James Leach publications
Publications - Books
2014 Subversion, Conversion, Development: Cross Cultural Knowledge Encounter and the Politics of Design (edited with Lee Wilson), The MIT Press, ‘Infrastructures Series’ (eds. Geof Bowker, Paul Edwards). http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/subversion-conversion-development
2010 (co authored with Porer Nombo) Reite Plants. An Ethno-botanical Study in Tok Pisin and English, Canberra: ANU EPress (Asia-Pacific Environment Monographs Series 4) http://epress.anu.edu.au/reite_plants_citation.html
2009 (ed. with Sandra Bamford) Genealogy Beyond Kinship. Sequence, Transmission and Essence in Social Theory and Beyond. Contributors: Jeanette Edwards, Tim Ingold, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Gisli Palsson, Rita Astuti, Rebecca Cassidy, Hillary Cunningham, Sandra Bamford, James Leach. Oxford: Berghahn Books. http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=BamfordKinship
2004 (with Simon Biggs) Autopoeisis: novelty, meaning and value. Artwords and Sheffield Hallam University Press.
2003 Creative Land. Place and procreation on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books. http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=LeachCreative
2001 (ed. with Lawrence Kalinoe) Rationales of Ownership. Ethnographic Studies of transactions and claims to ownership in contemporary Papua New Guinea. New Delhi and Port Moresby: U.B.S. Publishers’ Distributors Ltd./UPNG Law Faculty Publication Unit.
Reissued (2004) by Sean Kingston Publishing. Contributors: Tony Crook, Melissa Demian, Eric Hirsch, Stuart Kirsch, Laurence Kalinoe, James Leach, Marilyn Strathern. www.seankingston.co.uk
Peer Reviewed Journals - Editor
2017 Matter(s) of relations: Transformation and presence in Melanesian and Australian life-cycle rituals. Anthropological Forum: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Comparative Sociology, Guest Ed. with Pascale Bonnemère and Borut Telban (Special Issue) 27:1.
2012 Guest Ed. with Richard Davis, Special Issue Recognising and Translating Knowledge. Anthropological Forum: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Comparative Sociology, 22:3.
2006 Leonardo Special Section: Arts and Humanities Research Council/Arts Council England ‘Arts and Science Research Fellowship Scheme’. Co-edited with Bronac Ferran and Tony White, Leonardo 39(5).
Articles in Peer Reviewed Journals
Porer Nombo, James Leach & Urufaf Anip. 2021. Drawing on Human and Plant Correspondences on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea, Anthropological Forum, DOI: 10.1080/00664677.2021.1990012 Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/CDT73DM2SCJ34ZCKSW3G/full?target=10.1080/00664677.2021.1990012
2020. Creativity in an Occidental mode, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 45:1, 41-45, DOI: 10.1080/03080188.2020.1724378 Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/HZRFYWFGHRCZHWSZXUHF/full?target=10.1080/03080188.2020.1724378
James Leach & Catherine J. Stevens. 2020. Relational creativity and improvisation in contemporary dance, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 45:1, 95-116, DOI: 10.1080/03080188.2020.1712541 Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03080188.2020.1712541
2021. The mystery of the dying language. Comment on Kulick, Don. 2019. A death in the rainforest: How a language and a way of life came to an end in Papua New Guinea. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Hau 20(2): 660-663. Available at: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/709967
Biersack, A. L. Goldman et al. (2020) Reading and Remembering the Anthropologist James F. Weiner, Oceania, Vol. 91, Issue (2021): 2–25.
2019. Documents against ‘Knowledge’; immanence and transcendence and approaching legal materials, Law Text Culture, 23, 2019, 16-39. Available at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol23/iss1/3
2018. Review, Damon, Frederick H.: Trees, Knots, and Outriggers. Environmental Knowledge in the Northeast Kula Ring, Human Ecology. Pre-publication version available here (Damon review final pdf). The final publication is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-018-9993-y
2017 Dance Becoming Knowledge. Designing a Digital Body. With Scott deLahunta, Leonardo Vol. 50, No. 5, pp. 461–467.
2016 “Retracing Steps”: An Interview with Choreographer and Artist Tanya Voges, (with Tanya Voges and Catherine J. Stevens), Memory Studies 1-9. DOI: 10.1177/1750698016654877
2015 The death of a drum: objects, persons, and changing social form on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 21, 620-640. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9655.12253
2015 ‘Bodystorming: Effects of Collaboration and Familiarity on Improvising Contemporary Dance.’ (with Catherine Stevens) Cognitive Processing – International Quarterly of Cognitive Science. DOI: 10.1007/s10339-015-0682-0
2015 ‘Comment’ on ‘Anthropology through Levinas. Knowing the Uniqueness of Ego and the Mystery of Otherness’ by Nigel Rapport, CA Forum on Theory in Anthropology, Current Anthropology 56: 2 pp. 267-268.
2014 ‘The Time of Money: property and sovereignty as alternative narratives of land and value near Ramu-Nico, Madang, PNG’, Journal de la Société des Océanistes 138-139, pp. 53-62.
2013 ‘We will make a man out of you’. Taro styles and Initiation Brands on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea’. UC Davis Law Review 47:2 pp 633-655.
2013 ‘Choreographic Objects: contemporary dance, digital creations, and prototyping social visibility.’ Prototyping Cultures: art, science and politics in beta. ed. Alberto Corsin-Jimenez, Special Issue: Journal of Cultural Economy.
2012 ‘Leaving the Magic Out: Knowledge and Effect in Different Places’, Anthropological Forum: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Comparative Sociology, 22:3, 251-270
2012 (with Richard Davis) ‘Recognising and Translating Knowledge: Navigating the Political, Epistemological, Legal and Ontological’, Anthropological Forum: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Comparative Sociology, 22:3, 209-223
2012 ‘La Mort du Tambor. Choses uniques sur la rai Coast de Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée’, Techniques & Culture 58: 28-47.
2012 ‘Constituting aesthetics and utility. Copyright, patent, and the purification of knowledge objects in and art and science collaboration’, HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2 (1) : 248-267.
2011 ‘The Self of the Scientist: Material for the Artist. Emergent Distinctions in Interdisciplinary Collaborations’ Social Analysis 55(3): 143-163.
2011 ‘Twenty Toea has no power any more’: property, customary tenure, and pressure on land near the Ramu Nickel Project Area, Madang, PNG. Pacific Studies 34 (2/3): 295-322.
2009 (with Dawn Nafus and Bernhard Krieger) ‘Freedom Imagined. Ethics and Aesthetics in Open Source Software Design’. Ethnos 74:1, pp 51-71.
2008 (with Lorraine V. Aragon) ‘Arts and Owners: Intellectual Property Law and the Politics of Scale in Indonesian Arts.’ American Ethnologist Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 607–631
2006 ‘Extending Contexts, Making Possibilities’ Leonardo 39(5): 447-451.
2006 ‘Team Spirit’. Generating Community and the Pervasive Influence of Place formation in a Contemporary Papua New Guinean Setting’. Journal of Material Culture 11, (1 + 2 Special Edition in Honour of Barbara Bender, (ed) C. Tilley).
2006 ‘Vies et viscères: récits d’extraction d’organes sur la Rai Coast de Papouasie–Nouvelle–Guinée.’ Cahiers du Pacifique Sud Contemporain 4. À L'épreuve du capitalisme. Dynamiques économiques dans le Pacifique, Paris: L'Harmattan. pp130-158.
2005 ‘Being in Between. Art-Science Collaborations and a Technological Culture’. Social Analysis 49 (1) 141-160.
2003 ‘Owning Creativity. Cultural Property and the Efficacy of Kastom on the Rai Coast of PNG’ Journal of Material Culture 8(2): 123-143.
2002 ‘Drum and Voice. Aesthetics and social process on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea’, (Winner of the 1999 J.B. Donne essay prize in the Anthropology of Art) Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 8, 713-734.
2000 (with H. Englund) ‘Ethnography and the Meta-Narratives of Modernity.’ Current Anthropology 41(2): 225-248.
2000 ‘Situated Connections: rights and intellectual resources in a Rai Coast Society.’ Social Anthropology 8(2): 163-179.
2000 ‘Multiple Expectations of Ownership’. Melanesian Law Review (Special Issue on Transaction and Transmission of Indigenous Knowledge and Expressions of Culture) 27: 63-76.
1999 ‘Singing the Forest: composition and evocation among a Papua New Guinea People.’ Resonance (Journal of the London Musicians’ Collective) 7.2 pp. 24-27, with 16 minutes original sound recording published on accompanying CD.
Chapters in Peer Reviewed Edited Volumes
2019 with Monika Stern, ‘The Value of Music in Melanesia’, in The Oxford Handbook of Economic Ethnomusicology, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Available as PDF. Leach and Stern – Value of Music)
2019 ‘Making Worlds. The existential and moral imperatives of place making on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea’, in (ed) S. Bamford The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Available as PDF – Existential Landscape)
2018 Process Documentation with the Australian Dance Theatre, (with deLahunta, S., Vincent, JB., Old, E., Stewart, G., Stevens, C.) in Performing Process, eds. H Blades and E. Meehan, London: Intellect.
2016 ‘Making knowledge from movement. The contextual impetus to re-present dance practice’, in Transmission in Motion, ed. Maaike Bleeker, Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
2016 ‘Foreword’, Ownership and Nurture. Studies in Native Amazonian Property Relations, (eds.) M. Brightman, C. Fausto and V. Grotti, Oxford: Berghahn, pp. ix-xii.
2015 ‘Imagination/Making. Working with Others in the Formation of Anthropological Knowledge’. in M. Harris and N. Rapport (eds) Reflections on Imagination. Human Capacity and Ethnographic Method, Burlington VT: Ashgate, pp. 263-272
2014 ‘Anthropology, Cross-Cultural Encounter, and the Politics of Design’, (with L. Wilson), in Subversion, Conversion, Development: Cross Cultural Knowledge Encounter and the Politics of Design (edited with Lee Wilson), Cambridge Mass.: The MIT Press.
2014 ‘Subversion, Conversion, Development. Imaginaries, Knowledge Forms and the Uses of ICTs’, (with L. Wilson), in Subversion, Conversion, Development: Cross Cultural Knowledge Encounter and the Politics of Design (edited with Lee Wilson), Cambridge Mass.: The MIT Press
2013 ‘Waterfall, Movement, Life. Dyed Bark Fibre Skirts in Reite’ in Melanesia: Art and Encounter (eds) L. Bolton, N Thomas, E Bonshek, J Adams and B. Burt, London: British Museum Press. pp. 83-91.
2012 Creativity as a Social Relation? in Remediating the Social, ed. S. Biggs, ELMCIP/The University of Edinburgh: Edinburgh.
2012 ‘Step Inside: The Politics of (making) knowledge objects, in The Politics of Knowledge (eds) Patrick Beart and Fernando Rubio, London: Routledge. pp: 79-95.
2010 ‘Intervening with the social? Ethnographic practice and Tarde’s image of relations between subjects’, in M. Candea, `The Social After Gabriel Tarde’ London: Routledge. Pp: 191-207
2009 ‘Knowledge as Kinship. Mutable essence and the significance of transmission on the Rai Coast of PNG’ in Genealogy Beyond Kinship. Sequence, Transmission and Essence in Social Theory and Beyond, (eds) Sandra Bamford and James Leach, Oxford: Berghahn Books. Pp: 175-192.
2008 ‘An Anthropological Approach to Transactions involving Names and Marks, drawing on Melanesia’, in Trademarks and Brands, an Interdisciplinary Critique, (eds.) Lionel Bently, Jennifer Davis and Jane Ginsburg, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.319-342.
2007 ‘Creativity, Subjectivity, and the Dynamic of Possessive Individualism’ in Creativity and Cultural Improvisation (eds.) T. Ingold and E. Hallam, ASA Monograph 43. Oxford: Berg. Pp: 99-118.
2007 ‘Differentiation and encompassment: A critique of Alfred Gell’s theory of creativity.’ in Thinking Through Things, (eds.) Ami Henare, Martin Holbraad and Sari Wastell, London: Routledge. pp: 167-188.
2006 ‘Out of Proportion? Anthropological Description of Power, Regeneration and Scale on the Rai Coast of PNG’, in Locating the Field. Space, Place and Context in Anthropology (eds) Simon Coleman and Peter Collins. ASA Monograph 42, pp 149-162. Berg: Oxford.
2005 ‘Livers and Lives: Organ extraction narratives on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea’. in Commodification. Things, Agency, and Identities (The Social Life of Things Revisited) (eds.) Peter Geschiere and Wim van Binsbergen, LIT Verlag: Munster.
2005 ‘Disciplinary Specialisation and Collaborative Endeavour: some challenges presented by sci-art projects’. University of Dundee School of Fine Art/Visual Research Centre publication series ‘Learning is understanding in practice’ ISBN: 0-9549977-2-7
2005 ‘Modes of Creativity and the Register of Ownership’, in CODE. Collaboration and Ownership in the Digital Economy (ed) Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, Cambridge M.A.: MIT Press. Pp: 29-44.
2004 ‘Modes of Creativity’ in Transactions and Creations. Property Debates and the Stimulus of Melanesia. (eds). E. Hirsch and M. Strathern, Oxford: Berghahn Books. Pp: 152-175
2001 ‘Land, Trees and History. Disputes involving boundaries and identities in the context of development’, in (eds.) L. Kalinoe and J. Leach, Rationales of Ownership. Pp: 42-56. Ethnographic Studies of transactions and claims to ownership in contemporary Papua New Guinea. New Delhi and Port Moresby: U.B.S. Publishers’ Distributors Ltd./UPNG Law Faculty Publication Unit.
Reports
2010. (with Lee Wilson) ‘Arts and Humanities Research, Citizenship and an Innovative Society’. In Changing the World: the Value of Humanities Research. AHRC.
2009 Enabling Innovation. Creative Investments in Arts and Humanities Research. Provocation paper for AHRC Policy Seminar, Work Foundation, London.
2009 Choreographic Objects. Traces and Artefacts of Physical Intelligence.
2006 Extending Contexts, Making Possibilities. A Report on the Arts and Humanities Research Council/Arts Council England ‘Art and Science Research Fellowships’.
2006 Free/Libre and Open Source Software: Policy Support (FLOSSPOLS) D 16, Gender: Integrated Report of Findings, with Dawn Nafus and Bernhard Krieger (www.flosspols.org).
2005 Statement on Copyright and the Traditional Arts in Indonesia (co-authored).
2003 Rapporteur’s Report and Research Agenda Brief on ‘Traditional Knowledge’. Social Science Research Council, New York (www.ssrc.org).
2003 Evaluation paper commenting on Social Process in the New Technology Arts Fellowships. www.junction.co.uk/ntaf/anthrop.html
1995 ‘Contemporary material culture of Nekgini Speakers, Rai Coast, PNG.’ British Museum Ethnodoc: Leach ‘95. 40 pages + 72 photographs.
1991 'Impacts of Tourism around a National Park' (co-authored). Manchester University Zoconnis Trust Report. 120 pages.
Other
2012 The Task of Anthropology is to Invent Relations. Against the Motion: Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory, Critique of Anthropology 32(1).
2010 A Social Prototype (with Chris Kelty) // Cross Cultural partnership Template (with Wendy Seltzer) Anthropological Research on the Contemporary Episode 3.
2007/8 Partnership Agreement Template. Co-authored with Wendy Selzer, (Birkman Centre for Media Law, Harvard University). http://newmedia.umaine.edu/stillwater/partnership/partnership_template.html
2004 ‘A Dispersed Creativity, or, Persons and Their Boundaries: some broader issues involved in the ownership of Intellectual; Property’. Cambridge Anthropology 24 (1): 21-27.
2002 ‘The Generation of the Free/Open Source Community and the Conditions of Creativity’. www.infonomics.nl/FLOSS/workshop/papers/leach.htm
2001 ‘Comment’ on Joel S. Kahn ‘Anthropology and Modernity’, Current Anthropology 42:(5) 667-8.
1998 'Where does creativity reside: imagining places on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea'. Cambridge Anthropology 20: 1-2. 16-21.