Luke Eric Lassiter - Böcker

Collaboration between ethnographers and subjects has long been a product of the close, intimate relationships that define ethnographic research. But increasingly collaboration is no longer viewed as merely a consequence of fieldwork; instead collaboration now preconditions and shapes research design as well as its dissemination. As a result, ethnographic subjects are shifting from being informants to being consultants. The emergence of collaborative ethnography highlights this relationship between consultant and ethnographer, moving it to center stage as a calculated part not only of fieldwork but also of the writing process itself. "The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography" presents a historical, theoretical, and practice-oriented road map for this shift from incidental collaboration to a more conscious and explicit collaborative strategy. Luke Eric Lassiter charts the history of collaborative ethnography from its earliest implementation to its contemporary emergence in fields such as feminism, humanistic anthropology, and critical ethnography.On this historical and theoretical base, Lassiter outlines concrete steps for achieving a more deliberate and overt collaborative practice throughout the processes of fieldwork and writing. As a participatory action situated in the ethical commitments between ethnographers and consultants and focused on the co-construction of texts, collaborative ethnography, argues Lassiter, is among the most powerful ways to press ethnographic fieldwork and writing into the service of an applied and public scholarship. A comprehensive and highly accessible handbook for ethnographers of all stripes, "The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography" will become a fixture in the development of a critical practice of anthropology, invaluable to undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty alike.

Collaboration between ethnographers and subjects has long been a product of the close, intimate relationships that define ethnographic research. But increasingly collaboration is no longer viewed as merely a consequence of fieldwork; instead collaboration now preconditions and shapes research design as well as its dissemination. As a result, ethnographic subjects are shifting from being informants to being consultants. The emergence of collaborative ethnography highlights this relationship between consultant and ethnographer, moving it to center stage as a calculated part not only of fieldwork but also of the writing process itself. "The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography" presents a historical, theoretical, and practice-oriented road map for this shift from incidental collaboration to a more conscious and explicit collaborative strategy. Luke Eric Lassiter charts the history of collaborative ethnography from its earliest implementation to its contemporary emergence in fields such as feminism, humanistic anthropology, and critical ethnography.On this historical and theoretical base, Lassiter outlines concrete steps for achieving a more deliberate and overt collaborative practice throughout the processes of fieldwork and writing. As a participatory action situated in the ethical commitments between ethnographers and consultants and focused on the co-construction of texts, collaborative ethnography, argues Lassiter, is among the most powerful ways to press ethnographic fieldwork and writing into the service of an applied and public scholarship. A comprehensive and highly accessible handbook for ethnographers of all stripes, "The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography" will become a fixture in the development of a critical practice of anthropology, invaluable to undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty alike.

Prompted by the overt omission of Muncie's black community from the famous community study by Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture, the authors initiated this project to reveal the unrecorded historical and contemporary life of Middletown, a well-known pseudonym for the Midwestern city of Muncie, Indiana. As a collaboration of community and campus, this book recounts the early efforts of Hurley Goodall to develop a community history and archive that told the story of the African American community, and rectify the representation of small town America as exclusively white. The authors designed and implemented a collaborative ethnographic field project that involved intensive interviews, research, and writing between community organizations, local experts, ethnographers, and teams of college students. This book is a unique model for collaborative research, easily accessible to students. It will be a valuable resource for instructors in anthropology, creative writing, sociology, community research, and African American studies.

Prompted by the overt omission of Muncie's black community from the famous community study by Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture, the authors initiated this project to reveal the unrecorded historical and contemporary life of Middletown, a well-known pseudonym for the Midwestern city of Muncie, Indiana. As a collaboration of community and campus, this book recounts the early efforts of Hurley Goodall to develop a community history and archive that told the story of the African American community, and rectify the representation of small town America as exclusively white. The authors designed and implemented a collaborative ethnographic field project that involved intensive interviews, research, and writing between community organizations, local experts, ethnographers, and teams of college students. This book is a unique model for collaborative research, easily accessible to students. It will be a valuable resource for instructors in anthropology, creative writing, sociology, community research, and African American studies.

Prompted by the overt omission of Muncie's black community from the famous community study by Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture, the authors initiated this project to reveal the unrecorded historical and contemporary life of Middletown, a well-known pseudonym for the Midwestern city of Muncie, Indiana. As a collaboration of community and campus, this book recounts the early efforts of Hurley Goodall to develop a community history and archive that told the story of the African American community, and rectify the representation of small town America as exclusively white. The authors designed and implemented a collaborative ethnographic field project that involved intensive interviews, research, and writing between community organizations, local experts, ethnographers, and teams of college students. This book is a unique model for collaborative research, easily accessible to students. It will be a valuable resource for instructors in anthropology, creative writing, sociology, community research, and African American studies. It may be purchased with a companion DVD, Middletown Redux, which recounts the making of the Other Side of Middletown, illuminating the development of this rewarding ethnography out of joint fieldwork, and the strong ties formed as a result between the local communities.The Other Side of Middletown project is sponsored by the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry in Muncie, Indiana. Middletown Redux is a twenty-six-minute documentary that recounts the development and writing of The Other Side of Middletown, written in response to the overt omission of Muncie's black community from the famous study by Robert S. and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture. In their own words, faculty, students, and community members comment on the project's evolution and the relationships formed between the campus and community. This informative and compelling film illustrates the process of creating a rich ethnography out of fieldwork and the rewards of collaborating with local communities. Middletown Redux is directed by James Miles and produced by the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry, Ball State University.

Prompted by the overt omission of Muncie's black community from the famous community study by Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture, the authors initiated this project to reveal the unrecorded historical and contemporary life of Middletown, a well-known pseudonym for the Midwestern city of Muncie, Indiana. As a collaboration of community and campus, this book recounts the early efforts of Hurley Goodall to develop a community history and archive that told the story of the African American community, and rectify the representation of small town America as exclusively white. The authors designed and implemented a collaborative ethnographic field project that involved intensive interviews, research, and writing between community organizations, local experts, ethnographers, and teams of college students. This book is a unique model for collaborative research, easily accessible to students. It will be a valuable resource for instructors in anthropology, creative writing, sociology, community research, and African American studies.

Explorations in Cultural Anthropology is a collection of readings chosen to demonstrate the varied and valuable applications of the anthropological perspective to real-world problems on local, regional, and global scales. It introduces undergraduates to the exciting, perplexing, and troubling issues that socio-cultural anthropologists confront in their work in academia and beyond. Students now have a one-stop source for a variety of key ethnographic and cultural materials without having to buy or search for numerous texts. Explorations in Cultural Anthropology offers 31 classic readings and contemporary anthropological essays as well as pieces written by journalists, scholars from other disciplines, cultural consultants, and community leaders. The selections are meant to thoughtfully challenge students and provoke further discussion within introductory-level classrooms. The book is organized into nine parts that reflect significant themes and current trends in cultural anthropology: Culture; Fieldwork and Ethnography; Language, Communication, and Expressive Culture; Socio-economic and Political Systems in a Changing World; Race and Ethnicity; Gender and Sexuality; Marriage, Family, and Kinship; Belief Systems; and Applied and Future Anthropologies. Each part introduces the articles therein and provides probing questions per article for student response. This outstanding collection perfectly complements Luke Eric Lassiter's Invitation to Anthropology textbook but has wide appeal for all introductory cultural anthropology courses.

Explorations in Cultural Anthropology is a collection of readings chosen to demonstrate the varied and valuable applications of the anthropological perspective to real-world problems on local, regional, and global scales. It introduces undergraduates to the exciting, perplexing, and troubling issues that socio-cultural anthropologists confront in their work in academia and beyond. Students now have a one-stop source for a variety of key ethnographic and cultural materials without having to buy or search for numerous texts. Explorations in Cultural Anthropology offers 31 classic readings and contemporary anthropological essays as well as pieces written by journalists, scholars from other disciplines, cultural consultants, and community leaders. The selections are meant to thoughtfully challenge students and provoke further discussion within introductory-level classrooms. The book is organized into nine parts that reflect significant themes and current trends in cultural anthropology: Culture; Fieldwork and Ethnography; Language, Communication, and Expressive Culture; Socio-economic and Political Systems in a Changing World; Race and Ethnicity; Gender and Sexuality; Marriage, Family, and Kinship; Belief Systems; and Applied and Future Anthropologies. Each part introduces the articles therein and provides probing questions per article for student response. This outstanding collection perfectly complements Luke Eric Lassiter's Invitation to Cultural Anthropology textbook but has wide appeal for all introductory cultural anthropology courses.

This anthology examines the origins, meanings, and enduring power of the powwow. Held on and off reservations, in rural and urban settings, powwows are an important vehicle for Native peoples to gather regularly. Although sometimes a paradoxical combination of both tribal and intertribal identities, they are a medium by which many groups maintain important practices. Powwow begins with an exploration of the history and significance of powwows, ranging from the Hochunk dances of the early twentieth century to present-day Southern Cheyenne gatherings to the contemporary powwow circuit of the northern plains. Contributors discuss the powwow's performative and cultural dimensions, including emcees, song and dance, the expression of traditional values, and the Powwow Princess. The final section examines how powwow practices have been appropriated and transformed by Natives and non-Natives during the past few decades. Of special note is the use of powwows by Native communities in the eastern United States, by Germans, by gay and lesbian Natives, and by New Agers.

In this highly original and moving volume, an anthropologist, a historian, and a Native singer come together to reveal the personal and cultural power of Christian faith among the Kiowas of southwestern Oklahoma and to show how Christian members of the Kiowa community have creatively embraced hymns and made them their own. Kiowas practice a unique expression of Christianity, a blending that began with the arrival of missionaries on the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Reservation in the 1870s. In these pages, historian Clyde Ellis offers a compelling look at the way in which many Kiowas became Christian over the past century and have woven that faith into their identity. The personal and cultural significance of traditional songs and their close connection to the power of hymns is then illuminated by anthropologist Luke Eric Lassiter. Like traditional Kiowa songs, Christian hymns help restore and minister to the community; they also can be highly individualistic since many are composed and shared by church members themselves at different times in their lives. In the final section of the book Kiowa singer Ralph Kotay tells of the personal meaning and value of the hymns and of the Christian faith in general.This remarkable, sensitive book makes an important contribution to our understanding of the complexity of Native lives today and offers a subtle yet penetrating look at the legacy of Christianity among Native peoples.

These case studies explore how competing interests among the keepers of a community's heritage shape how that community both regards itself and reveals itself to others. As editors Celeste Ray and Luke Eric Lassiter note in their introduction, such stakeholders are no longer just of the community itself, but are now often "outsiders"—tourists, the mass media, and even anthropologists and folklorists.The setting of each study is a different marginalized community in the South. Arranged around three themes that have often surfaced in debates about public folklore and anthropology over the last two decades, the studies consider issues of representation, identity, and practice. One study of representation discusses how Appalachian Pentecostal serpent handlers try to reconcile their exotic popular image with their personal religious beliefs. A case study on identity tells why a segment of the Cajun population has appropriated the term "coonass," once widely considered derogatory. Essays on practice look at an Appalachian Virginia coal town and Snee Farm, a National Heritage Site in lowland South Carolina. Both pieces reveal how dynamic and contradictory views of community life can be silenced in favor of producing a more easily consumable vision of a "past."Signifying Serpents and Mardi Gras Runners offers challenging new insights into some of the roles that the media, tourism, and charismatic community members can play when a community compromises its heritage or even denies it.

These case studies explore how competing interests among the keepers of a community's heritage shape how that community both regards itself and reveals itself to others. As editors Celeste Ray and Luke Eric Lassiter note in their introduction, such stakeholders are no longer just of the community itself, but are now often "outsiders"—tourists, the mass media, and even anthropologists and folklorists.The setting of each study is a different marginalized community in the South. Arranged around three themes that have often surfaced in debates about public folklore and anthropology over the last two decades, the studies consider issues of representation, identity, and practice. One study of representation discusses how Appalachian Pentecostal serpent handlers try to reconcile their exotic popular image with their personal religious beliefs. A case study on identity tells why a segment of the Cajun population has appropriated the term "coonass," once widely considered derogatory. Essays on practice look at an Appalachian Virginia coal town and Snee Farm, a National Heritage Site in lowland South Carolina. Both pieces reveal how dynamic and contradictory views of community life can be silenced in favor of producing a more easily consumable vision of a "past."Signifying Serpents and Mardi Gras Runners offers challenging new insights into some of the roles that the media, tourism, and charismatic community members can play when a community compromises its heritage or even denies it.

Doing Ethnography Today explores the methodologies and theories behind contemporary, collaborative ethnography and provides an opportunity to cultivate experience with included exercises. • Presents ethnography as creative and artful rather than analytical or technical• Emphasises the collaborative nature of ethnography• Structured exercises cultivate practical experience • Includes a discussion on indexing and interpreting project materials• Provides guidance on interview questions and selecting appropriate field equipment

Born within and against the violence of European colonial conquest, anthropology has aspired to understand the diversity of human experience in ethical and transformative ways. The New Invitation to Anthropology is a fresh and accessible text that takes students to the heart of the discipline and reveals the ongoing relevance of anthropology today. The New Invitation to Anthropology, Fifth Edition has an intimate touch that invites students in and helps them understand the historical roots of anthropology and its connection to recent social and political issues. Part I covers the history of the discipline, the emergence of the concept of culture, and ethnographic field methods in relation to European imperialism and discourses on race. Part II illustrates how the concept of culture shaped specific domains of anthropological study, including ecological adaptation, social class, gender, family, marriage, religion, and medicine.As a timely and engaging “non-textbook,” The New Invitation to Anthropology explores anthropological perspectives on real-world problems, helping students think like anthropologists and become better citizens of the world.New To This EditionSignificantly revised Chapter 1, “The Origins of North American Anthropology,” demonstrates how modern anthropology emerged out of 19th century theories of race and social evolutionism and develops critical understandings of modern forms of racism New sections on social class and globalization in Chapter 4 offer insights into the complexities of modern global problems like climate changeNew elaborations of intersectionality in Chapter 5, “Sex, Gender, and Inequality” reinforces discussions of gender-based inequalityChapter 7 on religious experience now incorporates healing and medicine to expand a framework of studying belief and experience

Born within and against the violence of European colonial conquest, anthropology has aspired to understand the diversity of human experience in ethical and transformative ways. The New Invitation to Anthropology is a fresh and accessible text that takes students to the heart of the discipline and reveals the ongoing relevance of anthropology today. The New Invitation to Anthropology, Fifth Edition has an intimate touch that invites students in and helps them understand the historical roots of anthropology and its connection to recent social and political issues. Part I covers the history of the discipline, the emergence of the concept of culture, and ethnographic field methods in relation to European imperialism and discourses on race. Part II illustrates how the concept of culture shaped specific domains of anthropological study, including ecological adaptation, social class, gender, family, marriage, religion, and medicine.As a timely and engaging “non-textbook,” The New Invitation to Anthropology explores anthropological perspectives on real-world problems, helping students think like anthropologists and become better citizens of the world.New To This EditionSignificantly revised Chapter 1, “The Origins of North American Anthropology,” demonstrates how modern anthropology emerged out of 19th century theories of race and social evolutionism and develops critical understandings of modern forms of racism New sections on social class and globalization in Chapter 4 offer insights into the complexities of modern global problems like climate changeNew elaborations of intersectionality in Chapter 5, “Sex, Gender, and Inequality” reinforces discussions of gender-based inequalityChapter 7 on religious experience now incorporates healing and medicine to expand a framework of studying belief and experience

On January 9th 2014, residents across Charleston, West Virginia, awoke to an unusual liquorice smell in the air and a similar taste in the public drinking water. That evening residents were informed that the tap water in tens of thousands of homes, hundred of businesses, and dozens of schools and hospitals - the water made available to as many as 300,00 citizens in a nine-county region - had been contaminated with a chemical used for cleaning crushed coal. This books tells a particular set of stories about that chemical spill and its aftermath, an unfolding water crisis that would lead to months, even years, of fear and distrust. It is both oral history and collaborative ethnography, jointly conceptualised, researched, and written by people - more than fifty in all - across various positions in academia and local communities. I'm Afraid of That Water foregrounds the ongoing concerns of West Virginians (and people in comparable situations in places like Flint, Michigan) confronted by the problem of contamination, where thresholds for official safety may be crossed, but a genuine return to normality is elusive.