Buffalo Inc. American Indians and Economic Development
Indigenous Peoples in the United States 2007
Indigenous Peoples in the United States 2006
Indigenous Peoples in the United States 2005
Indigenous Peoples in the United States 2004
Contemporary Tribal Bison Ranching on the Great Plains
British Social Anthropology, Identity, Culture and Society
Ceremonies of Contact (Prehistoric Trade in North America)
Paul Radin: Intellectual Biography
| Bison ranching I wrote a book on contemporary tribal bison ranching on the Great Plains. My fieldwork took me primarily to the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, but also to other reservations on the Plains, to off-reservation bison ranches, auctions, and parks.
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Indigenous Politics A mainstay of my interest has become centered on the issue of indigenous politics and nationalism. I approach this question from the perspective of culture and political rights: in what ways is the maintenance of culture (especially "traditional" culture) linked to the maintenance of political rights for a society? How do dominant societies and colonized societies present themselves and their cultures - as well as the cultures of the other - to legitimize the demand for or the oppression of political status? Is it necessary to maintain "traditional" culture in order to be of a different social category? And what does this mean for the preservation and resurrection of traditions in practice? |
| Interethnic contacts Interethnic contacts in Native North America, be it trade, diplomacy, or warfare, are very often severely underestimated by historians. I came to the subjects from an interest in the prehistoric societies of the Eastern and the Southwestern United States, and wrote my Masters thesis at the University of Basel on the pre- and protohistoric interethnic contacts in Alaska and the Yukon, between Northwest Coast societies, Athapaskan speakers and Inupiaq / Yupik speakers. From there, my interests in this subject extended to a more theoretical and structural analysis of interethnic contact and kinship organizations (kinship is another area whose importance is sadly often neglected). | Ecological anthropology Ecological anthropology is at the heart of my interests. I understand the field in a holistic way, encompassing not only the biological environment and its cultural interpretation and manipulation, but also the social and cosmological environments and their cultural representations.
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| Great Plains The Great Plains have always fascinated me; like the ocean, their landscapes are sort of the opposite of my own home. I find the peoples and environments of the Plains open and deep, and often deceptively multi-layered and complex. Although they face some very different problems, the people (whatever their ethnicity) also remind me of the culture I grew up in.
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Cultural analysis Cultural analysis is the basis for the understanding of different societies, and has to form the foundation of any research involving cultures. While I sometimes tend to orient myself toward a structural analysis, an analysis of structure without an analysis of function would be lacking in depth and breath. The people that have inspired my thinking are many, but include Gregory Bateson, Paul Radin, Alfred Russel Wallace, Claude Levi-Strauss, Tzvetan Todorov, and my teachers, Raymond DeMallie and Meinhard Schuster. I often see haikus and koans as parables for the complexity of culture, although that is my own misconception. |
| Pre- and Protohistoric Cultures One of my early, but continuous, research interests are the prehistoric moundbuidling societies of the eastern United States, from Glacial Kame to Poverty Point, and Spiro to Town Creek. |
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