The Association of Black Anthropologists "Focus on Haiti"

Anténor Firmin. Ayisyen anthropologist and revolutionary (1850-1911). Image credit: Black Scholars Index

Peace. I have been intending to plug this new webpage on Ayiti (Haiti) maintained by the Association of Black Anthropologists (ABA), so here it is. Have a look and let them know what you think. GI

View webpage @  Focus on Haiti

also dig:

• "Senegal to house 160 Haitian youngsters"
• The womyn of Ayiti (Haiti): "We want participation and training" 
• Afro-American Response to the Occupation of Ayiti (Haiti) 1915-1934 by Brenda Gayle Plummer 
• Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy (H/T Nkrumah)

 
tags: haiti, anthropology, association of black anthropologists

Does Anthropology Belong to the White Man?

posted by the ghetto intellectual 2/27/2010

Update 1: Katherine Dunham timeline

Update 2: Katherine Dunham biography and photo gallery

Update 3: Another good Katherine Dunham website


***
The "A" Word


Comrade: You say you're an anthropologist?

Kwame: Yes.

Comrade: My brother, don't you know that the white man used it to colonize Africa!? How can you call yourself an anthropologist?

Kwame: Have you ever heard of Katherine Dunham?

Comrade: Katherine who?

Kwame: If you have never heard of Katherine Dunham then you only know the white man's version of anthropology. When I claim anthropology I invoke great Ancestors like Katherine Dunham and Zora Neale Hurston.

***
"How can you be down with black/Afrikan people and call yourself an anthropologist?" I get that question occasionally. It's a good question. It's an important question. I sometimes go into long ass explanations. But now that I have fielded this question many times, I have concluded that it makes more sense to name anthropologists I admire and do my best to produce work that honors their efforts, reflects our heritage and advances our political aims. The formal practice of anthropology was a child of colonialism, no doubt. But our Ancestors appropriated anthropology in ways that could never have been anticipated by those early white male founders. Furthermore, curiosity about cultural diversity is very Afrikan and fundamentally human. So imma take the good, the bad, and the ugly and try to create things that are more good than bad. 

Axé!

Katherine Dunham (1909-2006)

"It was never just about steps--it was about your soul" Dunham student (click on video or here)



The Dunham Technique (excerpt from SF Gate article)

As a graduate student in anthropology during the mid-'30s, Ms. Dunham spent nine months in Haiti, Trinidad, Jamaica and Martinique filming indigenous dances. "When I got to Haiti," she said in the 1988 interview, "I saw that some of the body movements in their dances resembled the body movements I had seen in the black storefront churches of Chicago."

Ms. Dunham returned to the United States and incorporated the motions she had observed into the vocabulary of modern dance and ballet. "What I tried to do," she said in a 2002 interview, "is take the meaning and the feeling and the intensity of the things that were portrayed and prepare them with a well-trained company so that they would convey to the audience the full meaning of that particular ritual or act."

What resulted from this synthesis became known as the Dunham Technique. It proved influential not just in dance but also in other performing arts. "Miss D.," as Ms. Dunham was known to associates, oversaw for many years the Katherine Dunham School of Cultural Arts, in New York. Among its students were the choreographers Arthur Mitchell and Peter Gennaro, the ballerina Nora Kaye, and the actors James Dean, Marlon Brando and Chita Rivera.

Ms. Dunham saw the Dunham Technique as a spiritual as well as physical discipline. "Anyone who seriously works in Dunham Technique," she said in 1988, "comes out not only a good professional dancer, but also a humanist."

Such a melding of motion and morality was central to Ms. Dunham's life. One of her most famous dances, "Southland," portrayed a Southern lynching. Ms. Dunham, who would not let her company perform before segregated audiences, was enraged to find out during a 1944 appearance in Louisville, Ky., that no blacks had been allowed in the auditorium. Upon learning this, she went on stage wearing a "White Only" sign attached to her bottom.

For full article go to SF Gate.

@@@@@@

There are many Gods in the Vodou spiritual system. The Yanvalou dance honors the Ayisyen (Haitian) Lwa (God), Damballah ("Snake God").  For a demonstration of the Dunham Technique's interpretation of Yanvalou, click here. Incidentally, while I was in Ghana conducting dissertation research I had some fascinating conversations with Australian Aboriginal cultural performers touring in Ghana. One of the members explained to me that the indigenous people of Australia have a reverence for snakes. I can't recall all of the various qualities he named but they included the observation that snakes were nurturing and protective. This was all fascinating to me given that many Americans have a dreadful fear of snakes and snakes are literally demonized in Christianity. [Also check this link which claims that Australians are "well afraid of snakes." The entry should have said white people in Australia are "well afraid of snakes."]

Katherine Dunham on the "Circle of Energy" click here.

Katherine Dunham speaks on the Afrikan God Shango (click on video or here)




Charles Moore Dance Company performs Shango (click on video or here)




Katherine Dunham: Queen Mother of Black Dance by Courtney Thompson (click on video or here)




Katherine Dunhum's oeuvre showcased in St. Louis exhibit click here.

tags: activism, African traditional religion, anthropology, culture, dance, haiti

Binghamton University Anthropology Professor Murdered by Graduate Student

Retired Anthropology Professor Richard Antoun stabbed to death in his office by a graduate student. A former student, Maximilian Forte, remembers Professor Antoun:

I was still new to anthropology when I met Dr. Antoun, and his work on tradition — a focus of my work in Ruins of Absence, Presence of Caribs — was vital to me, as was his material on the “social organization of tradition” that underpinned my own concept of “reengineering indigeneity.” He was the one to introduce me to the concept of “culture brokers” and how to use it, which I did, considerably. It is now my burden to say this here, never having taken the time to express my thanks to him directly, when he was still alive.

Dr. Antoun did not just mark essays. He called me in to meet with him in his office, where he devoted considerable time going over all the fine points, pulling books from the shelves of his massive office library, and fishing for old copies of journal articles in one of his numerous filing cabinets packed with them, so as to recommend resources that always proved helpful and had an important impact on the development of my own work. He was a model scholar, whose professionalism and commitment to teaching and research are an inspiration to all of us who knew him.

Read entire tribute here.


tags:anthropology, binghampton, crime

ADIA BENTON & KWAME ZULU SHABAZZ – "Find their Level". African American Roots Tourism in Sierra Leone and Ghana.

My first published work (with Adia Benton)

"Find their Level": African American Roots Tourism in Sierra Leone and Ghana, appears in this edited volume on tourism in Africa.


(download copy of essay here.)

Cahiers d'études africaines, n°193-194
Tourismes. La quête de soi par la pratique des autres

N. CHABLOZ & J. RAOUT –] Corps et âmes. Conversions touristiques à l'africanité.

Imaginaires d'hier et d'aujourd'hui
S. DULUCQ – « Découvrir l’âme africaine ». Les temps obscurs du tourisme
culturel en Afrique coloniale française (années 1920-années 1950).
N. B. SALAZAR – Imaged or Imagined ? Cultural Representations
and the "Tourismification" of Peoples and Places.


Passeurs culturels et prestataires sexuels
A. DOQUET – « Guides, guidons et guitares ». Authenticité et guides touristiques au Mali.
S. BOULAY – Culture nomade versus culture savante.
Naissance et vicissitudes d’un tourisme de désert en Adrar mauritanien.
C. CAUVIN VERNER – Du tourisme culturel au tourisme sexuel :
les logiques du désir d’enchantement.
C. SALOMON – Antiquaires et businessmen de la Petite Côte du Sénégal.
Le commerce des illusions amoureuses.


Circulations artistiques transnationales
J. RAOUT – Au rythme du tourisme. Le monde transnational de la percussion guinéenne.
J. BOUKOBZA – Danser l’Orient.
Touristes et pratiquantes transnationales de la danse orientale au Caire.
M.-P. GIBERT & U. H. MEINHOF – Inspiration triangulaire.
Musique, tourisme et développement à Madagascar.
E. CAROLI – « La tarentule est vivante, elle n’est pas morte ».
Musique, trandition, anthropologie et tourisme dans le Salento (Pouilles, Italie).
A. WA KABWE-SEGATTI – "We Offer the Whole of Africa Here !"
African Curio Traders and the Marketing of a Global African Image
in Post-apartheid South African Cities.

Détournements politiques
M. LASSIBILLE – Les scènes de la danse. Entre espace touristique
et politique chez les Peuls woDaaBe du Niger.
S. COUSIN & J.-L – MARTINEAU. Le festival, le bois sacré et l’Unesco.
Logiques politiques du tourisme culturel à Osogbo (Nigeria).
J. BONDAZ – Imaginaire national et imaginaire touristique.
L’artisanat au Musée national du Niger.

Retours aux sources
N. CHABLOZ – Tourisme et primitivisme. Initiations au bwiti et à l’iboga (Gabon).
J. R. FORTE – Marketing Vodun. Cultural Tourism
and Dreams of Succes in Contemporary Benin.
A. BELLAGAMBA – Back to the Land of Roots. African Tourism
and the Cultural Heritage of the River Gambia.
A. BENTON & K. Z. SHABAZZ – "Find their Level".
African American Roots Tourism in Sierra Leone and Ghana.

Désillusions exotiques
M. AIME – Les déçus de Tombouctou.
H. QUASHIE – Désillusions et stigmates de l’exotisme.
Quotidiens d’immersion culturelle et touristique au Sénégal.
V. BATTESTI – Tourisme d’Oasis. Les mirages naturels et culturels d’une rencontre ?