Anthropology and the racial politics of culture / Lee D. Baker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Baker, Lee D., 1966-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Race.

Culture.

Anthropology.

Sociology.

Physical Description:

xiv, 277 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Durham [NC] : Duke University Press, [2010]

Summary:

"In Anthropology and the Racial Politics of Culture, Lee D. Baker examines theories of race and culture developed by American anthropologists during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth. He investigates the role that ethnologists played in creating a racial politics of culture in which Indians had a culture worthy of preservation and exhibition while African Americans did not. Baker argues that the concept of culture developed by ethnologists to understand American Indian languages and customs in the nineteenth century formed the basis of the anthropological concept of race eventually used to confront "the Negro problem" in the twentieth century. As he explores the implications of anthropology's different approaches to African Americans and Native Americans, and the field's different but overlapping theories of race and culture, Baker delves into the careers of prominent anthropologists and ethnologists, including James Mooney Jr., Frederic W. Putnam, Daniel G. Brinton, and Franz Boas. His analysis takes into account not only scientific societies, journals, museums, and universities, but also the development of sociology in the United States, African American and Native American activists and intellectuals, philanthropy, the media, and government entities from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the Supreme Court."-- Publisher's description.

Contents:

Research, reform, and racial uplift

Fabricating the authentic and the politics of the real

Race, relevance, and Daniel G. Brinton's ill-fated bid for prominence

The cult of Franz Boas and his "conspiracy" to destroy the white race.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780822346869

0822346869

9780822346982

0822346982

OCLC:

456977435