BiblioVault - Books by Whitten, Norman E.

Expanding American Anthropology, 1945-1980

A Generation Reflects

Edited by Alice Beck Kehoe and Paul L. Doughty

University of Alabama Press, 2012

Expanding American Anthropology, 1945–1980: A Generation Reflects takes an inside look at American anthropology’s participation in the enormous expansion of the social sciences after World War II. During this time the discipline of anthropology itself came of age, expanding into diverse subfields, frequently on the initiative of individual practitioners. The Association of Senior Anthropologists of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) called upon a number of its leaders to give accounts of their particular innovations in the discipline. This volume is the result of the AAA venture—a set of primary documents on the history of American anthropology at a critical juncture.

In preparing the volume, the editors endeavored to maintain the feeling of “oral history” within the chapters and to preserve the individual voices of the contributors. There are many books on the history of anthropology, but few that include personal essays from such a broad swath of different perspectives. The passing of time will make this volume increasingly valuable in understanding the development of American anthropology from a small discipline to the profession of over ten thousand practitioners.

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Histories of the Present

People and Power in Ecuador

Norman E. Whitten Jr. and Dorothea Scott Whitten

University of Illinois Press, 2011

The wellspring of critical analysis in this book emerges from Ecuador's major Indigenous Uprising of 1990 and its ongoing aftermath in which indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian action transformed the nation-state and established new dimensions of human relationships. The authors weave anthropological theory with longitudinal Ecuadorian ethnography to produce a unique contribution to Latin American studies.

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Puyo Runa

Imagery and Power in Modern Amazonia

Norman E. Whitten Jr. and Dorothea Scott Whitten

University of Illinois Press, 2007

The Andean nation of Ecuador derives much of its revenue from petroleum that is extracted from its vast Upper Amazonian rain forest, which is home to ten indigenous nationalities. Norman E. Whitten Jr. and Dorothea Scott Whitten have lived among and studied one such people, the Canelos Quichua, for nearly forty years. In Puyo Runa, they present a trenchant ethnography of history, ecology, imagery, and cosmology to focus on shamans, ceramic artists, myth, ritual, and political engagements. Canelos Quichua are active participants in national politics, including large-scale movements for social justice for Andean and Amazonian people. Puyo Runa offers readers exceptional insight into this cultural world, revealing its intricacies and embedded humanisms.

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