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- Convenors:
-
Richard Powell
(University of Cambridge)
David Anderson (University of Aberdeen)
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- Stream:
- History of Anthropology and Geography
- Sessions:
- Thursday 17 September, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel brings together historians of anthropology and historians of geography to discuss entanglements and resistances between theories, methods, practices and institutions across both disciplines.
Long Abstract:
Although having much shared history as field sciences, in terms of common practices and practitioners, both anthropology and geography have generated quite distinctive approaches to the writing of disciplinary histories. This has meant that much history of anthropology has disavowed the presence of geographical thought, and much history of geography has pursued a reductive version of anthropological method. This approach to disciplinary history has been a key dimension in the training and identity of both anthropologists and geographers respectively. Increasingly, this position has become untenable as disciplinarity itself has been threatened through contemporary research practices and approaches to training in research methods across the social sciences.
This has ushered in a new generation of exciting historical and theoretical research that questions the boundaries between anthropological and geographical thought, and focuses on examining boundary concepts such as space, environment, field, culture and ontology. In the current moment, there is also increasing collaboration between scholarly institutions, such as around the digital archiving of collections at the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). This provides for a reconsideration of many of the defining origin stories of both disciplines.
This panel brings together anthropologists and geographers to discuss these shared histories and historiographies. The panel organizers welcome paper proposals on any of the above or related issues with respect to anthropological thought, geographical thought and their comparison.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 17 September, 2020, -Richard Powell (University of Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
This paper reviews shared concepts and methods in late nineteenth- and early twentieth- century geography and anthropology through the lens of the Arctic.
Paper long abstract:
Arctic anthropology and Arctic geography have had a contested, and at times uncomfortable, history. This has derived from competing institutional practices of canonicity and pedagogy. However, a number of fin de siècle Arctic anthropologists were initially trained as geographers, such as Franz Boas and Kaj Birkett-Smith, and derived many common field practices and methods. This paper examines the reasons for this situation and draws out some of the consequences for the enduring conceptualisation of the northern circumpolar region, particularly around concepts of 'culture'.
Michael Reibel (California State University, Pomona)
Paper short abstract:
Relations between anthropology and geography are much closer in the USA than they have been in Commonwealth countries, with at least a dozen joint departments. Combined programs leverage shared concerns in methods and the integration of unusually broad disciplines.
Paper long abstract:
The history of relations between anthropology and geography are quite different and apparently much closer in the USA than they have been in Commonwealth countries. My department is far from the only joint department of geography and anthropology in the US; there are at least a dozen granting bachelors' and in many cases masters' degrees. Nor are these all marriages of convenience between small programs; at least one - Louisiana State - is a top research-oriented department.
Historically, this tradition of collaboration owes much to the affinity between cultural geographer Carl Sauer at Berkeley and the iconoclastic cultural anthropologist Franz Boas. While not a formal cultural relativist, Sauer was influenced by Boas to reject environmental determinism and insist that cultures be evaluated on their own terms. In turn, Sauer's notion of cultural landscapes and his work on agricultural diffusion have influenced generations of U.S. anthropologists.
On the administrative side, combining these programs in a single department makes sense for three reasons: the first is the shared tradition of fieldwork, which has shaped the cultures of both disciplines by attracting more intrepid intellects. The second is the fact that both traditions integrate aspects of the physical and social sciences into coherent programs and disciplinary world views. Finally, there is a longstanding methodological overlap between archaeology - which is always a branch of anthropology in the U.S. - and physical geography. New remote sensing techniques and GIS continue to bring these fields closer methodologically.
Mitch Rose (Aberystwyth University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the latent legacy of cultural theory in geography. While anthropology made culture central to its work, geography approached the concept obliquely. The paper excavates geography's unique approach, illustrates its distinctiveness and points to future directions.
Paper long abstract:
The discipline of geography has always had an ambivalent relationship to the culture concept. While cultural geography had an immense influence on the methods and direction of the discipline more broadly, the question of culture itself (what is it, how it functions, its operative mechanisms and its underlying engine) has rarely been addressed explicitly. The aim of this paper is to excavate a latent geographical approach to the question of culture; a tradition that while sharing many touch points with anthropology, is nonetheless distinct even as it is less obvious. Specifically, I argue that the culture question has been developed by two schools of geographical thought: an Anthropogeographical School (represented by the traditions of Ratzel and Vidal de la Blache) and a Landscape School (represented by the Berkeley School and new cultural geographers). My purpose for conducting this excavation is not only to illustrate the discipline's distinct approach to the question of culture, but to make the argument that this tradition holds potential resources for raising the question of culture anew.
Philip Conway (Durham University)
Paper short abstract:
The connections between the Euro-American 'milieu' and the Pacific island 'mana' are familiar to the history of anthropology. Taken together, they offer boundary concepts for exploring the relationship of geography and anthropology, particularly with regard to issues of ontology and appropriation.
Paper long abstract:
The concept of 'milieu' was established as a biological and sociological term during the mid-nineteenth century by Auguste Comte, being translated into English by Harriet Martineau as 'environment.' Prior to Comte, milieu had been a physical term, popularised as a translation of Isaac Newton's notion of an 'Ætherial medium.' From the late eighteenth century, in keeping with Newton's deist speculations but particularly driven by the mystic-healer Franz Mesmer, milieu/medium also attained a spiritual meaning: being the universal substance that connects all things, explaining all ailment, and being the basis of all power. 'Mana,' by contrast, is a force or power common to much of Melanesia and Polynesia. Often translated as influence, authority, or efficacy, it is also a quasi-physical force of nature. Mana has been the subject of extensive anthropological investigation, as in Robert Henry Codrington's 1891 The Melanesians, and Marcel Mauss' 1902 A General Theory of Magic. It has also, and relatedly, been subject to colonial appropriation by New Age religions such as 'Huna,' propounded by Max Freedom Long from the 1930s—a creed that owed more to Mesmer's milieu but cloaked itself in pseudo-Hawai'ian terminology. By tracing the parallel emergence of milieu as a pan-scientific concept (including but not limited to human geography) and mana, as an item of interest and arrogation by various parties, it will be possible to identify common problematiques at play through these decades, and, thereby, to reflect upon present issues, particularly concerning Indigenous knowledges and global environmental governance.
David Anderson (University of Aberdeen)
Paper short abstract:
This paper surveys the co-production of knowledge in Northern Europe and Siberia between indigenous hunters and herders, nascent geographers and ethnographers, and contemporary identity managers It examines how landscape knowledge fragments into shamanism and ritual,and cartographic notation.
Paper long abstract:
This paper surveys 100 years the co-production of landscape knowledge in Northern Europe and Siberia between indigenous hunters and herders, nascent geographers and ethnographers, and contemporary identity managers. Based on long-term fieldwork and archival work in Eastern Siberia, the paper surveys early cultural conversations between taiga dwellers and academicians on the topic of rational representation of spaces, and the more controversial topic of accounting for the vibrancy of special parts of the landscape. The paper will examine how landscape knowledge has become fragmented into discourses on shamanism and ritual - on the one hand - and cartographic notation, on the other. Looking forward the paper will speculate how bridging concepts, such as that of the ontology, have renewed this debate in the 21st century.
Among the historical ethnographic examples discussed are the status of vibrant ecogeographic zones known sometimes as niches but also as "living spaces" to Evenkis and Orochens. Among historical geographic colloborations will be the study of wayfaring and hydrological navigation which the geographer Kropotkin learned off his guide Maksimov.
The contemporary examples will examine the use of GPS locators and their interface with public and private mapping projects in the region - and how this corresponds to older narrative traditions of vibrant spaces within and under the surface.
Vikram Tamboli (National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian)
Paper short abstract:
This paper brings together the history of Geography and Anthropology in the Guyanese-Venezuelan borderland space of the Essequibo through analysis of the practice of trafficking in bodies, goods, and ideas.
Paper long abstract:
This paper develops the historical analysis of anthropological and geographical inquiries into the Guyanese-Venezuelan borderlands—the land of "El Dorado" or "lake Parima" (Rivière 1995, Burnett 2000), the homeland of the Barama river Caribs (Gillin 1931, Adams 1972, Whitehead 1988, Forte 1990, 1999), and the heart of the disputed territory of the Essequibo. I use the oral narratives—including the gossip, folklore, and conspiracies—of bush workers I met over nearly ten years of fieldwork and travel, to navigate my archival inquiry into this obscure borderland history. Beginning in the eighteenth century and ending in the present, weaving classic ethnological accounts (Humboldt, Schomburk, Im Thurn, Koch-Grunberg, and Gillin) with the records of the British Guiana Boundary Dispute, the paper argues that analyzing the historical practice of trafficking in bodies, goods, and ideas defined the region physically and temporally. The analysis specifically demonstrates how sorcery, spirituality, rumor, and conspiracy are bound together in similar land and time-scapes, and makes clear how these forms of managing power are essential to understanding local and regional ontologies. Moreover, by analyzing the practice of trafficking through the history of Anthropology and Geography in the region the paper also provides another conceptual framework to understand the political ecology of Amazonia.
Giovanni Modaffari (University of Oulu)
Paper short abstract:
Sir Richard F. Burton (1821-1890) personifies an era in which some of the most controversial aspects of anthropology and geography became apparent. A discussion of these criticalities across disciplinary boundaries attempts to provide new answers to a constitutive dilemma.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper we offer a metaphorical lens for the comparison between anthropological and geographical thought with regard to the second half of the 19th century, a crucial period in their development. Our focus is one of the most prominent scholars in the history of both disciplines: Sir Richard F. Burton (1821-1890). In his works and in his career as an explorer, Burton epitomizes many peculiar aspects of these tools for interpreting the world and mankind which, according to critics, shared one original sin: their nature as instruments for domination. Moving along the geographical red line which marked the end of Modernity and the beginning of Globalisation, Burton, as agent of an empire, takes part in defining the contemporary way of representing the world while at the same time sharing an outlook which was widespread in the field of anthropology. In 1863, Burton was one of the founders of the Anthropological Society of London, within which he expressed many of his controversial views in his racialist studies. The latter, together with others strands of Burton's anthropological studies, co-exist with his constant engagement in exploring unknown regions, also on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society, and describing peoples and histories with an awareness and richness which are still of interest to the eye of the contemporary reader. Our travel into Burton's world will thus be an attempt to explore the ancient dilemma on the status of anthropology and geography as instruments for domination or mankind's self-representation.
Smita Yadav (University of Sussex)
Paper short abstract:
How have both geography and anthropology conceptualized borders, places, and people of the global south differently and why?
Paper long abstract:
Even though the idea of the global south came out of Geography, it was Anthropology, at least in Britain, that was originally linked with to the extent that now almost all of anthropology is a study of countries which are non-western and exclusively in the global south. In this paper, I try to understand how the treatment and practice of studying and understanding the global south in the two disciplines is different and how one or both have continued to influence each other. I would compare and contrast some key case studies in contemporary global south such as those studying Labour, Gender, Religion, and the State. I hope to draw some key ideas from these different practices of enquiry and methods of representing the social life in the global south.