Ira Bashkow


Ira Bashkow Associate Professor Ph.D. University of Chicago 1999 Levering, Room 105
I am a cultural anthropologist with research interests in globalization, development, corporations, race, historical anthropology, and the history of anthropology. I did fieldwork in the Pacific in two regions of Papua New Guinea: Orokaiva in Oro Province and Arapesh in East Sepik Province. My new book is The Meaning of Whitemen: Race and Modernity in the Orokaiva Cultural World. This book examines how Orokaiva and other Papua New Guineans conceptualize "whitemen" and the West through stereotypes that are morally-charged with the people's own evaluations of western power, wealth, and race privilege. By analyzing race outside the familiar landscape of western racial politics and assumptions, the book provides a fresh approach to understanding how race is culturally constructed, showing how racial categories can be grounded in "raced" material objects, and explaining why racial stereotypes stubbornly persist in the face of counterevidence. A project that began as an "out-take" from this book is my work-in-progress on the global spread of western clock and calendrical time. This article examines the symbolism of western time-keeping in Orokaiva development, where it is reinterpreted through Orokaiva moral assumptions and acquires racial significance as a symbol of "whitemanship." Another Orokaiva book project, for which I have collected materials and developed ideas, is a historical ethnography of a native prophetic movement that arose among Orokaiva peoples under colonialism. At the center of the Taro Cult were ecstatic trance rituals in which the spirits of personified taro plants inspired prophets with new knowledge, precepts, prohibitions, gardening techniques, dances, and rituals. Taro Cult prophecy responded to Orokaiva people's new experience of colonialism by revitalizing tradition while simultaneously offering a "veiled" discourse that covertly expressed interpretations of the situation of colonial domination in terms that opened up novel possibilities for pan-Orokaiva community and identity. The book, which I am calling The Taro Cult: Prophecy and Power in Colonial Papua, engages scholarly debates over the politics of popular religious movements involving prophecy, spirit possession, and shamanism in colonial situations. Through my teaching on globalization, I have recently begun a new project on the theoretical implications of the rise of corporate personhood. The corporation, or limited-liability joint-stock company, is the dominant institutional form of our time, with sui generis characteristics that cannot be reduced to the individuals who own, manage, and work for it. Through its public relations and marketing efforts, it powerfully shapes public discourse, normalizing hedonistic conceptions of social relations and contributing to the ideological transformation of the individual from producer to consumer. Indeed, the corporation has become an agent par excellence of cultural production, complicating our conventional view of the relationship between the individual and culture. So a proper understanding of the corporation is essential if we are to improve upon oversimplified producer-consumer (and producer-consumer-nation-state) models of the economy, and this is also a productive and appropriate focus of anthropologists' critical energies, which for too long have been wasted criticizing lesser powers for lesser wrongs. Another important side of my research is the history of anthropology, which is what initially brought me into the field. Here my special interest is in examining how past anthropologists were perceived by their informants in the field, and how this affected their findings, a kind of study that combines the history of anthropology with historical ethnography. In this vein I've written about the colonial context of David Schneider's fieldwork on Yap (Micronesia) during the U.S. naval colonial administration of the islands after World War II. I am currently working with Lise Dobrin on a book and series of articles that explore different sides of the fieldwork that Margaret Mead and Reo Fortune conducted together among the Arapesh in 1931-1932 - on the basis of which the two came to contradictory conclusions about Arapesh culture. I also have an abiding interest in the Boasian anthropologists of the early 20th century and in the possibility of creating a "Neo-Boasian" anthropology for present times. Specializations Globalization and development; whiteness and race studies; space and time; food and eating; exchange; cargo and prophetic movements; historical ethnography of Yap (Micronesia); Melanesian ethnography; colonial studies; social and cultural theory; history of anthropology. Graduate Courses Current Theory; Whiteness; Theories of Globalization and Culture; Prophecy and Power in Papua; The Anthropology of Time; Boasian Anthropology; Topics in History of Anthropology. Undergraduate Courses How Others See Us; Globalization and Development; Theory and History of Anthropology; The Culture of Consumption; Race and Racism in Global Perspective. Selected Publications In preparation, with Lise Dobrin - The Life and Lives of Ethnography: Margaret Mead, Reo Fortune, and the New Guinea Arapesh (book manuscript). 2007 - The Historical Study of Ethnographic Fieldwork: Margaret Mead and Reo Fortune among the Mountain Arapesh (with Lise Dobrin). History of Anthropology Newsletter 34 (1): 9-16. (Downloadable as a PDF file. Click here.) 2006 - "Pigs for Dance Songs": Reo Fortune's Empathetic Ethnography of the Arapesh Roads (with Lise Dobrin). In Histories of Anthropology Annual vol. 2. In preparation. The Great Arc of Human Possibilities and a Small Circle of Friends: The Social Microcosm of Margaret Mead's Sex and Temperament (with Lise Dobrin). In preparation. Will the Real Leviathan Please Sit Down? The Structural Agency of the Corporation. 2006 - The Meaning of Whitemen: Race and Modernity in the Orokaiva Cultural World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2004 - A Neo-Boasian Conception of Cultural Boundaries. American Anthropologist 106(3):443-458. 2004 - A New Boasian Anthropology: Theory for the 21st Century. American Anthropologist 106(3):433-434 (with Matti Bunzl, Richard Handler, Andrew Orta, and Daniel Rosenblatt). 2000 - "Whitemen" Are Good to Think With: How Orokaiva Morality is Reflected on Whitemen's Skin. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power vol. 7, pp. 281-332. 2000 - Confusion, Native Skepticism, and Recurring Questions About the Year 2000: 'Soft' Beliefs and Preparations for the Millennium in the Arapesh Region, Papua New Guinea. Ethnohistory vol. 47, pp. 133-169. 1991 - The Dynamics of Rapport in a Colonial Situation: David Schneider's Fieldwork on the Islands of Yap. In Colonial Situations: Essays on the Contextualization of Ethnographic Knowledge. George Stocking, ed. pp. 170-242. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Associate Professor
Ph.D. University of Chicago 1999

Levering, Room 105

I am a cultural anthropologist with research interests in globalization, development, corporations, race, historical anthropology, and the history of anthropology. I did fieldwork in the Pacific in two regions of Papua New Guinea: Orokaiva in Oro Province and Arapesh in East Sepik Province.

My new book is The Meaning of Whitemen: Race and Modernity in the Orokaiva Cultural World. This book examines how Orokaiva and other Papua New Guineans conceptualize "whitemen" and the West through stereotypes that are morally-charged with the people's own evaluations of western power, wealth, and race privilege. By analyzing race outside the familiar landscape of western racial politics and assumptions, the book provides a fresh approach to understanding how race is culturally constructed, showing how racial categories can be grounded in "raced" material objects, and explaining why racial stereotypes stubbornly persist in the face of counterevidence.

A project that began as an "out-take" from this book is my work-in-progress on the global spread of western clock and calendrical time. This article examines the symbolism of western time-keeping in Orokaiva development, where it is reinterpreted through Orokaiva moral assumptions and acquires racial significance as a symbol of "whitemanship."

Another Orokaiva book project, for which I have collected materials and developed ideas, is a historical ethnography of a native prophetic movement that arose among Orokaiva peoples under colonialism. At the center of the Taro Cult were ecstatic trance rituals in which the spirits of personified taro plants inspired prophets with new knowledge, precepts, prohibitions, gardening techniques, dances, and rituals. Taro Cult prophecy responded to Orokaiva people's new experience of colonialism by revitalizing tradition while simultaneously offering a "veiled" discourse that covertly expressed interpretations of the situation of colonial domination in terms that opened up novel possibilities for pan-Orokaiva community and identity. The book, which I am calling The Taro Cult: Prophecy and Power in Colonial Papua, engages scholarly debates over the politics of popular religious movements involving prophecy, spirit possession, and shamanism in colonial situations.

Through my teaching on globalization, I have recently begun a new project on the theoretical implications of the rise of corporate personhood. The corporation, or limited-liability joint-stock company, is the dominant institutional form of our time, with sui generis characteristics that cannot be reduced to the individuals who own, manage, and work for it. Through its public relations and marketing efforts, it powerfully shapes public discourse, normalizing hedonistic conceptions of social relations and contributing to the ideological transformation of the individual from producer to consumer. Indeed, the corporation has become an agent par excellence of cultural production, complicating our conventional view of the relationship between the individual and culture. So a proper understanding of the corporation is essential if we are to improve upon oversimplified producer-consumer (and producer-consumer-nation-state) models of the economy, and this is also a productive and appropriate focus of anthropologists' critical energies, which for too long have been wasted criticizing lesser powers for lesser wrongs.

Another important side of my research is the history of anthropology, which is what initially brought me into the field. Here my special interest is in examining how past anthropologists were perceived by their informants in the field, and how this affected their findings, a kind of study that combines the history of anthropology with historical ethnography. In this vein I've written about the colonial context of David Schneider's fieldwork on Yap (Micronesia) during the U.S. naval colonial administration of the islands after World War II. I am currently working with Lise Dobrin on a book and series of articles that explore different sides of the fieldwork that Margaret Mead and Reo Fortune conducted together among the Arapesh in 1931-1932 - on the basis of which the two came to contradictory conclusions about Arapesh culture.

I also have an abiding interest in the Boasian anthropologists of the early 20th century and in the possibility of creating a "Neo-Boasian" anthropology for present times.

Specializations

Globalization and development; whiteness and race studies; space and time; food and eating; exchange; cargo and prophetic movements; historical ethnography of Yap (Micronesia); Melanesian ethnography; colonial studies; social and cultural theory; history of anthropology.

Graduate Courses

Current Theory; Whiteness; Theories of Globalization and Culture; Prophecy and Power in Papua; The Anthropology of Time; Boasian Anthropology; Topics in History of Anthropology.

Undergraduate Courses

How Others See Us; Globalization and Development; Theory and History of Anthropology; The Culture of Consumption; Race and Racism in Global Perspective.

Selected Publications

In preparation, with Lise Dobrin - The Life and Lives of Ethnography: Margaret Mead, Reo Fortune, and the New Guinea Arapesh (book manuscript).
2007 - The Historical Study of Ethnographic Fieldwork: Margaret Mead and Reo Fortune among the Mountain Arapesh (with Lise Dobrin). History of Anthropology Newsletter 34 (1): 9-16. (Downloadable as a PDF file. Click here.)
2006 - "Pigs for Dance Songs": Reo Fortune's Empathetic Ethnography of the Arapesh Roads (with Lise Dobrin). In Histories of Anthropology Annual vol. 2.
In preparation. The Great Arc of Human Possibilities and a Small Circle of Friends: The Social Microcosm of Margaret Mead's Sex and Temperament (with Lise Dobrin).
In preparation. Will the Real Leviathan Please Sit Down? The Structural Agency of the Corporation.
2006 - The Meaning of Whitemen: Race and Modernity in the Orokaiva Cultural World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2004 - A Neo-Boasian Conception of Cultural Boundaries. American Anthropologist 106(3):443-458.
2004 - A New Boasian Anthropology: Theory for the 21st Century. American Anthropologist 106(3):433-434 (with Matti Bunzl, Richard Handler, Andrew Orta, and Daniel Rosenblatt).
2000 - "Whitemen" Are Good to Think With: How Orokaiva Morality is Reflected on Whitemen's Skin. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power vol. 7, pp. 281-332.
2000 - Confusion, Native Skepticism, and Recurring Questions About the Year 2000: 'Soft' Beliefs and Preparations for the Millennium in the Arapesh Region, Papua New Guinea. Ethnohistory vol. 47, pp. 133-169.
1991 - The Dynamics of Rapport in a Colonial Situation: David Schneider's Fieldwork on the Islands of Yap. In Colonial Situations: Essays on the Contextualization of Ethnographic Knowledge. George Stocking, ed. pp. 170-242. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.