Politics Of Anthropology Research Articles

Cultures, Open and in Process: An Interview with Ulf Hannerz

ABSTRACTIn this interview, Ulf Hannerz reflects on the relationship between the development of his career as an anthropologist and the elaboration of his theoretical positions. He recalls some of his fieldwork experiences and connects those experiences to his emerging conceptual apparatus in his own take on the culture concept, on cosmopolitanism, on creolization and cultural hybridity, on cultural flows and fluxes, on urban globalization and global futures, and on nationalism and transnationalism. He pauses to consider some of the controversies surrounding his earlier work in Washington, DC, and “ghetto culture” as well as his entry into the debates on the creolization concept. Given his interest in the history and politics of anthropology—and where anthropology is headed in the future—Hannerz also locates his own intellectual production and the influences on, and evolution of, his theoretical and ethnographic perspectives in the competing histories of national traditions, making critical comments on the hierarchization of anthropology and the advent of accountability regimes negatively affecting the discipline. [culture, cultural anthropology, creolization, globalization, Ulf Hannerz]

Middle East Politics in US Academia

In their recent book, Anthropology's Politics: Disciplining the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2016), Lara Deeb and Jessica Winegar provide the first academic study of how political and economic pressures shape the way scholars based in the United States research and teach about the Middle East. Lila Abu-Lughod, a member of the journal's editorial board, recently talked with the authors about the dynamics of the field. The book's final chapter examines the movement among anthropologists in support of a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Just after the book's publication, the issue came to a vote at the American Anthropological Association. Abu-Lughod asks the authors whether their research enables us to understand the outcome of the vote.

Anthropologists and Their Traditions across National Borders

In the introduction to this eighth volume of the Histories of Anthropology Annual series, the editors emphasize that it is not the goal of this series to provide thematically coherent volumes, but that this particular example “integrates fairly easily around how anthropologists’ careers have intersected across different professional generations and allowed them to navigate national boundaries and national traditions” (ix). I beg to disagree with this assessment—national borders and specific national anthropological histories are a feature of only a few of the articles compiled here. Instead, the articles in this book can be roughly divided into two groups—the first five largely probe overlooked events and figures from the early twentieth century in the context of their significance for the emerging meaning and politics of anthropology, mostly involving uncovered archival materials, while the next four offer a reexamination of central anthropological thinkers in light of new perspectives or applications.The most fascinating chapter comes right at the start, as Laurel Kendall uses the archives of Boas’s correspondence to tell the story of Berthold Laufer’s expedition to China from 1901 to 1903, which was organized by Boas after a major fundraising effort, to generate respect for China and inform his donors of the commercial possibilities it offered. The ultimate failure of this mission, as played out through Laufer’s complaints and Boas’s nagging letters, displays the limits and paradoxes of the collecting and cataloguing “expeditionist” anthropology of the period, but it also offers what Kendall calls a “spectral counterhistory” (32) of what American anthropology could have become if it had escaped the “savage slot” and engaged “countries with histories” (2).Marc Lamont and Ian Campbell also use archives to reinterpret the functionalist giants Bronislaw Malinowski and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, respectively, as deeply invested in promoting anthropology in ways that demonstrated its usefulness for managing the tensions of colonial society— Malinowski through his public crusade to rebrand functionalist anthropology as the “lead arbiter to the native question” and the emerging “world race problem” (75), and Radcliffe-Brown through his consistent (and ultimately failed) efforts to get support for the anthropological training of government officials in South Africa and Australia.These three articles, the most interesting in the book, refute any narrative of inevitability in the history of anthropology or any heroic story of innovative “great men.” We see Boas, Malinowski, and Radcliffe-Brown as deeply entwined with their milieus while struggling as best they can to act effectively within them. Their fame, successes, and failures come across as contingent and dependent on both national and international politics and the micropolitics of personality. The same cannot be said for Laughlin’s strangely hagiographic piece, the goal of which is not to situate A. M. Hocart in history, but to argue not particularly effectively in the purplest of prose that Hocart, and only Hocart, is “timeless” (63).The articles by Asch and Rodseth, which stand out among the selections of the second half of the book, also address agency, but in a different way, by drawing out the ways in which Claude Lévi-Strauss and Marshall Sahlins can be seen as giving more credit to human agency than is often supposed. Asch, drawing on his graduate school notes, discovers how Lévi-Strauss, in minor works that are not often read, allows for the consciously created solutions—refuting a stereotyped image of structuralism as essentially opposed to any sense of agency or history. Similarly, Regnall attempts to reconcile aspects of Lévi-Strauss’s and Boas’s perspectives.While uneven, the best articles in this volume force us to reexamine the standard ways we have come to think and teach about anthropological history—especially for Boas, Radcliffe-Brown, Malinowski, and Lévi-Strauss.

Ethnography at its edges: Compulsory Zionism, free speech, and anthropology

ABSTRACTLara Deeb and Jessica Winegar argue convincingly in Anthropology's Politics that US‐based academics face harassment and threats to their careers if they publicly reject US militarism in the Middle East and criticize the Israeli state in their teaching, research, and public speaking. Their analysis of five generations of anthropologists demonstrates that knowledge production is always political, but the thematic chapter organization—graduate school, getting hired, and handling job conflicts—does not explore the historical conjunctures in which the cohorts were formed. The authors’ assertion that the American Anthropological Association's practice of issuing public statements ignores the Middle East and criticism of US policies is clear, yet the association's history of opposition to US policies globally is uneven and episodic. Anthropology's Politics is an important and well‐researched book.

The Politics of Anthropology

The Politics of Anthropology

The Politics of Anthropology

Virtual War and Magical Death: Technologies and Imaginaries for Terror and Killing. Edited by Neil L. Whitehead, Sverker Finnstrom. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013. 289 pp., $24.95 paperback (ISBN: 978-0-8223-5447-5). Neil L. Whitehead and Sverker Finnstrom's edited collection, Virtual War and Magical Death , announces itself, though never explicitly so, as a Derridean project, in that one of the book's objectives concerns the subject position of the anthropologist—never a neutral observer—and the function of anthropology in a weaponized culture, a culture in which “war is always, everywhere” (p. 108). The starting point is, then, that philosophical vigilance forming one of Jacques Derrida's injunctions—a vigilance against the supposed neutrality of acts of witnessing or recording, the practices of a scholarship whose research is now frequently funded by and feeds back into the “military–industrial complex,” tentacular compound whose “magic” ostensibly occupies the heart of this collection. In particular, the early chapters, initiated by Whitehead's interrogation of his discipline, focus on precisely this act or state of vigilance. “Ethnography, Knowledge, Torture, Silence” opens the book with …

La ciencia omnívora: antropología, capitalismo y estados contemporaneos según Jean y John Comaroff

Muy pocos científicos sociales alcanzan el estatus de clásicos contemporáneos, pero ciertamente incluiríamos a Jean y John Comaroff en dicha categoría. Sus investigaciones se encuentran hoy sin duda en la vanguardia de las ciencias sociales, pero su trabajo ya venía siendo seguido y debatido ampliamente en el campo de la antropología casi tres décadas atrás. Más allá de las fronteras de esta disciplina, su trabajo ha tenido ecos, y continúa resonando, en las comunidades académicas de la sociología, las ciencias políticas y los estudios legales, en clara demostración del potencial del conocimiento antropológico cuando aborda abiertamente las grandes problemáticas de nuestros tiempos. Sólo una pequeña parte de la producción de John y Jean Comaroff ha sido traducida al castellano, pero son muchos los antropólogos españoles y latinoamericanos que conocen sus propuestas teóricas y metodológicas. La conversación que sigue nos brinda la oportunidad de profundizar en los contenidos de dichas propuestas y su relación con las política del conocimiento antropológico, del capitalismo y de los estados contemporáneos.

Section News

Abstract:For your convenience, this month's Section News PDF includes bookmarks for each section. After opening the PDF, select the “Bookmark” tab on the left side of your screen, and click on the name of the section you are interested in reading.AMERICAN ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY (AES): Caitrin Lynch, ed. “American Ethnologist News” by Angelique Haugerud; “OWS, Anthropology and New York City Student Engagement” by Narges BajoghliANTHROPOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT SECTION (A&E): Amelia Moore, ed. “Environmental Anthropology Engaging Occupy Wall Street” by James R VetetoARCHEOLOGY DIVISION (AD): E Christian Wells, ed. “Rhymes with the Past” by Christopher T Fisher and Gary M FeinmanASSOCIATION FOR AFRICANIST ANTHROPOLOGY (AfAA): Jennifer E Coffman, ed.ASSOCIATION FOR FEMINIST ANTHROPOLOGY (AFA): Damla Isik and Jessica Smith Rolston, eds. “First AFA Dissertation Award” by Nia ParsonASSOCIATION FOR POLITICAL AND LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY (APLA): Mona Bhan and Noelle Molé, eds. “Mediating Marriage, Engaging Law” by Srimati BasuASSOCIATION FOR QUEER ANTHROPOLOGY (AQA): David L R Houston, ed.ASSOCIATION OF SENIOR ANTHROPOLOGISTS (ASA): Paul Doughty, ed.CENTRAL STATES ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY (CSAS): Evelyn Dean‐Olmsted and Angela Glaros, eds.COUNCIL ON ANTHROPOLOGY AND EDUCATION (CAE): Steve Bialostok, ed.COUNCIL FOR MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY (CMA): Margaret Bruchac, ed.CULTURE AND AGRICULTURE (C&A): Susanna Donaldson and Joan Mencher, eds.EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY SOCIETY (EAS): John P Ziker, ed.MIDDLE EAST SECTION (MES): Yasmin Moll, ed. “Anthropology's Politics: Discipline and Region through the Lens of the Middle East” by Lara Deeb and Jessica WinegarNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE PRACTICE OF ANTHROPOLOGY (NAPA): Eva Friedlander and Tara Eaton, eds. “Emotion and Consumer Rituals” by Thomas MaschioNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF STUDENT ANTHROPOLOGISTS (NASA): Keri A Canada, ed. “Insights and Advice on the Challenges and Realities of Being an Anthropology Student” by Christine PrebleSOCIETY FOR ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCIENCES (SAS): Stephen Lyon, ed.SOCIETY FOR ANTHROPOLOGY IN COMMUNITY COLLEGES (SACC): Lloyd Miller, ed.” SACC fest San Diego 2012” by Laura Tubelle de GonzálezSOCIETY FOR THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS (SAC): Peter N Jones, ed.SOCIETY FOR THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF EUROPE (SAE): Othon Alexandrakis, ed. “Subjects and Politics in Excess of Exception: Notes on Migrant Dissent” by Irene PeanoSOCIETY FOR THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF FOOD AND NUTRITION (SAFN): Kenneth Maes and Alyson Young, eds.SOCIETY FOR THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF NORTH AMERICA (SANA): David Kamper, ed. “Traditional Arts Indiana: A University Based Public Folklore Program” by Jon KaySOCIETY FOR THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGION (SAR): Jennifer Selby, ed. “Review of Spirits without Borders: Vietnamese Spirit Mediums in a Transnational Age. By Karen Fjelstad and Nguyen Thi Hien, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011” by Janet HoskinsSOCIETY FOR CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY (SCA): Jean M Langford, ed.SOCIETY OF EAST ASIAN ANTHROPOLOGY (SEAA): Anru Lee and Bridget Love, eds. “Material Asia: Objects, Technologies and Rethinking Success” by Hyeon Ju LeeSOCIETY FOR HUMANISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY (SHA): Frederic W Gleach and Vilma Santiago‐Irizarry, eds.SOCIETY FOR MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY (SMA): Kathleen Ragsdale, ed. “Engaged Critical Medical Anthropology: Five Steps for Influencing Conversations on ‘Illegal’ Im/migration and Health” by Sarah S Willen, Jessica Mulligan and Heide CastañedaSOCIETY FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY (SPA): Jack R Friedman, ed.SOCIETY FOR URBAN, NATIONAL, AND TRANSNATIONAL/GLOBAL ANTHROPOLOGY (SUNTA): Jayne Howell, ed.SOCIETY FOR VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY (SVA): Wendy Dickinson, ed.

Book Reviews

MankindVolume 12, Issue 4 p. 351-379 Book Reviews First published: December 1980 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1835-9310.1980.tb01211.xCitations: 1AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Abstract Book reviewed in this article: The Evolution of Human Sexuality. By Donald Symons. The Sisterhood of Man. The Impact of Women's Changing Roles on Social and Economic Life Around the World. By Kathleen Newland. Mothers and Wives: Gusii Women of East Africa. Sarah LeVine, in collaboration with Robert A. LeVine. New Women of Lusaka, By Ilsa M. Glazer Schuster. The Politics of Anthropology, edited by Gerrit Huizer and Bruce Mannheim. System, Structure and Contradiction: The Evolution of ‘Asiatic’ Social Formations. Jonathan Friedman. Toward a Cultural Theory of Education and Schooling. Edited by Frederick Gearing and Lucinda Sangree. The Public School Phenomenon 597–1977. By Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy. The Religion, Spirituality, and Thought of Traditional Africa. By Dominique Zahan. Community, Self, and Identity. Edited by Bhabagrahi Misra and James Preston. Les Dieux et Les Hommes. Etude des Cultes d'un village du Tirunelveli, Inde du Sud. By Marie Louise Reiniche. Anutan Concepts of Disease: A Polynesian Study. By Richard Feinberg, with a forward by Dr Carleton Gajdusek. In the Shadow of Tlaloc: Life in a Mexican Village. By Gregory R. Reck. Protein from the Sea: Technological Change in Philippine Capture Fisheries. By Alexander Spoehr. The Ainu: The Past in the Present. By Fred C. C. Peng and Peter Geiser. From Field to Factory: Community Structure and Industrialization in West Bengal. By Morton Klass. Lightning meets the West Wind. The Malaita Massacre. By Roger M. Keesing and Peter Corris. Your Own Pigs You May Not Eat. By Paula L. Rubel and Barbara Rosman. Villagers at war: Some Papua New Guinean exyeriences in World War II. By Neville K. Robinson. Urbanization and Urban Growth in the Caribbean. By Malcolm Cross. Urbanization in Papua New Guinea: A Study of Ambivalent Townsmen. By Hal B. Levine and Marlene Wolfzahn-Levine. The Child in the City. By Colin Ward, with photographs by Ann Golzen and others. 'It's Coming Yet …' An Aboriginal Treaty Within Australia Between Australians. By Stewart Harris, for the Aboriginal Treaty Committee. The Street is Their Home: The Hobos' Manifesto. By Jim Ward. Aborigines in Colonial Victoria 1835-86, By M. F. Christie. Songs of the Pintupi. Musical Life in a Central Australian Society. By Richard M. Moyle Shuckin' and Jivin’: Folktore from Contemporary Black Americans. By Daryl Cumber Dance. The Evolution of Designs: Biological Analogy in the Architecture and the Applied Arts. By Philip Steadman A Geography of the Lifeworld: Movement, Rest and Encounter. By David Seaman. Climatic Races and Descent Groups. By Grover S. Krantz. Views of the Past. Essays in Old World Prehistory and Paleoanthropology. Edited by Leslie G. Freeman. Tools and Tillage. A Journal of the History of the Implements of Cultivation and other Agricultural Processes. Volume III:3. Edited by Grith Lerche, Alexander Fenton and Axel Steensberg Wooden Ritual Artifacts from Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. The Chetro Ketl Collection. By R. Gwinn Vivian, Dulce N. Dodgen, and Gayle H. Hartman. Volcanic Activity and Human Ecology. Edited by Payson D. Sheets and Donald K. Grayson. Fossils in the Making: Vertebrate Taphonomy and Palaeoecology. Edited by Anna K. Behrensmeyer and Andrew P. Hill. Citing Literature Volume12, Issue4December 1980Pages 351-379 RelatedInformation

Hindmarsh Island and the Politics of Anthropology

Hindmarsh Island and the Politics of Anthropology

The Politics of Anthropology in the Age of Empire: German Colonists, Brazilian Indians, and the Case of Alberto Vojtech Fric

The Politics of Anthropology in the Age of Empire: German Colonists, Brazilian Indians, and the Case of Alberto Vojtech Fric

The Politics of Anthropology

The Politics of Anthropology

The Politics of Anthropology: Conditions for Thought and Practice

The Politics of Anthropology: Conditions for Thought and Practice

Anthropology and Politics: Revolutions in the Sacred Grove.

Preface. 1. The Politics of Anthropology. 2. Origins of Society. 3. Culture, Constraint and Community. 4. Freud's Social Contract. 5. Past and Present. 6. James Frazer and Cambridge. 7. Pluralism and the Neolithic. 8. The Highway to Growth. 9. A Marxist Might-have-been. 10. War and Violence. 11. Tribe and State in the Middle East. 12. Maghreb as Mirror for Man. 13. Lawrence of Moravia. 14. Anthropology and Europe. 15. The Coming Fin de Millenaire. 16. The Uniqueness of Truth. Acknowledgments. Index.

“I was not consulted”: A. P. Elkin, Papua New Guinea and the Politics of Anthropology, 1942–1950*

“I was not consulted”: A. P. Elkin, Papua New Guinea and the Politics of Anthropology, 1942–1950*

Contested Worlds: The Politics of Culture and the Politics of Anthropology

Contested Worlds: The Politics of Culture and the Politics of Anthropology

Rethinking the Politics of Anthropology: The Case of the Andes [and Comments and Reply

L'A., repensant la politique de l'anthropologie dans la region andine, demontrant que l'image d'eux-memes faconnee par les « andinistes » comme etant de « bons etrangers » a glisser sur une serie d'ambiguites et de contradictions dans leur entreprise, puis il examine les possibilites d'une contribution plus importante des anthropologues a un changement constructif. En conclusion il souligne les efforts a fournir pour developper notre capacite a contribuer aux luttes pour l'egalite et la justice. Suivent les commentaires de O. Harris, D. Nugent, S. Nugent, B. S. Orlove, S. P. Reyna et G. Smith.

Abjection and Anthropological Praxis

Studying anthropologists and making the culture of culture professionnals into an object of research not only foregrounds the quandaries of feminist, postmodernist, and postcolonial critiques as cultural practice, but also demonstrates that such quandaries are coincident with the representational politics of anthropology. In this essay the ethnographic writing of the A. draws on theorizations of abjection to make intelligible the quandaries of her anthropology among anthropologists. (Res. d'A.)

On Being a Committed Intellectual: St Clair Drake and the Politics of Anthropology

Transforming AnthropologyVolume 1, Issue 2 p. 15-18 On Being a Committed Intellectual: St Clair Drake and the Politics of Anthropology Glenn Jordan, Glenn Jordan University of Illinois/ Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum.Search for more papers by this author Glenn Jordan, Glenn Jordan University of Illinois/ Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum.Search for more papers by this author First published: July 1990 https://doi.org/10.1525/tran.1990.1.2.15Citations: 4AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume1, Issue2July 1990Pages 15-18 RelatedInformation

The Politics of Anthropology

ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY ORIGINALLY FOUND THEIR more immediate inspiration in an evolutionary or Jacob's Ladder vision of human societies, the idea of Progress. Social forms were seen as located along some great Chain of Being, which eventually leads to this-worldly salvation by this-worldly means. But there the resemblance ends. Sociology was rooted in a primarily historical evolutionism, in the perception, by the generation of Condorcet and Hegel, that human history is a story of cumulative change, and in the hope that the pattern of this change was the key to the meaning of life. History was to reveal the inner potential and destiny of human society. By contrast, the evolutionism which somewhat later, around the middle of the nineteenth century, gave birth to anthropology, was markedly biological, and came to be much influenced by Darwin.