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maddy27's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
For a book that I had to read for class I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. I definitely learned a lot from it
wi_wonderchild's review against another edition
2.0
Some interesting essays, but mostly, this book leads me to further conclude that cultural anthropologists are crazy people.
calamity_cal's review against another edition
medium-paced
5.0
An incredibly detailed book about a group of revolutionary anthropologists. It takes great care to go year by year and details the smallest things. I only wish the author hadn't left the non-white anthropologists by the wayside. My only guess is there wasn't as much info on them but by the end of the book it became "the franz boas and Margaret Mead book"
lauren_shoe's review against another edition
5.0
History books are hit or miss for me, and this is a history of the early days in the field of anthropology. I knew some of the people followed because of their importance to literature (ZNH in particular) but some I knew their name without really knowing why (hello Margaret Mead). Rather than losing interest in the book after the first 100 pages—what I tend to do with 300+ page history books—I found I was more and more invested in the stakes of both anthropology’s findings and methodologies.
King frames the history as an ongoing debate about biology’s use/misuse in studying human cultures. That this debate coincides with US practices of immigration bans, Jim Crow laws, the development of eugenics, and Japanese American citizens’ internment is no accident. As someone who studies race and gender studies, of course I found the “circle of renegade anthropologists” interesting, but ummm...read more Black writers from decades earlier and you’ll notice they developed ideas practically indistinguishable from cultural relativity before the white institution of Columbia U made it mainstream. King mentions DuBois and Douglass, but I’m not all that convinced he’s read them.
This was an engrossing history of especially the women in Franz Boas’ circle, and I guess they are renegades, but only in that they brought ideas to white audiences that had only circulated through segregated Black academic publications (hence they were unaware of). I didn’t mean to critique this so heavily because I did really enjoy it.
King frames the history as an ongoing debate about biology’s use/misuse in studying human cultures. That this debate coincides with US practices of immigration bans, Jim Crow laws, the development of eugenics, and Japanese American citizens’ internment is no accident. As someone who studies race and gender studies, of course I found the “circle of renegade anthropologists” interesting, but ummm...read more Black writers from decades earlier and you’ll notice they developed ideas practically indistinguishable from cultural relativity before the white institution of Columbia U made it mainstream. King mentions DuBois and Douglass, but I’m not all that convinced he’s read them.
This was an engrossing history of especially the women in Franz Boas’ circle, and I guess they are renegades, but only in that they brought ideas to white audiences that had only circulated through segregated Black academic publications (hence they were unaware of). I didn’t mean to critique this so heavily because I did really enjoy it.
jessver618's review
hopeful
informative
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
This takes a look into the initial history behind the beginning of anthropology, and a closer look into each anthropologist, with brief explanations about personal backgrounds and history that can lend themselves well to understanding the implications and significance of the anthropological findings. I would have loved to have more information on Zora Neale Hurston in this, as she’s one of the pioneers for how current anthropology is written and described.