"COMPLETE ANTHROPOLOGIST" RALPH LUEBBEN

HONORED WITH FESTSCHRIFT

By Jon Andelson

 

When Ralph A. Luebben joined the Grinnell College faculty in 1957, he was the first professional anthropologist to teach at the college. In time, he became the first tenured anthropologist, the first chairperson of an autonomous anthropology department, the first full professor of anthropology, and the instigator of the summer archeological field school (still in existence). Ralph taught a broad array of subjects, including courses in archaeology, cultural anthropology, and physical anthropology, and served as department chairperson from 1967 to 1979. He ceased full-time teaching in 1984, but continued to offer occasional courses for several years after that. He became "professor emeritus" in 1991. When the department relocated in Goodnow Hall in 1993, Ralph occupied the tower office.

In honor of the fortieth anniversary of Ralph's first coming to the college, his colleagues presented him with a volume of essays written by current and former members of the department. Titled ANTHROPOLOGY MATTERS: ESSAYS IN HONOR OF RALPH A. LUEBBEN, the book contains never before published articles by Jonathan Andelson (who also edited the collection), Michael Bell, Vicki Bentley-Condit, Douglas Caulkins, Kathryn Kamp, Ronald Kurtz, Carol Trosset, and John Whittaker on a wide variety of subjects. It is a testimony to Ralph's broad four-field interests in anthropology that each of the essays can be connected to either his own scholarly work or his teaching.

Planning for the book was done entirely without Ralph's knowledge. Ralph's wife, Janell, collaborated by surrenptitiosly providing biographical information for the book's introduction and photographs, one of which appears on the book's back cover and another, of Ralph and Jannell, inside. A photgrpah of one of Ralph's favorite Anasazi pots adorns the cover. The technical aspects of production were expertly handled by Denise Lamphier, Editorial Director and Assistant Director of Public Relations, and Jim Powers, Director of Publications/Art Director. Through the efforts of Professor Caulkins, the volume even has an ISBN number (0-9607182-0-6). College President Pamela Ferguson generously paid for publication out of her discretionary budget.

Presentation of the book was made at a departmental gathering held on December 20 at the home of John Whittaker and Kathy Kamp. In the midst of what was ostensibly just an end-of-the-semester party, Ralph and Janell were called forward and, accompanied by a few words, he was handed the book amid great applause. The surprise was complete, and by all accounts, including his own, Ralph was stunned and nearly speechless.

The essays contained in this book are listed later in the newsletter under "Faculty Publications". A complementary copy of the book may be obtained by requesting one from the departmental secretary, Robyn Wingerter, Goodnow Hall, Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa 50112.

 

THE DISCOURSE OF RACE: AN INTERVENTION

By: Katya Gibel Azoulay

 

Black, Jewish And Interracial: Its Not The Color of Your Skin But The Race of Your Kin and Other Myths of Identity (K. Gibel Azoulay, Duke University Press, 1997) is an intervention in the discourse on "multiracial" identities. Through an exploration into the historical and existential significance of the Jewish and Black experiences I interrogate the language of race and racial categories as references for identity. My research emerged as a response to the discourse of "multiracialism" and "multiculturalism" which seem too often to be ahistorical and apolitical. In particular, I was curious about the manner in which Jewishness slips into whiteness given the history of Western anti-Semitism. In addition, I was intrigued and perplexed by the predisposition of rainbow children to project themselves as if they occupied an ambiguous status.

Identity for interracial children has always been a public and contentious issue. It is also circular -- one begins and ends with the arbitrary nature of race as a salient feature of American culture. The metaphors of "invented" and "constructed" provide no escape from the demand for -- and vocalization of -- a racial identity grounded in a history of family and community. And this identity is reduced to, and insists on, a negotiation between Whiteness and Blackness. Its not really the color of one's skin that matters but the race of one's kin. In the 1990s, the resurgence of the language of "mixed race," "hybridity," and "other" merely accentuates the extent to which the discourse of race in America continues to be profoundly rooted in the Black/White binary.

Historically, an interracial child with a Black parent has been socially defined through the "one drop rule" as Black, a custom legally sanctioned by the Supreme court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) (in)famous as the decision instituting separate but equal, while the child of a Jewish mother, is, by orthodox Jewish law (Halakha) unquestionable Jewish irregardless of the father (an tradition which kept a community together despite rape during wars and pogroms). Thus in countries where race thinking permeates legal and political discourse, the dual identity embodied by an interracial child of a white-skinned Jewish mother and a Black father negates the language of fractions in principal -- if not in practice.

Black, Jewish and Interracial represents an explication of an idea which builds on Stuart Hall's "logic of coupling rather than the logic of a binary opposition" -- being Black (a legal and social category in the us) and being Jewish (defined through matrilineal descent). Turning away from the dichotomous notion of public/private, I theorize identity/ies as a continuous process which reveals the profound context -- separate and apart from content-- in which the concept of identity conveys and signifies a process of being and a state of being. In other words, identities are relational, contextual and contingent. Most importantly, how we name ourselves, how we perform our identities and how (and whether) we correct misimpressions are always political acts.

Drawing on insights from anthropology, history and philosophy, I propose a theoretical break with Cartesian-based theories of identities rooted in Self/Other dichotomies. This allows for a conceptualization of identity as the incorporation of multiplicity without necessarily privileging either dissonance or compatibility -- the anxiety faced by white western scientists and politicians who confronted their own desire and repulsion towards those who they marked as other because of class, skin color or religious differences. As a theory of identity which looks to the story of Creation in the Jewish Torah (Genesis), the idea of multiplicity as complimentary and complementary is totalizing without being reductive. Most importantly, this allows us to look at public manifestations of racial identities as part of a political discourse in which race-based communities of meaning continue to be relevant, significant and strategic.

 

ARE GRINNELL'S VALUES ANTI-BUSINESS?

By: Doug Caulkins

 

The college is currently engaged in a dialogue among faculty, students, administration, alumni and trustees with the goal of clarifying our core values. Recently I attended one of these open meetings and heard one faculty member assert that the values of Grinnell and of the business world were antithetical. I replied by noting that at one time I felt the same way--until I started studying businesspeople and was pleased to find that among them were some of the most intelligent, creative, and moral people that I knew. I suggested that it was a mistake to speak of a (single) business world when, in fact, there are a diversity of business worlds (with emphasis on the plural). Among the public duties of anthropology, I think, is to reveal the diversity and complexity of culture and behavior that is often masked by dismissive stereotypes.

 

I would be interested in hearing from alumni with any further thoughts on this issue.

 

Douglas Caulkins

Professor of Anthropology

Grinnell College

Grinnell, Iowa 50112, USA

email: caulkins@ac.grin.edu

Tel: 515 269 3136

Fax: 515 269 4330

 

NEW FACULTY IN ANTHRO

 

Janelle Taylor has joined the Department of Anthropology for the spring semester, teaching "Language, Culture and Society." This is a topic of great interest to her, as someone who has devoted many years to studying languages (Chinese, Norwegian, and French). She is also teaching two sections of a senior capstone seminar in Gender & Women's Studies, on the topic of "Gender and Technology." Janelle is currently completing her ph.d. in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Chicago. Her dissertation explores the social and cultural dimensions of obstetrical ultrasound, looking at how the uses of this technology within medical practice are related to the ways that ultrasound imagery of the fetus has been taken up and used outside the medical context (for example, in popular kinship practices, mass-media advertisements, and abortion-debate polemics). She has presented research papers at a number of venues, including the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), and has published several articles, including most recently an essay titled "Image of Contradiction: Obstetrical Ultrasound in American Culture," which appears in a volume edited by Sarah Franklin and Helena Ragone, titled Reproducing Reproduction: Kinship, Power, and Technological Innovation (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997). Janelle's husband, Michael Rosenthal, teaches philosophy at Grinnell College, and they have one child (born in Grinnell!), Jacob.

 

ANTHROPOLOGY STUDENTS TO PRESENT PAPERS

Kathy Kamp has organized a Symposium on Experimental Archaeology for this year’s Central States Anthropological Society Meeting to be held April 2-5, 1998, in Kansas City, Kansas, and several anthropology majors and faculty members will be presenting papers as a part of this symposium. The students’ papers are the result of research they conducted in Ms. Kamp’s Experimental Archaeology and Ethnoarchaeology seminar last semester. Participants and titles of papers are:

 

1) John Whittaker, Barrett Brenton, and Kathryn Kamp. "Corn Storage in Simple Pits"

2) Sarah R. Koeman and Rachel M. Taylor. "An Investigation of Petroglyph Production"

3) Meredith Good and Misty J. Huacuja. "Temper Versus Tuff: A Material Sciences Approach to Ceramic Analysis"

4) Nicole Timmerman. "Fingerprint Ridge-widths as a Way of Determining Age: The Role of

Pre-historic Children"

5) Rebecca Crump and Andrea Evans. "Replication of Bone Flutes and Whistles"

6) Gregg R. Lind. "Use-wear Analysis of Experimental Compass Gravers"

7) Andrea Long and Penny Scheimberg. "Analysis of Food Residues in Pots"

8) Kathryn Kamp. "Hands-on Research as a Teaching Technique" Greg Lind will also be presenting his senior thesis "Naked on Four Wheels" in a general session.

 

FACULTY PUBLICATIONS

 

Doug Caulkins:

Brent Metz:

Kathryn Kamp:

Department:

 

KIND WORDS FOR ANTHROPOLOGY

[Excerpted from : Current Anthropology 38(3):452-453,1997]

 

The following is a Zulu praise poem was specially composed for the Joint Conference of the Pan African Anthropological Association and the Association for Anthropology in Southern Africa hosted by the University of South Africa by Themba Msimang, mbongi (praise singer) and head of the University of South Africa’s Department of African Languages.

 

The meal is served! The meal is served?

Open the gates let the hordes enter

I am referring to you son of De Jongh

You who whistled as you mounted the summit

As you perched upon Muckleneuk

Beckoning them from the four cardinal points

Inviting them from the Cameroon up there

Where the Bantu originated

Inviting them from the Cape downthere

Even you Welile have crossed the threshold

Beautiful heifer of Mthandeni

The Royal residence of Knondlo and Phakathwayo

Who while eating tempted the person with a story

Sweep the yard and let the hordes enter

You have brewed the choice beer at UNISA

Now serve it in pots big and small.

 

The meal is served! The meal is served!

Invite the descendants of Boas

To share the snuff of profound wisdom

To relate to us the good news about anthropology

To share ideas about linguistic anthropology

To share ideas about biological anthropology

That poverty and famine may be conquered

Do not leave behind Richard of the Leakey family

Who saw our ancestors ploughing with stones

Who saw them even when they forged iron

Plant the seed of plenty in the country of starvation

That Somalia and Ethiopia may be nourished

That abundance may reign in East Africa

That abundance may reign in West Africa

Lord bless Africa – Our land!

 

The meal is served! The meal is served!

I salute you son of Nkwi

You who know how to shorten distances

You who crossed the Equator repeatedly

For you united North with South

Those of the South were dumfounded

Seeing the beg gates being opened to them

Which for years were barred by apartheid

I was AASA and PAAA shaking hands

Embracing one another like twins

 

Relating the history of Malinowski to each other

He who opened up the route to Trobriand Islands

Telling us about procreation and kinship

They are saying unity is strength

They say it as they drink from the same pot.

 

The meal is served! The meal is served!

People from Kenya as smiling

People from Zaire are smiling

Because discrimination has been conquered

You have enslaved me apartheid

For you said anthropology makes into slaves

Yet anthropology liberates people

You have discriminated against me apartheid

For you said anthropology discriminates

Yet anthropology unites peoples

You have driven me backwards apartheid

For you said anthropology moves backward

Yet anthropology makes people advance

Today they are aiming for the mountain summits

Tomorrow they will be perched on the stars

 

I have no more words!