The Beast on the Table: Conferencing with Anthropologists

by Sydel Silverman

Overview

From intimate workshops and modest gatherings to meetings in exotic places, conferences are a mainstay of academic life. The conferences that are the subject of this book are the week-long international symposia sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, over 150 of which were held between 1952 and 2000. In their totality, they closely parallel the development of anthropology during this period, and indeed played a large part in shaping that development. In revisiting her experiences with the Wenner-Gren symposia over a thirteen-year period, Sydel Silverman examines the conference process as it relates to the production of knowledge and new directions in anthropology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780759102392
Publisher:	AltaMira Press
Publication date:	09/18/2002
Series:	Society for Economic Anthropology Monograph S
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.32(h) x 0.96(d)

About the Author

Sydel Silverman is Professor Emerita at City University, New York and former president of the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Introduction Chapter 2 1: The Life History of the Beast Chapter 3 2. Learning the Ropes Chapter 4 3. On My Own Chapter 5 4. The Beast Comes to Life Chapter 6 5. Advancing Anthropological Practice Chapter 7 6. Anthropological Agendas: What's Missing? Chapter 8 7. Monkeys, Apes, and Hominids Chapter 9 8. Anthropological Agendas: What's Happening? Chapter 10 9. The Afterlife of the Beast Chapter 11 10. Toward an Integrative and Comparative Anthropology Part 12 References

Editorial Reviews

The Wenner-Gren Foundation is one of the most influential organizations in contemporary anthropology. As president, Sydel Silverman has been at the heart of the field, witnessing the discipline's attempts to move forward and understand humanity's culture, social structures, and nature. As a theoretical scholar, strong leader, administrator, historian of anthropology and active researcher, Dr. Silverman has had numerous opportunities to help steer this debate, through the funding and organization of international conferences, where she set the stage so scholars could talk, debate, communicate, and misunderstand each other. As a social anthropologist with a rare ability to analyze organizations, Dr. Silverman analyzes these encounters as primary sites of disciplinary interaction with a rare candor and insight. The result is a compelling look at how intellectual ideas and theories are formulated, how they grow or are derailed. This is a critical book for anyone who is interested in where anthropology will go in the 21st century.

Nancy Parezo

The beast celebrates the conferences convened by the Wenner-Gren Foundation under the authoress's direction, including 'Critical approaches in archaeology'

Antiquity

The array of symposia covered offers at least something of interest to any anthropologist and plenty of interest to those seeking a synoptic grasp of the discipline as a whole.

Joel Wallmann Anthropologist

This book is the report by the former president of the Wenner Gren Foundation on her career as president of the most important foundation in anthropology...this book is unique and should be welcomed...Silverman shows herself to be an able ethnographer...a very interesting book, which gives the reader (lay person and anthropologist) sometimes practical and often conceptual insights in the role and impact of conferences and the structure they have.

Anthropos - Rik Pinxten

Her candid description...provides an overview of the changes in the discipline over this period and documents the influence of the Wenner-Gren conference tradition on its cutting edge...Silverman has given us an inside view of an important anthropological institution as well as of the more general process of conferencing. Readers will find details of substance as well as reflections on how our discipline progresses and where it ought to be going.

Current Anthropology - Regna Darnell

The array of symposia covered offers at least something of interest to any anthropologist and plenty of interest to those seeking a synoptic grasp of the discipline as a whole.

American Anthropologist - Joel Wallman

This book is the report by the former president of the Wenner Gren Foundation on her career as president of the most important foundation in anthropology...this book is unique and should be welcomed...Silverman shows herself to be an able ethnographer...a very interesting book, which gives the reader (lay person and anthropologist) sometimes practical and often conceptual insights in the role and impact of conferences and the structure they have.
— Rik Pinxten

Anthropos

The array of symposia covered offers at least something of interest to any anthropologist and plenty of interest to those seeking a synoptic grasp of the discipline as a whole.
— Joel Wallman

American Anthropologist