Reflections on Legacy

Some time ago in 1973, Edward H. Spicer (my mentor) and I (his graduate student) put on an all day event with the title, ACROSS GENERATIONS, at the SfAA. meetings in Tucson, Az. The event pitted a representative of the classic applied projects of the 1940-1960s with a graduate student or young faculty person who was familiar with the project only from the written record. Our goal was to evaluate the "present" record of these projects verses what may actually has been learned, forgotten from them or covered up. We packed the room at both session. But I doubt we really solved any of the issues.

While we never got around to turning the papers and tapes into a publication -- I still have them. This led me to think about the legacy issue. About a decade ago, Scott Spicer, Ned's grandson, posted something on the SfAA website that caught my attention about "keeping the legacy alive."  This has lead to the founding of the Edward H. and Rosamond B. Spicer Foundation in an attempt to do just that. We have found that this is more complicated than it sounds. 

My interest was based in part to the above issue but also to the discovery, on line, of the archive of Ned's papers that his wife assembled, organized, and presented to the Arizona State Museum library after his death. Playing with the archive as it appears in the posting has taught me more about who Ned was and the major contributions he was attempting to make during his lifetime. There is a real consistency and trajectory that you would find only by having the broad perspective of his works -- academic, applied, and human.

I know I was excited by the publication of Malinowski's Diaries and Margaret Mead's daughter, Kathrine Bateson's biography of her mother when they came out.. But more important, especially as an anthropologist -- is the insight into the "participant" who is doing the "observing."  The true ethnographer cannot divorce one's self from the fact that they are part of the picture they attempt to paint. The works of Price, Stocking, et al, definitely provide a more human face to our discipline than Lowie's did for me as an undergraduate.

note: These comments appeared previously in the Association of Senior Anthropologist Community of the American Anthropological Association. 

The Discovery of Anthropology

The raise of anthropology department in the 20th Century frequently came from the original formation of sociology or sociology/anthropology departments, Sociology, based on the divisions within Anglo/European civilization and its institutions, is the method for the study of society. This approach however, left unexplained the more exotic experience with Other peoples and cultures that western colonialism brought back to Europe. An anthropological approach with its holistic approach to the human animal, its organization, and its evolution provides a more objective inclusiveness, based on the "culture" concept, rather than simpler institutional perspective of society.

From my perspective, anthropology emerges as the "superior" approach since it focuses on the whole person as the atom of the socio/cultural world. That is, it incorporates both the physical nature of the human animal as well as how that animal is both aware of itself and its context, environment, history, and evolution. This is not to take away from the other social sciences. They are academic specialties with methodologies and applications that serve the social needs of an Anglo/European civilization to organize and administer its members through institutions. Archaeology and ancient history have demonstrated that civilizations have depended upon the evolution of such institutions. Anthropology provided the connection between the "present" and the "past" by challenging the dominant Judeo-Christian assumptions of Anglo/European society.

The reason we need to create a historical archive for anthropology is to help future generations to understand both that which has been lost in human history, and how we salvaged part of that. It will also show how we have responded to this lose by developing methods and adapting techniques for expanding the length and depth of that history; Most of all, It will demonstrate to ourselves what our basic nature (good, bad and ugly) are and the limits of being a human being. This is, I feel, the ultimate goal that our intellectual ancestors set out to find when they took the wider global view of a "cultural" humanity. And, in the practical, pragmatic sense, what we have learned about ourselves  as anthropologists and how that is influenced by who we are as individuals. We need this to calibrate our selves as "participants" and "observers;" and to enable the discipline and others to evaluate our products.