Reply to Kunkel
Albert B. Elsasser, Lowie Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley

Download the Paper (PDF format) - November 18, 2008 Tell a colleague about it. Printing Tips: Select 'print as image' in the Acrobat print dialog if you have trouble printing. This work has been peer reviewed.

ABSTRACT:

In regard to Peter Kunkel's objection to parts (or all) of my review of Native Californians: A Theoretical Retrospective, I do indeed owe him an apology if he believes I was misrepresenting him. I can assure him that I did not look at this book "on the run" and found little or nothing to comment upon adversely in any one of the articles of the volume, even if space were available to do so. What I chose to emphasize was what appeared to me as a sort of dichotomy between some "younger" and "older" scholars in the matter of relative confidence in handling of ethnological data. I am well aware that Kroeber's students or associates did not always agree with him, or with each other, in methodological aspects of their work—it merely seemed to me that they were not deprecating directly or by implication the work done (or not done) by others. I realize also that historically there was little likelihood that any condescending attitudes could develop among these early scholars. No doubt the separation of "old" or traditional from "new" or innovative can be done in an approximate and figurative sense only, and I regret the suggestion that Kunkel was in effect fuzzily categorized as of the latter persuasion.