Lynn began work at Pomona College in 1975, after having taught at junior colleges, a Cal State Campus, and UC Riverside while in graduate school. He teaches the department's required theory course and Language, Thought and Culture, as well as other courses. He is a social-cultural, cognitive, and linguistic anthropologist especially interested in questions of language, thought, ideology and ethics/morality. His (1977) dissertation at UC Riverside concerned social categories used by Minangkabau people in West Sumatra, Indonesia; the focus was on kinship. He has done field work on kitchen gardens in urban Louisiana (for a master's thesis in Geography at LSU, Baton Rouge), public affairs discourse and ethnocentrism in Claremont and Pomona, California. He has worked collaboratively with Professor Bolton and students, for example on Nepali color terms, and with his professors at UCR and his students here on Orwell;s thinking in relation to political events of 1989 in central Europe; and on the sociology of ethics among Boat people of Southern China.
When not preoccupied with anthropology and allied fields, Lynn takes walks, works in the garden, takes photographs and watches movies with his wife Christine. Christine and Lynn have two children.
Some papers may give an idea of kinds of work that Lynn has pursued (all PDF files):
A paper that dates back to 1983, gives glimpses of an instance of a genre of public affairs discourse -- expressed in newspaper op-ed pieces, lectures, etc. I call this genre "intractible problem-management", and describe how its relatively unimaginative modes of obfuscation operate. click here
A 1985 paper, discusses marriages across what I take to be social class and prestige lines in a West Sumatran village; the paper also addresses a paternity notion that seems to be implicated in the marriage patterns. [This paper is a relatively brief version of a longer, uncompleted paper.] click here
A philosopher friend and I produced this paper (1991) on ethical relativism, of which we addressed relatively early versions in American philosophy. click here
This 1994 paper was stimulated by the breakup of communist governments in Europe in 1989; it addresses its issues in terms of George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four. The paper was a collaboration involving one of my UCR professors and Pomona student, and a Polish anthropologist. click here
I was able to collaborate with another one of my UCR professors and another Pomona student in this 1999 paper on construals of personhood and ethics among Boat People in Southern China. click here
Horace Minor wrote "Body Ritual among the Nacirema" originally for the "New Yorker," but the "American Anthropologist" published it, in 1956. A long version (click here) and a short version (click here) of my analysis of student reactions (in the 1980s) to Minor's is available.