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The Anthropologist, the Jester, and the Poet: An Oral History Interview with B ruce G rindal about the S ociety for H umanistic A nthropology
Author(s) -
Sarkis Marianne M.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
anthropology and humanism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1548-1409
pISSN - 1559-9167
DOI - 10.1111/anhu.12084
Subject(s) - oral history , storytelling , ethnography , narrative , poetry , humanism , materialism , anthropology , sociology , literature , history , art , theology , philosophy
Summary B ruce G rindal played an instrumental role in the S ociety for H umanistic A nthropology ( SHA ), which he helped found in 1974 at an A merican A nthropological A ssociation meeting in M exico C ity. He became the editor of The A nthropology and H umanism Q uarterly ( AHQ ) in 1976, a journal that eschewed traditional ethnographic writing, and celebrated and encouraged storytelling in anthropology. Poems, narratives, fictions, and short essays that were rejected as “not anthropology” by other journals found a home in AHQ . In this oral history interview, B ruce recalls the history of the SHA and the challenges it faced in its early days in gaining acceptance by other anthropologists. In his attempts to legitimize humanistic anthropology, he challenged the materialist and postmodernist anthropological paradigms of the time through a series of scathing articles that publicly challenged what he regarded as the “overly analyzed digested mystification” of reality. This oral history interview covers the periods from 1976 to 2005 at the 30th anniversary of the founding of the SHA and touches upon philosophical musings and highlights from B ruce G rindal's career.