American Anthropological Association - Böcker

American anthropology in the late twentieth century interrogated and depicted the worlds of others, past and present, in subtle and incisive ways while increasingly questioning its own authority to do so. Marxist, symbolic, and structuralist thought shaped the fieldwork and conclusions of many researchers around the globe. Practicing anthropology blossomed and grew rapidly as a subdiscipline in its own right. There emerged a keener appreciation of both the history of the discipline and the histories of those studied. Archaeologists witnessed a resurgence of interest in the concept of culture. The American Anthropologist also made systematic efforts to represent the field as a whole, with biological anthropology and linguistics particularly adept at crossing subdiscipline boundaries. Proliferation of specialized areas within sociocultural anthropology encouraged work across the subdisciplines. The thirty selections in this volume reflect the notable trends and accomplishments in American anthropology during the closing decades of the millennium. An introduction by Regna Darnell offers a historical background and critical context that enable readers to better understand the changes and continuity in American anthropology during this time.

The formative years of American anthropology were characterized by intellectual energy and excitement, the identification of key interpretive issues, and the beginnings of a prodigious amount of fieldwork and recording. The American Anthropological Association (AAA) was born as anthropology emerged as a formal discipline with specialized subfields; fieldwork among Native communities proliferated across North America, yielding a wealth of ethnographic information that began to surface in the flagship journal, the American Anthropologist; and researchers increasingly debated and probed deeper into the roots and significance of ritual, myth, language, social organization, and the physical make-up and prehistory of Native Americans. The fifty-five selections in this volume represent the interests of and accomplishments in American anthropology from the establishment of the American Anthropologist through World War I. The articles in their entirety showcase the state of the subfields of anthropology—archaeology, linguistics, physical anthropology, and cultural anthropology—as they were imagined and practiced at the dawn of the twentieth century. Examples of important ethnographic accounts and interpretive debates are also included. Introducing this collection is a historical overview of the beginnings of American anthropology by A. Irving Hallowell, a former president of the AAA.

From the early Cold War years through the social unrest and activism of the 1960s, American anthropology expanded considerably in size and outreach, becoming spectacularly global and cross-cultural in its interests. Complex societies and communities became increasingly popular subjects of inquiry; the influence of sociological methods upon fieldwork and interpretation grew; a reimagined cultural evolution emerged; and a pervasive interest in the broader forces of culture change shaped research, writing, and theory throughout the quarter century. A dynamic range of schools of anthropological thought flowered—cultural ecology, structural-functionalism, ethnoscience, and, in the last years of the era, French structuralism. The American Anthropological Association became a forum of political debate in the 1960s, and its membership included more people of color but fewer women than previously. The twenty-two selections in this volume highlight the many telling achievements and enduring insights in American anthropology during the first few decades after World War II. An introduction to these essays by Robert F. Murphy provides a historical and critical backdrop for understanding the changes and continuity in American anthropology during this time.