Schneider on Schneider: The Conversion of the Jews and Other Anthropological Stories

David M. Schneider

Published by Duke University Press 1995

Schneider on Schneider

The Conversion of the Jews and Other Anthropological Stories

David M. Schneider
In collaboration with: Richard Handler

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822397953

Overview
Contents

About this book

To listen to David M. Schneider is to hear the voice of American anthropology. To listen at length is to hear much of the discipline’s history, from the realities of postwar practice and theory to Schneider’s own influence on the development of symbolic and interpretive anthropology in the 1970s and 1980s. Schneider on Schneider offers readers this rare opportunity, and with it an engrossing introduction into a world of intellectual rigor, personal charm, and wit.
In this work, based on conversations with Richard Handler, Schneider tells the story of his days devoted to anthropology—as a student of Clyde Kluckhohn and Talcott Parsons and as a writer and teacher whose work on kinship and culture theory revolutionized the discipline. With a master’s sense of the telling anecdote, he describes his education at Cornell, Yale, and Harvard, his fieldwork on the Micronesian island of Yap and among the Mescalero Apache, and his years teaching at the London School of Economics, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago. Musing on the current state and the future of anthropology, Schneider’s cast of characters reads like a who’s who of postwar social science. His reflections on anthropological field research and academic politics address some of the most pressing ethical and epistemological issues facing scholars today, while yielding tales of unexpected amusement.
With its humor and irony, its wealth of information and searching questions about the state of anthropology, Schneider on Schneider not only provides an important resource for the history of twentieth-century social science, but also brings to life the entertaining voice of an engaging storyteller.

Author / Editor information

David M. Schneider, one of the key figures in twentieth-century social science, is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His books include American Kinship and A Critique of the Study of Kinship.

Richard Handler is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Virginia and author of, among other works, Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec

Reviews

"Is it possible that our whole knowledge of people, what they do and what they are, can only come true or complete itself in a humor about them? What Schneider’s humor and Handler’s skill have captured is not simply the wit of anthropology nor once again the story of anthropology, but actually the life of anthropology in its times."—Roy Wagner, University of Virginia

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Editor's acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: the origin of the dog Richard Handler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
One: the work of the gods in Tikopia, or, a career in anthropology Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
Two: youth Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
Three: Addy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
Four: surveying the army Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	61
Five: an education in anthropology Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
Six: fieldwork on yap Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
Seven: from Harvard to England Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
Eight: Mescalero Apache: the romance and politics of fieldwork Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
Nine: from Berkeley to Chicago Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
Ten: studying kinship Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193
Afterword David M. Schneider Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
Writings of David m. Schneider Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Pages
- Main content: 264
Illustrations
- Other: 8 b&w photographs

eBook

Published: September 20, 1995
ISBN: 9780822397953