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The origins of anthropology lie in expeditionary journeys. But since the rise of immersive fieldwork, usually by a sole investigator, the older tradition of team-based social research has been largely eclipsed. Expeditionary Anthropology argues that expeditions have much to tell us about anthropologists and the people they studied. The book charts the diversity of anthropological expeditions and analyzes the often passionate arguments they provoked. Drawing on recent developments in gender studies, indigenous studies, and the history of science, the book argues that even today, the ‘science of man’ is deeply inscribed by its connections with expeditionary travel.
“Martin Thomas and Amanda Harris’s edited volume makes important steps towards understanding the history of the sociopolitical formations that are embedded in, and around, the idea of the expedition.” • Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI)
“Expeditionary Anthropology emerges as an extraordinary book, with unexpected insights that demonstrate the vitality and relevance of the sub-disciplinary field of the history of anthropology. There is no doubt that it deserves a place on the bookshelves of every scholar interested in the subject.” • The Journal of Pacific History
“This distinctive volume represents a genuinely interesting set of contributions to scholarship in anthropology, literary studies, history, and the history of science.” • Nicholas Thomas, University of Cambridge
“Scholars of exploration and the history of anthropology will find this book very useful—the approach put forward by Thomas and Harris is novel and important.” • Michael F. Robinson, University of Hartford
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Anthropology and the Expeditionary Imaginary: An Introduction to the Volume
Martin Thomas and Amanda Harris
PART I: ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE FIELD: INTERMEDIARIES AND EXCHANGE
Chapter 1. Assembling the Ethnographic Field: The 1901-02 Expedition of Baldwin Spencer and Francis Gillen
Philip Batty
Chapter 2. Receiving guests: The Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Strait 1898
Jude Philp
Chapter 3. Donald Thomson’s Hybrid Expeditions: Anthropology, Biology and Narrative in Northern Australia and England
Saskia Beudel
PART II: EXPLORATION, ARCHAEOLOGY, RACE AND EMERGENT ANTHROPOLOGY
Chapter 4. Looking at Culture through an Artist’s Eyes: William Henry Holmes and the Exploration of Native American Archaeology
Pamela Henson
Chapter 5. The Anomalous Blonds of the Maghreb: Carleton Coon Discovers the African Nordics
Warwick Anderson
Chapter 6. Medium, Genre, Indigenous Presence: Spanish Expeditionary Encounters in the Mar del Sur, 1606
Bronwen Douglas
Chapter 7. Ethnographic Inquiry on Phillip Parker King’s Hydrographic Survey
Tiffany Shellam
PART III: THE QUESTION OF GENDER
Chapter 8. Gender and the Expedition: Anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons and the Politics of Fieldwork in the Americas in the 1920s and 1930s
Desley Deacon
Chapter 9. What Has Been Forgotten? The Discourses of Margaret Mead and The American Museum of Natural History Sepik Expedition
Diane Losche
Chapter 10. Gender, Science and Imperial Drive: Margaret McArthur on Two Expeditions in the 1940s
Amanda Harris
Index