ISBN-13: 9780803241152 / Angielski / Twarda / 2013 / 432 str.
Alice C. Fletcher (1838 1923), one of the few women who became anthropologists in the United States during the nineteenth century, was a pioneer in the practice of participant-observation ethnography. She focused her studies over many years among the Native tribes in Nebraska and South Dakota.
Life among the Indians, Fletcher s popularized autobiographical memoir written in 1886 87 about her first fieldwork among the Sioux and the Omahas during 1881 82, remained unpublished in Fletcher s archives at the Smithsonian Institution for more than one hundred years. In it Fletcher depicts the humor and hardships of her field experiences as a middle-aged woman undertaking anthropological fieldwork alone, while showing genuine respect and compassion for Native ways and beliefs that was far ahead of her time. What emerges is a complex and fascinating picture of a woman questioning the cultural and gender expectations of nineteenth-century America while insightfully portraying rapidly changing reservation life.
Fletcher s account of her early fieldwork is available here for the first time, accompanied by an essay by the editors that sheds light on Fletcher s place in the development of anthropology and the role of women in the discipline."