Professor Roger Martin Keesing (16 May 1935 – 7 May 1993) was a linguist

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 and anthropologist

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

, noted for his fieldwork on the Kwaio

Kwaio

Kwaio is an ethnic group found in central Malaita, in the Solomon Islands. According to Ethnologue, they numbered 13,249 in 1999. Much of what is known about the Kwaio is due to the work of the Marxian anthropologist Roger M...

 people of Malaita

Malaita

Malaita is the largest island of the Malaita Province in the Solomon Islands. A tropical and mountainous island, Malaita's pristine river systems and tropical forests have not been exploited. Malaita is the most populous island of the Solomon Islands, with 140,000 people or more than a third of the...

 in the Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands is a sovereign state in Oceania, east of Papua New Guinea, consisting of nearly one thousand islands. It covers a land mass of . The capital, Honiara, is located on the island of Guadalcanal...

, and his writings on a wide range of topics including kinship

Kinship

Kinship is a relationship between any entities that share a genealogical origin, through either biological, cultural, or historical descent. And descent groups, lineages, etc. are treated in their own subsections....

, religion

Religion

Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...

, politics

Politics

Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...

, history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

, cognitive

Cognition

In science, cognition refers to mental processes. These processes include attention, remembering, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. Cognition is studied in various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science...

 anthropology and language

Language

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

. Keesing was a major contributor to anthropology.

He was the son of Felix M. Keesing, another distinguished anthropologist with an interest in the South Pacific

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

. Keesing studied at Stanford

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 and Harvard

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 and began work in 1965 at the University of California, Santa Cruz

University of California, Santa Cruz

The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...

. In 1974 he became a professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Australian National University

Australian National University

The Australian National University is a teaching and research university located in the Australian capital, Canberra.As of 2009, the ANU employs 3,945 administrative staff who teach approximately 10,000 undergraduates, and 7,500 postgraduate students...

 in Canberra

Canberra

Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...

, heading the Department of Anthropology from 1976. In 1990 he moved to McGill University

McGill University

Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...

 in Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

.

In 1974 he wrote a famous article, one of around a hundred published over the course of his career, defining and specifying a view of culture

Culture

Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...

 inspired by linguistics and Marxian thinking. He also wrote several books, and is perhaps best known among students of anthropology as the author of Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective, regarded as one of the most authoritative general introductory works on the subject. This was based on a book originally authored by his father, and was extensively revised by Keesing over the course of many years, beginning with an updated edition of the original in 1971, and continuing with a full rewrite in 1976, revised further in 1981. Since Keesing's death this task was taken up by Dr Andrew Strathern, and the book remains popular.

In 1989, Keesing worked closely with the author to translate Jonathan Fifi'i's autobiography "From pig-theft to parliament : my life between two worlds" which chronicled his life from his poor Kwaio origins through to the Maasina Ruru

Maasina Ruru

Maasina Ruru was an emancipation movement for self-government and self-determination during and after World War II, 1945–1950, credited with creating the movement towards independence for the Solomon Islands...

 movement and onto his career as a politician.

Keesing died suddenly of a heart attack at the Canadian Anthropology Society dance and reception in 1993, and his ashes were transferred to the Solomon Islands, where the families of his Kwaio associates accord him the status of an andalo or ancestral spirit.

Partial bibliography

• Kwaio descent groups. University of California, 1966.
• New Perspectives in Cultural Anthropology. Holt, Rineheart and Winston, 1971 (co-authored with Felix M. Keesing). ISBN 0-03-085486-5.
• Paradigms lost: The new ethnography and the new linguistics. Bobbs-Merrill, 1972.
• Kin Groups and Social Structure. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975. Rpt. Thomson Learning, 1985. ISBN 0-03-012846-3.
• Kwaio dictionary. Australian National University, 1975. ISBN 0-85883-120-1.
• Explorations in role analysis. P. De Ridder, 1975.
• Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976. 2nd ed. CBS College Publishing, 1981. ISBN 0-03-046296-7. 3rd ed. Wadsworth, 1997 (edited by Andrew Strathern). ISBN 0-03-047582-1.
• Elota's Story: The Life and Times of a Solomon Islands Big Man. St. Martin's Press; University of Queensland Press, 1978. Rpt. Thomson Learning, 1983. ISBN 0-03-062897-0.
• Lightning Meets the West Wind: Malaita Massacre. OUP Australia and New Zealand, 1980 (co-authored with Peter Corris). ISBN 0-19-554223-1.
• Kwaio Religion. Columbia University Press, 1982. ISBN 0-231-05341-X.
• Melanesian Pidgin and the Oceanic Substrate. Stanford University Press, 1988. ISBN 0-8047-1450-9.
• Custom and Confrontation: Kwaio Struggle for Cultural Autonomy. University of Chicago Press, 1992. ISBN 0-226-42919-9 (hardcover). ISBN 0-226-42920-2 (paperback).