"Elegantly written essays. . . . Roseberry is the real gem, an anthropologist with extensive Latin American field experience and an impressive scholarly grasp of the histories of anthropology and Marxist theory."--Micaela di Leonardo, The Nation "An extremely stimulating volume . . . rich and provocative, and codifies a new depature point."--Choice "As a critic . . . Roseberry writes with sustained force and clarity. . . . his principal points emerge with a directness that will make this book attractive to a wide range of readers."--American Anthropologist "Roseberry in among the most astute, careful, and theoretically cogent of the anthropologists of his generation. . . . [This book] illustrates well the breadth and coherence of his thinking and guides the reader through the complicated intersections of anthropology with history, political economy, Marxism, and Latin American studies."--Jane Schneider, CUNY In Anthropologies and Histories, William Roseberry explores some of the cultural and political implications of an anthropological political economy. In his view, too few of these implications have been explored by authors who dismiss the very possibility of a political economic understanding of culture. Within political economy, readers are offered sophisticated treatments of uneven development, but when authors turn to culture and politics, they place contradictory social experiences within simplistic class or epochal labels. Within cultural anthropology, history is often little more than new terrain for extending anthropological practice. Roseberry places culture and history in relation to each other, in the context of a reflection on the political economy of uneven development. In the first half of this books, he looks at and critiques a variety of anthropological understandings of culture, arguing for an approach that sees culture as socially constituted and socially constitutive. Beginning with a commentary on Clifford Geertz's seminal essay on the Balinese cockfight, Roseberry argues that Geertz and his followers pay insufficient attention to cultural differentiation, to social and political inequalities that affect actors' different understandings of the world, other people, and of themselves. Sufficient attention to such questions, Roseberry argues, requires a concern for political economy. In the second half of the book, Roseberry explores the assumptions and practices of political economy, indicates the kind of problems that should be central to such an approach, and reviews some of the inadequacies of anthropological studies. William Roseberry is a professor of anthropology at the New School for Social Research.

This edited volume presents, for the first time, a history of anthropology regarding not only the well-known European and American traditions, but also lesser-known traditions, extending its scope beyond the Western world. It focuses on the results of these traditions in the present. Taking into account the distinction between empire-building and nation-building anthropology, introduced by G. Stocking and taken up by U. Hannerz, the book investigates different histories of anthropology, especially in ex-colonial and marginal contexts. It highlights how the hegemonic anthropologies have been accepted and assimilated in local contexts, which approaches have been privileged by institutions and academies in different locations, how the anthropological approach has been modelled and adapted according to specific knowledge requirements related to the cultural features of different areas, and which schools emerge as the most consolidated today. Each chapter presents a “cultural history” of one of the historical-cultural and geo-political contexts that influenced and produced the specific disciplinary traditions. The chapters highlight the local contributions to the discipline, the influences that the world centres have on the peripheries, but also the ways in which the peripheries have “learned from the centres” in order to re-elaborate meaningful or otherwise recognisable disciplinary lines.

Anthropologists and world historians make strange bedfellows. Although the latter frequently employ anthropological methods in their descriptions of cross-cultural exchanges, the former have raised substantial reservations about global approaches to history. Fearing loss of specificity, anthropologists object to the effacing qualities of techniques employed by world historians—this despite the fact that anthropology itself was a global, comparative enterprise in the nineteenth century.Rainer Buschmann here seeks to recover some of anthropology’s global flavor by viewing its history in Oceania through the notion of the ethnographic frontier—the furthermost limits of the anthropologically known regions of the Pacific. The colony of German New Guinea (1884–1914) presents an ideal example of just such a contact zone. Colonial administrators there were drawn to approaches partially inspired by anthropology. Anthropologists and museum officials exploited this interest by preparing large-scale expeditions to German New Guinea. Buschmann explores the resulting interactions between German colonial officials, resident ethnographic collectors, and indigenous peoples, arguing that all were instrumental in the formation of anthropological theory. He shows how changes in collecting aims and methods helped shift ethnographic study away from its focus on material artifacts to a broader consideration of indigenous culture. He also shows how ethnological collecting, often a competitive affair, could become politicized and connect to national concerns. Finally, he places the German experience in the broader context of Euro-American anthropology. Anthropology's Global Histories will interest students and scholars of anthropology, history, world history, and Pacific studies.

Histories of Anthropology Annual promotes diverse perspectives on the discipline's history within a global context. Critical, comparative, analytical, and narrative studies involving all aspects and subfields of anthropology will be included, along with reviews and shorter pieces.This inaugural volume offers insightful looks at the careers, lives, and influence of anthropologists and others, including Herbert Spencer, Frederick Starr, Mark Hanna Watkins, Leslie White, and Jacob Ezra Thomas. Topics in this volume include anti-imperialism; racism in Guatemala; the study of peasants; the Carnegie Institution, Mayan archaeology and espionage; Cold War anthropology; African studies; literary influences; church and religion; and tribal museums.Regna Darnell is a professor of anthropology at the University of Western Ontario. She is the author of Invisible Genealogies: A History of Americanist Anthropology (Nebraska 2001) and Edward Sapir: Linguist, Anthropologist, Humanist . Frederic W. Gleach is a senior lecturer and curator of anthropology at Cornell University and the author of Powhatan's World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures (Nebraska 1997). Together they co-edited Celebrating a Century of the American Anthropological Association: Presidential Portraits (Nebraska 2002).

This comprehensive anthology offers over 40 readings that are critical to the understanding of anthropological theory and the development of anthropology as an academic discipline. The fourth edition maintains a strong focus on the "four-field" roots of the discipline in North America but has been reorganized with a new section on twenty-first-century theory, including coverage of postcolonial and public anthropology. New key terms and introductions accompany each reading and a revamped glossary makes the book more student-friendly. Used on its own, or together with the overview text A History of Anthropological Theory, Fourth Edition, this anthology offers a flexible and unrivaled introduction to anthropological theory that reflects not only the history but also the changing nature of the discipline today. For additional resources, visit the "Teaching Theory" page at www.utpteachingculture.com.

The fifth edition of this bestselling reader builds a strong foundation in both classical and contemporary theory, with a sharpened focus on gender and anthropology, and the anthropology of new media and technology. Short introductions and key terms accompany every reading, and light annotations have been added to aid students in reading original articles. Used on its own or together with A History of Anthropological Theory, Fifth Edition, this anthology offers a flexible and unrivalled introduction to anthropological theory that reflects not only the history but also the changing nature of the discipline today.

In The History of Anthropology Regna Darnell offers a critical reexamination of the Americanist tradition centered around the figure of Franz Boas and the professionalization of anthropology as an academic discipline in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focused on researchers often known as the Boasians, The History of Anthropology reveals the theoretical schools, institutions, and social networks of scholars and fieldworkers primarily interested in the anthropology and ethnography of North American Indigenous peoples. Darnell’s fifty-year career entails seminal writings in the history of anthropology’s four fields: cultural anthropology, ethnography, linguistics, and physical anthropology. Leading researchers, theorists, and fieldwork subjects include Edward Sapir, Daniel Brinton, Mary Haas, Franz Boas, Leonard Bloomfield, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Stanley Newman, and A. Irving Hallowell, as well as the professionalization of anthropology, the development of American folklore scholarship, theories of Indigenous languages, Southwest ethnographic research, Indigenous ceremonialism, text traditions, and anthropology’s forays into contemporary public intellectual debates. The History of Anthropology is the essential volume for scholars, undergraduates, and graduate students to enter into the history of the Americanist tradition and its legacies, alternating historicism and presentism to contextualize anthropology’s historical and contemporary relevance and legacies.

Over the latter half of the twentieth century, the Guatemalan state slaughtered more than two hundred thousand of its citizens. In the wake of this violence, a vibrant pan-Mayan movement has emerged, one that is challenging Ladino (non-indigenous) notions of citizenship and national identity. In The Blood of Guatemala Greg Grandin locates the origins of this ethnic resurgence within the social processes of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century state formation rather than in the ruins of the national project of recent decades. Focusing on Mayan elites in the community of Quetzaltenango, Grandin shows how their efforts to maintain authority over the indigenous population and secure political power in relation to non-Indians played a crucial role in the formation of the Guatemalan nation. To explore the close connection between nationalism, state power, ethnic identity, and political violence, Grandin draws on sources as diverse as photographs, public rituals, oral testimony, literature, and a collection of previously untapped documents written during the nineteenth century. He explains how the cultural anxiety brought about by Guatemala’s transition to coffee capitalism during this period led Mayan patriarchs to develop understandings of race and nation that were contrary to Ladino notions of assimilation and progress. This alternative national vision, however, could not take hold in a country plagued by class and ethnic divisions. In the years prior to the 1954 coup, class conflict became impossible to contain as the elites violently opposed land claims made by indigenous peasants. This “history of power” reconsiders the way scholars understand the history of Guatemala and will be relevant to those studying nation building and indigenous communities across Latin America.

Histories of American Physical Anthropology in the Twentieth Century chronicles the history of physical anthropology--or, as it is now known, biological anthropology--from its professional origins in the late 1800 up to its modern transformation in the late 1900s. In this edited volume, 13 contributors trace the development of people, ideas, traditions, and organizations that contributed to the advancement of this branch of anthropology that focuses today on human variation and human evolution. Designed for upper level undergraduate students, graduate students, and professional biological anthropologists, this book provides a brief and accessible history of the biobehavioral side of anthropology in America.

The sixth edition of this bestselling text offers a concise history of anthropological theory from antiquity to the twenty-first century, with new and significantly revised sections that reflect the current state of the field.