By Jennifer Cole (NHC Fellow, 1997–98) While doing fieldwork in a village in east Madagascar that had suffered both heavy settler colonialism and a bloody anticolonial rebellion, Jennifer Cole found herself confronted by a puzzle. People in the area had lived through almost a century of intrusive French colonial rule, but they appeared to have … Continued
By Michel-Rolph Trouillot (NHC Fellow, 1985–86)
By W. V. Harris (NHC Fellow, 1998–99) The angry emotions, and the problems they presented, were an ancient Greek preoccupation from Homer to late antiquity. From the first lines of the Iliad to the church fathers of the fourth century A.D., the control or elimination of rage was an obsessive concern. From the Greek world it passed … Continued
By Shepard Krech, III (Trustee; NHC Fellow, 1993–94; 2000–01) The idea of the Native American living in perfect harmony with nature is one of the most cherished contemporary myths. But how truthful is this larger-than-life image? According to anthropologist Shepard Krech, the first humans in North America demonstrated all of the intelligence, self-interest, flexibility, and … Continued
By Dhan Gopal MukerjiEdited by Akhil Gupta (NHC Fellow, 2000–01), Gordon H. Chang, and Purnima Mankekar A person of rare talent and broad appeal, Dhan Gopal Mukerji (1890-1936) holds the distinction of being the first South Asian immigrant to have a successful career in the United States as a man of letters. As the author … Continued
By Daniel J. Sherman (NHC Fellow, 1999–00) For over a century, the idea of primitivism has motivated artistic modernism. Focusing on the three decades after World War II, known in France as “les trentes glorieuses” despite the loss of most of the country’s colonial empire, this probing and expansive book argues that primitivism played a … Continued
By Julie Velásquez Runk (NHC Fellow, 2018–19) La región del Darién, en la frontera entre Panamá y Colombia, es un nombre que muchos conservacionistas conocen. Reconocida por sus bosques tropicales de tierras bajas, su fama es mayor aún porque una carretera que debería estar allí no está: los ambientalistas, repetida y asombrosamente, han detenido los … Continued
By Karen Tranberg Hansen (NHC Fellow, 1997–98)
By Jack Goody (NHC Fellow, 1991–92) Jack Goody's new book explores the history of social anthropology as an emergent discipline in the interwar years. It focuses on key practitioners, such as Malinowski and Fortes, and explores how far ideological approaches adopted by social anthropologists were defined by the institutions in which they developed, particularly in … Continued
Edited by Ákos Östör (NHC Fellow, 1980–81), Lina Fruzzetti, and Steve Barnett Using rich ethnographic detail, this work looks at the extent to which new models of kinship, caste and marriage translate into regional and Indian Models. The contributors, all distinguished scholars of South Asia, tackle different geographical areas and such diverse topics as hierarchy, … Continued