Anthropology and Radical Humanism: Native and African American Narratives and the Myth of Race

by Jack Glazier

Overview

Paul Radin, famed ethnographer of the Winnebago, joined Fisk University in the late 1920s. During his three-year appointment, he and graduate student Andrew Polk Watson collected autobiographies and religious conversion narratives from elderly African Americans. Their texts represent the first systematic record of slavery as told by former slaves. That innovative, subject-centered research complemented like-minded scholarship by African American historians reacting against the disparaging portrayals of black people by white historians. Radin’s manuscript focusing on this research was never published. Utilizing the Fisk archives, the unpublished manuscript, and other archival and published sources, Anthropology and Radical Humanism revisits the Radin-Watson collection and allied research at Fisk. Radin regarded each narrative as the unimpeachable self-representation of a unique, thoughtful individual, precisely the perspective marking his earlier Winnebago work. As a radical humanist within Boasian anthropology, Radin was an outspoken critic of racial explanations of human affairs that pervaded not only popular thinking but also historical and sociological scholarship. His research among African Americans and Native Americans thus places him in the vanguard of the anti-racist scholarship marking American anthropology. Anthropology and Radical Humanism sets Paul Radin’s findings within the broader context of his discipline, African American culture, and his career-defining work among the Winnebago.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611863505
Publisher:	Michigan State University Press
Publication date:	03/01/2020
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	258
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

JACK GLAZIER is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Oberlin College. A former president of the Central States Anthropological Society, he is a fellow of the American Anthropological Association and the Royal Anthropological Institute. He collaborated with Arthur L. Helweg on the inaugural volume, Ethnicity in Michigan, of the series Discovering the Peoples of Michigan. His previous books include Been Coming Through Some Hard Times: Race, History and Memory in Western Kentucky and Dispersing the Ghetto: The Relocation of Jewish Immigrants Across America.

Table of Contents

Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Note on Tribal Nomenclature
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Unsettled Career of a Radical Humanist
Chapter 2. Our Science and Its Wholesome Influence: Anthropology against Racism
Chapter 3. From Object to Subject: Centering African American Lives at Fisk University
Chapter 4. The Radin-Watson Collection: Narratives of Slavery and Transcendence
Chapter 5. The Winnebago Narrations: Tradition and Transformation
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

This tour de force of detective work and interpretation discloses the rich intellectual and peculiarly alienating moral history of Paul Radin, a footloose, controversial, and mercurial maverick, and, from his little-known research at Fisk, the personal narratives of former slaves. It speaks profoundly from their times of racism and the rise of fascism to our own troubled times. As one of Paul’s last students, I felt deeply moved by Jack Glazier’s remarkable elucidation of my teacher’s radical humanism, his discerning approach to our shared human capacity for reflection and consciousness: it is as subversive as ever of much objectifying of our subjects in the social sciences.

Richard Werbner

Jack Glazier’s book is the first extensive account of Paul Radin’s scholarship and his radical humanistic understanding of human experience. It is a signal contribution to the understanding and appreciation of a major figure in the history of American anthropology. - Herbert S. Lewis, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Herbert S. Lewis

Jack Glazier’s book is a most welcome addition to the history of Boasian anthropology. By focusing on the relationship between Paul Radin’s well-known Winnebago studies and his little-known work on autobiographical narratives of slavery in the US South, Glazier recovers Radin as an important contributor to anti-racist anthropology.

Richard Handler

Charming, erudite, erratically employed, Paul Radin advocated an end to racism as staunchly as his teacher Franz Boas. His genuine respect for Indians and African Americans supported his famous detailed Winnebago ethnography and also, less known, an extraordinarily moving collection of autobiographical narratives by men and women born into slavery. Here, Jack Glazier gives us the man and his work with these two peoples, showing how both projects focused on religious experiences central to so many human lives.

Alice B. Kehoe

This tour de force of detective work and interpretation discloses the rich intellectual and peculiarly alienating moral history of Paul Radin, a footloose, controversial, and mercurial maverick, and, from his little-known research at Fisk, the personal narratives of former slaves. It speaks profoundly from their times of racism and the rise of fascism to our own troubled times.”
—RICHARD WERBNER, Professor Emeritus in African Anthropology, and Honorary Professor in Visual Anthropology, University of Manchester

"Jack Glazier’s book is the first extensive account of Paul Radin’s scholarship and his radical humanistic understanding of human experience. It is a signal contribution to the understanding and appreciation of a major figure in the history of American anthropology." - HERBERT S. LEWIS, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

“This book arrives at a particularly opportune moment, given the attention to Black lives and racism in American culture…. Given its many strengths, Anthropology and Radical Humanism would undoubtedly be a welcome contribution to scholarship, but with the double significance of its racial theme and the utter lack of attention to the critically important, but hitherto ignored, work of Paul Radin it demands a wide readership.”—Ira Jacknis in the Journal of Anthropological Research

From the Publisher