Members of the Faculty of the UVa Anthropology Department
and advanced Doctoral students offer insights into their
research with indigenous communities around the world.

January 30 - Peter A. Metcalf, Professor of socio-cultural Anthropology (Ph.D Harvard University 1976) "Lessons from the Long House: LIfe in a Community in Central Borneo" Abstract: In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, no one traveled along the fast-flowing rivers that snake towards the mountainous interior of central Borneo without remarking on the stupendous houses that stand along their banks, massive structures, their floors raised a dozen feet above ground on sturdy pilings, accommodating hundreds of residents under one high-pitched shingled roof, their roomy interiors shady and inviting after the tropical brightness outside. To travel at all in the region was to travel between longhouses, and every arrival was a surprise. After hours of seeing nothing but apparently empty forest, one was suddenly immersed in the social density of a city. Peter Metcalf has spent over four years in Borneo, most of it living in longhouses. In his talk he will describe his experiences, and explore the consequences for longhouse residents of such intensely social lives.

February 13 - Roy Wagner, Professor of socio-cultural anthropology (Ph.D University of Chicago, 1966) "How the Other Figures Us Out, Papua New Guinea" Abstract: Just as the happening that we call history is never really history until it happens outside of its time, so that which we call "culture" is never perceptible, understandable, nor tangible as such-never really THERE-until and unless it happens outside of its context. If there were only one culture, there would be none; if there were no other, there would be no anthropologist. This means, of course, that, like history or culture, the other is an invention, an innovation upon the context in which it shows up. But it also means that the act of invention is crucially dependent upon the other, the control upon what the other is able to know or find out about him or her. We do not normally think of the "native" or other as wearing our eyeglasses and looking back at us through them-but again where else would "reflections" come from?

February 27 - Clare Terni, Doctoral candidate in economic anthropology (University of Virginia) "'Like the Terrier': Doing Ethnography In, On, and Around the De Beers Diamond Corporation." Abstract: The burgeoning field of corporate ethnography requires a revision of the techniques formerly associated with anthropological fieldwork. My initial summer of field research in South Africa convinced me that such fieldwork is, indeed possible, but requires patience, persistence, a diversity of approaches to information collection, and at times, good reflexes.

March 13 Jesse Shipley, Doctoral Candidate in socio-cultural anthropology (University of Chicago and a Pre-doctoral fellow at the Carter Woodson Institute, UVA) "Performing Anthropology, Staging Dialogues: Acting, Research, and Politics in Ghana" Abstract: This lecture will address what is at stake in doing participant observation research with artists and performers in cross cultural contexts. Drawing on two years of artistic participation and research in Ghana with theater, television, and film groups, I will discuss how working as an artist affects research and writing. What affect does the researcher have on the arts when dealing with explicitly political groups ? In the African context I will look how being awhite actor brought to the fore many of the issues of race, power, andpolitics with which I have been concerned. I will also examine cross cultural notions of art and its role in society. How do we examine thevery historical production of artistic categories while operating from within them?

March 27 Hanan Sabea, Assistant Professor of socio-cultural anthropology (Ph.D Johns Hopkins University 2000) " Many 'Others': Between a Ghost Town and A Transnational Corporation in Tanzania" Abstract: This presentation explores how conflicting and multiple perceptions and presentations of self and other are produced and negotiated during ethnographic research within a transnational corporation. During the course of three and a half years I was constantly on the move between nine sisal plantations and a myriad of company offices in Tanzania. I established a home base in Tanga, a town in the northeast of the country, where the Company has its headquarters. Moving between town, plantations, and company offices, and interacting with managers, workers, staff, state officials, and town residents, entailed an on-going process of defining and negotiating relationships and categories of self and other, particularly those pertaining to gender, race, nation, and class.

April 10 Tenibac Harvey, Doctoral Candidate in linguistic anthropolog (University of Virginia) Medical "Neocolonialism: The search for Patients Among the Biomedically 'Unreached' in Guatemala" Abstract: Among the K'iche' of highland Guatemala, wellness, illness, and care for the sick are disputed domains, uneasily co-inhabited by Maya healers and Ladino (non-indigenous) health professionals. Here, expressions of care for the ailing are caught betwixt and between sacred and secular curative worlds, Maya healer-wellness seeker therapeutic interactions on the one hand, and Ladino doctor-(Maya) patient biomedical encounters on the other. Until recently, Maya therapeutic models of care in many Guatemalan towns and villages have existed alongside biomedical healthcare agencies with only minimal contestation. Now, a kind of biomedical "incursion" into sacred areas of Maya healing in the noble search of "patients" among the biomedically unreached is changing this and serious disputes have arisen. At the center of these cultural and curative misunderstandings are the Maya wellness-seekers. This paper examines the problematics and complexities of cross-cultural medical care, explores the interface of secular (biomedical) and sacred (Maya) conceptions of wellness, illness and care, and debates the benefits of compulsory biomedical care given the decimation of indigenous therapeutic models of care.

April 24 Jeffery H. Hantman, Associate Professor of
Archaeology (Ph.D Arizona State University 1983) " American
Indians of Virginia: The Past and Present" Abstract: This
talk will discuss the place of American Indians in the
history of Virginia. The talk will discuss the long-term
history of American Indians as known from archaeological
study prior to A.D. 1600, and will then consider the nature
of the initial contacts between native peoples and
Europeans ca. 1600. The impact of European colonization and
the subsequent marginalization of American Indian groups
through racial policies implemented by the state will be
reviewed, as will the current status of the Tribes. I will
focus in particular on some collaborative work I have done
with the Monacan Indian Nation of the central Virginia
area.

All speakers will take place in Campbell Hall 153, (School
of Architecture) on Thursdays from 6:30-7:30pm with light
reception following.

sponsored by: The Lorna Sundberg International Center and
the UVa Anthropology Deparment.