Anthropology Has One Job (On Genocide in the United States)
Name
Anthropology Has One Job On Genocide in the United States .pdf
Size
2.99 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
3ae96791e8d0caaa7c22cba2452d7f87
Author(s)
Lowry, David Shane
Date Issued
January 2, 2023
Journal
Anthropology Now
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Citation
Lowry, D. S. (2023). Anthropology Has One Job (On Genocide in the United States). Anthropology Now, 15(1), 69–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/19428200.2023.2230096
Version
Final published version
Abstract
In an introductory anthropology course, the instructor might provide a definition of anthropology similar to this: “Anthropology is the most scientific of the humanities, and it is the most humanistic of the sciences.” If something like that is said, it stems from a statement in Anthropology, a 1964 book by famed anthropologist Eric Wolf in which he attempted to define the discipline. Wolf’s approach came at a time when many anthropologists were attempting to intervene in the historical telling of the world.Footnote1 In particular, Wolf argued that non-Europeans were also participants in global, colonial processes. The value of Wolf’s voice—indeed, the value of most anthropology at the time—was that it offered a wide-scale view of human events for which the anthropologist was merely an observer, hence not responsible.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Anthropology
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1080/19428200.2023.2230096
