Editors' Introduction

Abstract

Editors' Introduction Regna Darnell (bio) and Frederic W. Gleach (bio) Histories of Anthropology Annual, volume 6, gives the impression—at least to us as editors—that we have reached a kind of steady state and that the journal is becoming known as a publication outlet and source of information on the history of anthropology in North America and in farther-flung parts of the anthropological world. Moreover, we have a sense that there is a consensus building among those who submit to HOAA about what the object of our study is. My [RD] favorite metaphor for curiosity about ideas is the six blind men of Hindustan who were poking at an elephant. The minute they began to talk to each other and to share their insights from particular standpoints, they moved into constructing something we might want to call an elephant, or culture, or history of anthropology. That entity took on a form and substance that none of them, as isolated investigators, could have reached or had confidence in. We as editors have argued that histories, like the standpoints of the six blind men, are necessarily plural and socially constructed—that is, they are arrived at by communication among a network of scholars seeking common ground for debate (which does not, of course, imply agreement—only openness to dialogue). We take pride in the diversity of our contributors. They range from graduate students to mid-career, senior, and emeritus scholars. They come from all subdisciplines of anthropology as understood in North America. Papers in this issue deal with archaeology (Meltzer), physical anthropology (Lieberman), and practicing or "action" anthropology (Smith, Dinwiddie). Cultural/social anthropology remains the most frequent baseline, but cultural matters are frequently related to developments in other subdisciplines. Interestingly, several linguistic anthropologists (Darnell, Dinwiddie, and Dobrin) have contributed to this volume but their topics are not explicitly "linguistic," although their methods of analysis tend to be dialogic and interpretive. National traditions continue to hold a strong place among submissions (from Mexico, Canada, Australia, and France), although it is increasingly clear that these national developments are inseparable from transnational forces—and not only in our immediate post-capitalist world. Networks of scholars cross-cut locations, whether of institutional home or ethnographic area. [End Page vii] Indeed, the distinction between where one is employed and where one does research dissolves in the work of many contributors. Historians of anthropology these days often come from the traditions they describe, whether national or ethnographic. Perhaps because of the nature of our own networks as Americanists, we have found it easiest to attract articles on Native North America and the institutionalization of anthropology in North America. Notably, however, Canada and Mexico enter independently into the "North American" focus of this volume (Krotz, Darnell, Dinwiddie). Anthropological methods are comparative, and disciplinary historians do not forget this when they begin to construct their topics and arguments. Indeed, we never expected our commitment to HOAA's publishing unrelated papers in the history of various kinds of anthropology to produce disjointedness in the pages of a given volume or across all volumes. We envisioned, rather, an enrichment arising from juxtaposition. We might speculate that the keystone of such synergy in disciplinary history resides in the ethical basis of how researchers frame the contemporary relevance of their material. This is not the mea culpa navel-gazing of an earlier critique of colonialism and its ongoing baggage, although that was perhaps necessary in its time. We identify a new optimism, particularly among younger anthropologists, that our discipline has something to contribute and that we can become coevals of our consultants and collaborators. Another consequence of this project has been to reinforce the arguments against teaching the history of anthropology as a quasi-evolutionary sequence of failed and replaced ideas. In teaching and in conferences we regularly meet students who suddenly find our disciplinary history interesting, even exciting, when a more holistic and contextualized understanding of a particular time, argument, theory or approach is laid before them. Our intellectual ancestors were engaged in debates and developments of thinking at least as vital and productive as those of today—indeed, many of today's arguments are little more than rephrasings of earlier...