A Conversation with Marilyn Strathern

Abstract

Professor Strathern recently delivered the 25th annual Westermarck Memorial Lecture in Helsinki: the lecture, titled ‘Comparing Concerns’, was published in issue 4/2009 of Suomen Antropologi. In the lecture Professor Strathern highlighted a number of unvoiced assumptions prevalent in the fields of organ, tissue and blood donations, through a comparison of contexts that are often considered incompatible. This is a perspective that has been dominant in much of her work: opening up new angles of approach through comparisons from a broad range of fields including personhood, gender, systems of kinship, law, intellectual and cultural property, and new reproductive technologies, to mention but some of her interests. In addition, she has been an active discussant onquestions of administrative reforms in academia, though she does not regard herself as political in the sense that many people who read her work actually do. These were the issues that were foremost in our minds as we sat down for a conversation with Professor Strathern. In between her Westermarck lecture, a seminar held in her honour, and the Finnish Anthropological Society Christmas party, time was a scarce resource; we therefore decided to waste no words on idle chit-chat and dove right in at the deep end.