Invisible genealogies : a history of Americanist anthropology

Book

Invisible genealogies : a history of Americanist anthropology / Regna Darnell.

Summary:

Invisible Genealogies is a landmark reinterpretation of the history of anthropology in North America. During the past two decades, theorizing by many American anthropologists has called for an "experimental moment" grounded in explicit self-reflexive scholarship and experimentation with alternate forms of presentation. Such postmodern anthropology has effectively downplayed connections with past luminaries in the field, whose scholarship is perceived to be uncomfortably colonialist and nonreflexive. Ironically, as the American Anthropological Association nears its one hundredth anniversary and interest in the history of the discipline is at an all-time high, that history has been effectively presented as removed from and irrelevant to the new generation.

Invisible Genealogies offers an alternative, compelling vision of the development of anthropology in North America, one that emphasizes continuity rather than discontinuity from legendary founder Franz Boas to the present. Regna Darnell identifies key interpretive assumptions and practices that have persisted, sometimes in modified form, since the groundbreaking work of A. L. Kroeber, Boas, Ruth Benedict, Edward Sapir, Elsie Clews Parsons, Paul Radin, Benjamin Lee Whorf, and A. Irving Hallowell during the founding decades of anthropology. Also highlighted are the Americanist roots of postmodern anthropology and the work of innovative recent scholars like Claude Lévi-Strauss and Clifford Geertz. -- Amazon

Record details

ISBN: 0803217102
ISBN: 9780803217102
ISBN: 0803266294
ISBN: 9780803266292
Physical Description: xxvi, 373 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Publisher: Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, ©2001.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:: Includes bibliographical references (pages 341-362) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:: Introduction: The Invisibility of Americanist Genealogies -- 1. History and Psychology as Anthropological Problems. Boas and the Boasians in the History of American Anthropology. History and Psychology as the Poles of Boasian Theory. The Boasian Model of Culture Change: Diffusion. The Sapir Model of Culture Change: Genetic Relationship. Boas's Reaction to the Sapir Classification. Disciplinary Consequences -- 2. Culture as Superorganic. Culture as Anthropology's Autonomous Level of Explanation. The Dream of Synthesis and the Failure of Nerve. Complexity and the Reformulation of the Culture Concept. Style, Women's Fashion, and Cultural Wholes. Setting the Stage for a New Concept of Culture -- 3. Culture Internalized. Anthropology without the Superorganic. "Standpoint" and the Individual in Culture. The Anthropologist's Quest for "Genuine" Culture. The Need for Interdisciplinary Triangulation -- 4. Philosophizing with the "Other" Primitive Man as Philosopher.