Sergei A. Kan – författare

This intellectual biography of Lev Shternberg (1861–1927) illuminates the development of professional anthropology in late imperial and early Soviet Russia. Shortly after the formation of the Soviet Union the government initiated a detailed ethnographic survey of the country's peoples. Lev Shternberg, who as a political exile during the late tsarist period had conducted ethnographic research in northeastern Siberia, was one of the anthropologists who directed this survey and consequently played a major role in influencing the professionalization of anthropology in the Soviet Union.But Shternberg was much more than a government anthropologist. Under the new regime he continued his work as the senior curator of the St. Petersburg Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, which began in the early 1900s. In the last decade of his life Shternberg also played a leading role in establishing a new Soviet school of cultural anthropology and in training a cohort of professional anthropologists. True to the ideals of his youth, he also continued an active involvement in the intellectual life of the Jewish community, even though the new regime was making it increasingly difficult. This in-depth biography explores the scholarly and political aspects of Shternberg's life and how they influenced each other. It also places his career in both national and international perspectives, showing the context in which he lived and worked and revealing the important developments in Russian anthropology during these tumultuous years.

Sharing Our Knowledge brings together Native elders, tradition bearers, educators, cultural activists, anthropologists, linguists, historians, and museum professionals to explore the culture, history, and language of the Tlingit people of southeast Alaska and their coastal neighbors. These interdisciplinary, collaborative essays present Tlingit culture, as well as the culture of their coastal neighbors, not as an object of study but rather as a living heritage that continues to inspire and guide the lives of communities and individuals throughout southeast Alaska and northwest British Columbia.  This volume focuses on the preservation and dissemination of Tlingit language, traditional cultural knowledge, and history from an activist Tlingit perspective. Sharing Our Knowledge also highlights a variety of collaborations between Native groups and individuals and non-Native researchers, emphasizing a long history of respectful, cooperative, and productive working relations aimed at recording and transmitting cultural knowledge for tribal use and promoting Native agency in preserving heritage. By focusing on these collaborations, the contributors demonstrate how such alliances have benefited the Tlingits and neighboring groups in preserving and protecting their heritage while advancing scholarship at the same time.

Strangers to Relatives is an intimate and illuminating look at a typical but misunderstood part of anthropological fieldwork in North America: the adoption and naming of anthropologists by Native families and communities. Adoption and naming have long been a common way for Native peoples in Canada and the United States to deal with strangers who are not enemies. For over a century, adoption and naming have also served as an important means for many Native American and First Nation communities to become connected to the anthropologists visiting and writing about them. In this outstanding volume, leading anthropologists in the United States and Canada discuss this issue by focusing on the cases of such prominent earlier scholars as Lewis Henry Morgan and Franz Boas. They also share personal experiences of adoption and naming and offer a range of stimulating perspectives on the significance of these practices in the past and today. The contributors explore the impact of adoption and naming upon the relationship between scholar and Native community, considering in particular two key issues: How does adoption affect the fieldwork and subsequent interpretations by anthropologists, and in turn, how are Native individuals and communities themselves affected by adopting an outside scholar whose aim is to learn and write about them? Strangers to Relatives not only sheds valuable light on how anthropology fieldwork is conducted but also makes a seminal contribution to our understanding of the ongoing, often troubled relationship between the academy and Native communities.

In this volume some of the leading scholars working in Native North America explore contemporary perspectives on Native culture, history, and representation. Written in honor of the anthropologist Raymond D. Fogelson, the volume charts the currents of contemporary scholarship while offering an invigorating challenge to researchers in the field. The essays employ a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches and range widely across time and space. The introduction and first section consider the origins and legacies of various strands of interpretation, while the second part examines the relationship among culture, power, and creativity. The third part focuses on the cultural construction and experience of history, and the volume closes with essays on identity, difference, and appropriation in several historical and cultural contexts. Aimed at a broad interdisciplinary audience, the volume offers an excellent overview of contemporary perspectives on Native peoples.

The Northwest Coast of North America was home to dozens of Native peoples at the time of its first contact with Europeans. The rich artistic, ceremonial, and oral traditions of these peoples and their preservation of cultural practices have made this region especially attractive for anthropological study. Coming to Shore provides a historical overview of the ethnology and ethnohistory of this region, with special attention given to contemporary, theoretically informed studies of communities and issues.The first book to explore the role of the Northwest Coast in three distinct national traditions of anthropology— American, Canadian, and French—Coming to Shore gives particular consideration to the importance of Claude Lévi-Strauss and structuralism, as well as more recent social theory in the context of Northwest Coast anthropology. In addition contributors explore the blurring boundaries between theoretical and applied anthropology as well as contemporary issues such as land claims, criminal justice, environmentalism, economic development, and museum display. The contribution of Frederica de Laguna provides a historical background to the enterprise of Northwest Coast anthropology, as do the contributions of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Marie Mauzé.

A Maverick Boasian explores the often contradictory life of Alexander Goldenweiser (1880–1940), a scholar considered by his contemporaries to be Franz Boas’s most brilliant and most favored student. The story of his life and scholarship is complex and exciting as well as frustrating. Although Goldenweiser came to the United States from Russia as a young man, he spent the next forty years thinking of himself as a European intellectual who never felt entirely at home. A talented ethnographer, he developed excellent rapport with his Native American consultants but cut short his fieldwork due to lack of funds. An individualist and an anarchist in politics, he deeply resented having to compromise any of his ideas and freedoms for the sake of professional success. A charming man, he risked his career and family life to satisfy immediate needs and wants.A number of his books and papers on the relationship between anthropology and other social sciences helped foster an important interdisciplinary conversation that continued for decades after his death. For the first time, Sergei Kan brings together and examines all of Goldenweiser’s published scholarly works, archival records, personal correspondences, nonacademic publications, and living memories from several of Goldenweiser’s descendants.Goldenweiser attracted attention for his unique progressive views on such issues as race, antisemitism, immigration, education, pacifism, gender, and individual rights. His was a major voice in a chorus of progressive Boasians who applied the insights of their discipline to a variety of questions on the American public’s mind. Many of the battles he fought are still with us today.

Sharing Our Knowledge brings together Native elders, tradition bearers, educators, cultural activists, anthropologists, linguists, historians, and museum professionals to explore the culture, history, and language of the Tlingit people of southeast Alaska and their coastal neighbors. These interdisciplinary, collaborative essays present Tlingit culture, as well as the culture of their coastal neighbors, not as an object of study but rather as a living heritage that continues to inspire and guide the lives of communities and individuals throughout southeast Alaska and northwest British Columbia.  This volume focuses on the preservation and dissemination of Tlingit language, traditional cultural knowledge, and history from an activist Tlingit perspective. Sharing Our Knowledge also highlights a variety of collaborations between Native groups and individuals and non-Native researchers, emphasizing a long history of respectful, cooperative, and productive working relations aimed at recording and transmitting cultural knowledge for tribal use and promoting Native agency in preserving heritage. By focusing on these collaborations, the contributors demonstrate how such alliances have benefited the Tlingits and neighboring groups in preserving and protecting their heritage while advancing scholarship at the same time.

Anthropology is inseparable from writing, whether in field diaries, letters, articles, or books. Among these writings, letters form paper bridges—holding a special place as material artifacts uniquely capable of building scholarly communities and sustaining relationships with field collaborators long after the fieldwork is completed.The story of Franz Boas, one of the founders of American anthropology, can be imagined as a res publica literaria, a network that, like its Renaissance prototype, shaped the contours of transnational anthropology. This two-part volume chronicles more than forty years of Boas's collaborations and friendships with Russian and Soviet anthropologists, following a small group of anthropologists as they built the house of Arctic and Siberian anthropology. Through these letters, readers are introduced to a lesser-known aspect of Boas's political life and his ambition to redefine anthropology as a transnational discipline, one that transcended national borders and political obstacles. Through meticulously gathered correspondence from more than thirty archives in the United States, Russia, France, and Norway, The Franz Boas Papers, Volume 3 reveals an untold chapter in the history of anthropology.