representation – ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

Spirited Encounters: American Indians Protest Museum Policies and Practices

In line with an earlier post about the repatriation of First Nation remains held in museums, I am happy to tell readers of the recent publication of a new book, by AltaMira Press, titled Spirited Encounters: American Indians Protest Museum Policies and Practices. The publisher’s synopsis reads as follows (with minor edits): “During the twentieth […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

When does reciprocity not matter? When you’re a journalist and not an anthropologist

Continuing from my last two posts, I have been thinking about instances where reciprocity, collaboration, control over representation, advocacy, and even informed consent simply did not matter at all to the indigenous community in question and to its friends in the wider community. I thought of the occasions where I had to share space with […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Indigenism and Essentialism, 2

In a previous post on “Anti-Anti-Essentialism,” I began by outlining some of what I think are the problems with anti-essentialism in anthropology, one of the now dominant conceptual pillars of the discipline. I wish to add a few more personal notes to that here. Again, this is by no means “finished” work, but more like […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Anti-anti-essentialism. 1

I tell people that I am an “anti-anti-essentialist.” I am still working on what that is supposed to mean, so let me do this in bits and pieces, and this is the first entry for this topic. I am not at all convinced that essentialism–the notion, in anthropology, that a culture or ethnicity consists of […]