Anthropologists and Their Traditions Across National Borders

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Anthropologists and Their Traditions Across National Borders University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln University of Nebraska Press -- Sample Books and University of Nebraska Press Chapters 2014 Anthropologists and Their rT aditions across National Borders Regna Darnell Frederic W. Gleach Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/unpresssamples Darnell, Regna and Gleach, Frederic W., "Anthropologists and Their rT aditions across National Borders" (2014). University of Nebraska Press -- Sample Books and Chapters. 285. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/unpresssamples/285 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Nebraska Press at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Nebraska Press -- Sample Books and Chapters by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Anthropologists and Th eir Traditions across National Borders Buy the Book Histories of Anthropology Annual Editors Regna Darnell, University of Western Ontario Frederic W. Gleach, Cornell University Editorial Board Lee D. Baker, Duke University Alexei Elfi mov, Russian Academy of Sciences Paul A. Erickson, Saint Mary’s University Davydd J. Greenwood, Cornell University Abdellah Hammoudi, Princeton University Robert L. Hancock, Victoria, British Columbia Richard Handler, University of Virginia Curtis M. Hinsley, Northern Arizona University Jason Baird Jackson, Indiana University Christer Lindberg, Lund University Jonathan Marks, University of North Carolina, Charlott e Marie Mauzé, l’École de Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales Tim May, University of Salford Stephen O. Murray, El Instituto Obregón H. Glenn Penny, University of Iowa Vilma Santiago- Irizarry, Cornell University Arlene Torres, University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign Susan R. Trencher, George Mason University Book Review Editor Joshua Smith, University of Western Ontario Buy the Book Anthropologists and Th eir Traditions across National Borders Histories of Anthropology Annual, Volume 8 Edited by Regna Darnell & Frederic W. Gleach University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln and London Buy the Book © 2014 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Control Number: 2014947911 Set in Arno Pro by Renni Johnson. Designed by A. Shahan. Buy the Book Contents List of Illustrations vii Editors’ Introduction ix 1. “China to the Anthropologist”: Franz Boas, Berthold Laufer, and a Road Not Taken in Early American Anthropology 1 Laurel Kendall 2. A. M. Hocart: Refl ections on a Master Ethnologist and His Work 41 Charles D. Laughlin 3. Malinowski and the “Native Question” 69 Mark Lamont 4. Radcliff e- Brown and “Applied Anthropology” at Cape Town and Sydney 111 Ian Campbell 5. “Th e Department Was in Some Disarray”: Th e Politics of Choosing a Successor to S. F. Nadel, 1957 141 Geoffrey Gray and Doug Munro 6. An Elegy for a Structuralist Legacy: Lévi- Strauss, Cultural Relativism, and the Universal Capacities of the Human Mind 173 Regna Darnell 7. Lévi- Strauss’s Approach to Systems of Classifi cation: Categories in Northwest Coast Cultures 183 Abraham Rosman and Paula Rubel Buy the Book 8. Lévi- Strauss on Th eoretical Th ought and Universal History 193 Michael Asch 9. Historical Massacres and Mythical Totalities: Reading Marshall Sahlins on Two American Frontiers 209 Lars Rodseth 10. Anthropologists as Perpetrators and Perpetuators of Oral Tradition: Th e Lectures of Kenelm O. L. Burridge and Robin Ridington, Storytellers 249 Lindy- Lou Flynn Book Reviews 271 Contributors 279 Buy the Book Illustrations 1. Berthold Laufer in Hankou 13 2. Paper kite collected by Laufer 14 3. Laufer’s hand- drawn map of his travels 17 4. Carpenters in Beijing 26 5. Cloisonné vase collected by Laufer 27 6. Model of a pott er’s kiln 31 7. Kenelm Burridge at retirement party 252 8. Robin Ridington celebrating another thirty- ninth birthday 253 9. Robin Ridington recording Dunne- za singers 262 Buy the Book Buy the Book Editors’ Introduction We begin by apologizing to our readers for the recent hiatus in publi- cation of our ostensibly annual publication. Histories of Anthropology Annual began in the University of Nebraska book division and moved to the journals category aft er it had established reasonable visibility among anthropologists and historians. We discovered, however, that our readers are more inclined to buy single volumes than to subscribe. Th us we are returning to the book division. Th is has required rethink- ing and rescheduling, especially to accommodate the peer review pro- cess now in place through the Press in addition to the editors’ review. We are confi dant that this will improve the quality of each issue and that the regular annual appearance of HoAA is sustainable into the foreseeable future. Another important change is that each volume will now appear with a subtitle indicating something about the nature of its contents. Hence Volume 8: Anthropologists and Th eir Traditions across National Borders. We emphasize that this does not mean we are moving to thematic vol- umes. HoAA was established to provide a publication outlet across subject matt ers and approaches to history for specialists and for schol- ars whose primary interests lie elsewhere but who on occasion delve into historical questions of wider interest to the discipline. Volume 8 integrates fairly easily around how anthropologists’ careers have inter- sected across diff erent professional generations and allowed them to navigate national boundaries and national traditions. Th e essays are partly biographical, moving from the iconic heroes of the discipline to their litt le known contemporaries. Authors oft en deal with the foun- dational relationship of anthropologists to the people(s) they study. In each previous volume, while consciously encouraging the greatest possible diversity, we have in practice been startled by recurrent pat- terns as we juxtapose the scholarship of diverse contributors. Hence- ix Buy the Book forth, we will make this explicit at the point of assembling a volume, rather than seeking out integrated themes in advance. Likewise we have sought variation in genres of historical writing. Lindy- Lou Flynn’s meticulous documentation of the teaching styles of two quite diff erent undergraduate mentors off ers an informal and deeply personal commentary about professional socialization. Simul- taneously, the paper provides a fascinating glimpse of how a British- trained social anthropologist and a First Nations cultural anthropologist coexisted as departmental colleagues and were perhaps not as far apart as a more abstract treatment might suggest. We continue to be open to refl exive memoir and oral history materials from or about anthropolo- gists as well as to more conventional research articles. National traditions dominate volume 8, but these traditions refuse to stay in their separate boxes. Anthropologists working in the American- ist tradition will be aware of Boas’s Jesup expedition foray into Asian ethnography, whereas Laurel Kendall explores Berthold Laufer’s Chi- nese work and its abortive anthropological context at the American Museum of Natural History, which has been largely forgott en. Several papers trace the British national tradition through its far- fl ung geograph- ical distribution: Charles Laughlin reexamines the comparative ethno- graphic approach of A. M. Hocart, which was eclipsed in its own time by the reputations of Radcliff e- Brown and Malinowski. Mark Lamont places Malinowski squarely within British colonialism and att ributes the success of his functionalism to its administrative utility in dealing with the “native question.” Another guise of functionalism, Radcliff e- Brown’s “applied anthropology,” was tested at the far ends of empire during his appointments at Sydney, Australia, and Cape Town, South Africa; Ian Campbell demonstrates that British social anthropology was not a position confi ned to or developed solely within the Brit- ish Isles. Geoff rey Gray and Doug Munro continue their institutional documentation of anthropology in Australia and New Zealand as they skip ahead in time to 1957 and the politics of fi lling S. R. Nadel’s chair at Australian National University aft er his sudden death the previous year. Th ree short papers, best read as a set, assess the legacy of struc- turalism not long aft er the death of Claude Lévi- Strauss, its founder and most distinguished anthropological proponent. Regna Darnell x Editors’ Introduction Buy the Book emphasizes the interplay between culture- specifi c patt ern and cog- nitive universals in the widespread empirical exemplars of kinship, myth, and language. Abraham Rosman and Paula Rubel focus on the application of Lévi- Strauss’s structuralist method to the classifi catory systems of the North Pacifi c Coast, where Boas established an ethno- graphic database that has become iconic for the discipline. Michael Asch assesses Lévi- Strauss’s claim to have accessed universal mental structures in his renditions of history, tying the French anthropologist to the European philosophical traditions usually outside the sphere of att ention of practicing anthropologists. Th e death of the major fi gure in a theoretical school of thought off ers the disciplinary historian a unique opportunity to stand back and take stock. Th ese papers begin to defi ne the ongoing legacy. Lars Rodseth contextualizes the complex career of Marshall Sahlins, albeit
Recommended publications
  • Roosevelts' Giant Panda Group Installed in William V
    News Published Monthly by Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago Vol. 2 JANUARY, 1931 No. 1 ROOSEVELTS' GIANT PANDA GROUP INSTALLED IN WILLIAM V. KELLEY HALL By Wilfred H. Osgood conferences with them at Field Museum be superficial, and it was then transferred Curator, Department of Zoology while the expedition was being organized, to the group which includes the raccoons although it was agreed that a giant panda and allies, one of which was the little panda, The outstanding feature of the William would furnish a most satisfactory climax for or common which is also Asiatic in V. Kelley-Roosevelts Expedition to Eastern panda, their the chance of one was distribution. Still an Asia for Field Museum was the obtaining efforts, getting later, independent posi- considered so small it was best to tion was advocated for in which it became of a complete and perfect specimen of the thought it, make no announcement it when the sole of a peculiar animal known as the giant panda concerning living representative distinct or great panda. In popular accounts this they started. There were other less spec- family of mammals. Preliminary examina- rare beast has been described as an animal tacular animals to be hunted, the obtaining tion of the complete skeleton obtained by with a face like a raccoon, a body like a of which would be a sufficient measure of the Roosevelts seems to indicate that more bear, and feet like a cat. Although these success, so the placing of advance emphasis careful study will substantiate this last view. characterizations are The giant panda is not scientifically accu- a giant only by com- rate, all of them have parison with its sup- some basis in fact, and posed relative, the little it might even be added panda, which is long- that its teeth have cer- tailed and about the tain slight resem- size of a small fox.
    [Show full text]
  • Islamization of Anthropological Knowledge
    The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Vol. 6. No. 1, 1989 143 Review Article Islamization of Anthropological Knowledge A. R. Momin The expansion of Western coloniaHsrn during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought in its wake the economic and political domination and exploitation of the Third World countries. Western colonialism and ethnocentrism went hand in hand. The colonial ideology was rationalized and justified in terms of the white man's burden; it was believed that the White races of Europe had the moral duty to carry the torch of civilization­ which was equated with Christianity and Western culture-to the dark comers of Asia and Africa. The ideology of Victorian Europe accorded the full status of humanity only to European Christians; the "other" people were condemned, as Edmund Leach has bluntly put it, as "sub-human animals, monsters, degenerate men, damned souls, or the products of a separate creation" (Leach, 1982). One of the most damaging consequences of colonialism relates to a massive undermining of the self-confidence of the colonized peoples. Their cultural values and institutions were ridiculed and harshly criticized. Worse still, the Western pattern of education introduced by colonial governments produced a breed of Westernized native elite, who held their own cultural heritage in contempt and who consciously identified themselves with the culture of their colonial masters. During the nineteenth century Orientalism emerged as an intellectual ally of Western colonialism. As Edward Said has cogently demonstrated, Oriental ism was a product of certain political and ideological forces operating in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and that it was inextricably bound up with Western ethnocentrism, racism, and imperialism (Said, 1978).
    [Show full text]
  • Franz Boas's Legacy of “Useful Knowledge”: the APS Archives And
    Franz Boas’s Legacy of “Useful Knowledge”: The APS Archives and the Future of Americanist Anthropology1 REGNA DARNELL Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology University of Western Ontario t is a pleasure and privilege, though also somewhat intimidating, to address the assembled membership of the American Philosophical ISociety. Like the august founders under whose portraits we assemble, Members come to hear their peers share the results of their inquiries across the full range of the sciences and arenas of public affairs to which they have contributed “useful knowledge.” Prior to the profes- sionalization of science in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the boundaries between disciplines were far less significant than they are today. Those who were not experts in particular topics could rest assured that their peers were capable of assessing both the state of knowledge in each other’s fields and the implications for society. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington were all polymaths, covering what we now separate into several kinds of science, humanities, and social science in ways that crosscut one another and illustrate the permeability of disciplinary boundaries. The study of the American Indian is a piece of that multidisciplinary heri- tage that constituted the APS and continues to characterize its public persona. The Founding Members of the Society all had direct and seminal experience with the Indians and with the conflict between their traditional ways of life and the infringing world of settler colonialism. On the one hand, they felt justified in exploiting Native resources, as surveyors, treaty negotiators, and land speculators. On the other hand, the Indians represented the uniqueness of the Americas, of the New World that defined itself apart from the decadence of old Europe.
    [Show full text]
  • History of the Human Sciences
    History of the Human Sciences http://hhs.sagepub.com/ Herder: culture, anthropology and the Enlightenment David Denby History of the Human Sciences 2005 18: 55 DOI: 10.1177/0952695105051126 The online version of this article can be found at: http://hhs.sagepub.com/content/18/1/55 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for History of the Human Sciences can be found at: Email Alerts: http://hhs.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://hhs.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://hhs.sagepub.com/content/18/1/55.refs.html Downloaded from hhs.sagepub.com at Zabol University on November 23, 2010 03HHS18-1 Denby (ds) 8/3/05 8:47 am Page 55 HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 18 No. 1 © 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) pp. 55–76 [18:1;55–76; DOI: 10.1177/0952695105051126] Herder: culture, anthropology and the Enlightenment DAVID DENBY ABSTRACT The anthropological sensibility has often been seen as growing out of opposition to Enlightenment universalism. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) is often cited as an ancestor of modern cultural relativism, in which cultures exist in the plural. This article argues that Herder’s anthropology, and anthropology generally, are more closely related to Enlightenment thought than is generally considered. Herder certainly attacks Enlightenment abstraction, the arrogance of its Eurocentric historical teleology, and argues the case for a proto-hermeneutical approach which emphasizes embeddedness, horizon, the usefulness of prejudice. His suspicion of the ideology of progress and of associated theories of stadial development leads to a critique of cosmopolitanism and, particularly, of colonialism.
    [Show full text]
  • Table of Contents
    Vol. 45, No. 1 January 2016 Newsof the lHistoryetter of Science Society Table of Contents From the President: Janet Browne From the President 1 HSS President, 2016-2017 Notes from the Inside 3 Publication of this January 2016 Newsletter provides me in congratulating Angela very warmly on a task Reflections on the Prague a welcome opportunity for the officers of the Society carried out superbly well. Conference “Gendering Science” 4 to wish members a very happy new year, and to thank Lone Star Historians of It is usual at this point in the cycle of Society business our outgoing president Angela Creager most sincerely Science—2015 8 for the incoming president also to write a few forward- for her inspired leadership. Presidents come and go, Lecturing on the History of looking words. As I take up this role it is heartening to but Angela has been special. She brought a unique Science in Unexpected Places: be able to say that I am the eighth female in this position Chronicling One Year on the Road 9 combination of insight, commitment, and sunny good since the Society’s foundation, and the third in a row. A Renaissance in Medieval nature to every meeting of the various committees and The dramatic increase of women in HSS’s structure Medical History 13 phone calls that her position entailed and has been and as speakers and organizers at the annual meeting, Member News 15 an important guide in steering the Society through from the time I first attended a meeting, perhaps a number of structural revisions and essential long- In Memoriam: John Farley 18 reflects a larger recalibration of the field as a whole.
    [Show full text]
  • Society: a Key Concept in Anthropology - Christian Giordano and Andrea Boscoboinik
    ETHNOLOGY, ETHNOGRAPHY AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY - Society: A Key Concept In Anthropology - Christian Giordano and Andrea Boscoboinik SOCIETY: A KEY CONCEPT IN ANTHROPOLOGY Christian Giordano and Andrea Boscoboinik University of Fribourg, Department of Social Sciences, Pérolles 90, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland. Keywords: Society, Culture, Evolutionism, Functionalism, Structuralism, Post- Structuralism, Dynamic Anthropology, Diffusionism, Relativism, Interpretive Anthropology, Postmodern Anthropology Contents 1. Introduction: semantic ambiguities of the concept of anthropology 2. Pioneers of Social Anthropology: Evolutionism and Society 3. The Idea of Society in British Anthropology: Functionalism 4. The French School: Structuralism 5. From Structuralism to Post-Structuralism and Their Influence on Agency Theory 6. Against Stability: Dynamic Anthropology 7. Diffusionism, Historicism and Relativism in Franz Boas: Culture as the Expression of Society in American Anthropology 8. Beyond seemingly objective facts: the interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz 9. Postmodern Anthropology: The Advent of Methodological Individualism and the Omission of Society. 10. Conclusion. Glossary Bibliography Biographical Sketches Summary In this chapter, we present the major anthropological currents that directly or indirectly made use of the notion of society in their theoretical reflections and analyses of empirical data. Having first clarified the polysemic nature of the term anthropology, we analyze the theoretical framework of early anthropologists who drew upon the evolutionist theories stemming from natural science. We then analyze British functionalism,UNESCO-EOLSS whose theoretical basis chiefly consists in a criticism of evolutionism, which was regarded as too speculative. Functionalism is characterized by its interest in institutions that, through their functions, generate cohesion in societies deemed primitive. TypicalSAMPLE of British functionalism is CHAPTERSthe empirical orientation of research put forward by Bronislaw Malinowski.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter 2 Alternating Sounds and the Formal Franchise in Phonology James Mcelvenny University of Edinburgh
    Chapter 2 Alternating sounds and the formal franchise in phonology James McElvenny University of Edinburgh A matter of some controversy in the intersecting worlds of late nineteenth-century linguistics and anthropology was the nature of “alternating sounds”. This phe- nomenon is the apparent tendency, long assumed to be characteristic of “primitive” languages, to freely vary the pronunciation of words, without any discernible sys- tem. Franz Boas (1858–1942), rebutting received opinion in the American anthro- pological establishment, denied the existence of this phenomenon, arguing that it was an artefact of observation. Georg von der Gabelentz (1840–1893), on the other hand, embraced the phenomenon and fashioned it into a critique of the compara- tive method as it was practised in Germany. Both Boas and Gabelentz – and indeed also their opponents – were well versed in the Humboldtian tradition of language scholarship, in particular as developed and transmitted by H. Steinthal (1823–1899). Although the late nineteenth-century debates surrounding alternating sounds were informed by a number of sources, this chapter argues that Steinthal’s writings served as a key point of reference and offered several motifs that were taken up by his scholarly successors. In addition, and most crucially, the chapter demonstrates that the positions at which the partic- ipants in these debates arrived were determined not so much by any simple tech- nical disagreements but by underlying philosophical differences and sociological factors. This episode in the joint history of linguistics and anthropology istelling for what it reveals about the dominant mindset and temperament of these disci- plines in relation to the formal analysis of the world’s languages.
    [Show full text]
  • Anthropology and the Racial Politics of Culture
    ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE RACIAL POLITICS OF CULTURE Lee D. Baker Anthropology and the Racial Politics of Culture Duke University Press Durham and London ( 2010 ) © 2010 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞ Designed by C. H. Westmoreland Typeset in Warnock with Magma Compact display by Achorn International, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. Dedicated to WILLIAM A. LITTLE AND SABRINA L. THOMAS Contents Preface: Questions ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 (1) Research, Reform, and Racial Uplift 33 (2) Fabricating the Authentic and the Politics of the Real 66 (3) Race, Relevance, and Daniel G. Brinton’s Ill-Fated Bid for Prominence 117 (4) The Cult of Franz Boas and His “Conspiracy” to Destroy the White Race 156 Notes 221 Works Cited 235 Index 265 Preface Questions “Are you a hegro? I a hegro too. Are you a hegro?” My mother loves to recount the story of how, as a three year old, I used this innocent, mis­ pronounced question to interrogate the garbagemen as I furiously raced my Big Wheel up and down the driveway of our rather large house on Park Avenue, a beautiful tree-lined street in an all-white neighborhood in Yakima, Washington. It was 1969. The Vietnam War was raging in South- east Asia, and the brutal murders of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, and Bobby and John F. Kennedy hung like a pall over a nation coming to grips with new formulations, relations, and understand- ings of race, culture, and power.
    [Show full text]
  • Anthropological Regionalism at the American Museum of Natural History, 1895–1945
    52 Ira Jacknis: ‘America Is Our Field’: Anthropological Regionalism at the American Museum of Natural History, 1895–1945 ‘America Is Our Field’: Anthropological Regionalism at the American Museum of Natural History, 1895–1945 *Ira Jacknis Abstract This article outlines the regional interests and emphases in anthropological collection, research, and display at the American Museum of Natural History, during the first half of the twentieth century. While all parts of the world were eventually represented in the museum’s collections, they came from radically different sources at different times, and for different reasons. Despite his identity as an Americanist, Franz Boas demonstrated a much more ambitious interest in world-wide collecting, especially in East Asia. During the post-Boasian years, after 1905, the Anthropology Department largely continued an Americanist emphasis, but increasingly the museum’s administration encouraged extensive collecting and exhibition for the Old World cultures. For the most part, these collections and exhibits diverged from anthropological concerns, expressing imperialist messages, biological documentation, or artistic display. In thus constituting the ‘stuff’ of an anthropology museum, one can trace the transvaluation of objects, the importance of networks, institutional competition, and the role of disciplinary definitions. Keywords: museum, anthropology, collecting, exhibition, culture areas, American Museum of Natural History Almost by definition, the great metropolitan natural history museums were founded on a problematic relationship to a distant ‘field.’ Wandering through their halls, the visitor is confronted by cultures that are usually far away in space and time.1 As they were developed in the nineteenth century, these natural history museums, parallel to the art museums (Duncan and Wallach 1980), adopted Enlightenment schemes of universal survey.
    [Show full text]
  • Philosophical Anthropology
    070.616 – Proseminar: Philosophical Anthropology Johns Hopkins University, Fall 2010, Macaulay 400, Thursdays 2-4 PM Anand Pandian* Working along four distinct axes of philosophical thought and anthropological investigation – the human and non-human, culture and history, space and time, and mind and matter – we will examine the relationship between conceptual and empirical work in classical and contemporary anthropology. The first three sections of the course begin with Enlightenment philosophies crucial for the development of modern social and cultural anthropology, tracking subsequent inheritances and transmutations of their conceptual positions; the final section instead explores a movement of thought from anthropology to philosophy and back again. Throughout the semester, we will be concerned with how concepts arise in, and circulate through, the exercise of anthropology: what is it to think – critically, imaginatively, comparatively, minutely – about human being and becoming? Required Texts. Michel Foucault, Order of Things; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, Volume 1; Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques; Hugh Raffles, The Illustrated Insectopedia; Johann Gottfried Herder, Herder: Philosophical Writings; Michael Fischer, Anthropological Futures; Emile Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religious Life; Alfred Gell, The Anthropology of Time; Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind; Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus; Todd Ochoa, Society of the Dead: Quita Manaquita and Palo Praise in Cuba; other articles and excerpts. Coursework. All required texts will be available either at the campus bookstore or through library reserve (password PAN616). You will be expected to have read them completely before each class meeting, and to be prepared to discuss them closely.
    [Show full text]
  • Frameworks of Analysis
    PART I Frameworks of Analysis INTRODUCTION Tony Bennett then examine the forms of cultural analysis that have been associated It is clear from our discussion in the general with the development of psychological and introduction that it is impossible to tie the sociological thought. Peter Burke’s discussion term ‘culture’ to a single concept or to a of cultural history provides a bridge into simple history of usage. It is better understood the next group of chapters focused mainly as referencing a network of loosely related on text-based disciplines. James English’s concepts that has been shaped by the relations account of the role that the analysis of form between the different histories and fields of has played in the development of literary usage with which the term has came to be studies is followed here by Tia DeNora’s entangled. A significant factor here has been consideration of music as both text and the different meanings deriving from the ways performance. Mieke Bal then examines the in which the concept has been used and relations between art history and the more interpreted in the social science disciplines recent development of visual culture studies. one the one hand and in the humanities The next two chapters – Tom Gunning’s on the other. These different disciplinary discussion of film studies and Toby Miller’s articulations of the concept are the focus account of broadcasting – are concerned with of the contributions composing this first the forms of cultural analysis that have been part of the book, which also assesses how developed in relation to the two main media the ‘cultural turn’ has affected developments systems of the twentieth century.
    [Show full text]
  • Following Boas, Malinowski, Physics And
    History of Anthropology Newsletter Volume 39 Issue 2 December 2012 Article 3 January 2012 Conversions, Dreams, Defining Aims? ollowingF Boas, Malinowski, Physics and Anthropology, Through Laboratory and Field Richard Staley Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/han Part of the Anthropology Commons, and the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons Recommended Citation Staley, Richard (2012) "Conversions, Dreams, Defining Aims? ollowingF Boas, Malinowski, Physics and Anthropology, Through Laboratory and Field," History of Anthropology Newsletter: Vol. 39 : Iss. 2 , Article 3. Available at: https://repository.upenn.edu/han/vol39/iss2/3 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/han/vol39/iss2/3 For more information, please contact [email protected]. History of Anthropology Newsletter 39.2 (December 2012) / 3 Conversions, Dreams, Defining Aims? Following Boas and Malinowski, Physics and Anthropology, through Laboratory and Field Richard Staley, University of Wisconsin–Madison, [email protected] Founding Figures Anthropology’s founding figures were academic travelers, who brought skills that were honed in a variety of fields to their new enterprise. Two such figures were Franz Boas, born in Minden, Westphalia in 1858, and Bronislaw Malinowski, born in Kraków, Galicia, in 1884. Both were recognized for helping to establish anthropology in their respective adopted homes of the United States and Britain. Both are associated with the development of participant observation, the fieldwork method requiring anthropologists to immerse themselves in the everyday lives of the peoples of other cultures.1 Both were initially trained in physics (amongst other subjects), and many historians stress that both traveled a considerable intellectual distance from the grounding their early work provided.
    [Show full text]