To kick off the academic year, Nicholas Barron will join us to share his article, "Lessons in Safe Logic: Reassessing Anthropological and Liberal Imaginings of Termination," which has been accepted by the Journal of Anthropological Research.
As it is unusual for us to read a piece in press, we have paired it with two pieces to help broaden the conversation: Akhil Gupta and Jesse Stoolman’s recently published “Decolonizing US Anthropology” (2022) and George Pierre Castile’s “Federal Indian Policy and Anthropology” (2004). These pieces are intended as points of contextualization, comparison, and enrichment. As Nick continues to work on the material presented in this article, the session will still contribute to his ongoing work.
We are thrilled to have commentary from Laura Stark (Vanderbilt) and David Dinwoodie (University of New Mexico).
Abstract: "Building upon recent efforts to assess the history of anthropology in light of renewed calls for disciplinary decolonization, this paper turns to the role of US anthropologists in the infamous policy period known as Termination. Contextualizing the activism of the applied anthropologist John H. Provinse against the backdrop of broader shifts in post-WWII, US liberalism, I argue that Provinse’s support for Termination in the late 1940s reflected an embattled social democratic and pluralistic conception of Indian-US relations. This perspective contrasted with and was ultimately overshadowed by the assimilatory sentiments that would become institutionalized in the Termination policies of the 1950s. Thus, Provinse provides an analytical opening from which to explore the discipline’s relationship with Termination as well as the affordances and limitations of liberal anthropological activism. Moreover, such a case offers a generous rejoinder to more speculative assessments of the discipline’s many pasts."
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Late breaking addition: If you are interested in the broader context for the Gupta and Stoolman piece, it responds in part to pieces by two of our working group members, Herb Lewis and Ira Bashkow. Lewis and Bashkow's pieces are now included in the packet of readings as optional complements to the month's reading.
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