New Release: INDIGENOUS COSMOPOLITANS

Finally, after three years of work, my newest edited volume is out:

Indigenous Cosmopolitans

Transnational and Transcultural Indigeneity in the Twenty-First Century

Reviewers’ comments:

“Timely and original, this volume looks at indigenous peoples from the perspective of cosmopolitan theory and at cosmopolitanism from the perspective of the indigenous world. In doing so, it not only sheds new light on both, but also has something important to say about the complexities of identification in this shrinking, overheated world.Analysing ethnography from around the world, the authors demonstrate the universality of the local – indigeneity – and the particularity of the universal – cosmopolitanism. Anthropology doesn’t get much better than this.”–Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Professor of Anthropology, University of Oslo; author of Globalisation.

“This collection takes the anthropological study of indigeneity to an entirely new level. Bringing together an impressive range of case studies, from the Inuit in the north to Aboriginal Australian in the south, the authors fundamentally challenge the assumption that that indigeneity and transnationalism are separate and opposed conditions. They reveal with engaging ethnographic richness and historical depth that contemporary indigeneity is a rooted cosmopolitanism and that this indigeneity of roots and routes is being continually reinvented in ways that challenge conventional understandings, both within anthropology and in the wider public arena. This exploration of re-rooted cosmopolitanisms and remixed cosmopolitan indigeneities is also a major contribution to the anthropology of globalisation….This theoretically sophisticated collection will be essential reading for anyone in the humanities and social sciences seeking to understand the nature of contemporary indigeneity.”–Jeffrey Sissons, Associate Professor, Cultural Anthropology, School of Social and Cultural Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, Author of First Peoples: Indigenous Cultures and Their Futures.

Book Synopsis:

What happens to indigenous culture and identity when being rooted in a fixed cultural setting is no longer necessary – or even possible? Does cultural displacement mean that indigeneity vanishes? How is being and becoming indigenous (i.e., indigeneity) experienced and practiced along translocal pathways? How are “new” philosophies and politics of indigenous identification (indigenism) constructed in “new,” translocal settings? The essays in this collection develop our understandings of cosmopolitanism and transnationalism, and related processes and experiences of social and cultural globalization, showing us that these do not spell the end of ways of being and becoming indigenous. Instead, indigeneity is reengaged in wider fields, finding alternative ways of being established and projected, or bolstering older ways of doing so, while reaching out to other cultures.

About the Contributors:

Carolyn Butler-Palmer currently occupies the Legacy Chair in Modern and Contemporary Arts of the Pacific Northwest in the History in Art Department at the University of Victoria, Canada. She is interested in the aesthetic relations between various Pacific Northwest people and their cross-cultural reception. Her program of research includes questions about the politics of aesthetics, modernity, mobility, identity, and humanitarianism with respect to the arts and material cultures of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. She is currently working on a book Cosmographic Cosmopolitanism: The Life and Aesthetics of David Neel that locates Neel’s aesthetic praxis within debates about mobility, identity, and the ethics of cross-cultural relations. Professor Butler-Palmer has recently held fellowships at The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center and a University of Pittsburgh Mellon Fellowship.

Robin Maria DeLugan is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the new University of California, Merced. Among her research interests is the historical and contemporary relations between Indigenous peoples and the nation-state with particular attention to the Americas. In El Salvador she is examining how post-civil war representations of national culture and identity bring the issue of indigeneity to the forefront to challenge ideologies of mestizaje and efforts to erase contemporary Indigenous peoples from national society. Other ongoing research examines how the increased migration of Indigenous people from Latin America to the United States motivates states to forge transnational ties with faraway Indigenous citizens. In Northern California, she is examining how new migrations increase hemispheric connections between Indigenous people of the Americas, build new ethnic communities, and transform collective identity.

Maximilian C. Forte is an associate professor and anthropologist in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. His primary area of ethnographic research has focused on the contemporary indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, and specifically the Carib Community in Arima, Trinidad and Tobago. In relation to these areas, Maximilian published Ruins of Absence, Presence of Caribs: (Post)Colonial Constructions of Aboriginality in Trinidad and Tobago (University Press of Florida, 2005), and he edited the volume Indigenous Resurgence in the Contemporary Caribbean: Amerindian Survival and Revival (Peter Lang, 2006). Maximilian has also published his research in Indigenous World, Indigenous Affairs, and Cultural Survival Quarterly. For 10 years he served as the managing editor for an open access, peer-reviewed journal that he founded, KACIKE: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History & Anthropology, as well as a Web editor for the online database he constructed, the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink. His involvement in supporting indigenous Caribbean transnationalism extended to the creation of the online Indigenous Caribbean Network. Maximilian’s research for this chapter and related projects was supported by a Standard Research Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), from 2006 to 2009.

Arthur Mason is an anthropologist and assistant professor at Arizona State University and was the 2006–2007 Canada-U.S. Fulbright Scholar at the University of Calgary. Between 2001 and 2003, he served as Associate Director of Energy in the Office of the Alaska Governor. From 1992 to 1993, he served as curator of the Alutiiq Native Cultural Center on Kodiak Island. Arthur’s research is concerned with Alaska’s political and indigenous elite who possess the administrative positions, personal qualities, and utopian vision required for modernizing Alaskan society. In particular, he is interested in the practical aspects of how Alaska leaders aim to translate Alaskan society into the object of their image of the modern, including their increased reliance on the specialized knowledge of non-Alaskan expertise.

Donna Patrick is an associate professor in the School of Canadian Studies and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where she is the Graduate Supervisor in Canadian Studies. Her current research focuses on urban Aboriginal communities, particularly Inuit; indigeneity and language endangerment; the political, social, and cultural aspects of language use, mainly Inuit and Aboriginal. Her research in Northern Quebec is published in a book titled Politics and Social Interaction in an Inuit Community (2003) and Language Rights and Language Survival (2004) (coedited with Jane Freeland), as well as a number of papers on language endangerment and language rights in indigenous communities. Donna teaches courses in Aboriginal and Northern Issues with an interdisciplinary focus on historical, geographical, and social processes concerning language, culture, and nationhood; minority languages and multilingualism; language rights and policy; language, identity, and political economy and other areas in the sociology of language and sociolinguistics.

Craig Proulx is an associate professor in anthropology at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, Canada, where he is also the Chair of the Department. Craig is interested in Aboriginal experiences in cities along a variety of lines from restorative justice to community building to constructions of identity and processes of cultural production within North American cities. The anthropology of sport is a new area that he is exploring. He has published Reclaiming Aboriginal Justice Community and Identity (2003) and, along with coeditor Heather Howard Bobiwash, he edited Aboriginal Experiences in Canadian Cities, published in 2007. Craig is also an active member on the executive committee of the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA).

Nigel Rapport is a social anthropologist at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, where he directs the program on cosmopolitanism and was appointed Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies in 1996. He previously held the Canada Research Chair in Globalization, Citizenship and Justice at Concordia University, Montreal, where he was the founding director of the Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies. Nigel has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has undertaken four pieces of participant-observation fieldwork: among farmers and tourists in a rural English village (1980–1981); among the transient population of a Newfoundland city and suburb (1984–1985); among new immigrants in an Israeli development-town (1988–1989); and among health-care professionals and patients in a Scottish hospital (2000–2001). His research interests include social theory, phenomenology, identity and individuality, community, conversation analysis, and links between anthropology and literature and philosophy. His recent books include The Trouble with Community: Anthropological Reflections on Movement, Identity and Collectivity (Pluto, 2002); “I Am Dynamite”: An Alternative Anthropology of Power (Routledge, 2003); and (as editor) Democracy, Science and the Open Society: A European Legacy? (Transaction, 2006).

Linda Scarangella is an anthropologist and Postdoctoral Fellow at Carleton University’s Institute for the Comparative Study of Language, Art and Culture (ICSLAC), in Ottawa, Canada. Linda Scarangella earned her PhD in Anthropology from McMaster University in June 2008. Her dissertation, “Spectacular Native Performances: From the Wild West to the Tourist Site, Nineteenth c. to the Present,” focuses on Native North American perspectives and experiences in both historic and contemporary Wild West shows and exhibitions. A short article in Anthropology News (May, 2005) considers the challenges of multisited fieldwork in conducting this research. She also published an article in the 2004 issue of Nexus that considers the ethical issues surrounding research on Indigenous knowledge. Based on ethnographic work conducted in 2001, her article in Anthropology in Action (2004) examines how Salish performers create a space in tourism for the witnessing of First Nation claims of history, culture, and identity by reclaiming discourses of “the Native” through performances of place, ancestry, and cultural continuity. Dr. Scarangella’s research and teaching interests include First Nations of Canada, identity and indigeneity, representation, performance and visual culture, anthropology of tourism, globalization and popular culture, narrative and oral history, ethnohistory and ethnographic research methods, and ethics.

Frans J. Schryer was Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the University Of Guelph, Canada, at the time of writing. He has taught at Guelph since 1974, and he has held part-time teaching posts at Atkinson College (York University) and at the Centre for Rural Development Studies of the Colegio de Postgraduados at Chapingo (Mexico). He also spent four months in 1988 as a visiting researcher at the Centre for Research and Documentation on Latin America (CEDLA) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Agrarian Studies at Yale University in 1994–1995. Frans has done most of his ethnographic and historical research in Mexico, but has also carried out a study of postwar Dutch immigrants in Ontario. He is currently examining the impact of globalization on the Nahuas of the Alto Balsas region (Mexico), a group best known for its craft production (especially paintings on bark paper known as amates) and a successful struggle to stop the construction of a hydroelectric dam (in the 1990s). His recent publications include Farming in a Global Economy (Brill, 2006) and “Multiple Hierarchies and the Duplex Nature of Groups” (JRAI, 2001).

Julie-Ann Tomiak is a doctoral student in Canadian Studies, with a specialization in Political Economy, at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Her research interests include the political economy of urban Aboriginal service organizations, transnational First Nations, Métis, and Inuit positionalities, identities, and communities, and the application of intersectionality as an analytical framework.

Published by Peter Lang USA, 2010:
New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien.
X, 223 pp., num. ill.
ISBN 978-1-4331-0102-1

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