The next meeting of the 2022 History of Anthropology Working Group hosted by the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine will be held on Wednesday, April 6 at 12:00pm ET via Zoom. The topic of the discussion will be “thin description” with John L. Jackson, Jr., Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication and University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Please join us for a discussion about the politics and poetics of ethnography, past and present.
Main Readings (included as PDF):
- John L. Jackson, Jr., Thin Description: Ethnography and the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem, Harvard University Press, 2013. Chapters 1-4 and 20 (“Thin”) (1-38, 149-155)
- Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” 1973, 14 pp.
- John L. Jackson, Jr. “Bewitched by Boas,” 18-22, in Hau- Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7, no. 3 (2017): 18-22.
Additional readings (also included as PDF):
- Jackson, Thin Description, Chapter 5, “Chicago.”
- The rest of the special section of Hau which contains “Why do we read the classics?” with pieces by Fred Myers, Anastasia Piliavsky, Yarimar Bonilla, Adia Benton, and Paul Stoller. Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7, no. 3 (2017): 1-38.
Additional details about the group, access to the readings, and information on how to attend may be found on the Consortium website. Questions may be directed to John Tresch at john.tresch@sas.ac.uk.
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