David Lipset
· ProfessorVerifiedUniversity of Minnesota · Anthropology
Active 1981–2026
About
David Lipset is a Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on masculinity, personhood and modernity, the state of the Pacific, and various aspects of symbolic, political-legal, and psychoanalytic anthropology. His work includes studies related to Bakhtinian dialogism, Papua New Guinea, the Sepik River, the Pacific, romance, the body, non-Western people in mass media, climate change and culture, and social theory. As a faculty member, he contributes to the understanding of social and cultural dynamics through interdisciplinary approaches within anthropology.
Research topics
- Sociology
- History
- Art
- Political Science
- Media studies
- Environmental ethics
- Literature
- Philosophy
- Art history
- Law
- Aesthetics
- Gender studies
Selected publications
The Australian Journal of Anthropology · 2026-01-06
article1st authorCorrespondingJournal of the Royal Anthropological Institute · 2026-04-10
article1st authorCorrespondingAnthropos · 2025-01-01
article1st authorCorrespondingJournal of the Royal Anthropological Institute · 2025-01-26
article1st authorCorrespondingThis attractive, coffee-table catalogue, which is an abbreviated version of an earlier, 2018 publication, is the product of about ten years of research and a series of exhibits staged during roughly the same time period. The authors lavish objects in the Vatican collection with all kinds of love in the form of brief exegeses, stunning photography not only of them, but also of people and places, all of which is combined with a narrative of visits made to communities throughout Oceania and Island Southeast Asia. The goal of the latter, or what the authors call their ‘reconnecting philosophy’ (p. 376), was to learn about the historical cultural context in which the objects were originally created. Willy-nilly, contemporary anxieties also emerge, as does a story about the Catholic mission in this part of the world. The text is divided into the conventional geographical zones associated with the insular Pacific. Beginning with Micronesia, we see turtle shell spoons, a statue of a bowl-carrying woman, a toy outrigger transporting the body of a deceased missionary, among other artefacts. We also learn about nuclear testing in the Bikini Atoll in 1954, the contamination that resulted, and ongoing conservation efforts indigenous people are making today by establishing marine reserves and so forth. ‘The people and the Catholic Church’, so the authors reckon, ‘are … battl[ing] … for Oceania and their environments’ (p. 49). In the Polynesia section, statues of the deities Rongo and Ru and an 1836 ritual staff from Mangareva stand out, together with a wooden chest containing relics of ancestors that a family of converts gave to missionaries in 1785. A painting by a Belgian priest that incorporated Hawaiian cosmology is included as well. Gorgeous photos of stone moai statues bathed in amber light from Rapa Nui and jade ornaments follow, together with a chiefly sceptre and a woven cloak from Aotearora/New Zealand. In addition, the Maori material includes a notable scroll that was given to Pope Pius in 1904, as a condolence following the death of Pope Leo XIII. Moving on to eastern Melanesia, there are images of objects from Ambryn, a Choiseul war canoe, door jambs, and other things. A chief's house is discussed in detail. When the authors visited New Caledonia, ‘cultural custodians’ regaled them with stories about relations between nineteenth-century missionaries and chiefs. Exegeses of Bougainville objects do not fail to cite the work of pioneering anthropologists Beatrice Blackwood and Richard Parkinson, as well as Father Patrick O'Reilly, a priest who served there for almost forty years. Inevitably, a subsidiary theme of the book is syncretism. The Bougainville material goes on to feature a Madonna and child figurine that the church commissioned in 1935; and the authors met descendants of its carver. But the text does also acknowledge the grim, ten-year war (1988-98) caused by disputed land claims and the environmental damage done by a big mining project. Perhaps the highlight of the catalogue is the extraordinary Sepik collection assembled by Father Franz Kirschbaum, who founded the mission there in 1913 and went on to serve for the next 35 years or so, during which time he bought or came into the possession of no fewer than 1000 artifacts, many of which were shipped to the Vatican for its 1925 Exposition. Objects from middle-river, photos of Iatmul-speaking villages, of course appear, but so are striking pieces from lower river tributaries, such as a shield from the upper Keram, a Mundugumor suspension hook from the Yuat, and a remarkable series of 18 feathered, molon mosaics from this same area. The authors made ‘reconnecting’ visits in 2018 to Imboando village along the lower river and to Palimbei and Kamindimbit on the middle-river and were warmly welcomed as they visited churches, showed people old photos, and once again attended to local worries about illegal logging and the damage the large Frieda River mine up-river that was under construction might do to the environment and their subsistence economy. Limits on time and space prohibit me from doing justice to everything in this ample volume. But I must add that it does go on to survey the church's holdings from Bali and Minangabau, as well as elsewhere. And it concludes with a discussion of Aboriginal Australia, which draws from Katherine Aigner's extensive fieldwork among people and cultures in this area. This magnificent catalogue, I must observe, is the outcome of an odd, political paradox. On the one hand, it is a consequence of the Vatican's centuries-long mission to Oceania and Island Southeast Asia in order to ‘save souls’ and the comprehensive challenges proselytizing the Gospel posed to indigenous cosmologies and their modes of expressive culture. Examples of the latter were obviously carted off to Rome in the process, where they came to be desacralized and redefined as ‘art’. On the other, it is also the proud product of efforts to celebrate and honour the church's ongoing relationship with its far-flung parishioners. By acknowledging the objects, the ancestors who created them, and their contemporary, living communities, the book thus remakes and repairs both the past and the church's moral standing. As Pope John Paul II put it: ‘We must respect each culture and never ask people to renounce it’ (p. 2). The volume is therefore both a sparkling assertion of this contemporary commitment to relativism and an implicit admission of its contradictory roots.
Journal de la Société des océanistes · 2025-01-01
article1st authorCorrespondingOceania · 2025-03-01
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingEuropean Journal of Social Theory · 2024-10-29 · 1 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingReview of The Convert by David Lipset
Waka Kuaka | The Journal of the Polynesian Society · 2024-12-01
article1st authorCorrespondingOceania · 2024-11-01
article1st authorCorrespondingRiver Life and the Upswing of Nature
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology · 2024-07-09
article1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 9 shared
Daniela Kraemer
- 9 shared
Jeffrey W. Mantz
Cornell University
- 9 shared
Dan Jørgensen
- 9 shared
Margaret Jolly
Australian National University
- 8 shared
Eric Kline Silverman
Christopher Newport University
- 4 shared
Paul Roscoe
- 2 shared
Jamon Alex Halvaksz
- 2 shared
Kathleen Barlow
Awards & honors
- McKnight Land Grant Professorship
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