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" Anthropologists need history to understand how the past has shaped the present. Historians need anthropology to help them interpret the past. Where anthropologists' and historians' needs intersect is ethnohistory. The contributors to this volume have been inspired in large part by the teaching and writing of distinguished ethnohistorian Raymond J. DeMallie, whose exemplary combination of ethnographic and archival research demonstrates the ways anthropology and history can work together to create an understanding of the past and the present. Transforming Ethnohistories comprises ten new avenues of ethnohistorical research ranging in topic from fiddling performances to environmental disturbance and spanning places from North Carolina to the Yukon. The authors seek to understand communities by finding and interpreting their stories in a variety of different texts, some of which lie outside academic understanding and research methodology. It is exactly those stories, conventionally labeled "myths" or "oral tradition," that ethnohistorians demand we pay attention to. Although historians cannot see or talk to their informants as anthropologists do, both anthropologists and historians can listen to oral histories and written documents for the essential stories they contain. The essays assembled here use DeMallie's approach to contribute to the history and anthropology of Native North America and address issues of literary criticism and contexts, sociolinguistics, performance theory, identity and historical change, historical and anthropological methods and theory, and the interpretation of histories, cultures, and stories. Debates over the legitimacy of ethnohistory as a specialization have led some scholars to declare its decline. This volume shows ethnohistory to be alive and well and continuing to attract young scholars"--

Die Autorin entwickelt ein vergleichendes Modell zur Analyse nicht-nationaler Ethnizität am Beispiel der USA. Dieses historisch-kontextuelle figurationssoziologische Modell kombiniert sozialstrukturelle und kulturelle Dimensionen und verwendet deshalb sowohl den Struktur- als auch den Kulturvergleich in gleichgewichtiger Weise. Sie stützt sich dabei auf die Reformulierung der Strukturationstheorie von Giddens und der Habitustheorie von Bourdieu. Unabhängig von den begrifflichen Modellen, die zur Analyse von Wanderungsbewegungen und ethnischen Prozessen verwandt werden, ist man sich darüber einig, daß diese plural sind und mit der fortschreitenden Globalisierung zusammenhängen: "Das Strukturationsmodell liefert ein besonders gute Analyseinstrumentarium für ein offenes und eben auch vielstimmiges Studium dieser komplexen Sachverhalte." (pra)

In this article I analyse the history of weaving in a Chamar community on the outskirts of the city of Banaras, eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP). I explore the recruitment of rural Chamar men as apprentices to the city's Muslim master weavers, the consequent emergence of a class of Chamar artisans and its gradual disappearance from the 1990s onwards. I argue that the weaving era represented a historical moment of relative prosperity for the Chamar community, where strengthened ties with urban Muslim weavers enabled a progressive disentanglement from relationships of domination by rural landed elites. As a consequence, a positive Chamar self-representation was crafted in ways which contrasted with the trends of identity consolidation for 'Untouchable' communities—as well as other castes—that started during the colonial period. Further, an important phase of social mobility was initiated through weaving. With the onset of economic liberalisation, as the handloom sari industry has lost its momentum, weavers have increasingly abandoned their occupation to join the ranks of unskilled casual labourers. Surrounded by compelling socio-economic imperatives that their meagre wages can not meet, former weavers appear to belong to a 'lost world' as they try to make sense of the laws of local and global bazaars.

"Stretching back to the 1950s, interdisciplinary work between anthropology and history has taken diverse expressions. Yet it has developed with more coherence since the 1980s, largely in response to the declining promise of global modernity and the rise of poststructuralism and deconstructionism. Through a critical and contemporary engagement with this wave of scholarship, this volume challenges readers to think of work at the crossroads of anthropology and history as transdisciplinary and anthrohistorical, moving beyond a partial integration of the disciplines as it critically evaluates their assumptions and trajectories. This approach permits Anthrohistory: Unsettling Knowledge, Questioning Discipline to present a broader perspective that unsettles the constraints of existing academic practice. The volume does not offer a blueprint for fulfilling this goal, but rather a variety of positions taken by anthrohistorians who work in diverse contexts. Adopting an innovative and accessible style, Anthrohistory opens a provocative window into broader questions of interdisciplinarity, representation, epistemology, methodology, and social commitment."--Back Cover