Chiefs, Scribes, and Ethnographers : : Kuna Culture from Inside and Out / / James Howe.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Texas Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Howe, James,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2021]; ©2009
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: The William and Bettye Nowlin Series in Art, History, and Culture of the Western Hemisphere
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (360 p.)

The Kuna of Panama, today one of the best known indigenous peoples of Latin America, moved over the course of the twentieth century from orality and isolation towards literacy and an active engagement with the nation and the world. Recognizing the fascination their culture has held for many outsiders, Kuna intellectuals and villagers have collaborated actively with foreign anthropologists to counter anti-Indian prejudice with positive accounts of their people, thus becoming the agents as well as subjects of ethnography. One team of chiefs and secretaries, in particular, independently produced a series of historical and cultural texts, later published in Sweden, that today still constitute the foundation of Kuna ethnography. As a study of the political uses of literacy, of western representation and indigenous counter-representation, and of the ambivalent inter-cultural dialogue at the heart of ethnography, Chiefs, Scribes, and Ethnographers addresses key issues in contemporary anthropology. It is the story of an extended ethnographic encounter, one involving hundreds of active participants on both sides and continuing today.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- ONE Introduction: Literacy, Representation, and Ethnography -- TWO A Flock of Birds: The Coming of Schools and Literacy -- THREE Letters of Complaint -- FOUR Representation and Reply -- FIVE North American Friends -- SIX The Swedish Partnership -- SEVEN Collaborative Ethnography -- EIGHT Post-Rebellion Ethnography, 1925–1950 -- NINE The Ethnographic Boom, 1950 -- TEN Native Ethnography -- ELEVEN Chapin’s Lament -- NOTES -- ABBREVIATIONS -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX