Invisible Genealogies

by Darnell, Regna

• ISBN13: 9780803266292
• ISBN10: 0803266294
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr

Summary

Invisible Genealogiesis 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 Genealogiesoffers 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 Levi-Strauss and Clifford Geertz.

Author Biography

Regna Darnell is a professor of anthropology at the University of Western Ontario. Her many works include And Along Came Boas: Continuity and Revolution in Americanist Anthropology and Edward Sapir: Linguist, Anthropologist, Humanist.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	xi
Series Editors' Introduction	xiii
Preface and Acknowledgments	xvii
List of Abbreviations	xxvii
Introduction: The Invisibility of Americanist Genealogies	1	(1)
Resuscitating the Habits of Historicism	1	(7)
Recovering the Complexity of Our History	8	(3)
Distinctive Features of the Americanist Tradition	11	(10)
Why These Genealogies Are Invisible	21	(7)
Why the Americanist Tradition Persists	28	(2)
The Plan of the Work	30	(3)
History and Psychology as Anthropological Problems	33	(36)
Boas and the Boasians in the History of American Anthropology	33	(7)
History and Psychology as the Poles of Boasian Theory	40	(7)
The Boasian Model of Culture Change: Diffusion	47	(4)
The Sapir Model of Culture Change: Genetic Relationship	51	(10)
Boas's Reaction to the Sapir Classification	61	(4)
Disciplinary Consequences	65	(4)
Culture as Superorganic	69	(36)
Culture as Anthropology's Autonomous Level of Explanation	72	(8)
The Dream of Synthesis and the Failure of Nerve	80	(9)
Complexity and the Reformulation of the Culture Concept	89	(6)
Style, Women's Fashion, and Cultural Wholes	95	(2)
Setting the Stage for a New Concept of Culture	97	(8)
Culture Internalized	105	(32)
Anthropology without the Superorganic	107	(4)
``Standpoint'' and the Individual in Culture	111	(6)
The Anthropologist's Quest for ``Genuine'' Culture	117	(4)
The Need for Interdisciplinary Triangulation	121	(16)
Philosophizing with the ``Other''	137	(36)
Primitive Man as Philosopher	138	(11)
The Individual in History	149	(5)
The Counterargument for Systematic Philosophy	154	(3)
The Closing of the Philosophical Mind	157	(5)
Are the Alternatives Philosophies?	162	(2)
In Search of Contemporary ``Primitive'' Philosophers	164	(9)
Linguistic Relativity and Cultural Relativism	173	(34)
Benjamin Lee Whorf as Core Sapirian Linguist	175	(10)
The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis	185	(3)
Linguistic Relativity and Analytic Philosophy	188	(3)
Ruth Benedict and the Arc of Cultural Selection	191	(9)
Cognitive Science vs. Grammatical Categories	200	(7)
The Challenge of Life Histories	207	(34)
Variable Uses of the Life History	207	(3)
The Baseline: American Indian Life	210	(14)
Boasian Explorations of the Arts	224	(6)
Transmitting Disciplinary Wisdom: In the Company of Man	230	(5)
American Indian Intellectuals Relegated to Ethnohistory	235	(6)
Blurred Genres of Ethnography and Fiction	241	(34)
Psychology and Culture in the New Ethnography: A Irving Hallowell among the Ojibwes	242	(6)
What Is That Coyote Up to Now? Native Writers and Anthropological Stereoscopy	248	(3)
Anthropologically Sophisticated Literature: The Science Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin	251	(6)
On the Anthropological Applications of an English Degree	257	(6)
What if the Ethnographer Writes Well? Reading the New Ethnographies	263	(12)
Will the Real Americanists Please Stand?	275	(34)
Rhetorics of Continuity and Discontinuity	275	(14)
Claude Levi-Strauss as Self-Incorporated Americanist	289	(1)
Clifford Geertz as Nuanced Americanist	289	(7)
The Illusory ``Experimental Moment'' of Writing Culture	296	(5)
The Rhetoric of Normal Science	301	(2)
Interdisciplinary Misreadings of Anthropology	303	(6)
Reconstructing the Metanarrative of Anthropology	309	(32)
Deconstructing ``Us'' and ``Them''	309	(14)
Race and Racism: From Biology to Culture	323	(5)
Identity Politics and Standpoint Epistemology	328	(7)
The Anthropologist as Public Intellectual: Educating an Audience for Contemporary Anthropology	335	(6)
Bibliography	341	(22)
Index	363