The Functional Fallacy: On the Supposed Dangers of Name Repetition

Abstract

UNSPECIFIED History and AnthropologyPublicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions for aut hors and subscript ion informat ion: ht t p:/ / t andfonline.com/ loi/ ghan20The Functional Fallacy: On the Supposed Dangers of Name Repetition This art icle m ay be used for research, t eaching, and privat e st udy purposes. Any subst ant ial or syst em at ic reproduct ion, redist ribut ion, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, syst em at ic supply, or dist ribut ion in any form t o anyone is expressly forbidden.The publisher does not give any warrant y express or im plied or m ake any represent at ion t hat t he cont ent s will be com plet e or accurat e or up t o dat e. The accuracy of any inst ruct ions, form ulae, and drug doses should be independent ly verified wit h prim ary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, act ions, claim s, proceedings, dem and, or cost s or dam ages what soever or howsoever caused arising direct ly or indirect ly in connect ion wit h or arising out of t he use of t his m at erial.

The core of affects: namer and named in Bahia (Brazil)

“…One's name may be the same as that of another person (a namesake, see Pina‐Cabral ; ) or it may be a teknonym (see Needham ), in which case each time the name is used – by us or apropos of us – it co‐evokes that other person in a more or less explicit manner, depending on circumstance. There is, however, another kind of affective echo in names, which is related to the fact that our names also bear continued identities because other persons attributed them to us.…”

“…I believe that the ethnographic material I have been collecting concerning naming processes among Portuguese‐speakers (Pina‐Cabral ; ) allows us to extend the insight that such continued identities are not merely mental processes but are inscribed in the world around us (in things, spaces, words, narratives, dictionaries, etc.) – they inhere in the world we cohabit .…”

We are not Alone! (At least, Most of us aren't)

“…Historians and anthropologists have remarked that in small European villages, many individuals shared the same identity. In small settings, where everyone was known to everyone else, there was no “collective interest in the clear and unambiguous individuation of persons through their names”, writes Professor João de Pina‐Cabral 1 . Instead, someone called John Martin might have been better identified by nicknames (Big John), toponyms (John from the lake) and paraphrases (the son of Jake).…”

On the Problem of the Namesake

“…As much as the editorial team believes that ORCID is an important innovation, our commitment to what Jason Baird Jackson and Ryan Anderson (, 236) have called “a critical anthropology of scholarly communication” means that we do not advocate approaching ORCID as a self‐evident good. This editorial opens with the example of the Orokaiva name system to make the point that the so‐called name disambiguation problem is not universally understood to be a problem at all (see also Pina‐Cabral ). Even as we have come to recognize it as a problem in scholarly publishing, we also want to honor and engage with feminist efforts to challenge norms of individual authorship that involve writing under the sign of pseudonyms and collectives (e.g., Gibson‐Graham , xli– xlii).…”

“…Yet our aim is also to boost the visibility of ORCID within anthropology as a discipline. The American Anthropological Association's member database now includes an optional field for ORCID identifiers (Liebow 2014), and the unified manuscript submission system that is currently being developed would be a logical point at which to implement ORCID associationwide. For now, though, keep an eye out for the green ORCID icon in the pages of Cultural Anthropology, and consider taking thirty seconds to register for an identifier yourself at https://orcid.org/register.…”