Comments on: From Reinventing Anthropology to Writing Culture

By: Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog » So much for laterality.

Sun, 15 Jan 2006 23:03:22 +0000

[...] I have just successfully managed to make it through the first chapter of Mutual Life, Limited by Bill Maurer, entitled “Lateral reasons for a post-reflexive anthropology.” Maurer’s books represents one of the most recent statements of one school of thought trying to recover an anthropological program after the critiques of the 1980s (the other, ‘unnew’ approach a while back). Maurer’s argument is (very) complex, but at a general level we might want to say that it involves an attempt to rethink anthropology as a program of adequation—of creating representations of life that are adequate (or resemble) the empirical world. His alternate conception is important (to me, anyway) because it might allow us to escape some of the problems with the existing I-say you-say dynamics of anthropological explanation I mentioned earlier. [...]

By: oneman

oneman — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 17:57:48 +0000

Ok, point taken — there are more than 10 pieces of history of anthro dealing with the post-WWII era.

However. The kind of history that Stocking writes, or Suzuki, or a handful of others is exceedingly rare. The kind where the actions and interactions of people are described, that is. Far more common are pieces like Bunzl’s mentioned or Ortner’s “Theory in Anthropology Since the ’60s” — work that details the theoretical developments and how different theories or bodies of work relate to each other. There is nothing wrong with this kind of work, of course — ideas are important, and this kind of wider perspective can help revive or evn resuscitate work which has fallen by the wayside, when it’s done well, or inspire new developments — but it’s not the kind of work I think of as “history of anthropology”. Maybe that’s just a personal quibble, or maybe I need to sit down and put together a post on the subject.

By: Rex

Rex — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 07:17:17 +0000

Oneman: you realize this brings the number of pieces written on post-1942 anthropology up to 11, don’t you :)

More seriously, have you looked at “Exotics at Hom” by Micaela de Leonardo? I thought it was quite good (in a sort of relentless, polemical sort of way) on anthro in the most recent decades.

By: oneman

oneman — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 06:02:39 +0000

Since I received a sideways glance in this post, I feel it incumbent on me to comment :-) I’m more than happy to see Bunzl moving into the “extended present” — his work on Boas has been top-notch. I actually felt ashamed of myself for my own work on Boas’ Jewish influences (part I at http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/jewish_american_history/32804) after hearing Bunzl’s far more sophisticated and nuanced take at the AAAs a few years ago. His new piece brings a nice overview perspective to the theoretical shifts of the last 40 years, although as a lot of intellectual histories do, it presents history as embodied in books, as if _Writing Culture_ itself reasponded to _Orientalism_ and _Reinventing Anthropology_ responded to _A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term_. He does mention the influence of ’60s radicalism and the effect of the decolonization of many of anthropoogy’s fieldsites, but where are the practices of reinvented fieldworkers, where the historically embedded writers of these works, where the institutional shifts that undergirded anthropology’s expansion throughout the ’60s and ’70s and its diminishment since the Reagan years? Ok, ok, it’s 6 1/3 pages (9 *with* the bibliography) — more of a precis towards an in-depth history than a history itself.

In response to the last question — when were the bad old years — I think it has to depend at least in part on whether you think Darnell has been wholly successful in “reclaiming” a usable Boasianism. And, too, a great deal of the 40’s-50’s upheaval was institutional as much as ideational.

By: Anthro Grad Student Guy

Anthro Grad Student Guy — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 04:42:02 +0000

anthro campuses should read university campuses

By: Anthro Grad Student Guy

Anthro Grad Student Guy — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 04:41:18 +0000

Actually you should be able to view it at many anthropology campuses. I live on campus at my current institution and I can read it as could professors in their offices or people in the library.

By: Rex

Rex — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 03:18:10 +0000

Yeah I know. I would have linked to the abstract if such an abstract was available to avoid the non-authorized from being bounced, but A&H doesn’t do abstracts, only the fulltext is available on AnthroSource.

By: Dr. Sanders

Dr. Sanders — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 01:50:00 +0000

This Bunzl character looks intriguing, but only because Alex does. On a tedious logistical note, your link for the Anthro and Humanism article is wrong. If you’re at U of Chicago, the link is:
http://www.anthrosource.net.proxy.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1525/ahu.2005.30.2.187?prevSearch=authorsfield%3A%28Bunzl%2CMatti%29

If not, and you’re not in the AAA, then the message (from the AAA) is apparently that you have no business reading this. Sad.