Sally Price - Böcker

What is so "primitive" about primitive art? And how do we dare to use our standards to judge it? Drawing on an intriguing mixture of sources-including fashion ads and films, her own anthropological research, and even comic strips like Doonesbury—Price explores the cultural arrogance implicit in Westerners' appropriation of non-Western art."[Price] presents a literary collage of the Western attitude to other cultures, and in particular to the visual art of the Third and Fourth Worlds. . . . Her book is not about works of 'primitive art' as such, but about the Western construction 'Primitive Art.' It is a critique of Western ignorance and arrogance: ignorance about other cultures and arrogance towards them."—Jeremy Coote, Times Literary Supplement"The book is infuriating, entertaining, and inspirational, leaving one feeling less able than before to pass judgment on 'known' genres of art, but feeling more confident for that."—Joel Smith, San Francisco Review of Books"[A] witty, but scholarly, indictment of the whole primitive-art business, from cargo to curator. And because she employs sarcasm as well as pedagogy, Price's book will probably forever deprive the reader of the warm fuzzies he usually gets standing before the display cases at the local ethnographic museum."—Newsweek

In 1990, Jacques Chirac, the future president of France and a passionate fan of non-European art, met Jacques Kerchache, a maverick art collector with the lifelong ambition of displaying African sculpture in the holy temple of French culture, the Louvre. Together, they began laying plans, and ten years later African fetishes were on view under the same roof as the Mona Lisa. Then, in 2006, amid a maelstrom of controversy and hype, Chirac presided over the opening of a new museum dedicated to primitive art in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower: the Musee du Quai Branly (MQB). "Paris Primitive" recounts the massive reconfiguration of Paris' museum world that resulted from Chirac's dream, set against a backdrop of personal and national politics, intellectual life, and the role of culture in French society. Along with exposing the machinations that led to the MQB's creation, Sally Price addresses the thorny questions it raises about the legacy of colonialism, the balance between aesthetic judgments and ethnographic context, and the role of institutions of art and culture in an increasingly diverse France.Anyone with a stake in the myriad political, cultural, and anthropological issues raised by the MQB will find Price's account fascinating.

A postmodern romp through the rain forest, Equatoria is both travelogue and cultural critique. On the right-hand pages, the Prices chronicle their 1990 artifact-collecting expedition up the rivers of French Guiana, and on the left, stage an accompanying sideshow that enlists the help of Jonathan Swift, Joseph Conrad, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Alex Haley, James Clifford, Eric Hobsbawn, Germaine Greer, and even the noted anthropologist James Goodfellow. Charged with acquiring objects for a new museum, the Prices kept a log of their day-to-day adventures and misadventures, constantly confronting their ambivalence about the act of collecting, the very possibility of exhibiting cultures and the future of anthropology. Probing the nature of museums, collecting, and power relations between "us" and "them," the Prices raise many troubling questions.

Noted writers on art, culture, and the tropical Americas, Richard and Sally Price have crafted a mystery at the intersections of art and anthropology. Drawing readers into their quest for a solution, they build an unusual partnership between text and pictures, daringly expanding the possibilities of academic discourse. Enigma Variations--in the tradition of The Recognitions and The Crying of Lot 49--is an entertainment as readable for its intellectual power as for its irresistible drama.

In 'Caribbean Contours' eight leading scholars in the humanities and the social sciences survey the history, politics, economics, demography, and culture of the Caribbean to provide an authoritative yet accessible introduction to this complex and geographically fragmented region.

This abridgement of the Prices' acclaimed 1988 critical edition is based on Stedman's original, handwritten manuscript, which offers a portrait at considerable variance with the 1796 classic. The unexpurgated text, presented here with extensive notes and commentary, constitutes one of the richest and most evocative accounts ever written of flourishing slave society.

For more than four centuries, communities of maroons (men and women who escaped slavery) dotted the fringes of plantation America, from Brazil through the Caribbean to the United States. Today their descendants still form semi-independent enclaves—in Jamaica, Brazil, Colombia, Belize, Suriname, Guyane, and elsewhere—remaining proud of their maroon origins and, in some cases, faithful to unique cultural traditions forged during the earliest days of Afro-American history. In 1986, expelled by the military regime of Suriname, anthropologists Richard and Sally Price turned to neighboring Guyane (French Guiana), where thousands of Maroons were taking refuge from the Suriname civil war. Over the next fifteen years, their conversations with local people convinced them of the need to replace the pervasive stereotypes about Maroons in Guyane with accurate information. In 2003, Les Marrons became a local best seller. In 2020, after a series of further visits, the Prices wrote a new edition taking into account the many rapid changes. Available for the first time in English, Maroons in Guyane reviews the history of Maroon peoples in Guyane, explains how these groups differ from one another, and analyzes their current situations in the bustling, multicultural world of this far-flung outpost of the French Republic. A gallery of the magnificent arts of the Maroons completes the volume.

When Richard and Sally Price stepped out of the canoe to begin their fieldwork with the Saamaka Maroons of Suriname in 1966, they were met with a mixture of curiosity, suspicion, ambivalence, hostility, and fascination. With their gradual acceptance into the community they undertook the work that would shape their careers and influence the study of African American societies throughout the hemisphere for decades to come. In Saamaka Dreaming they look back on the experience, reflecting on a discipline and a society that are considerably different today. Drawing on thousands of pages of field notes, as well as recordings, file cards, photos, and sketches, the Prices retell and comment on the most intensive fieldwork of their careers, evoke the joys and hardships of building relationships and trust, and outline their personal adaptation to this unfamiliar universe. The book is at once a moving human story, a portrait of a remarkable society, and a thought-provoking revelation about the development of anthropology over the past half-century.

When Richard and Sally Price stepped out of the canoe to begin their fieldwork with the Saamaka Maroons of Suriname in 1966, they were met with a mixture of curiosity, suspicion, ambivalence, hostility, and fascination. With their gradual acceptance into the community they undertook the work that would shape their careers and influence the study of African American societies throughout the hemisphere for decades to come. In Saamaka Dreaming they look back on the experience, reflecting on a discipline and a society that are considerably different today. Drawing on thousands of pages of field notes, as well as recordings, file cards, photos, and sketches, the Prices retell and comment on the most intensive fieldwork of their careers, evoke the joys and hardships of building relationships and trust, and outline their personal adaptation to this unfamiliar universe. The book is at once a moving human story, a portrait of a remarkable society, and a thought-provoking revelation about the development of anthropology over the past half-century.

Anthropological iconoclasts Richard and Sally Price have spent the last two decades not only creating an unparalleled oeuvre of scholarship in several areas of anthropology but also unabashedly calling foul on any untenable or patronizing concepts of "us" and "them," "primitive" and "modern," that cross their path. For this pamphlet, they crack the yellowing diaries kept by Melville and Frances Herskovits on their famous 1920s expedition deep into the South American jungle, exposing—with their trademark combination of deadpan wit and theoretical rigor—the origins of the field that has come to be known as African diaspora studies.