Raymond Corbey
Associate Professor
Room D 238
P.O. Box 90153
NL-5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands
Phone +31 13 466 2617
Fax +31 13 466 2892
E-mail: r.corbey@uvt.nl or r.corbey@arch.leidenuniv.nl
Expertise
Keywords
News and Events
Curriculum Vitae
Publications
Current Research Projects
External Recognition
Teaching
Other activities
Expertise
My research concentrates on human and animal cognition, sociality and culture in an evolutionary perspective. I look at current philosophical and theoretical views and their history, in particular how they guide research in ethnology, palaeoanthropology and primatology. See also http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Corbey (in Dutch).
Keywords
• Comparison of cultures• Cultural diversity
• History of cultural anthropology
• Human evolution
• Human-animal relationships
• Philosophy
• Philosophy of social sciences and humanities
• Tribal art
News and events
Curriculum Vitae
Degrees- BA Philosophy 1975, BA Anthropology 1976, BA psychology 1979, MA philosophy 1982, PhD Philosophy 1988, all Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
- 1982-1983 visiting scholar, Husserl Institute, Leuven University; 1983-1988 Ph D candidate, philosophy, Radboud University
- 1988-1990 junior lecturer, cultural philosophy, Radboud University
- Since 1990 lecturer, philosophical anthropology and cultural philosophy, Tilburg University; next to that from 1993-1998 senior researcher, Dept. of Archaeology, Leiden University and since 2005, Chair, Epistemology of Archaeology and Anthropology, Dept. of Archaeology and Dept. of Philosophy, Leiden University
Publications
Key Publications- The Metaphysics of Apes: Negotiating the Animal-Human
Boundary, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press (Italian
translation: Metafisiche delle scimmie, transl. by Paola Cavalieri, Bollati
Boringhieri, Torino, 2008).
- Studying Human Origins: Disciplinary History and Epistemology, with Wil Roebroeks (Eds.), Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2001
- Tribal Art Traffic: A Chronicle of Taste, Trade and Desire in Colonial and Post-Colonial Times, Amsterdam: KIT-Publishers/Royal Tropical Institute, 2000
- Ape, Man, Apeman: Changing Views since 1600, with Bert Theunissen (Eds.), Evaluative Proceedings of the Symposium Ape, Man, Apeman: Changing Views since 1600 (Leiden 1993), Leiden: Dept. of Prehistory, Leiden University, 1995
- Alterity, Identity, Image: Selves and Others in Society and Scholarship, with Joep Leerssen (Eds.), Amsterdam Studies in Cultural Identity I, Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1991
- Menschen, Menschenaffen, Affenmenschen: Zur Geschichte der Idee der Menschlichen Sonderstellung, in Katharina Blesch et al. (Eds.), Tierrechte: Eine interdisziplinäre Herausforderung, Erlangen: Harald Fischer Verlag (forthcoming)
- Laying aside the spear: Hobbesian warre and the Maussian gift, in Ton Otto, Henrik Thrane and Helle Vandkilde (Eds.), Warfare and Society: Archaeological and Social Anthropological Perspectives, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press 2006, 29-36
- Archaeology and Art (with Robert Layton and Jeremy Tanner), in Companion to Archaeology, Ed. John Bintliff, London and New York: Blackwell, 2004: 357-379
- Destroying the graven image: Religious iconoclasm on the Christian frontier, Anthropology Today 19 (2003), Nr. 4: 10-14
- Periodisations and double standards in the study of the Palaeolithic, in W. Roebroeks et al. (Eds.), Hunters of the Golden Age: The Mid-Upper Palaeolithic of Eurasia, 30,000-20,000 BP, Leiden: University of Leiden with the European Science Foundation, 2000: 77-86; also as Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia 31 (2000)
- De l'histoire naturelle à l'histoire humaine: Comment conceptualiser les origines de la culture?, in Albert Ducros, Jacqueline Ducros & Frédéric Joulian, La nature est-elle naturelle? Histoire, épistémologie et applications récentes du concept de culture, Paris, Editions Errance, 1998: 223-238
- Inventaire et surveillance: L'appropriation de la nature à travers l'histoire naturelle, in C. Blanckaert et al. (Eds.), Le Muséum au premier siècle de son existence, Paris: Archives du Muséum national d'Histoire Naturelle, 1997: 541-557
- Ethnographic showcases, 1870-1930, Cultural Anthropology: Journal of the Society for Cultural Anthropology 8 (1993): 338-369; also in J. Nederveen Pieterse & B. Parekh (Eds.), The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power, London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1995: 57-80
- Ambiguous apes, in P. Cavalieri & P. Singer (Eds.), The Great Ape Project: Equality beyond Humanity, London: Fourth Estate,1993, 126-136 (also: New York, St. Martins Press, 1994; German translation 1994; Italian translation 1994, Spanish translation 1995)
- Freud et le sauvage, in C.Blanckaert (Ed.), Des sciences contre l'homme II:Aunom du Bien, Paris: Editions Autrement, 1993: 83-103
Current Research Projects
Paradigm struggles in the anthropological disciplinesThis research project deals with paradigm struggles in the anthropological disciplines, in particular clashes between verstehende (interpretive, hermeneutic) and erklaerende (evolutionary, functionalist) approaches in ethnological, archaeological, and palaeoanthropological research as well as between various articulations of disciplinary identity. The approach taken is epistemological (cf. Grundlagenforschung): looking not directly at empirical data as such but at how these are handled conceptually in terms of theoretical and philosophical presuppostions. A major focus of this research is constituted by conflicting conceptual strategies, in anthropology, regarding cooperation/conflict, ritual, and myth (narrative) - in present-day humans as well as early hominins. There is intensive cooperation with several anthropological/archaeological research programs at Leiden University.
Teaching
I teach courses in philosophical anthropology, cultural philosophy and epistemology of the human sciences.
External Recognition
Other activities
Next to my appointement at Tilburg University I hold a chair in the epistemology of the human sciences (in particular archaeology and anthropology) at Leiden University.
