Timothy Mason's Site

Articles

Crime and Deviance

(Language - English or French - and size in Ko indicated in brackets)

Reading the Crime Figures (Eng - 41 Ko).

In this article, presented at a conference at the University of Tours organized by the GRAAT and published in their journal, I show how radical questioning of the crime figures came into vogue during the late sixties and relate this to changes in higher education as a whole and sociology departments in particular. The swing of the pendulum back to a more "realist" position is then charted, with some indications as to why this occurred.

Reading the Riots; interpretations of disorder (Eng & Fr - 49 Ko)

This article was presented at the Université du Havre in 1998. Taking the case of the so-called 'Bean-Field Massacre', in which a number of New Age Travellers fought with the police during an attempt to hold a free open-air concert at Stonehenge, I try to show how newspaper accounts of the event echoed and were shaped by "templates" already well in place in the Middle Ages and which invoke night-battles between forces of good and evil, and magic armies swooping through the sky.

The Serial Killer ; an anti-hero for the fin de siècle (Eng - 47 Ko)

Through films and novels such as 'The Silence of the Lambs', 'Seven' or 'True Crime' books like 'The Stranger Beside Me', the serial killer became one of the emblematic figures of American culture. In this essay, I look first at Anne Rule's typification of the serial killer, taken from a letter she wrote to Ted Bundy while he was in prison, and then turn to an analysis of Harris's 'The Silence of the Lambs'.

Elliot Currie on Crime & Punishment; a review (Eng - 17 Ko)

Elliot Currie, American criminologist, surveys recent attempts to come to terms with America's crime problem, and finds them wanting. He inveighs against the idea that 'nothing works' apart from punishment, and points to programs that can prevent crime.

Literature

(Language - English or French - and size in Ko indicated in brackets)

Le Fantasme Panoptique (Charles Dickens & the Panopticon) (Fr)

(The article is taken from my doctoral thesis and is in French. It is divided into sections, and the link takes you to the Table of Contents, from which you may load down the different bits individually - their weight in Ko is given on that page. Alternatively, you can load it down as one zip file from here (58 Ko)).
Beginning with an analysis of the opening pages of 'The Pickwick Papers' and continuing with a reading of passages from 'The Old Curiosity Shop', I attempt to show that underlying much of Dickens's work is a socio-psychological complex which I refer to as the Panoptic Fantasy. I see Dickens as accomplishing some of the work which will make it possible for modern thinkers to accept and welcome the Freudian vision of the human psyche.

Living in the Present ; an analysis of Tense Switching in Angela Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber' (Eng - 43 Ko).

Carter uses the English tense system in ways which are unusual, breaking the ground rules of English Grammar. In this paper, I attempt to see whether the reader can discern any system beneath what appears to be linguistic anarchy. I suggest that Carter is playing with a distinction between the world of the fairy tale, made up of never-changing archetypes, and a more realistic world of human social conventions.

Visual Arts

L'enfant abattu ; la violence dans quelques tableaux d'Edwin Landseer (Fr)

(This link takes you to the first section - 26 Ko + about 50 Ko in two image files. From there, you may load down the other bits. You may also load it down as one zip file from here (138 Ko))
Sir Edwin Landseer was one of the most popular painters of the Victorian period. His portraits, of members of the aristocracy, of the animals they liked to pet and of the animals they liked to kill, were in great demand, and prints of his works hung on many British walls. But Landseer's way of seeing the world was already outdated ; his glorification of the hunt, of blood and violent death made him suspect in the eyes of such as Ruskin. I here look at the enormous problems that Landseer was faced with when asked to produce a group portrait of the Royal Family disporting themselves in the Scottish Highlands, and try to analyse the reasons, both sociological and psychological, why he failed in his attempt. This paper is taken from my doctoral thesis.

Anthropological Discourse

(You may wish to consult my Anthro-History source-page, giving links to web-available documents on the history of anthropology).

(Language - English or French - and size in Ko indicated in brackets)

Anchors in the Desert Sand

Another look at the development of Australian Ethnography from spencer & Gillen through to Phyllis Kaberry. This time, the main weight of the argument falls on the odd figure of Daisy Bates and her fantasies of cannibalism.

Extinguished Voices; Spencer, Gillen, and the Last Aborigines

Draught for a talk at a congress at Lille 3 in December 2003. Gillen and Spencer were particularly interested in the old men of the Arunta, who they saw as embodying the purity of their culture, before the fall. But in their writings we can find traces of those who were doing their best to adapt and survive under the new dispensation.

From Culture to Cultures

From Tyler's conception of culture as a totality to later conceptions of human societies as exhibiting a multitude of discrete cultures - a look at how this change occurred in the field of Australian ethnology.

The Anthropologist's Magician

Paper based on a talk given at the Colloquium 'Mages et Magicens' at the Institut Catholique de Paris in December of 2002. A look at how the anthropologist has both analyzed and mythologized the magician.

Incest ; Frontiers and Syncretism (Eng - 45 Ko)

This paper was read during a conference at the Université of Franche-Comté. In it, I look at how the troubled concept of incest is used in the writings of the Australian ethnologists, Spencer and Gillen, and in the writings of Malinowski.

The Anthropologist's Bagmen : Frazer, Spencer and Gillen, and the Primitive in Australia (Eng - 45 Ko)

This paper was read at the 'Cultures of Commonwealth' workshop at the SAES congress in 1998, and published in 'Cultures of the Commonwealth ; Essays and Studies (Rewriting History)', No. 5, Winter 1998-99. Spencer and Gillen's ethnographies provided the basis for theoretical works in anthropology from Frazer to Levi-Strauss but their own theoretical contributions have been overlooked. In the wake of Howard Morphy and John Mulvaney's attempts to revitalize interest in their work, I look at some of the reasons why they faded from view.

The Anthropologist's Eye for the Bushie Lubra (Eng - 61 Ko)

First draught of paper for the colloquium 'Shamelessness' at Paris VII (November 2000). Frank Gillen offers to take a photo of one of the maids, Polly, in her 'bush clobber'. Polly is not having any. What was Gillen up to?

Of Lice and Men (Eng - 21 Ko)

Everyone and her dog seems to have a theory of how and why our species evolved. This is mine. As it's unlikely ever to be published anywhere, you'd better read it here.

Evolution or Révolution ; a review of Chris Knight's 'Blood Relations'. (Eng or Fr - 45 Ko).

This paper was delivered at the University of Le Havre in 2000. I examine Chris Knight's theory of the origins of humanity as put forward in his book 'Blood Relations'. This can be read in parallel with the preceding paper.