Cornell University Emblemthe department of Anthropology
Faculty
Terence Turner
Terence Turner , Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago and Cornell University, has worked with the Kayapo of Central Brazil since 1962. His writings on the Kayapo cover social organization, myth, ritual, history, politics, values, and inter-ethnic relations. He has also published numerous papers on general theoretical topics, including structural analysis and interpretation of ritual and myth, the social construction of the body, emotions and subjectivity, family structures and kinship terminology, the application of aspects of Marxian theory to anthropology, and the theoretical basis of anthropological approaches to human rights, multiculturalism, and activism in support of indigenous causes. He has made a number of ethnographic films about the Kayapo with the British Broadcasting Company and Granada Television International. In 1990 he founded the Kayapo Video Project, through which the Kayapo have become able to shoot and edit videos about their own culture and encounters with Brazilian society.

Recent Publications

2007 "Derechos humanos" (54-62); "Elites" (89-93); "Elites cosmopolitas" (993-98"); "Identidad: Pluralismo sincrónico" (296-298). In Barañnano, Ascensión José Garcia, María Cátedra y Marie J. Devillard, ed.s, Diccionario de relaciones interculturales. Diversidad y globalización. Madrid. Editorial Complutense
  "Envisioning history: anthropological theory and the rights of indigenous peoples. A comment". Focaal: The European Journal of Anthropology 49
2006 "Structure, process, form", Kreinath, Jens, Jan Snoek, and Michael Stausberg, ed.s, Theorizing ritual, Brill: NUMEN-Bookseries: 207-246
  (with Vanessa Fajans-Turner) "Political innovation and inter-ethnic alliance: Kayapo resistance to the developmentalist state", Anthropology Today 22(5):3-10
  "Tropos, marcos de referencia, y poderes", in Antropologia social 15: 305-315. Madrid. Universidad Complutense
  "Do anthropologists have an ethical obligation to promote human rights?", Anthropology News 47(7): 3-4. October
  "Anthropology as reality show and as co-production: Internal relations between theory and activism", in Sangren, Stephen and Dominic Boyer, ed.s, For a critique of pure culture: Special issue in honor of Terry Turner. Critique of anthropology 26(1):15-26
2005 "Death, passion, and politics: The power of grief and the charisma of loss", Review article on Gail Holst-Warhaft, The cue for passion: Grief and its political uses, and Douglas J. Davies, Death, ritual and belief. The rhetoric of funerary rites (Second Edition). Reviews in Anthropology
2002 "Lo bello y lo común: desigualidades de valor y jerarqía rotativa entre los kayapó", in Revista de Antropologia Social, 11:1 (2002) Madrid. English translation: "The beautiful and the common: gender and social hierarchy among the Kayapo" in Tipiti (The journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America) 1:1 (September 2003)
  "Representation, Politics and Cultural Imagination in Indigenous Video: General Points and Kayapo Examples", in Faye Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin, eds., The Social Practice of Media. Berkeley. University of California Press. 75-89
  "The poetics of play: ritual clowns, masking and performative mimesis among the Kayapo", in Peter Koepping, ed., The play of gods and men: Essays in Play and Performance. Studien zur sozialen und rituellen Morphologie. Lit Verlag. Hamburg. (Revised text of article that originally appeared in first edition of book, 1998)
  "Shifting the frame from nation-state to global market: Class and social consciousness in the advanced capitalist countries", in Social analysis: International Journal of Social and Cultural Analysis, 46:2. 56-80
  The Yanomami and the ethics of anthropological practice. Occasional Paper, Latin American Studies Program, Cornell University.
2000 "The sacred as alieneated social consciousness: Cosmology, ritual and ideology in the traditional Kayapo conception of the world", in Lawrence Sullivan, ed., Indigenous religions and cultures of Central and South America, New York. Continuum (English version of article that originally appeared in Italian as "Il sacro come alienazione della coscienza sociale: riti e cosmologia dei Cayapó", in Lawrence Sullivan, ed., Trattato di Antropologia del Sacro: Volume VI, Culture e religioni indigene in America centrale e meridionali. Editoriale Jaca Book S.A., Milano. 1997
1999 "Indigenous and culturalist movements in the contemporary global conjuncture", in Francisco F. Del Riego, Marcial G. Portasany, Terence Turner, Josep R. Llobera, Isodoro Moreno, and James W. Fernandez, Las identidades y las tensiones culturales de modernidad. Santiago de Compostela. Federacion de Asociaciones de antropologia del Estado Español