HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
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Interwar anthropology from the global periphery: Curt Nimuendajú’s correspondence with Robert Lowie and Claude Lévi-Strauss
No full textCurt Nimuendajú (1883–1945) was a German ethnographer who became a naturalized citizen of Brazil and spent most of his life doing fieldwork among the country’s indigenous people. He gained the attention of the anthropological world when he began producing his studies on the Gê-speaking peoples of central Brazil. These sparked an ongoing correspondence with Robert Lowie, who secured American funding for Nimuendajú, advised him on research sites and topics, and translated and edited his manuscripts. Nimuendajú also maintained a brief correspondence with Claude Lévi-Strauss when the latter was a rising anthropologist and the former a mature ethnographer. Together the letters illustrate one form taken by the relations between anthropologists located in global centers and peripheries during years between the two world wars. This introduction contextualizes Nimuendajú’s correspondence with both scholars by tracing relevant aspects of his life, his involvement with Brazilian indigenous people, and his impact on lowland South American anthropology
Brexit and the decolonization of Ireland
No full textThe response to Brexit in Ireland needs to be considered in relation to the long-term and short-term histories of the relationship between Ireland and the UK. Brexit, or at least the farcical debate around Brexit, which coincided with the author’s fieldwork, may have contributed to the process of decolonization by undermining certain expectations about the British that had been retained from the colonial period
Iconoclasm and the restitution of African cultural heritage What role for the communities of owners?
No full textMissionary conversions: How missionary encounters pushed fundamentalists towards evangelicalism
No full textMissionary encounters stimulate cultural change, although not always in ways one might expect. Throughout the mid-twentieth century, among missionaries from the Assemblies of God (AG), the world’s largest pentecostal group, encounters with postcolonial converts often generated “missionary conversions,” which instead of converting the target population, animated individual experiences of change among the missionaries themselves which then resonated across registers and transformed missiological theories, AG theology, and finally even facilitated a shift from an isolationist fundamentalism to a culturally savvy evangelicalism. This article contributes to the “anthropology of the encounter” with an example of transculturation explored through a methodology that links different registers of analysis. Together these registers generate cultural exchange that travels from the home church to the missions field and then back into the home churches. The irony is that while most missions aim towards purely external change, they clearly generate inner transformation, and it isn’t subtle
