Dr Michael W. Scott

Michael W. Scott received his MA in sociology from the University of Glasgow and his PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago. He joined the LSE in 2001. An Oceanist with a primary focus on Melanesia, Dr Scott is engaged in ongoing fieldwork among the Arosi of the island of Makira (Solomon Islands) and has conducted archival research on colonial and mission history at numerous locations in the Pacific, Britain, and North America. He has written and lectured on Social and Cultural Theory, Ontology, Cosmology, Sociality, Hybridity, Christianity, Space and Place-making.

As one of several anthropologists establishing an agenda for an anthropology of ontology, Dr Scott has developed new models, methodologies, and analytical language for the study of indigenous theories of being and their relationships to practice. In his recent book The Severed Snake and related publications, he situates Arosi thought and practice in a comparative study of ontology and cosmology to offer fresh approaches to anthropological understandings of sociality, place-making, and the globalisation of Christianity.

Dr Scott’s current ESRC-funded research focuses on Makira as a context in which ethnic identity formation appears to be coincident with an efflorescence of myth-making, unorthodox biblical interpretations, messianic hopes, rumours of the existence of a secret underground world, and expectations of imminent and spontaneous prosperity. This research aims to contribute to the growing literature on transformations of the nation-state in postcolonial contexts, the role of religion in nationalism and ethnicity, and debates concerning the nature of so-called ‘cargo cults.’

Selected publications:

2008. ‘Proto-People and Precedence: Encompassing Euroamericans through Narratives of “First Contact” in Solomon Islands’. In Exchange and Sacrifice, ed. Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern, 141-176. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.

2007. Neither “New Melanesian History” nor “New Melanesian Ethnography”: Recovering Emplaced Matrilineages in Southeast Solomon Islands. [LSE username and password required to access 1.5MB pdf of this article.] Oceania 77(3): 337-354.

2007. The Severed Snake: Matrilineages, Making Place, and a Melanesian Christianity in Southeast Solomon Islands. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.

2005. "I was like Abraham": Notes on the anthropology of Christianity from the Solomon Islands. Ethnos 70(1): 101-125.

2005. Hybridity, vacuity, and blockage: Visions of chaos from anthropological theory, Island Melanesia, and Central Africa. Comparative Studies in Society and History 47(1): 190-216.

2000. Ignorance is cosmos; knowledge is chaos: Articulating a cosmological polarity in the Solomon Islands. Social Analysis 44(2): 56-83.

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