Anthropology and Indigenous Rights in Canada and the United States: Implications in Steward's Theoretical Project

Pinkoski, Marc; Asch, Michael

doi:10.4324/9781003085645-18

Cited by 2 publications

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“…It might be an anthropological stubbornness to admit that the unified history of capitalism was wrong in this case. Or the theorizing on trapping as a driver of culture collapse was too important to other powerful bodies to be challenged and the role of anthropology in the colonization of North America was left to be silent and unanalysed (Pinkoski, 2008; Pinkoski and Asch, 2004). Then, as now, these imaginaries have contributed to a shift in northern economic policy away from the exploitation of renewable resources and towards large scale non-renewable resource extraction schemes (Berger, 1977; Wishart, 2014a).…”

Section: Anthropological Conjecture and The Life World Of Trappingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Where is the real trap? Domination and mutualism in Teetl’it Gwich’in sensibilities about trapping

Wishart

2018

Journal of Material Culture

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Teetl’it Gwich’ins, NWT, Canada have consistently positioned trapping as a valuable exercise despite fluctuations in the price of furs. Materialist anthropological theories applied to the trapping economies of boreal forest First Nations created an image of trapping as an activity that necessarily leads to individualism, alienation, nucleated family structures and disenchantment because the furs were being produced for trade in the world economy. The rise of anti-fur sentiments and Canadian industrial intrusions helped cement this imaginary of the trapper as corrupt but, instead of simply being the victims of European domination, they were positioned to have abandoned the ‘traditional’ sensibilities of trust and reciprocity to adopt the cruelties of the steel trap. In contrast with these conjectural world histories, the author argues that trapping as it is practiced today is far from being an alienating practice. Indigenous trappers work with animals in ways that suit their pre-existing practices. In order to dispel the imaginary of the cruel dominator of animals, more recent thoughts on mutualism in human–animal relationships help but it would be difficult to argue that this activity does not require some deception. Indigenous trappers will create methods and tinker with their traps in ways that are counterintuitive to some of the human–environment dualisms found in the deception paradigm that posits that the human presence and the intention to trap is hidden from the animal and tricks it into making a fatal error. The author argues that trapping is effective and valued because it plays upon the signs and expectations which lie between the past and the present, and between domination and mutualism.

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Section: Anthropological Conjecture and The Life World Of Trappingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Where is the real trap? Domination and mutualism in Teetl’it Gwich’in sensibilities about trapping

Wishart

2018

Journal of Material Culture

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Locke's state of nature

Hindess

2007

History of the Human Sciences

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Scholarly discussion has treated the account of the state of nature which Locke presents in his Second Treatise as neither an hypothesis nor a description but rather as a fiction. John Dunn, for example, claims that it is a 'theoretical analysis of the fundamental relations of right and duty which obtain between human beings, relations which are logically prior to the particular historical situations in which all actual human beings always in fact find themselves'. Here Dunn presents a misleading account of Locke's argument, presumably, as the title of his paper suggests, in order to mount an argument of his own about the 'political relevance' of Locke's work to a time when no one takes seriously the early modern idea of the state of nature. However, this article also has a more serious concern. I argue that the representation of the state of nature as a merely imaginary, 'theoretical analysis' of social relations obscures the significance of the early modern idea of a state of nature, not only for the work of Locke and his near contemporaries, but also, more importantly, for the broader development of western social and political thought. The idea of an original condition of freedom and equality played a central role in Locke's argument, serving as a means both to undermine the view that humans were born into a natural condition of subjection to the rule of others and to justify European expropriation of land in the Americas. It also represented one end of a developmental continuum, running from the original, most primitive, condition of humanity through to the societies of contemporary western Europe, which was thought to encompass all sections of humanity. While the idea of an original asocial condition on which this continuum

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Anthropology and Indigenous Rights in Canada and the United States: Implications in Steward's Theoretical Project

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Where is the real trap? Domination and mutualism in Teetl’it Gwich’in sensibilities about trapping

Where is the real trap? Domination and mutualism in Teetl’it Gwich’in sensibilities about trapping

Locke's state of nature

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