
• Kwaio Religion. Columbia University Press, 1982. ISBN 023105341X.
• Melanesian Pidgin and the Oceanic Substrate. Stanford University Press, 1988. ISBN 0804714509.
• Custom and Confrontation: Kwaio Struggle for Cultural Autonomy. University of Chicago Press, 1992. ISBN 0226429199 (hardcover). ISBN 0226429202 (paperback).

References

• "Keesing, Roger Martin (1935–1993)". Anthrobase Online Dictionary of Anthropology. Retrieved 10 March 2005.
• Otto, Ton (1993). "In memoriam Roger Martin Keesing". Oceania Newletter.