Michael D. Jackson

This article is about the New Zealand poet and academic. For the American singer-songwriter, see Michael Jackson.

Michael D. Jackson. Courtesy Columbia University.

Michael D. Jackson
Born	1940 Nelson, New Zealand
Education	B.A., Victoria University of Wellington M.A., University of Auckland Ph.D., Cambridge University
Occupation	Anthropologist, poet, philosopher, teacher
Employer	Harvard Divinity School

Michael D. Jackson (born 1940) is a New Zealand poet, anthropologist, and academic.

Life

Jackson holds a B.A. from Victoria University of Wellington, an M.A. from the University of Auckland, and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge.

He has taught in anthropology departments at Massey University, the Australian National University, Indiana University Bloomington, and the University of Copenhagen. He is distinguished professor of world religions at Harvard Divinity School.

Jackson is the founder of existential anthropology, a non-traditional sub-field of anthropology using ethnographic methods and drawing on continental traditions of phenomenology, existentialism, and critical theory, as well as American pragmatism, in exploring the human condition from the perspectives of both lifeworlds and worldviews, histories and biographies, collective representations and individual realities. The struggle for being involves a struggle to reconcile shared and singular experiences, acting and being acted upon, being for others and being for oneself. But rather than polarize subject and object, Jackson emphasizes the intersubjective negotiations at the heart of all relationships - whether between persons, persons and things, persons and language - and shows that being-in-the-world consists of endless dilemmas and constant oscillations in consciousness that admit of only temporary, imagined, narrative or ritualized resolutions. Insofar as anthropological understanding is attained through conversations and events in which the ethnographer's prejudices, ontological assumptions, and emotional dispositions are at play, the ethnographer cannot pretend to be an impartial observer, producing objective knowledge. Jackson's published work fully discloses the contexts in which understandings are negotiated, arrived at, or, in some instances, unattainable.

Jackson's recent books have explored diverse topics such as well-being in one of the world's poorest societies (Life Within Limits), the relation between religious experience and limit situations (The Palm at the End of the Mind), the interplay between egocentric and sociocentric modes of being (Between One and One Another), and writing as a technology for creating connections that transcend the limits of ordinary communication (The Other Shore).

He has conducted fieldwork among the Kuranko of Sierra Leone from 1969, among the Warlpiri of Australia’s Northern Territory between 1989 and 1991, and among the Kuku Yalangi of Cape York Peninsula in 1993 and 1994.

Writing

Jackson's poetry has appeared in Poetry NZ, and in The Poetry Archive.

A critic wrote that, In Dead Reckoning, Jackson deploys "a navigator’s term for estimating one’s location based upon extrapolations of distance and direction from one’s last-known position. The eponymous poem cements the metaphor’s connection to personal identity."

In Being of Two Minds (2012), Jackson explores the existential quandaries of being torn between seemingly irreconcilable affections, identifications, and places of personal anchorage. Critic Vincent O'Sullivan writes, "What one hears in his readings is the modest, confidant, international voice that drives his poems, the conversing of a man who, as ever, is on one road to find another."

Recognition

• 1976 - Commonwealth Poetry Prize, Latitudes of Exile
• 1977 - Jessie Mackay Poetry Award
• 1981 - New Zealand Book Award for Poetry, for Wall
• 1982 - Sotheby's International Poetry Competition
• 1983 - Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship
• 1984 - Mattara Poetry Prize (University of Newcastle, Australia)
• 2006 - Honorary Doctor of Literature (Victoria University, Wellington)
• 2012 - Lifetime Achievement Award, Society for Humanist Anthropology

Except where noted, award information courtesy The Poetry Archive.

Publications

Poetry

• Latitudes of Exile: Poems, 1965-1975. Dunedin, NZ; J. McIndoe, 1976.
• Wall: Poems, 1976-1979. Dunedin, NZ; J. McIndoe, 1980.
• Going On. Dunedin, NZ; J. McIndoe, 1985.
• Duty Free: Selected poems, 1965-1988. Dunedin, NZ; J. McIndoe, 1989.
• The Blind Impress Palmerston North, NZ: Dunmore Press, 1997.
• Antipodes. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1996.
• Dead Reckoning. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2006.
• Being of Two Minds. Wellington: Roger Steele, 2011.
• Midwinter at Walden Pond. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2013.

Novels

• Rainshadow: A novel. Dunedin, NZ; J. McIndoe, 1988.
• Barawa, and the Ways Birds Fly in the Sky: An ethnographic novel. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1986.

Short fiction

• Pieces of Music. Auckland: Vintage, 1994.

Non-fiction

• Aspects of Symbolism and Composition in Maori Art. The Hague, Netherlands: Nijhoff, 1972.
• The Kuranko: Dimensions of social reality in a west African society. London: C. Hurst, 1977; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977.
• Personhood and Agency: The Experience of self and other in African cultures: Papers presented at a symposium on African folk models and their application, held at Uppsala University, August 23-30, 1987 (by Jackson & Ivan Karp). Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala University, 1980.
• Allegories of the Wilderness: Ethics and ambiguity in Kuranko narratives. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1982.
• Paths Towards a Clearing: Radical empiricism and ethnographic inquiry. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989.
• At Home in the World. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995.
• Things As They Are: New directions in phenomenological anthropology. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996.
• Minima Ethnographica: Intersubjectivity and the anthropological project. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
• The Politics of Storytelling: Violence, transgression, and intersubjectivity. Copenhagen, Denmark: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, 2002.
  • also published as The Politics of Storytelling: Variations on a theme by Hannah Arendt. Copenhagen, Denmark: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, 2013.
• In Sierra Leone. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.
• Existential Anthropology: Events, exigencies and effects. New York: Berghahn Books, 2005.
• The Accidental Anthropologist: A memoir. Dunedin, NZ: Longacre, 2006.
• Excursions. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.
• The Palm at the End of the Mind: Relatedness, religiosity, and the real. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009.
• Life Within Limits: Well-being in a world of want Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.
• Between One and One Another. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013.
• Road Markings: An anthropologist in the Antipodes. Dunedin, NZ: Rosa Mira, 2012.
• The Other Shore: Essays on writers and writing. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013.
• Lifeworlds: Essays in existential anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
• The Wherewithal of Life: Ethics, migration, and the question of wellbeing. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of New Zealand poets

External links

Poems

• Three poems in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin

Prose

• "The Philosopher Who Would Not Be King", Harvard Divinity Bulletin, 38:3-4 (Summer/Autumn 2010)

Books

• Michael Jackson at Amazon.com
• Michael Jackson at the New Zealand Literature File

About

• Jackson, Michael at the New Zealand Book Council
• Michael D. Jackson at Harvard Divinity School