Richard Handler's pathbreaking study of nationalistic politics in Quebec is a striking and successful example of the new experimental type of ethnography, interdisciplinary in nature and intensively concerned with rhetoric and not only of anthropologists but also of scholars in a wide range of fields, and it is likely to stir sharp controversy.
Bringing together methodologies of history, sociology, political science, and philosophy, as well as anthropology, Handler centers on the period 1976-1984, during which the independantiste Parti Quebeois was in control of the provincial...

Anthropology is by definition about "others," but in this volume the phrase refers not to members of observed cultures, but to "significant others" spouses, lovers, and others with whom anthropologists have deep relationships that are both personal and professional. The essays in this volume look at the roles of these spouses and partners of anthropologists over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially their work as they accompanied the anthropologists in the field. Other relationships discussed include those between anthropologists and informants, mentors and students,...

"Critics against Culture: Anthropological Observers of Mass Society"--a collection of essays on the history of anthropology focused on Benedict, Boas, Sapir, and modernist thought by one of American anthropology's leading scholars--explores the roots of anthropology's early involvement with the study of American society. The essays making up this volume, focused on the critique of mass society and the history of the culture concept, examine Boasian anthropologists as critics of mass society. The book also includes two new, unpublished essays: one on Alexis de Tocqueville and Margaret Mead,...

Though there has been much discussion of the uses of literature for social analysis, this is the first book-length work that takes the complete body of work of a major novelist as the basis for rethinking ethnographic representation and cross-cultural analysis.

To listen to David M. Schneider is to hear the voice of American anthropology. To listen at length is to hear much of the discipline s history, from the realities of postwar practice and theory to Schneider s own influence on the development of symbolic and interpretive anthropology in the 1970s and 1980s. "Schneider on Schneider" offers readers this rare opportunity, and with it an engrossing introduction into a world of intellectual rigor, personal charm, and wit.
In this work, based on conversations with Richard Handler, Schneider tells the story of his days devoted to anthropology as a...

"The New History in an Old Museum" is an exploration of "historical truth" as presented at Colonial Williamsburg. More than a detailed history of a museum and tourist attraction, it examines the packaging of American history, and consumerism and the manufacturing of cultural beliefs. Through extensive fieldwork--including numerous site visits, interviews with employees and visitors, and archival research--Richard Handler and Eric Gable illustrate how corporate sensibility blends with pedagogical principle in Colonial Williamsburg to blur the lines between education and entertainment,...

With a new introduction by the authors, this paperback edition of Jane Austen and the Fiction of Culture takes the complete body of work of a major novelist as the basis for rethinking ethnographic representation and cross-cultural analysis. Authors Handler and Segal have approached Jane Austen's writing as a source for interpreting the cultural ideology of kinship, social rank, courtship, and marriage in Austen's England. Arguing against the conventional reading of Austen as portrayer and upholder of a well-ordered society, they evaluate the rhetorical techniques that make Austen an...