Author / Yu Kun
Sol Tax is a name that will always appear in the history of anthropology in various fields, such as the famous “action anthropology” (action anthropology), the founder of “Current Anthropology” (Current Anthropology), and the world. Anthropology linkage within the scope, the World Anthropology Series with a total of 91 books, kinship research, large-scale surveys in Central America, the finalization of the curriculum of the University of Chicago and even American anthropology in the mid-20th century, Boas Awards, the North American Aboriginal Movement, the 1959 Darwin Conference at the University of Chicago, numerous newspaper interviews and television appearances. Born in Milwaukee in 1907 and died in Chicago in 1995, Tuckers’ career in the Midwest spanned all of them.
Saul Tucker, Source: University of Chicago Photo Archives, https://ift.tt/glAmTit
Tucker’s reputation is relatively unknown today. The important reason may be that his mixed knowledge production and actions are difficult to measure by academic indicators. Anthropology’s internal history’s scrawled account of the post-Boasian period to Geertz hardly covers these aspects. Tuckers was a student of Ralph Linton and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, and his contribution cannot be reduced to the introduction of schools such as structural functionalism. Tuckers’ doctoral fieldwork focused on the kinship structure of the Meskwaki Aboriginal people, a topic introduced by his mentor Radcliffe Brown. His long-term fieldwork in Guatemala also grew out of Radcliffe-Brown’s larger research program at the Carnegie Institution on the social structure of indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica. In 1948, after teaching at the University of Chicago, Tuckers also sent six of his students to conduct fieldwork in the Meskwaki Aboriginal community where he was deeply involved. A master-student operation of this scale was unprecedented at the time. Community research paradigm. Changes occurred after this group of students returned to school. Tuckers led them to discuss the findings in the field. The focus of the discussion gradually shifted from the theoretical construction within the discipline that they were accustomed to focusing on to the current problems faced by the indigenous people, integration? Alcohol? Stick to tradition or adapt? When these issues are no longer high-pitched talks at seminars, but the demands, strategies and movements of Aboriginal people, when what matters is no longer the explanation and potential rationalization of the status quo, but the actions of Aboriginal people trying to change the status quo, it is the media With public appeals and governmental testimony for Aboriginal land rights, the birth of “action anthropology” was natural.
Tuckers facilitated the 1961 National Indian Congress in Chicago, which brought together 90 tribes. Image source: wiki.
It was action anthropology in the middle of the century. The problems faced by mankind also included Hitler, the atomic bomb and the Cold War. Under these clues, the issues that Saul Tucker thought about and advocated also included global lingua franca and multi-ethnic outer space communities. .
Discussions about the future of mankind that Tuckers participated in. Source: University of Chicago Special Collections
Tucker’s action anthropology is steeped in the optimism, darkness, and flexibility of the century. These characteristics were recombined in different ways among his students, with Joan Nash’s focus on labor and the Cold War, and her problematic awareness of Mayan communities and Zapata movements recalling Tucker’s work on the economic self-empowerment of Guatemala’s indigenous peoples. In the shadow of Quan’s famous book Penny Capitalism: a Guatemalan Indian economy ( see previous introduction ); Laura Nader’s call for anthropological imperatives inspired “upward research”, in which often overlooked actions intervene Tuckers can also be seen traveling between Aboriginal communities and government hearings ( see previous article ). These elements will also continue to reorganize and evolve in this era.
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