Review

Reviewed Work(s): African-American Pioneers in Anthropology by Ira E. Harrison and

Faye V. Harrison
Review by: James Lowell Gibbs, Jr.
Source: Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 58, No. 2 (Summer, 2002), pp. 305-307
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3631061
Accessed: 19-12-2018 12:55 UTC

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 BOOK REVIEWS 305

in their essays, and it's not alw

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Russell Cole
University of New Mexico

African-American Pioneers in Anthropology. Ira E. Harrison and Faye V.

Harrison, eds. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999, 328 pp.
$49.95, cloth.

This symposium presents the lives and work of a cohort of thirteen African-
American anthropologists who were trained between World War I, when African-
Americans began earning doctorates in the field, and 1953, when new field training
fellowships for Africanists spawned the second generation of African-American
anthropologists.
The conception of the book and some of its profiles grew out of historic 1980s
sessions on black anthropologists' "ancestors and elders," sponsored by the
Association of Black Anthropologists, held at Annual Meetings of the American
Anthropological Association.
The anthropologists profiled, each by a different contributor, are Caroline
Bond Day, Zora Neale Hurston, Louis Eugene King, Lawrence Forster, W.
Montague Cobb, Katherine Dunham, Ellen Irene Diggs, Allison Davis, St. Clair
Drake, Arthur Huff Fawcett, William S. Willis, Jr., Hubert B. Ross, and Elliot
Skinner.
The thirteen chapters are contextualized in the editors' opening essay,
"Introduction: Anthropology, African-Americans, and the Emancipation of a
Subjugated Knowledge." This overview notes that the pioneers' life stories,
careers, and intellectual agendas were strongly influenced by anthropology's racial

Journal ofAnthropological Research, vol. 58, 2002

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306 JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH

and gender politics. Using the profiles as a vehicle for "studyi

pursue their goal: "to repossess and reposition the African-Am
lineage within the history of anthropology."
Major themes in the pioneers' careers chronicled by the co
highlighted in the introduction are: their links with prominent
who were not anthropologists; their stance as "vidicationists" (o
activism, advocacy, and public service; and the anticipation in t
of the thrusts (e.g., reflexivity) of "post-modernist" anthropol
ironical, theme is the role of white anthropologist patrons wh
early African-American anthropologists but, simultaneously, e
constrained their careers within racial boundaries, perip
scholarship.
The contributors' profiles cover the family origins of the pioneers, their
education (with particular emphasis on graduate training), their conception of
anthropology, and the foci of their research and writing. The chapters are uneven,
however. Some are based on much more information, and some provide fuller
analyses of their subject's scholarship. They all document, with moving,
cumulative impact, both the numerous obstacles the pioneers faced in obtaining
formal training in anthropology and in pursuing their research and writing and their
successes in spite of the odds.
The editors weigh the pioneers' contributions to the profession primarily in
terms of the extent to which they contribute to the vindicationalist agenda and to
activism. But their summary of the substance of the pioneers' work is broader,
detailing the pioneers' contributions to anthropology, to academia generally, and
to public policy.
From the individual chapters readers can trace the pioneers' other
contributions such as institution building. Many contributed significantly to the
governance or sociopolitical character of their institutions and faculties and to their
curricula. They also trained and mentored generations of students.
Seven of the pioneers received their doctorates from just three institutions:
Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of
Chicago; and the chapters reveal the recurring role of several white anthropologists
(e.g., Franz Boas, A. Irving Hallowell, Elsie Clews Parsons). However, the
absence of an index obscures these and other patterns (e.g., as graduate students
some of the pioneers were pressed into service on white professors' research
dealing with race differences).
The editors barely explore patterns in the sociology of who the pioneers were.
Most came from middle-class families. Many of them were mulattoes or racially
mixed. A few were of Caribbean birth or parentage. All but two took undergraduate
training at elite, private, "white" institutions, in a few cases obtaining second
undergraduate degrees there. Notably, none obtained an undergraduate degree at a
"white" state institution. Moreover, the ten who received Ph.D.s obtained them at
private, "white" institutions.
One wishes that the editors' introduction had pursued the implications of these
patterns more fully. Was the relatively elitist education and training of the pioneers

Journal ofAnthropological Research, vol. 58, 2002

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 BOOK REVIEWS 307

simply a reflection of the elitism

what ways did their shared "backg
of their blackness, their choice of
to negotiate the institutional barri
and the ways in which they balan
scholarship? In what ways did su
total contributions to anthropolo

James Lowell
Stanford Un

Dance in Cambodia. Toni Saman

Oxford University Press, 2000, v

This book is a concise, straightf

Cambodia. The authors make th
connected to the fluctuating soc
show how changes in the sociopo
a direct impact on Cambodia's Kh
Following a brief discussion of
Cambodian dance, the authors int
practiced today-the shadow theat
dance-drama, and the ceremonia
descriptive chapters, the reade
continuation" dan found in these
With shifts in political power an
suppression and periods of restora
out of the old" (p. 10).
Of the four dance genres discuss
the most difficult for performin
high cost of production and the lo
years of the 1970s. The large lea
characters or even whole scenes
cowhide. More than 150 cows are
panels. The dancers from behind a
panels casting shadows and high
typically involved seven consecu
battles between good and evil
"relatively high production cost
always limited expansion of the ar
in Cambodia's present economic

Journal of Anthropological R

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