prof.dr. N. (Niko) Besnier

Afdeling Sociologie en Antropologie

Niko Besnier is Professor of Cultural Anthropology in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology of the University of Amsterdam. He has also taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1986-88), Yale University (1989-95), Victoria University of Wellington (1996-2002), and UCLA (2002-05). He has held visiting appointments or fellowships at the University of Hawai’i, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, University of Auckland, Kagoshima University, and Waseda University.

Although gossip is disapproved of across the world's societies, it is a prominent feature of sociality, whose role in the construction of society and culture cannot be overestimated. In particular, gossip is central to the enactment of politics: through it people transform difference into inequality and enact or challenge power structures. Based on the author's intimate ethnographic knowledge of Nukulaelae Atoll, Tuvalu, this work uses an analysis ofgossip as political action to develop a holistic understanding of a number of disparate themes, including conflict, power, agency, morality, emotion, locality, belief, and gender. It brings together two methodological traditions - the microscopic analysis of unelicited interaction and the macroscopic interpretation of social practice - that are rarely wedded successfully.Drawing on a broad range of theoretical resources, Niko Besnier approachesgossip from several angles. A detailed analysis of how Nukulaelae's people structure their gossip interactions demonstrates that this structure reflects and contributes to the atoll's political ideology, which wavers between a staunch egalitarianism and a need for hierarchy. His discussion then turns to narratives of specific events in whichgossip played an important role in either enacting egalitarianism or reinforcing inequality. Embedding gossip in a broad range of communicative practices enables Besnier to develop a nuanced analysis of how gossip operates, demonstrating how it allows some to gain power while others suffer because of it.