Tony Crook – författare

What is the nature of knowledge? Anthropology imagines it possible to divide or separate social and analytical relations, whereby knowledge travels between persons as a thing. And yet, Bolivip imagines knowledge as the bodily resources or parts of a person that can be extended or combined with others. This methodological exchange is modelled on a moment from Bolivip - an exchange of skin whereby knowledge is returned in respect of prior nurture and care given, and two people become encompassed by one skin.The Min area of Papua New Guinea has proven to be one of the most enigmatic cultures in anthropological experience. But rather than accept this resistance to analysis as a problem of Melanesian secrecy, this volume suggests that archaic notions of anthropological knowledge have been the problem all along. Taking up the 'Min problem' head on, this study suggests a novel solution to the impasse.The argument works through alternating chapters: an imagistic ethnography of Bolivip describes how arboreal and horticultural metaphors motivate the growth of persons and plants by circulating bodily resources through others. Knowledge here comes from those who contribute to conception, and is withheld until a person is capable of bearing it. These images are used to provide new readings of classic Melanesianist texts - Mead, Bateson and Fortune - substituting theoretical ideas for intimate relations; Weiner and Strathern's own experiments with anthropology modelled on Melanesia; and Barth's reading of secrecy amongst the Min.The book provides an valuable insight into our own assumptions about knowledge and the world by means of insights into the aesthetics of a Papua New Guinean lifeworld.

A new focus on private renting has been brought into sharp relief by the global financial crisis, with its profound impact on mortgage finance, housing markets and government budgets.Written by specially commissioned international experts and structured around common themes, this timely book explores the nature and role of private renting in eight advanced economies around the world.The book examines in depth the size, shape and role of the private rented sector today. Topics covered include the funding, ownership and management of private rental housing. It also pays close attention to regulation of rents and security of tenure, as well as the role of taxation and subsidies. The book offers important insights into recent developments in demand and supply and on the role of individual landlords, property companies and institutional investors in the private rental housing market.The global financial crisis has made acquiring new homes for social renting and for owner occupation more difficult for low and moderate income households. This authoritative study will be of great interest to scholars and policy makers concerned with role of private renting in meeting housing demand and its impact on housing markets and public finances.Contributors: H.S. Anderson, T. Crook, M. Haffner, K. Hulse, R. James III, P.A. Kemp, S. Kofner, M. Pareja-Eastaway, T. Sánchez-Martínez, M.-A. Stamso

This book considers some of the ways in which time appears – and seemingly does it work – through moments of crisis. What can different concepts of time and diverse temporal frameworks tell us about how crises are configured and apprehended?First-hand research is central to the fashioning of ethnography through fieldwork, yet always brings with it a specific time horizon. Recognizing that the ethnographer’s present is not always the best vantage point from which to grasp contemporary issues offers a fresh entry into current debates on how both past and future stimulate social action, and thus reveal its temporal multiplicities. These essays turn to present-day Amazonia and Melanesia to examine in detail the production and reproduction of specific crises and the time horizons they mobilize.The ethnographic themes explored include the transformation of crises prophesized in the past and their implications for the future; what it means to explore perceptions of crisis from the aftermath of recent armed conflict; the multifaceted nature of future horizons precipitated by changing economic policies, when these have bodily as well as social impact; and the amelioration of governmental crisis through initiatives that rely on specific temporal understandings of effective change. Such trajectories are set variously against backgrounds of continuing colonialism, environmental calamity, overt hostility, the absent or over-present state and perceptions of moral degradation. Further analytic reflections examine the ways crisis holds the imagination through subsisting in time; configure international temporal frameworks through depictions of the climate crisis as the ‘tragedy of the horizon’; and highlight a perspective from which to compare the diverse temporal frameworks presented in the preceding chapters.

Low-lying Pacific island nations are experiencing the frontline of sea-level rises and climate change and are responding creatively and making-sense in their own vernacular terms. Pacific Climate Cultures aims to bring Oceanic philosophies to the frontline of social science theorization. It explores the home-grown ways that 'climate change' becomes absorbed into the combined effects of globalization and into a living nexus of relations amongst human and non-humans, spirits and elements. Contributors to this edited volume explore diverse examples of living climate change—from floods and cyclones, through song and navigation, to new forms of art, community initiatives and cultural appropriations—and demonstrate their international relevance in understanding climate change. A Prelude by His Highness Tui Atua Efi and Afterword by Anne Salmond frame an Introduction by Tony Crook & Peter Rudiak-Gould and nine chapters by contributors including John Connell, Elfriede Hermann & Wolfgang Kempf and Cecilie Rubow. Endorsement from Professor Margaret Jolly, Australian National University: This exciting volume offers innovative insights on climate cultures across Oceania. It critically interrogates Western environmental sciences which fail to fully appreciate Oceanic knowledges and practices. It reveals how climate science can be both ‘a weapon of the weak’ and ‘an act of symbolic violence of the powerful’. A compelling series of studies in the Cook islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea and Samoa suggest not diverse cultural constructions of ‘natural facts’ but processes of knowledge exchange and at best a respectful reciprocity in confronting present challenges and disturbing future scenarios. ’Home-grown’ Pacific discourses and ways of living emphasise the interconnections of all life on earth and in our cosmos; they do not differentiate between the natural and the moral, between environmental and cultural transformations. These studies evoke the creative agency of Oceanic peoples, too often seen as on the vanguard of victimhood in global representations of climate change, and offer distinctive visions for all humanity in these troubling times.

Winner of the Royal Town Planning Institute award for research excellenceThis critical examination of the development and implementation of planning gain is timely given recent changes to the economic and policy environment.The book looks both at the British context as well as experience in other developed economies and takes stock of how the policy has evolved. It examines the rationale for planning gain, how it has delivered substantial funds for infrastructure and affordable housing and, in the light of this, how it might continue to play a role in the funding of these.  It also draws on overseas experience, for example on impact fees and public sector land assembly.  It looks at lessons from the past for future policy, both for Britain and for countries overseas.Mechanisms to tap development value are also a global phenomenon in developed market economies - whether through formal taxation or negotiated contributions.  As fiscal austerity becomes an increasingly challenging issue, ‘planning gain’ has grown in importance as a potential source of funding for infrastructure and new affordable housing, with many countries keen to examine, learn from, and adapt the experience of others. a critical commentary of planning gain as a policytimely post credit crunch analysisaddresses recent planning policy changes