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Senior Lecturer
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+44 (0)1224 272732
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+44-1224-272552
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a.king@abdn.ac.uk
Koryak Net--http://www.koryaks.net/
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Edward Wright G2
Senior Lecturer
BA 1991 (Reed College), MA 1996, PhD 2000 (University of Virginia)
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Personal Details
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Jump to:
http://www.koryaks.net/
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/translating-cultures/
http://www.eth.mpg.de/
http://www.eth.mpg.de/subsites/siberia/index.html
http://www.ssila.org/
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Alexander King joined the department in January 2003. Growing up in Washington State, USA lead to an interest in indigenous people of the northwest coast of America. Two years of teaching English in a Berlin Volkshochschule right after German unification sparked Dr. King's interest in postsocialist societies. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in the Russian Far East (Kamchatka and Magadan Oblast, St. Petersburg archives) since 1995.
He has written on the lives of indigenous and European people living in NE Asia in an ethnography of speaking. Dr. King's theoretical interests focus on the concepts of 'culture' and 'tradition', in terms of how anthropologists use these terms and also in terms of how analogous terms (in Russian) are used by local people in Kamchatka to talk about indigenous people (themselves) and their (own) lives.
His current research is taking a more linguistic turn. He is beginning a project on documenting and describing two variants of Koryak spoken in Kamchatka and an ethnopoetic analysis of oral narratives. This work parallels an on-going interest in Koryak cosmologies and rituals with an focus on collecting myths.
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Circumpolar North and North Pacific (NE Siberia, NW America) symbolic anthropology, linguistic anthropology, indigenous Siberians, political use of culture, performance, narrative, descriptive grammar, mythology, religion, ritual, shamans, language documentation.
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Current research has three strands united by a common focus on language and communication among Koryak people of Siberia: 1) ritual performance and animistic cosmology through communicative practices relating people to other-than-human beings; 2) practices and politics of language revival; 3) oral narratives and practices of storytelling. This last strand includes documenting the language and grammatical description. I have started working on the analysis of wax cylinder recordings of Koryak stories made in 1901, and I am finding that proper ethnopoetics analysis of oral narratives requires a thorough knowledge of the grammatical structures of Koryak as well as understanding the cultural context of narrative metaphors. Thus, I am finally acting upon a long-held interest in verbal morphology, theories of person hierarchy and marking, switch reference, ergativity and other linguistic topics frequenting the pages of Language. I am now preparing to make a short trip of about four weeks to Kamchatka in March/April 2011. This trip will help me prepare several grant proposals.
1) Ritual Communication and Shamanic Cosmologies
Koryaks today are still proudly “pagan” (their term), and many communities conduct annual hunting thanksgiving rituals or cremate the deceased “in the old way.” I am interested in understanding the continuing power and relevance of these practices for contemporary people, especially in terms of the communicative aspects of commensality and conversation among humans, animals, ancestors, and spirits. Much of this communication is non-linguistic and thus cannot be captured with the recording of texts. I have already gathered substantial material on Koryak funerals and an important hunting rituals.
2) Koryak Language Shift and Revitalisation
Koryak is an endangered language and there are various programs to teach it to children, mostly focused on schools. Language shift and revival is one of the most salient issues confronting indigenous peoples everywhere. The causes of language shift are undoubtedly connected to the socio-political subordination of speakers of endangered languages, but the details are complex and still poorly understood. This is also an area where I may be of some help to the local community, and I am working with friends and colleagues in Kamchatka to aid their efforts at revitalizing spoken Koryak.
3) Ethnopoetics of Koryak Oral Narratives
My third research strand, on oral narratives, includes the ethnographic and political aspects of the first two research strands. I was struck by the political power of taking Koryak stories seriously and representing them as poetry organized as lines and verses. In terms of theoretical problems, I seek to combine the superficially antagonistic approaches to oral narratives by Tedlock and Hymes. A key goal is a book of Koryak narratives ethnopoetically transcribed and translated into both Russian and English. Such a book is the kind of work my friends there want me to pursue and might extend into more than one book in Russian and English translations of Koryak originals. Oral narratives are fascinating because they require knowledge and analysis of phonetic, morphological and grammatical processes in the language, as well as understanding of social and cultural context. Themes, problems, and metaphors featured in stories are connected to all kinds of things in wider Koryak society, from cosmological ideas of birth and death, to a cultural sense of humour and ideas of personhood, power, gender and voice.
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2012-14 Endangered Language Documentation Project, 'Documentation of Koryak Ethnopoetics: Stories from Speakers of Non-standard Varieties of Koryak and Nymylan Koryak' (Ref. MDP0268, £128,821)
2006-09 ESRC Research Project, "Dance, Tradition and Power among Alaskan Eskimos" (REF. RES-000-2301545, £120,720)
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AT1003 Peoples of the World: Introduction to Anthropology
AT4030 Anthropology of Myth
SL5509 Advanced Case Studies in Research Ethics (2011)
LN1002 Communication and Language (modules on literacy and orality) AT25082 Perceiving Cultural Differences (2003-09)
AT4013/AT4513 Language in Culture and Society
AT5001 Philosophy and Methods of Research in Social Anthropology, Ethnology and Culture History (module "Language and the Ethnography of Speaking")
AT5501 Philosophy and Methods of Research in Social Anthropology, Ethnology and Culture History II (first part of module, "Power, Ideology and the State")
EF 5002 MLitt programme in Ethnology and Folklore (Module on myth)
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AHRC Peer Review College
Editor, Sibirica: Interdisciplinary Joural of Siberian Studies
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currently on research leave
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