Documenting the multisensory and ephemeral: Navajo Chantway singers and the troubles of a “science” of ceremonialism (2019)
Johnson, Adam Fulton (Author)
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
Volume: 55
Issue: 3
Pages: 230-251
Even as American ethnology in the late-nineteenth century continued to accumulate data about indigenous groups for comparative study, the surgeon-turned-ethnographer Washington Matthews found standardized documentary methods constricting, unable to reflect the complexity of a community's spiritual practices. Through studies of Navajo Indians in the 1880s and 90s, Matthews experimented with documentation techniques to capture the multisensorial and ephemeral elements of Navajo healing ceremonialism, such as the design of sandpaintings that were later destroyed as the rites concluded. Investigating his ethnographic strategies and his relationships with Navajo knowledge stewards, this article charts Matthews’ emerging conviction in social immersion and bonding with indigenous informants, tenets that predated the rise of cultural relativism in anthropology. The article argues that his experience among and tutelage from Navajo medicine “singers” reshaped Matthews’ documentary practices to emphasize the irreducibility of cultural facets to tabular columns, raising doubts about then-dominant theories of social evolution.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Frederic W. Gleach;
Regna Darnell;
(2016)
Local Knowledge, Global Stage
(/isis/citation/CBB713344644/)
Chapter
Bruckner, Sierra A.;
(2003)
Spectacles of (Human) Nature: Commercial Ethnography between Leisure, Learning, and Schaulust
(/isis/citation/CBB000501090/)
Book
O'Hanlon, Michael;
Welsch, Robert Louis;
(2000)
Hunting the Gatherers: Ethnographic Collectors and Agency in Melanesia, 1870s-1930s
(/isis/citation/CBB000101821/)
Article
Johnston, Ewan;
(2005)
Reinventing Fiji at 19th-Century and Early 20th-Century Exhibitions
(/isis/citation/CBB000660212/)
Book
Alessandra Cerea;
(2021)
Natura, psiche e cultura. Dal “ragazzo selvaggio” all’etnopsicoanalisi
(/isis/citation/CBB136760743/)
Article
Nicholls, Angus;
(2007)
Anglo-German Mythologics: The Australian Aborigines and Modern Theories of Myth in the Work of Baldwin Spencer and Carl Strehlow
(/isis/citation/CBB000773662/)
Book
Conn, Steven;
(2004)
History's Shadow: Native Americans and Historical Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB000830688/)
Book
Patterson, Thomas Carl;
(2009)
Karl Marx, Anthropologist
(/isis/citation/CBB001031294/)
Article
Lafferton, Emese;
(2007)
The Magyar Moustache: The Faces of Hungarian State Formation, 1867--1918
(/isis/citation/CBB000831415/)
Article
Knight, Nathaniel;
(2008)
Nikolai Kharuzin and the Quest for a Universal Human Science: Anthropological Evolutionism and the Russian Ethnographic Tradition, 1885--1900
(/isis/citation/CBB001030774/)
Thesis
Hoffman, Joann L.;
(2008)
A. C. Haddon's Original Vision: An Ethnography of Resistance in a Colonial Archive
(/isis/citation/CBB001561180/)
Article
Mohan, Jyoti;
(2004)
British and French Ethnographies of India: Dubois and His English Commentators
(/isis/citation/CBB000660568/)
Book
Buschmann, Rainer F.;
(2009)
Anthropology's Global Histories: The Ethnographic Frontier in German New Guinea, 1870--1935
(/isis/citation/CBB000952073/)
Chapter
Ssorin-Chaikov, Nikolai;
(2008)
Political Fieldwork, Ethnographic Exile, and State Theory: Peasant Socialism and Anthropology in Late-Nineteenth-Century Russia
(/isis/citation/CBB000900010/)
Thesis
James A. Puckett;
(2022)
A Science of Literature: Ethnology and the Collection of Indigenous Oral Traditions in the United States
(/isis/citation/CBB845920115/)
Article
Willmott, Cory;
(2014)
Beavers and Sheep: Visual Appearance and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Algonquian-Anglo Relations
(/isis/citation/CBB001201576/)
Book
Farina King;
(2018)
The Earth Memory Compass: Diné Landscapes and Education in the Twentieth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB284737395/)
Article
William T. Lynch;
(2019)
Between Kin Selection and Cultural Relativism: Cultural Evolution and the Origin of Inequality
(/isis/citation/CBB211246459/)
Chapter
Brian Yazzie Burkhart;
(2011)
The Physics of Spirit: The Indigenous Continuity of Science and Religion
(/isis/citation/CBB108927421/)
Article
Shankman, Paul;
(2006)
Virginity and Veracity: Rereading Historical Sources in the Mead-Freeman Controversy
(/isis/citation/CBB000660233/)
Be the first to comment!