Prologue – Purpose, Audience, Objectives and Pedagogy

This book borrows it’s title from a volume published more than two decades ago: Excluded Ancestors, Inventible Traditions: Essays Toward a More Inclusive History of Anthropology (Handler, 2000). Edited by Richard Handler, Excluded Ancestors was published in the History of Anthropology series established by George Stocking Jr., a historian who contributed more than anyone else to the development of the history of anthropology as a lively emphasis in both anthropology and history.

Excluded Ancestors marked an institutional and topical shift. Rather than adding ever greater detail to our knowledge of a handful of canonical thinkers, for two decades research on the history of anthropology has focused on the study of scholars whose work has been overlooked or marginalized, especially indigenous, minority, and female researchers, including individuals from communities that were the objects of study by past anthropologists.

Handler’s volume was not unique. Around the time Excluded Ancestors was published, new work in the same vein was emerging (e.g., Baker, 1998; Harrison and Harrison, 1999), and much additional research has been published in the decades that followed (e.g., Blackhawk and Wilner, 2018; Anderson, 2019). So many new case studies have been produced that it is not only possible, but overdue, to produce more inclusive histories of the field based on synthesizing the secondary literature. There have been notable steps in this direction, notably the work of Thomas Patterson (Patterson, 1997) and Jacob Pandian (Pandian, 1985), each of whom produced slender introductions that pack a punch, and both of whom were ahead of the curve.

SCOPE AND FOCUS

The contributions to Excluded Ancestors were circumscribed and demanding, expecting readers to possess considerable prior knowledge of anthropology and intellectual history. Later studies that have enriched our understanding of what matters in the history of anthropology similarly tend to be  highly focused case studies. The goal of this book is different: to provide an introductory synthesis that integrates new more inclusive work with existing disciplinary history. Canonical themes and thinkers are not eliminated, but the conversation is broadened.

In any book, much must be left out. In making choices, I have tried to consistently respond to this question: What does the history of anthropology look like when we bring excluded ancestors into the conversation, and pay attention to individuals and communities who participated in the history of anthropology as objects of study as well as silent but essential co-authors? That question cannot be addressed for all thinkers, issues, institutions, and places. Because this is a work of synthesis based on existing sources, my decisions have been driven by pragmatism. While I have selected cases for their interest, the topics addressed are also limited by the availability of sufficient secondary materials. It has been humbling and inspiring to discover how richly the field has developed in recent decades, but that growth has been uneven. As a result, the discussion has gaps and the synthesis is somewhat patchy. I am confident that will change in years to come as additional studies accumulate.

In terms of geographic coverage, the discussion is weighted to anthropologists who lived and worked in North America, particularly studies of Native North America. This reflects my preparation as a student and teaching history as faculty, where I was assigned to teach courses on Native America for twenty years. Those courses became studies on the history of anthropology. As I worked on my lectures, I came to focus more and more on the relationships between anthropologists and the people they wrote about, and the wider social context and impact of their work. The rich materials on Lewis Henry Morgan and Ely Parker, and Alfred Kroeber and Ishi, provided a paradigm.

As will become evident to readers, I prefer to bring contrasting modes of thought into dialogue, and develop their differences and shared assumptions. I try to carefully and accurately explain ideas I disagree with, as well as those I favor.  If a reader who completes this book can compare and contrast and evaluate how scholars who were differently situated produced work that contributed to highly varied anthropological projects, I will consider it to be a success.

Audience

The first drafts of this book were developed as open educational resources (OER). It started out as a collection of fragmentary Google Docs linked to course pages. The intended audience has been, and remains, upper division undergraduate and first year graduate students. I hope it proves interesting to general readers with an interest in anthropology or intellectual history as well. As noted above, much excellent work published in recent years addresses readers whose knowledge of social and intellectual history is considerable.  In developing this book, I have aimed to provide more context and keep things more introductory, in order to make the issues more understandable to students with limited knowledge of history and anthropology. Although greater attention is given to the history of social and cultural anthropology, I have tried to reach an audience centered in archaeology, linguistics, and biological anthropology where possible. I hope it finds readers among applied scholars as well.

A Word to instructors

Beyond working at an introductory level, I have addressed two additional challenges that most courses on intellectual history face. One is quite old, and stems from the observation that not all readers find intellectual history riveting, especially today when history enrollments are falling and fewer students are developing enough background to make sense of the complexities of the past. The second challenge is both an antidote to the first, and a source of new tensions. In my experience, students find history more interesting when we address ethical and political issues that matter today. By the same token, many contemporary students are impatient with the moral imperfection of anthropology as it has been practiced, especially when it comes to biases that exclude many voices and ignore important social issues. Students maturing in their knowledge of anthropology are not wrong to conclude that anthropology has largely been developed by scholars hailing from imperial powers who studied subjugated peoples in colonial possessions, nor that their identity has primarily been white and male. They are also correct that the issues anthropologists have considered to be important, and the way questions have been framed, often have not aligned with the priorities of the people they worked with.

Additionally, the language used by anthropologists in the past is often blatantly offensive. How do we weigh the value of reading classic contributions to the field against their potential to offend? To aspire to see the world from “the native’s point of view” as Malinowski (1922) enjoined us, is not the same thing as achieving that vision. And as Malinowski’s writings make clear, inspiring expressions of tolerance are often found immediately adjacent to offensive phrasings that jar contemporary sensibilities. Consider two versions of a quotation from the final page of Malinowski’s classic work, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (Malinowski, 1922: 518). In the first quotation, I remove a few words, in the second I restore them:

In grasping the essential outlook of others, with … reverence and real understanding … we cannot help widening our own.

In grasping the essential outlook of others, with the reverence and real understanding due even to savages, we cannot help widening our own.

The first, edited sentence is no doubt more congenial, but the unedited original speaks more authentically to the challenging ethical terrain of the discipline. I have not tried to purify the history of anthropology. Anthropology has been used for many purposes, good and bad, and I think it is important to understand the full range of those uses. As a result, we should expect that a fuller account will be disturbing. It should be.

Today, the history of anthropology has emerged as a key arena where contemporary debates concerning the future of anthropology play out. I have tried to stress the complexity that inheres in anthropology, and why a tolerance for ambiguity and gray zones has long been considered a mark of virtue and maturity among anthropologists. 

Integrated Pedagogical Devices

To support learning, a number of pedagogical devices have been integrated into the book. Boldface print is used to mark ideas, places, and thinkers that precisely correspond to Wikipedia entries. I am bullish on Wikipedia. It is an underappreciated, open source teaching resource – and it is as good as we want to make it. When you feel you need more context, Wikipedia provides a place to start, and boldface terms can serve as nudges to explore. In addition, discussion boxes are used to highlights key ideas and events.

Perhaps most importantly, this book maintains a consistent chapter structure. The primary chapters – excluding this introduction and the conclusion- are organized around the components below.

• Chapter Learning Objectives

To provide a high level overview, each chapter opens with chapter level learning objectives.

• narrative vignettes: Moments in Time

Following the objectives, a key moment in the history of anthropology selected for alignment with the chapter topic is narrated in a more personal fashion to motivate interest.

• social and intellectual CONTEXTS
  

The core of each chapter develops the context needed to understand anthropological theory and methods in a particular time and place. Celebrated anthropological thinkers are introduced alongside their key ideas and why their work mattered at the time, as well as contemporary evaluations of their significance.

• SUMMARY: ON EXCLUDED ANCESTORS
  

Each chapter concludes by returning to the core theme of the volume – What do more inclusive histories offer us? To the extent materials allow, I reach beyond the canon to examine the contributions of excluded ancestors – including field assistants and residents of the communities under study, as well as marginalized ethnographers.

• additional resources

In this section, additional readings and web resources that are not contained in the references cited, but that are relevant to specific chapters are listed. Emphasis is placed on resources that can be accessed openly via online content.

• References CITED