Franz Boas, the major founding figure of anthropology as a discipline in the United States, came to America from Germany in 1886. This volume in the highly acclaimed History of Anthropology series is the first extensive scholarly exploration of Boas' roots in the German intellectual tradition and late nineteenth-century German anthropology, and offers a new perspective on the historical development of ethnography in the United States.
"The introductory volume to the Franz Boas Papers: Documentary Edition, which examines Boas' stature as public intellectual in three crucial dimensions: theory, ethnography and activism"--
Volume 8 of the Histories of Anthropology Annual series, the premier series published in the history of the discipline, explores national anthropological traditions in Britain, the United States, and Europe and follows them into postnational contexts. Contributors reassess the major theorists in twentieth-century anthropology, including luminaries such as Franz Boas, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Bronisław Malinowski, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Marshall Sahlins, and lesser-known but important anthropological work by Berthold Laufer, A. M. Hocart, Kenelm O. L. Burridge, and Robin Ridington, among others. These essays examine myriad themes such as the pedagogical context of the anthropologist as a teller of stories about indigenous storytellers; the colonial context of British anthropological theory and its projects outside the nation state; the legacies of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism regarding culture specific patterns; cognitive universals reflected in empirical examples of kinship, myth, language, classificatory systems, and supposed universal mental structures; and the career of Marshall Sahlins and his trajectory from neo evolutionism and structuralism toward an epistemological skepticism of cross cultural miscommunication.
The Bristol doctor James Cowles Prichard (1786-1848) has enjoyed a glowing reputation. Late Victorians regarded him as the founder of British anthropology and, in the twentieth century, he has been considered as a precursor of Darwin. Nowadays his name is cited mainly in context of inquiries into the rise of racial theories. Prichard's own theoretical goal was simple: the son of Quaker parents, he attempted to establish that the Bible provided a correct account of the earliest history of humankind; above all it was his aim to prove once and for all the doctrine of monogenesis: the unitary origins of mankind. He single-handedly charted the waters of the pre-Victorian human sciences. Philology, anthropology, mythology, Biblical criticism, the philosophy of the human mind, comparative anatomy, physiology, and practical medicine - Prichard mastered subjects so diverse that his learning may be called truly universal. His views have often been misrepresented, however, and his opposition to racial thinking in particular has been underestimated. This book, the first study dedicated exclusively to Prichard, explores his notions of man's place in nature and puts them in the context of contemporary European learning.
"A genuine one-stop reference point for the many, many differing strands of cultural analysis. This isn′t just one contender among many for the title of ′best multidisciplinary overview′; this is a true heavyweight." - Matt Hills, Cardiff University "An achievement and a delight - both compelling and useful." - Beverley Skeggs, Goldsmiths, University of London With the ′cultural turn′, the concept of culture has assumed enormous importance in our understanding of the interrelations between social, political and economic structures, patterns of everyday interaction, and systems of meaning-making. In The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Analysis, the leading figures in their fields explore the implications of this paradigm shift. Part I looks at the major disciplines of knowledge in the humanities and social sciences, asking how they have been reshaped by the cultural turn and how they have elaborated distinctive new objects of knowledge. Parts II and III examine the questions arising from a practice of analysis in which the researcher is drawn reflexively into the object of study and in which methodological frameworks are rarely given in advance. Addressed to academics and advanced students in all fields of the social sciences and humanities, The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Analysis is at once a synthesis of advances in the field, with a comprehensive coverage of the scholarly literature, and a collection of original and provocative essays by some of the brightest intellectuals of our time.
This book chronicles the life and political action of Franz Boas, a ground-breaking anthropologist whose work denied the notion of racial superiority and introduced the notion of cultural relativity. In addition, he was a fierce pacifist who opposed the entry of the United States into World War I, and organized a powerful organization protecting the free speech of those accused of left-wing sympathies. He was among the first to recognize the strength of a scientist speaking out on political issues. The book will appeal to those interested in issues of race relations and free speech, and those interested in the role of science and scientists in the larger society.
With the rise of imperialism, the centuries-old European tradition of humanist scholarship as the key to understanding the world was jeopardized. Nowhere was this more true than in nineteenth-century Germany. It was there, Andrew Zimmerman argues, that the battle lines of today's "culture wars" were first drawn when anthropology challenged humanism as a basis for human scientific knowledge. Drawing on sources ranging from scientific papers and government correspondence to photographs, pamphlets, and police reports of "freak shows," Zimmerman demonstrates how German imperialism opened the door to antihumanism. As Germans interacted more frequently with peoples and objects from far-flung cultures, they were forced to reevaluate not just those peoples, but also the construction of German identity itself. Anthropologists successfully argued that their discipline addressed these issues more productively—and more accessibly—than humanistic studies. Scholars of anthropology, European and intellectual history, museum studies, the history of science, popular culture, and colonial studies will welcome this book.
Using our Field Experiences to Build Theories of Applied Social Change—Why Do We Not Do More? - Kevin Preister The Distribution and Meaning of Labrets on the Salish Sea - Kate Shantry The Western Stemmed Point Tradition on the Columbia Plateau - E.S. Lohse and Coral Moser A Glimpse at the Beginning of Language Studies on the Northwest Coast: Johann Christoph Adelung’s Mithridates oder Allgemeine Sprachenkunde - Richard L. Bland The Franz Boas Papers: Documentary Edition - Joshua Smith, Regna Darnell, Robert L.A. Hancock, and Sarah Moritz The 65th Annual Northwest Anthropological Conference, Pendleton, Oregon, 27–30 March 2012
In a time of intense uncertainty, social strife, and ecological upheaval, what does it take to envision the world as it yet may be? The field of anthropology, Anand Pandian argues, has resources essential for this critical and imaginative task. Anthropology is no stranger to injustice and exploitation. Still, its methods can reveal unseen dimensions of the world at hand and radical experience as the seed of a humanity yet to come. A Possible Anthropology is an ethnography of anthropologists at work: canonical figures like Bronislaw Malinowski and Claude Lévi-Strauss, ethnographic storytellers like Zora Neale Hurston and Ursula K. Le Guin, contemporary scholars like Jane Guyer and Michael Jackson, and artists and indigenous activists inspired by the field. In their company, Pandian explores the moral and political horizons of anthropological inquiry, the creative and transformative potential of an experimental practice.
