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Anthropologists in Unexpected Places: Tracing Anthropological Theory, Practice, and Policy in Indians at Work
Author(s) -
Morgan Mindy J.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1111/aman.12892
Subject(s) - indigenous , ethnography , discipline , representation (politics) , anthropology , sociology , publishing , work (physics) , social science , media studies , history , political science , politics , law , ecology , biology , mechanical engineering , engineering
During the 1930s, anthropologists were frequent contributors to the periodical, Indians at Work , published by the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA). While the magazine's primary purpose was to chronicle American Indian participation in federal relief programs, it also served as a larger forum for publishing and reprinting ethnographic works authored by anthropologists about American Indian communities. As such, it was a key site for mid‐twentieth‐century disciplinary debates, particularly in regard to establishing the subfield of applied anthropology. The varied contributions expose differences regarding the purpose and goals of the discipline as well as growing tensions between anthropologists and the OIA about the application of disciplinary knowledge to governmental policy. These struggles reveal the difficulty anthropologists had in locating contemporary American Indian communities within the larger US nation‐state. Critically, the magazine also provided a space for tribal members as well as Indigenous anthropologists to engage in debates regarding ethnographic (mis)representation. [ history of anthropology, anthropological practice, Indigenous studies, United States ]