Anthropologists and the Rediscovery of America, 1886–1965

Anthropologists and the Rediscovery of America, 1886–1965

Author: John S. Gilkeson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-09-20

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 1139491180

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This book examines the intersection of cultural anthropology and American cultural nationalism from 1886, when Franz Boas left Germany for the United States, until 1965, when the National Endowment for the Humanities was established. Five chapters trace the development within academic anthropology of the concepts of culture, social class, national character, value, and civilization, and their dissemination to non-anthropologists. As Americans came to think of culture anthropologically, as a 'complex whole' far broader and more inclusive than Matthew Arnold's 'the best which has been thought and said', so, too, did they come to see American communities as stratified into social classes distinguished by their subcultures; to attribute the making of the American character to socialization rather than birth; to locate the distinctiveness of American culture in its unconscious canons of choice; and to view American culture and civilization in a global perspective.


Book Synopsis Anthropologists and the Rediscovery of America, 1886–1965 by : John S. Gilkeson

Download or read book Anthropologists and the Rediscovery of America, 1886–1965 written by John S. Gilkeson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-20 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the intersection of cultural anthropology and American cultural nationalism from 1886, when Franz Boas left Germany for the United States, until 1965, when the National Endowment for the Humanities was established. Five chapters trace the development within academic anthropology of the concepts of culture, social class, national character, value, and civilization, and their dissemination to non-anthropologists. As Americans came to think of culture anthropologically, as a 'complex whole' far broader and more inclusive than Matthew Arnold's 'the best which has been thought and said', so, too, did they come to see American communities as stratified into social classes distinguished by their subcultures; to attribute the making of the American character to socialization rather than birth; to locate the distinctiveness of American culture in its unconscious canons of choice; and to view American culture and civilization in a global perspective.


Anthropologists and the Rediscovery of America, 1886-1965

Anthropologists and the Rediscovery of America, 1886-1965

Author: John S. Gilkeson

Publisher:

Published: 2014-05-14

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 9780511932731

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How a small group of anthropologists shaped American thought from the late nineteenth century until the mid-1960s.


Book Synopsis Anthropologists and the Rediscovery of America, 1886-1965 by : John S. Gilkeson

Download or read book Anthropologists and the Rediscovery of America, 1886-1965 written by John S. Gilkeson and published by . This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How a small group of anthropologists shaped American thought from the late nineteenth century until the mid-1960s.


The Franz Boas Papers, Volume 1

The Franz Boas Papers, Volume 1

Author: Franz Boas

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2015-08-01

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 0803269846

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"The introductory volume to the Franz Boas Papers: Documentary Edition, which examines Boas' stature as public intellectual in three crucial dimensions: theory, ethnography and activism"--


Book Synopsis The Franz Boas Papers, Volume 1 by : Franz Boas

Download or read book The Franz Boas Papers, Volume 1 written by Franz Boas and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2015-08-01 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The introductory volume to the Franz Boas Papers: Documentary Edition, which examines Boas' stature as public intellectual in three crucial dimensions: theory, ethnography and activism"--


American Antiquities

American Antiquities

Author: Terry A. Barnhart

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2015-11-01

Total Pages: 584

ISBN-13: 0803284314

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Writing the history of American archaeology, especially concerning eighteenth and nineteenth-century arguments, is not always as straightforward or simple as it might seem. Archaeology’s trajectory from an avocation, to a semi-profession, to a specialized, self-conscious profession was anything but a linear progression. The development of American archaeology was an organic and untidy process, which emerged from the intellectual tradition of antiquarianism and closely allied itself with the natural sciences throughout the nineteenth century—especially geology and the debate about the origins and identity of indigenous mound-building cultures of the eastern United States. Terry A. Barnhart examines how American archaeology developed within an eclectic set of interests and equally varied settings. He argues that fundamental problems are deeply embedded in secondary literature relating to the nineteenth-century debate about “Mound Builders” and “American Indians.” Some issues are perceptual, others contextual, and still others basic errors of fact. Adding to the problem are semantic and contextual considerations arising from the accommodating, indiscriminate, and problematic use of the term “race” as a synonym for tribe, nation, and race proper—a concept and construct that does not, in all instances, translate into current understandings and usages. American Antiquities uses this early discourse on the mounds to frame perennial anthropological problems relating to human origins and antiquity in North America.


Book Synopsis American Antiquities by : Terry A. Barnhart

Download or read book American Antiquities written by Terry A. Barnhart and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2015-11-01 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing the history of American archaeology, especially concerning eighteenth and nineteenth-century arguments, is not always as straightforward or simple as it might seem. Archaeology’s trajectory from an avocation, to a semi-profession, to a specialized, self-conscious profession was anything but a linear progression. The development of American archaeology was an organic and untidy process, which emerged from the intellectual tradition of antiquarianism and closely allied itself with the natural sciences throughout the nineteenth century—especially geology and the debate about the origins and identity of indigenous mound-building cultures of the eastern United States. Terry A. Barnhart examines how American archaeology developed within an eclectic set of interests and equally varied settings. He argues that fundamental problems are deeply embedded in secondary literature relating to the nineteenth-century debate about “Mound Builders” and “American Indians.” Some issues are perceptual, others contextual, and still others basic errors of fact. Adding to the problem are semantic and contextual considerations arising from the accommodating, indiscriminate, and problematic use of the term “race” as a synonym for tribe, nation, and race proper—a concept and construct that does not, in all instances, translate into current understandings and usages. American Antiquities uses this early discourse on the mounds to frame perennial anthropological problems relating to human origins and antiquity in North America.


A Historiography of the Modern Social Sciences

A Historiography of the Modern Social Sciences

Author: Roger E. Backhouse

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-09-22

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1107037727

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A Historiography of the Modern Social Sciences exposes parallels and contrasts in the way the histories of the social sciences are written.


Book Synopsis A Historiography of the Modern Social Sciences by : Roger E. Backhouse

Download or read book A Historiography of the Modern Social Sciences written by Roger E. Backhouse and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-22 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Historiography of the Modern Social Sciences exposes parallels and contrasts in the way the histories of the social sciences are written.


The Poverty of the World

The Poverty of the World

Author: Sheyda F. A. Jahanbani

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-09-22

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 019976591X

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In the middle of the twentieth century, liberal intellectuals and policymakers in the United States came to see poverty as a global problem. Applying Progressive era and Depression insights about the causes of poverty to the post-World War II challenges posed by the Cold War and decolonization, they developed new ideas about why poverty persisted. The problem, they argued, was that the poor at home and abroad were alienated from the enormous opportunities industrial capitalism provided. Left unsolved, that problem, they believed, would threaten world peace. In The Poverty of the World, Sheyda Jahanbani brings together the histories of US foreign relations and domestic politics to explain why, during a period of unprecedented affluence, Americans rediscovered poverty and supported major policy initiative to combat it. Revisiting a moment of triumph for American liberals in the 1940s, Jahanbani shows how the US's newfound role as a global superpower prompted novel ideas among liberal thinkers about how to address poverty and generated new urgency for trying to do so. Their sense of responsibility about deploying American knowledge and wealth as a beneficent force in the world, produced such foreign aid programs as the Peace Corps. As Americans came to recognize the problem beyond the country's borders, they turned the idea of "underdevelopment" inward to explain poverty in urban neighborhoods and rural communities at home, inspiring Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty and his domestic peace corps, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). Drawing on a wide variety of archival material, Jahanbani reinterprets the lives and work of prominent liberal figures in postwar American social politics, from Oscar Lewis to John Kenneth Galbraith, Michael Harrington to Sargent Shriver, to show the global origins of their ideas. By tracing how American liberals invented the problem of "global poverty" and executed a war against it, The Poverty of the World sheds new light on the domestic impacts of the Cold War, the global ambitions of American liberalism, and the way in which key intellectuals and policymakers worked to develop an alternative vision of US empire in the decades after World War II.


Book Synopsis The Poverty of the World by : Sheyda F. A. Jahanbani

Download or read book The Poverty of the World written by Sheyda F. A. Jahanbani and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-22 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the middle of the twentieth century, liberal intellectuals and policymakers in the United States came to see poverty as a global problem. Applying Progressive era and Depression insights about the causes of poverty to the post-World War II challenges posed by the Cold War and decolonization, they developed new ideas about why poverty persisted. The problem, they argued, was that the poor at home and abroad were alienated from the enormous opportunities industrial capitalism provided. Left unsolved, that problem, they believed, would threaten world peace. In The Poverty of the World, Sheyda Jahanbani brings together the histories of US foreign relations and domestic politics to explain why, during a period of unprecedented affluence, Americans rediscovered poverty and supported major policy initiative to combat it. Revisiting a moment of triumph for American liberals in the 1940s, Jahanbani shows how the US's newfound role as a global superpower prompted novel ideas among liberal thinkers about how to address poverty and generated new urgency for trying to do so. Their sense of responsibility about deploying American knowledge and wealth as a beneficent force in the world, produced such foreign aid programs as the Peace Corps. As Americans came to recognize the problem beyond the country's borders, they turned the idea of "underdevelopment" inward to explain poverty in urban neighborhoods and rural communities at home, inspiring Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty and his domestic peace corps, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). Drawing on a wide variety of archival material, Jahanbani reinterprets the lives and work of prominent liberal figures in postwar American social politics, from Oscar Lewis to John Kenneth Galbraith, Michael Harrington to Sargent Shriver, to show the global origins of their ideas. By tracing how American liberals invented the problem of "global poverty" and executed a war against it, The Poverty of the World sheds new light on the domestic impacts of the Cold War, the global ambitions of American liberalism, and the way in which key intellectuals and policymakers worked to develop an alternative vision of US empire in the decades after World War II.


Darwinism, Democracy, and Race

Darwinism, Democracy, and Race

Author: John P Jackson

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-07-06

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 1351810782

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Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introduction: in the footsteps of Franz Boas -- 2 Franz Boas and the argument from presumption -- 3 Demarcating anthropology: the boundary work of Alfred Kroeber -- 4 Theodosius Dobzhansky and the argument from definition -- 5 Unifying science by creating community: the epideictic rhetoric of Sherwood Washburn -- 6 A kairos moment unmet and met: the controversy over Carleton Coon's The Origin of Races -- 7 Epilogue: the roots of the Sociobiology controversy, the infirmities of Evolutionary Psychology, and the unity of anthropology -- Index


Book Synopsis Darwinism, Democracy, and Race by : John P Jackson

Download or read book Darwinism, Democracy, and Race written by John P Jackson and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-06 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introduction: in the footsteps of Franz Boas -- 2 Franz Boas and the argument from presumption -- 3 Demarcating anthropology: the boundary work of Alfred Kroeber -- 4 Theodosius Dobzhansky and the argument from definition -- 5 Unifying science by creating community: the epideictic rhetoric of Sherwood Washburn -- 6 A kairos moment unmet and met: the controversy over Carleton Coon's The Origin of Races -- 7 Epilogue: the roots of the Sociobiology controversy, the infirmities of Evolutionary Psychology, and the unity of anthropology -- Index


Gods of the Upper Air

Gods of the Upper Air

Author: Charles King

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2020-07-14

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 0525432329

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2020 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award From an award-winning historian comes a dazzling history of the birth of cultural anthropology and the adventurous scientists who pioneered it—a sweeping chronicle of discovery and the fascinating origin story of our multicultural world. A century ago, everyone knew that people were fated by their race, sex, and nationality to be more or less intelligent, nurturing, or warlike. But Columbia University professor Franz Boas looked at the data and decided everyone was wrong. Racial categories, he insisted, were biological fictions. Cultures did not come in neat packages labeled "primitive" or "advanced." What counted as a family, a good meal, or even common sense was a product of history and circumstance, not of nature. In Gods of the Upper Air, a masterful narrative history of radical ideas and passionate lives, Charles King shows how these intuitions led to a fundamental reimagining of human diversity. Boas's students were some of the century's most colorful figures and unsung visionaries: Margaret Mead, the outspoken field researcher whose Coming of Age in Samoa is among the most widely read works of social science of all time; Ruth Benedict, the great love of Mead's life, whose research shaped post-Second World War Japan; Ella Deloria, the Dakota Sioux activist who preserved the traditions of Native Americans on the Great Plains; and Zora Neale Hurston, whose studies under Boas fed directly into her now classic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Together, they mapped civilizations from the American South to the South Pacific and from Caribbean islands to Manhattan's city streets, and unearthed an essential fact buried by centuries of prejudice: that humanity is an undivided whole. Their revolutionary findings would go on to inspire the fluid conceptions of identity we know today. Rich in drama, conflict, friendship, and love, Gods of the Upper Air is a brilliant and groundbreaking history of American progress and the opening of the modern mind.


Book Synopsis Gods of the Upper Air by : Charles King

Download or read book Gods of the Upper Air written by Charles King and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2020 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award From an award-winning historian comes a dazzling history of the birth of cultural anthropology and the adventurous scientists who pioneered it—a sweeping chronicle of discovery and the fascinating origin story of our multicultural world. A century ago, everyone knew that people were fated by their race, sex, and nationality to be more or less intelligent, nurturing, or warlike. But Columbia University professor Franz Boas looked at the data and decided everyone was wrong. Racial categories, he insisted, were biological fictions. Cultures did not come in neat packages labeled "primitive" or "advanced." What counted as a family, a good meal, or even common sense was a product of history and circumstance, not of nature. In Gods of the Upper Air, a masterful narrative history of radical ideas and passionate lives, Charles King shows how these intuitions led to a fundamental reimagining of human diversity. Boas's students were some of the century's most colorful figures and unsung visionaries: Margaret Mead, the outspoken field researcher whose Coming of Age in Samoa is among the most widely read works of social science of all time; Ruth Benedict, the great love of Mead's life, whose research shaped post-Second World War Japan; Ella Deloria, the Dakota Sioux activist who preserved the traditions of Native Americans on the Great Plains; and Zora Neale Hurston, whose studies under Boas fed directly into her now classic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Together, they mapped civilizations from the American South to the South Pacific and from Caribbean islands to Manhattan's city streets, and unearthed an essential fact buried by centuries of prejudice: that humanity is an undivided whole. Their revolutionary findings would go on to inspire the fluid conceptions of identity we know today. Rich in drama, conflict, friendship, and love, Gods of the Upper Air is a brilliant and groundbreaking history of American progress and the opening of the modern mind.


Culture Writing

Culture Writing

Author: Tim Watson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-01-19

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0190852682

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Focusing on the 1950s and early 1960s, Culture Writing argues that this period in Britain, the United States, France, and the Caribbean was characterized by dynamic exchanges between literary writers and anthropologists on both sides of the Atlantic. As the British and French empires collapsed and the United States rose to global power in the early Cold War, and as intellectuals from the decolonizing world challenged the cultural hegemony of the West, some anthropologists began to assess their discipline's complicity with empire and experimented with literary forms and technique. Culture Writing shows that the "literary turn" in anthropology took place earlier than has conventionally been assumed, in the 1950s rather than the 1970s and 80s. Simultaneously, some literary writers reacted to the end of the period of modernist experimentation by turning to ethnographic methods for representing the people and cultural practices of Britain, France, and the United States, bringing anthropology back home. There is analysis of literary writers who had a significant professional engagement with anthropology and brought some of its techniques and research questions into literary composition: Barbara Pym (Britain), Ursula Le Guin and Saul Bellow (United States), Édouard Glissant (Martinique), and Michel Leiris (France). On the side of ethnography, the book analyzes works by anthropologists who either explicitly or surreptitiously adopted literary forms for their writing about culture: Laura Bohannan (United States), Michel Leiris and Claude Lévi-Strauss (France), and Mary Douglas (Britain). Culture Writing concludes with an epilogue that shows how the literature-anthropology conversation continues into the postcolonial period in the work of Indian author-anthropologist Amitav Ghosh and Jamaican author-sociologist Erna Brodber.


Book Synopsis Culture Writing by : Tim Watson

Download or read book Culture Writing written by Tim Watson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-19 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the 1950s and early 1960s, Culture Writing argues that this period in Britain, the United States, France, and the Caribbean was characterized by dynamic exchanges between literary writers and anthropologists on both sides of the Atlantic. As the British and French empires collapsed and the United States rose to global power in the early Cold War, and as intellectuals from the decolonizing world challenged the cultural hegemony of the West, some anthropologists began to assess their discipline's complicity with empire and experimented with literary forms and technique. Culture Writing shows that the "literary turn" in anthropology took place earlier than has conventionally been assumed, in the 1950s rather than the 1970s and 80s. Simultaneously, some literary writers reacted to the end of the period of modernist experimentation by turning to ethnographic methods for representing the people and cultural practices of Britain, France, and the United States, bringing anthropology back home. There is analysis of literary writers who had a significant professional engagement with anthropology and brought some of its techniques and research questions into literary composition: Barbara Pym (Britain), Ursula Le Guin and Saul Bellow (United States), Édouard Glissant (Martinique), and Michel Leiris (France). On the side of ethnography, the book analyzes works by anthropologists who either explicitly or surreptitiously adopted literary forms for their writing about culture: Laura Bohannan (United States), Michel Leiris and Claude Lévi-Strauss (France), and Mary Douglas (Britain). Culture Writing concludes with an epilogue that shows how the literature-anthropology conversation continues into the postcolonial period in the work of Indian author-anthropologist Amitav Ghosh and Jamaican author-sociologist Erna Brodber.


The Cambridge History of American Modernism

The Cambridge History of American Modernism

Author: Mark Whalan

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-06-30

Total Pages: 948

ISBN-13: 1108808026

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The Cambridge History of American Modernism examines one of the most innovative periods of American literary history. It offers a comprehensive account of the forms, genres, and media that characterized US modernism: coverage ranges from the traditional, such as short stories, novels, and poetry, to the new media that shaped the period's literary culture, such as jazz, cinema, the skyscraper, and radio. This volume charts how recent methodologies such as ecocriticism, geomodernism, and print culture studies have refashioned understandings of the field, and attends to the contestations and inequities of race, sovereignty, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity that shaped the period and its cultural production. It also explores the geographies and communities wherein US modernism flourished-from its distinctive regions to its metropolitan cities, from its hemispheric connections to the salons and political groupings that hosted new cultural collaborations.


Book Synopsis The Cambridge History of American Modernism by : Mark Whalan

Download or read book The Cambridge History of American Modernism written by Mark Whalan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-06-30 with total page 948 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge History of American Modernism examines one of the most innovative periods of American literary history. It offers a comprehensive account of the forms, genres, and media that characterized US modernism: coverage ranges from the traditional, such as short stories, novels, and poetry, to the new media that shaped the period's literary culture, such as jazz, cinema, the skyscraper, and radio. This volume charts how recent methodologies such as ecocriticism, geomodernism, and print culture studies have refashioned understandings of the field, and attends to the contestations and inequities of race, sovereignty, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity that shaped the period and its cultural production. It also explores the geographies and communities wherein US modernism flourished-from its distinctive regions to its metropolitan cities, from its hemispheric connections to the salons and political groupings that hosted new cultural collaborations.