Indigeneity
Since its inception, Cultural Anthropology has addressed how indigenous status both serves to describe historical situations produced by colonialism and human migrations and to assert political and cultural claims. Essays address the complex and often contradictory forces at work in indigeneity: while indigenous status can inscribe radically different assumptions in its various local contexts, its contemporary deployment generally indexes transnational social movements and international networks of advocacy, knowledge, and capital. Thus, indigeneity forms a nexus of cultural identity, human rights, environmentalism, and specific political claims. This multiplicity allows indigeneity to have multiple, unexpected effects. For example, anthropologists have explored how claims of indigeneity produce double-binds for those who, by the nature of their claims, find themselves playing roles that may not be in their own long-term interest. At the same time, indigeneity can be a powerful argument for cultural and linguistic preservation programs.
Cultural anthropologists have a special historical relationship with the concept of the indigenous. Many contemporary anthropologists serve as court experts in legal claims based on indigeneity, and many historical anthropological texts now serve as documents of indigenous custom. Yet, as many indigenous activists and intellectuals have enunciated, the historical relationship between anthropology and indigenous groups has often involved anthropologists' collusion in explicit and implicit oppression. Dissatisfactions with this history and a commitment to discussions about the appropriate foci for anthropological research and the best forms of representation motivated the establishment of Cultural Anthropology in 1986, and continue to motivate its contributors, editors, and readers today. Dialogues and research around indigeneity provide a means for anthropology to continue to remake itself for new conversants and new commitments.
Upcoming Special Issue on Indigeneity
An upcoming special issue of Cultural Anthropology will focus on how indigeneity is what Michael Fischer has called an "emergent form of life," resulting from complex arrangements of culture, nature, and political-economy and shaping understandings of key concepts like geography, sovereignty, and human rights. Keeping with Cultural Anthropology’s commitment to the consideration of pressing contemporary issues (see also the special issue on the "Coke Complex" and articles on Hurricaine Katrina), this special issue will offer a sustained engagement with indigeneity in light of the United Nations consideration of the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
“Emergent Indigeneities” Special Issue CFP
Essays in Cultural Anthropology that contribute to understandings of indigeneity and indigenous lifeways address the following themes:
- Indigenous difference and representations of identity
- Cultures of preservation and propriety
- Spaces of governance and activism
- Anthropology in light of indigeneity
Indigenous difference and representations of identity
Conforming Disconformity: “Mestizaje,” Hybridity, and the Aesthetics of Mexican Nationalism
Ana María Alonso
Cultural Anthropology Nov 2004, Vol. 19, No. 4: 459-490.
Stumped Identities: Body Image, Bodies Politic, and the Mujer Maya as Prosthetic
Diane M. Nelson
Cultural Anthropology Aug 2001, Vol. 16, No. 3: 314-353.
Authorizing Voices: Going Public in an Indigenous Language
David W. Dinwoodie
Cultural Anthropology May 1998, Vol. 13, No. 2: 193-223.
"Indian Blood": Reflections on the Reckoning and Refiguring of Native North American Identity
Pauline Turner Strong, Barrik Van Winkle
Cultural Anthropology November 1996, Vol. 11, No. 4: 547-576
Telling about Whites, Talking about Indians: Oppression, Resistance, and Contemporary American Indian Identity
Theresa D. O'Nell
Cultural Anthropology February 1994, Vol. 9, No. 1: 94-126
Embedded Aesthetics: Creating a Discursive Space for Indigenous Media
Faye Ginsburg
Cultural Anthropology Aug 1994, Vol. 9, No. 3: 365-382.
Representation and Politics: Contesting Histories of the Iroquois
Sara Ciborski, Gail Landsman
Cultural Anthropology November 1992, Vol. 7, No. 4: 425-447
National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees
Liisa Malkki
Cultural Anthropology Feb 1992, Vol. 7, No. 1: 24-44.
Picturing Aborigines: A Review Essay on After Two Hundred Years: Photographic Essays on Aboriginal and Islander Australia Today
Penny Taylor, Jane Nadel-Klein
Cultural Anthropology August 1991, Vol. 6, No. 3: 414-423
Indigenous Media: Faustian Contract or Global Village?
Faye Ginsburg
Cultural Anthropology Feb 1991, Vol. 6, No. 1: 92-112.
The Tasaday, Which and Whose? Toward the Political Economy of an Ethnographic Sign
Jean-Paul Dumont
Cultural Anthropology Aug 1988, Vol. 3, No. 3: 261–275.
Cultures of preservation and propriety
CONSUMING INTERESTS: Water, Rum, and Coca-Cola from Ritual Propitiation to Corporate Expropriation in Highland Chiapas
JUNE NASH
Cultural Anthropology Nov 2007, Vol. 22, No. 4: 621-639.
Tracking Properness: Repackaging Culture in a Remote Australian Town
Kimberly Christen
Cultural Anthropology Aug 2006, Vol. 21, No. 3: 416-446.
Bobbittizing Texaco: Dis-Membering Corporate Capital and Re-Membering the Nation in Ecuador
Suzana Sawyer
Cultural Anthropology May 2002, Vol. 17, No. 2: 150-180.
Bioprospecting the Public Domain
Stephen B. Brush
Cultural Anthropology Nov 1999, Vol. 14, No. 4: 535-555.
A-Whaling We Will Go: Encounters of Knowledge and Memory at the Makah Cultural and Research Center
Patricia Pierce Erikson
Cultural Anthropology November 1999, Vol. 14, No. 4: 556-583
Of Birds and Gifts: Reviving Tradition on an Indonesian Frontier
Danilyn Rutherford
Cultural Anthropology November 1996, Vol. 11, No. 4: 577-616
Maya Hackers and the Cyberspatialized Nation-State: Modernity, Ethnostalgia, and a Lizard Queen in Guatemala
Diane M. Nelson
Cultural Anthropology Aug 1996, Vol. 11, No. 3: 287-308.
Preserving Indian Culture: Shaman Schools and Ethno-Education in the Vaupes, Colombia
Jean Jackson
Cultural Anthropology Aug 1995, Vol. 10, No. 3: 302-329.
The Patronage of Difference: Making Indian Art "Art, Not Ethnology"
Molly H. Mullin
Cultural Anthropology November 1992, Vol. 7, No. 4: 395-424
Representing Culture: The Production of Discourse(s) for Aboriginal Acrylic Paintings
Fred Myers
Cultural Anthropology Feb 1991, Vol. 6, No. 1: 26-62.
Spaces of governance and activism
Indigenous Cosmopilitics in the Andes: Conceptual Reflections Beyond 'Politics'
Marisol de la Cadena
Cultural Anthropology May 2010, Vol. 25, No. 2:334-370
Supplemental Material
Between Global Flows and Local Dams: Indigenousness, Locality, and the Transnational Sphere in Jharkhand, India
Kaushik Ghosh
Cultural Anthropology Nov 2006, Vol. 21, No. 4: 501-534.
Discussion
Activist Research v. Cultural Critique: Indigenous Land Rights and the Contradictions of Politically Engaged Anthropology
Charles R. Hale
Cultural Anthropology Feb 2006, Vol. 21, No. 1: 96-120.
Longing for the Kollektiv: Gender, Power, and Residential Schools in Central Siberia
Alexia Bloch
Cultural Anthropology Nov 2005, Vol. 20, No. 4: 534-569.
Bobbittizing Texaco: Dis-Membering Corporate Capital and Re-Membering the Nation in Ecuador
Suzana Sawyer
Cultural Anthropology May 2002, Vol. 17, No. 2: 150-180.
"Making Place" at the United Nations: Indigenous Cultural Politics at the U.N. Working Group on Indigenous Populations
Andrea Muehlebach
Cultural Anthropology Aug 2001, Vol. 16, No. 3: 415-448.
The Salt of the Montaña: Interpreting Indigenous Activism in the Rain Forest
Hanne Veber
Cultural Anthropology Aug 1998, Vol. 13, No. 3: 382–413.
Anthropology in light of indigeneity
Activist Research v. Cultural Critique: Indigenous Land Rights and the Contradictions of Politically Engaged Anthropology
Charles R. Hale
Cultural Anthropology Feb 2006, Vol. 21, No. 1: 96-120.
From Text to Context: How Anthropology Makes Its Subject
Allen Chun
Cultural Anthropology Nov 2000, Vol. 15, No. 4: 570-595.
The Politics of Discursive Authority in Research on the "Invention of Tradition"
Charles L. Briggs
Cultural Anthropology November 1996, Vol. 11, No. 4: 435-469
The Dundus and the Nation
Charles V. Carnegie
Cultural Anthropology November 1996, Vol. 11, No. 4: 470-509
National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees
Liisa Malkki
Cultural Anthropology Feb 1992, Vol. 7, No. 1: 24-44.
Picturing Aborigines: A Review Essay on After Two Hundred Years: Photographic Essays on Aboriginal and Islander Australia Today
Penny Taylor, Jane Nadel-Klein
Cultural Anthropology August 1991, Vol. 6, No. 3: 414-423
Reflecting on the Yanomami: Ethnographic Images and the Pursuit of the Exotic
Alcida R. Ramos
Cultural Anthropology Aug 1987, Vol. 2, No. 3: 284-304.
