A Kindly Scrutiny of Human Nature

Description

A Kindly Scrutiny of Human Nature is a collection of essays honouring Richard (Dick) Slobodin, one of the great anthropologists of the Canadian North. A short biography is followed by essays describing his formative thinking about human nature and human identities, his humanizing force in his example of living a moral, intellectual life, his discernment of people’s ability to make informed choices and actions, his freedom from ideological fashions, his writings about the Mackenzie District Métis, his determination to take peoples experience seriously, not metaphorically, and his thinking about social organization and kinship. An unpublished paper about a 1930s caribou hunt in which he participated finishes the collection, giving Dick the last word.

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 05 avril 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781554587681
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A Kindly Scrutiny of Human Nature

A Kindly Scrutiny of Human Nature
Essays in Honour of Richard Slobodin
Richard J. Preston, editor
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
A kindly scrutiny of human nature: essays in honour of Richard Slobodin / Richard J. Preston, editor.
Includes bibliographical references and index. Also issued in electronic format. ISBN 978-1-55458-040-8
I . Slobodin, Richard, 1915-2005. 2. Ethnology-Canada, Northern. 3. Anthropologists-Canada-Biography. I. Preston, Richard J. (Richard Joseph), 1931- II. Slobodin, Richard, 1915-2005.
GN29.K46 2009 301 C2008-907619-2
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
A kindly scrutiny of human nature [electronic resource]: essays in honour of Richard Slobodin / Richard J. Preston, editor.
Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-55458-120-7 Electronic edited collection in PDF, ePub, and XML formats. Issued also in print format.
I . Slobodin, Richard, 1915-2005. 2. Ethnology-Canada, Northern. 3. Anthropologists-Canada-Biography. I. Preston, Richard J. (Richard Joseph), 1931- II. Slobodin, Richard, 1915-2005.
GN29.K46 2009 301
2009 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Waterloo, Ontario, Canada www.wlupress.wlu.ca
Cover photograph courtesy of Eleanor Slobodin. Cover design by Brian Grebow / BG Communications. Text design by Catharine Bonas-Taylor.
This book is printed on FSC recycled paper and is certified Ecologo. It is made from 100% post-consumer fibre, processed chlorine free, and manufactured using biogas energy.
Printed in Canada
Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher s attention will be corrected in future printings.
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION Richard J. Preston and Harvey A. Feit
1 Richard Slobodin s Ethnography and Human Nature Richard J. Preston
2 Dick Slobodin: The Anthropology of a Divided Self Sam Ajzenstat
3 Slobodin as Example: A Note on a Dialectics of Style Kenneth Little
4 Writing against the Grain of Materialist Orthodoxy: Richard Slobodin and the Teetl it Gwich in Robert Wishart and Michael Asch
5 Histories of the Past, Histories of the Future: The Committed Anthropologies of Richard Slobodin, Frank G. Speck, and Eleanor Leacock Harvey A. Feit
6 Slobodin among the Metis, 1938-98: Anthropologist, Scholar, Historian, and Fieldworker par excellence Mary Black-Rogers
7 Richard Slobodin and the Creation of the Amerindian Rebirth Book Antonia Mills
8 Richard Slobodin as Scholar of Societies David J. Damas
9 Caribou Hunt Richard Slobodin
RICHARD SLOBODIN BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
INTRODUCTION A Kindly Scrutiny of Human Nature
Richard J. Preston and Harvey A. Feit
Dick Slobodin is for many of us an exemplar of a period in anthropology when the ethnographer s personal qualities established the guidelines for what we now discuss under the rubric of methodology, and when personal perspectives on peoples actions and intentions directed the selection and balance of more abstract theoretical orientations than are expressed in the written ethnography. Dick knew social and cultural theories with great breadth and depth; he taught the honours theory course for many years and understood the material well enough to avoid selecting any one perspective to guide his thinking and writing.
I chose the title A Kindly Scrutiny of Human Nature because it seemed to me that it represented Dick as the person I knew and admired.
Kindly does not mean naive but rather it suggests an undercurrent of humane interest in intentions, actions, and their consequences-and a respect for the simple fact that life looks different to different individuals, even among members of a personal community or intimates in the same family. Dick s respect could and often did show itself in forthright criticism of behaviour that he found lacking in personal decency or social justice, and his files contain a large number of copies of personal letters hesent regarding social justice. Kindly has this larger dimension.
Scrutiny is a penetrating gaze that goes far deeper than casual interest. Scrutiny is not the clinical gaze of a French critic s judgment but a clear view of deeper motives and exogenous influences. Dick s personal qualities led him to study people in their whole social and cultural context, first the Gwich in, then the Metis in the same area-the northern Yukon and northeastern Alaska-and the non-natives there, and the relations between individuals of these groups. Later he turned his gaze inward in order to study a psychiatric anthropologist whose views and personality interested him. And while he had limited opportunity to speak with women, the gender aspect of Gwich in culture is also served in giving women s views on men s actions and vice versa.
Dick Slobodin anticipated many trends in anthropological thinking. He was reflexive before the term gained currency, he was gender-sensitive without discussing its importance, he paid close attention to nuances of narratives and actions, and so on. He was politically correct because of who he was, not because of critical intellectual currents.
The chapters that follow are the result of a double-session of papers delivered at the annual conference of the Canadian Anthropology Society/Soci t Canadienne d Anthropologie in 2006. The idea for the session came from Doug Hudson, Dick Slobodin s first M.A. student in the early 1970s. Doug volunteered to give a paper on Dene social organization if there were to be a session on Dick s work, but, since he chose not to send it on, I regret that we cannot publish it here. Doug s idea was welcome, since three of the present authors (Damas, Ajzenstat, and myself) had written eulogies about Dick for presentation at his memorial service, and a conference session was the next logical step in honouring Dick s career and expressing something of our memories of him. The double-session jelled nicely, and we agreed to take it the next step, to a Festschrift.
The appropriate starting point for this memorial volume is a brief biography, and since Harvey Feit compiled a fine statement for the university obituary notice soon after Dick s death, it is fitting to use it here, slightly modified. This is followed by the eulogy that I gave at his memorial service. That service, I might add, was conducted by two Anglican priests, Holly Ratcliffe and Paddy Doran, who were anthropology students and friends of Dick s (and also of mine) before they moved on to their religious vocation. It is worth noting that in his later years Dick attended Anglican services and took an active role in them.
O BITUARY , P ROFESSOR R ICHARD S LOBODIN , 1915-2005
Harvey A. Feit
Richard Slobodin, one of the finest ethnographers to work among the First Nations peoples of the Canadian north, and one of the founders of the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University, passed away in Hamilton, Ontario, on January 22, 2005. Born in New York City on March 6, 1915, he was just short of his ninetieth birthday. Professor Slobodin attended the City College of New York, where he completed a B.A. in comparative literature in 1936 and an M.S. in education in 1938. During and after his studies he worked as a teacher, mainly of English, in New York City high schools.
After completing his master s degree he took a break from teaching and made a career-altering trip to the Yukon Territory in Canada, adjacent to Alaska, where he travelled and did research among the Gwich in people of the Fort McPherson region through the winter from September 1938 to May 1939. The trip and his decision afterwards to turn to a career in anthropology probably flowed from his early upbringing. He wrote of his career, My best preparation consisted of belonging to a family wherein both parents and many associates had broad humanist interests, which led to an early exposure to the literature, folklore, and art of many cultures. I was also fortunate enough to have some excellent teachers.... These influences were much more important than formal majors and minors.
After returning to New York he registered in the Ph.D. program at Columbia University in 1940 and began his career as an anthropologist. But his career was interrupted more than once, and it took a quarter-century before he had a continuing academic position. In 1942 he entered the military and served until 1946. After the war he returned to Columbia to complete his Ph.D. For his doctoral research, which he undertook between August 1946 and May 1947, he returned to the Fort McPherson region with support from the Social Science Research Council and a research fellowship from the Arctic Institute of North America. His return to the Gwich in was a mutually happy one. Dick commented that as a returning visitor he was not treated as a formidable official sort of person. And he reported that Chief Julius remarked of him on one festive occasion that he was the fellow whom the people had previously taken in when he was just a poor boy (Slobodin, 1969: 57).
Following his doctoral field research, he began his university teaching career wi