Re: revitalization movements

thomas w kavanagh (tkavanag@INDIANA.EDU)
Fri, 19 Jan 1996 23:31:27 -0500

For those of you who tuned in late, here is a brief synopsis of our story
so far.

[The original question (BY WHOM?) was on the general relevance of AFC
Wallace's conceptualization/generalization of revitalization movements to the
present political moment in the US. No one picked up on that thread, but

> > On Wed, 10 Jan 1996, JEROME H. BARKOW wrote:
> >
> > > A.F.C. Wallace's revitalization stuff first appeared around 40 years
> > > ago and is definitely out-of-fashion.

I [tk] then replied,

> On Wed, 10 Jan 1996, thomas w kavanagh wrote:
>
> >
> > One trajectory of development follows Wallace's extention/generalization
> > of the revitalization stuff into his "paradigmatic processes of
cultural
> > change" (AA 74:467-78). A parallel line was taken by Roy Rappaport
> > (Ritual, Sanctity and Cybernetics, AA 73: 59-76; the Sacred in Human
> > Evolution AR Ecol & Sytematics), and later by Kent Flannery (Cultural
> > Evolution of Civilizations) and beyond with the archaeologists (Sanders
> > and Webster, Unilinealism, Multilinealism, and the Evolution of Complex
> > Societies, 1978).

[Back to BARKOW]
> >
> > > As far as I can tell, the kinds
> > > of phenomena with which he was concerned today are discussed under the
> > > rubric of "identity," the "politics of identity" in particular. A
> > > union or synthesis of the Wallace framework and more recent approaches
> > > is needed.

and I [tk] asked the question:
>Question: Do these "politics of identity" studies subsume the
>ethnogenesis and/or "re-tribalization" studies or do they indeed "start
>from scratch"

So far no answer on that specific point.

However, at this point, Karl Schwerin comes in

>On Fri, 19 Jan 1996, karl h schwerin wrote:


>
> Tom-
> Wallace's model also greatly influenced the theoretical efforts I
> undertook in my dissertation in trying to develop a workable micro-macro
> model for cultural evolution. see
>
> Schwerin, Karl H. 1966. Oil and steel. Processes of Karinya culture
> change in response to industrial development. Latin American Studies,
> vol. 4. Los Angeles, CA: Latin American Center, University of California
> (UCLA)
>
> Schwerin, Karl H. 1970. The Mechanisms of Culture Change, pp. 283-305
> 3~3~in The Social Anthropology of Latin America. Essays in honor of Ralph
> Leon Beals, ed. by Walter Goldschmidt & Harry Hoijer. Latin American
> Center. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA
>
> Later, I discovered that John Gillin had come up with essentially the
> same model in his anthropological textbook The Ways of Men, pp. 558-568.
> New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. 1948
>


Hi Karl!
Yes, thanks for the further elaboration of the paradigm.
indeed, I think the paradigm, has extreme potential.

My recent research I have been going the other way: back to Mooney's
Ghost Dance, and uncovering the ways in which he manipulated and glossed
over particular pieces of data. F'rinstance: when he got out to Oklahoma
in Dec 1890, it was snowing so hard no one was dancing, so he spent a
week or more with Wataanga learning the songs. Wataanga was the chief of
the Agency police.

Wait, what, ... the leader of a revitalization movement was a member of
the colonial establishment?

Yes, but I don't yet know what to make of it. But, for further
developments, see:

http://bronze.ucs.indiana.edu/~tkavanag/home.html

look for "Visualizing the Ghost Dance." If its not there yet, its not
finished

tk