Search results for ""Author Stephen O. Murray""

In American Anthropology and Company, linguist and sociologist Stephen O. Murray explores the connections between anthropology, linguistics, sociology, psychology, and history, in broad-ranging essays on the history of anthropology and allied disciplines. On subjects ranging from Native American linguistics to the pitfalls of American, Latin American, and East Asian fieldwork, among other topics, American Anthropology and Company presents the views of a historian of anthropology interested in the theoretical and institutional connections between disciplines that have always been in conversation with anthropology. Recurring characters include Edward Sapir, Alfred Kroeber, Robert Redfield, W. I. and Dorothy Thomas, and William Ogburn. While histories of anthropology rarely cross disciplinary boundaries, Murray moves in essay after essay toward an examination of the institutions, theories, and social networks of scholars as never before, maintaining a healthy skepticism toward anthropologists’ views of their own methods and theories.

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Anthropologists have long sought to extricate their work from the policies and agendas of those who dominate—and often oppress—their native subjects. Looking through Taiwan is an uncompromising look at a troubling chapter in American anthropology that reveals what happens when anthropologists fail to make fundamental ethnic and political distinctions in their work. Keelung Hong and Stephen O. Murray examine how Taiwanese realities have been represented—and misrepresented—in American social science literature, especially anthropology, in the post–World War II period. They trace anthropologists’ complicity in the domination of a Taiwanese majority by a Chinese minority and in its obfuscation of social realities. At the base of these distortions, the authors argue, were the mutual interests of the Republic of China’s military government and American social scientists in mischaracterizing Taiwan as representative of traditional Chinese culture. American anthropologists, eager to study China but denied access by its communist government, turned instead to fieldwork on the Republic of China’s society, which they incorrectly and disingenuously interpreted to reflect traditional Chinese society on the mainland. Anthropologists overlooked the cultural and historical differences between the island and the mainland and effectively legitimized the People’s Republic of China’s claim on Taiwan. Looking through Taiwan is a powerful critique of American anthropology and a valuable reminder of the political and ethical implications of social science research and writing.

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Anthropologists have long sought to extricate their work from the policies and agendas of those who dominate—and often oppress—their native subjects. Looking through Taiwan is an uncompromising look at a troubling chapter in American anthropology that reveals what happens when anthropologists fail to make fundamental ethnic and political distinctions in their work. Keelung Hong and Stephen O. Murray examine how Taiwanese realities have been represented—and misrepresented—in American social science literature, especially anthropology, in the post–World War II period. They trace anthropologists’ complicity in the domination of a Taiwanese majority by a Chinese minority and in its obfuscation of social realities. At the base of these distortions, the authors argue, were the mutual interests of the Republic of China’s military government and American social scientists in mischaracterizing Taiwan as representative of traditional Chinese culture. American anthropologists, eager to study China but denied access by its communist government, turned instead to fieldwork on the Republic of China’s society, which they incorrectly and disingenuously interpreted to reflect traditional Chinese society on the mainland. Anthropologists overlooked the cultural and historical differences between the island and the mainland and effectively legitimized the People’s Republic of China’s claim on Taiwan. Looking through Taiwan is a powerful critique of American anthropology and a valuable reminder of the political and ethical implications of social science research and writing.

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The first anthropological collection that reveals patterns of male and female homosexuality in the Muslim World The dramatic impact of Islamic fundamentalism in recent years has skewed our image of Islamic history and culture. Stereotypes depict Islamic societies as economically backward, hyper-patriarchal, and fanatically religious. But in fact, the Islamic world encompasses a great diversity of cultures and a great deal of variation within those cultures in terms of gender roles and sexuality. The first collection on this topic from a historical and anthropological perspective, Homosexuality in the Muslim World reveals that patterns of male and female homosexuality have existed and often flourished within the Islamic world. Indeed, same-sex relations have, until quite recently, been much more tolerated under Islam than in the Christian West. Based on the latest theoretical perspectives in gender studies, feminism, and gay studies, Homosexuality in the Muslim World includes cultural and historical analyses of the entire Islamic world, not just the so-called Middle East. Essays show both age-stratified patterns of homosexuality, as revealed in the erotic and romantic poetry of medieval poets, and gender-based patterns, in which both men and women might, to varying degrees, choose to live as members of the opposite sex. The contributors draw on historical documents, literary texts, ethnographic observation and direct observation by both Muslim and non-Muslim authors to show the considerable diversity of Islamic societies and the existence of tolerated gender and sexual variances.

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