Glimpses into my own black box : an exercise in self-deconstruction / George W. Stocking.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stocking, George W., Jr. (George Ward), 1928-2013.

Series:

History of anthropology ; v. 12.

History of anthropology ; v. 12

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Anthropologists--United States--Biography.

Anthropologists.

Stocking, George W., Jr. (George Ward), 1928-2013.

Stocking, George W.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (247 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

George W. Stocking, Jr., has spent a professional lifetime exploring the history of anthropology, and his findings have shaped anthropologists' understanding of their field for two generations. Through his meticulous research, Stocking has shown how such forces as politics, race, institutional affiliations, and personal relationships have influenced the discipline from its beginnings. In this autobiography, he turns his attention to a subject closer to home but no less challenging. Looking into his own "black box," he dissects his upbringing, his politics, even his motivations in writing about himself. The result is a book systematically, at times brutally, self-questioning. An interesting question, Stocking says, is one that arouses just the right amount of anxiety. But that very anxiety may be the ultimate source of Stocking's remarkable intellectual energy and output. In the first two sections of the book, he traces the intersecting vectors of his professional and personal lives. The book concludes with a coda, "Octogenarian Afterthoughts," that offers glimpses of his life after retirement, when advancing age, cancer, and depression changed the tenor of his reflections about both his life and his work. This book is the twelfth and final volume of the influential History of Anthropology series.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

List of Illustrations

Prologue

My Life under Surveillance

Documenting Surveillance

1. Autobiographical Recollections

From the Lincoln School to Harvard College

Pascal's Wager and Communist Politics at Harvard

Divergent Family Histories within a WASP Tradition

Imagining a Future with Wilhelmina Davis

Life in the Working Class during the McCarthy Era

American Civilization and Postivist Historiography at the University of Pennsylvania

Political Disillusion and Historiographical Assumption

Social History and Historiography at Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement Years

The Berkeley Experience: Divorce, Family Breakup, and Consciousness Raising

Tenure without a Book: Essays toward a New History of Anthropology

From History to Anthropology at the University of Chicago

Multicultural Travels with Carol Bowman: From Srpski Itebej to King's High Table across Boundaries in Time and Class

From Huey Newton's Poster to the Harvard Twenty-fifth Anniversary Report: Settling in to a Cautious and Ambivalent Historicism

Blocked Projects, False Starts, and Miscast Roles: The Travails of an Interdisciplinary Hybrid

Disciplinary Marginality as a Condition of Productive Scholarship

From Academic Striver to Disciplinary Doyen

Conversations across a Widening Generation Gap

Biography in an Autobiographical Context

2. Historiographical Reflections

Inside an Historian's Study: The "Micro-technology" of a "Bottom-up" Historicism

Intellectual Topographies, Concentric Models, Enduring Biases: Some Limitations of a Professed Historicism

Interesting Questions and Blocked Researches: Notes on Anxiety and Method in My Historiography of Anthropology

Revelatory Moments Unexplored: The Mead/Freeman Controversy and the Amplification of Anxiety in Present History.

From the Big Picture to the Biographical Vignette: The Ulterior Historiographical Motives of an Aging Old Historicist

The Problematic Character of Influence: The "Gatekeeper" and a "New" History of Anthropology

Doing "Good Work" : Thoughts on the Craft of One Historian

3. Octogenarian Afterthoughts: "Fragments Shored against My Ruins

Further Steps down a Pyramid of Deterioration

Conjuring a Readership: Yet Another Try at Influence

Reconceptualizing Historicism: "Handling the Rich Complexities of the Lives of Others

Office in a Storeroom: Trashing the Icons of a Scholarly Life

Becoming an Octogenarian and Accentuating the Positive

The Audacity of Hope and the Politics of Mr. In-between

Notes from the Edge of the Abyss: The Serenity Prayer and Pascal's Wager

Epilogue

Penelope's Shroud, Zeno's Paradox, and the Closure of the Black Box

Striving for Perfection and Accepting the Terminal Realities of Life: Final Notes on the Making and Completion of This Book

Acknowledgments

References Cited

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-282-91646-7

9786612916465

0-299-24983-2

OCLC:

699519524