The Ethnographer's Magic and Other Essays in the History of Anthropology

The Ethnographer's Magic and Other Essays in the History of Anthropology
Author: George W. Stocking
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages: 452
Release: 1992
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780299134143
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George Stocking has been widely recognized as the premier historian of anthropology ever since the publication of his first volume of essays, Race, Culture, and Evolution, in 1968. As editor of several publications, including the highly acclaimed History of Anthropology series, he has led the movement to establish the history of anthropology as a recognized research specialization. In addition to the study Victorian Anthropology, his work includes numerous essays covering a wide range of anthropological topics. The eight essays collected in The Ethnographer's Magic consider the emergence of anthropology since the late nineteenth century as an academic discipline grounded in systematic fieldwork. Drawing extensively on unpublished manuscript materials, the essays focus primarily on Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinowski, the leading figures in the American and the British academic fieldwork traditions. According to George Marcus of Rice University, the essays "represent the most informative and insightful writings on Malinowski and Boas and their legacies that are yet available." Beyond their biographical material, the essays here touch upon major themes in the history of anthropology: its powerfully mythic aspect and persistent strain of romantic primitivism; the contradictions of its relationship to the larger sociopolitical sphere; its problematic integration of a variety of natural scientific and humanistic inquiries; and the tension between its scientific aspirations and its subjectively acquired data. To provide an overview against which to read the other essays, Stocking has also included a sketch of the history of anthropology from the ancient Greeks to the present. For this collection, Stocking has written prefatory commentaries for each of the essays, as well as two more extended contextualizing pieces. An introductory essay ("Retrospective Prescriptive Reflections") places the volume in autobiographical and historiographical context; the Afterword ("Postscriptive Prospective Reflections") reconsiders major themes of the essays in relation to the recent past and present situation of academic anthropology.

Colonial Situations

Colonial Situations
Author: George W. Stocking
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 1991-10-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0299131238
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As European colonies in Asia and Africa became independent nations, as the United States engaged in war in Southeast Asia and in covert operations in South America, anthropologists questioned their interactions with their subjects and worried about the political consequences of government-supported research. By 1970, some spoke of anthropology as “the child of Western imperialism” and as “scientific colonialism.” Ironically, as the link between anthropology and colonialism became more widely accepted within the discipline, serious interest in examining the history of anthropology in colonial contexts diminished. This volume is an effort to initiate a critical historical consideration of the varying “colonial situations” in which (and out of which) ethnographic knowledge essential to anthropology has been produced. The essays comment on ethnographic work from the middle of the nineteenth century to nearly the end of the twentieth, in regions from Oceania through southeast Asia, the Andaman Islands, and southern Africa to North and South America. The “colonial situations” also cover a broad range, from first contact through the establishment of colonial power, from District Officer administrations through white settler regimes, from internal colonialism to international mandates, from early “pacification” to wars of colonial liberation, from the expropriation of land to the defense of ecology. The motivations and responses of the anthropologists discussed are equally varied: the romantic resistance of Maclay and the complicity of Kubary in early colonialism; Malinowski’s salesmanship of academic anthropology; Speck’s advocacy of Indian land rights; Schneider’s grappling with the ambiguities of rapport; and Turner’s facilitation of Kaiapo cinematic activism. “Provides fresh insights for those who care about the history of science in general and that of anthropology in particular, and a valuable reference for professionals and graduate students.”—Choice “Among the most distinguished publications in anthropology, as well as in the history of social sciences.”—George Marcus, Anthropologica

Delimiting Anthropology

Delimiting Anthropology
Author: George W. Stocking
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780299174507
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All but two of the 16 essays have been previously published, and Stocking (anthropology, U. of Chicago) wrote all of them in response to invitations to give a lecture, present a paper at a scholarly meeting, contribute to an edited volume, introduce a volume he edited, or respond to a specific moment of archival discovery. They meander through Boasian culturalism, British evolutionaries, institutions in national traditions, and mesocosmic reflections. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Observers Observed

Observers Observed
Author: George W. Stocking
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 1984-01-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0299094537
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History of Anthropology is a new series of annual volumes, each of which will treat an important theme in the history of anthropological inquiry. For this initial volume, the editors have chosen to focus on the modern cultural anthropology: intensive fieldwork by "participant observation." Observers Observed includes essays by a distinguished group of historians and anthropologists covering major episodes in the history of ethnographic fieldwork in the American, British, and French traditions since 1880. As the first work to investigate the development of modern fieldwork in a serious historical way, this collection will be of great interest and value to anthropologist, historians of science and the social sciences, and the general readers interested in the way in which modern anthropologists have perceived and described the cultures of "others." Included in this volume are the contributions of Homer G. Barnett, University of Oregon; James Clifford, University of California, Santa Cruz; Douglas Cole, Simon Frazer University; Richard Handler, Lake Forest College; Curtis Hinsley, Colgate University; Joan Larcom, Mount Holyoke College; Paul Rabinow, University of California, Berkeley; and the editor.

The Other Shore

The Other Shore
Author: Michael Jackson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2013
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520275241
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In this book, ethnographer and poet Michael Jackson addresses the interplay between modes of writing, modes of understanding, and modes of being in the world. Drawing on literary, anthropological and autobiographical sources, he explores writing as a technics akin to ritual, oral storytelling, magic and meditation, that enables us to reach beyond the limits of everyday life and forge virtual relationships and imagined communities. Although Maurice Blanchot wrote of the impossibility of writing, the passion and paradox of literature lies in its attempt to achieve the impossible--a leap of faith that calls to mind the mystic's dark night of the soul, unrequited love, nostalgic or utopian longing, and the ethnographer's attempt to know the world from the standpoint of others, to put himself or herself in their place. Every writer, whether of ethnography, poetry, or fiction, imagines that his or her own experiences echo the experiences of others, and that despite the need for isolation and silence his or her work consummates a relationship with them.

Romantic Motives

Romantic Motives
Author: George W. Stocking
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 1989-12-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0299123634
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Romantic Motives explores a topic that has been underemphasized in the historiography of anthropology. Tracking the Romantic strains in the the writings of Rousseau, Herder, Cushing, Sapir, Benedict, Redfield, Mead, Lévi-Strauss, and others, these essays show Romanticism as a permanent and recurrent tendency within the anthropological tradition.

Writing Anthropology

Writing Anthropology
Author: Carole McGranahan
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2020-05-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1478009160
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In Writing Anthropology, fifty-two anthropologists reflect on scholarly writing as both craft and commitment. These short essays cover a wide range of territory, from ethnography, genre, and the politics of writing to affect, storytelling, authorship, and scholarly responsibility. Anthropological writing is more than just communicating findings: anthropologists write to tell stories that matter, to be accountable to the communities in which they do their research, and to share new insights about the world in ways that might change it for the better. The contributors offer insights into the beauty and the function of language and the joys and pains of writing while giving encouragement to stay at it—to keep writing as the most important way to not only improve one’s writing but to also honor the stories and lessons learned through research. Throughout, they share new thoughts, prompts, and agitations for writing that will stimulate conversations that cut across the humanities. Contributors. Whitney Battle-Baptiste, Jane Eva Baxter, Ruth Behar, Adia Benton, Lauren Berlant, Robin M. Bernstein, Sarah Besky, Catherine Besteman, Yarimar Bonilla, Kevin Carrico, C. Anne Claus, Sienna R. Craig, Zoë Crossland, Lara Deeb, K. Drybread, Jessica Marie Falcone, Kim Fortun, Kristen R. Ghodsee, Daniel M. Goldstein, Donna M. Goldstein, Sara L. Gonzalez, Ghassan Hage, Carla Jones, Ieva Jusionyte, Alan Kaiser, Barak Kalir, Michael Lambek, Carole McGranahan, Stuart McLean, Lisa Sang Mi Min, Mary Murrell, Kirin Narayan, Chelsi West Ohueri, Anand Pandian, Uzma Z. Rizvi, Noel B. Salazar, Bhrigupati Singh, Matt Sponheimer, Kathleen Stewart, Ann Laura Stoler, Paul Stoller, Nomi Stone, Paul Tapsell, Katerina Teaiwa, Marnie Jane Thomson, Gina Athena Ulysse, Roxanne Varzi, Sita Venkateswar, Maria D. Vesperi, Sasha Su-Ling Welland, Bianca C. Williams, Jessica Winegar

Crossing Histories and Ethnographies

Crossing Histories and Ethnographies
Author: Ricardo Roque
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 530
Release: 2019-06-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1805393685
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The key question for many anthropologists and historians today is not whether to cross the boundary between their disciplines, but whether the idea of a disciplinary boundary should be sustained. Reinterpreting the dynamic interplay between archive and field, these essays propose a method for mutually productive crossings between historical and ethnographic research. It engages critically with the colonial pasts of indigenous societies and examines how fieldwork and archival studies together lead to fruitful insights into the making of different colonial historicities. Timor-Leste’s unusually long and in some ways unique colonial history is explored as a compelling case for these crossings.

Anthropology's Global Histories

Anthropology's Global Histories
Author: Rainer F. Buschmann
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2008-10-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0824831845
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Anthropologists and world historians make strange bedfellows. Although the latter frequently employ anthropological methods in their descriptions of cross-cultural exchanges, the former have raised substantial reservations about global approaches to history. Fearing loss of specificity, anthropologists object to the effacing qualities of techniques employed by world historians—this despite the fact that anthropology itself was a global, comparative enterprise in the nineteenth century.Rainer Buschmann here seeks to recover some of anthropology’s global flavor by viewing its history in Oceania through the notion of the ethnographic frontier—the furthermost limits of the anthropologically known regions of the Pacific. The colony of German New Guinea (1884–1914) presents an ideal example of just such a contact zone. Colonial administrators there were drawn to approaches partially inspired by anthropology. Anthropologists and museum officials exploited this interest by preparing large-scale expeditions to German New Guinea. Buschmann explores the resulting interactions between German colonial officials, resident ethnographic collectors, and indigenous peoples, arguing that all were instrumental in the formation of anthropological theory. He shows how changes in collecting aims and methods helped shift ethnographic study away from its focus on material artifacts to a broader consideration of indigenous culture. He also shows how ethnological collecting, often a competitive affair, could become politicized and connect to national concerns. Finally, he places the German experience in the broader context of Euro-American anthropology. Anthropology's Global Histories will interest students and scholars of anthropology, history, world history, and Pacific studies.

Lev Shternberg

Lev Shternberg
Author: Sergei Kan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 574
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0803224702
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This intellectual biography of Lev Shternberg (1861 1927) illuminates the development of professional anthropology in late imperial and early Soviet Russia. Shortly after the formation of the Soviet Union the government initiated a detailed ethnographic survey of the country s peoples. Lev Shternberg, who as a political exile during the late tsarist period had conducted ethnographic research in northeastern Siberia, was one of the anthropologists who directed this survey and consequently played a major role in influencing the professionalization of anthropology in the Soviet Union. But Shternberg was much more than a government anthropologist. Under the new regime he continued his work as the senior curator of the St. Petersburg Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, which began in the early 1900s. In the last decade of his life Shternberg also played a leading role in establishing a new Soviet school of cultural anthropology and in training a cohort of professional anthropologists. True to the ideals of his youth, he also continued an active involvement in the intellectual life of the Jewish community, even though the new regime was making it increasingly difficult. This in-depth biography explores the scholarly and political aspects of Shternberg s life and how they influenced each other. It also places his career in both national and international perspectives, showing the context in which he lived and worked and revealing the important developments in Russian anthropology during these tumultuous years.