Paul Stoller (born January 25, 1947) is an American cultural anthropologist. He is a professor of anthropology at West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Paul Stoller (born January 25, 1947) is an American cultural anthropologist. He is a professor of anthropology at West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Stoller received his B.A. in political science at the University of Pittsburgh in 1969. He joined the Peace Corps after graduation. Placed in Niger, he taught English to the Songhay until he left in 1971. In 1974, he earned an MS in sociolinguistics at Georgetown University. In 1978, Stoller obtained his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin with his field research on religious practices among the Songhay in Tillaberi and Mehanna and Wanzerbe in the Republic of Niger and Mali. More specifically, his work has focused on magic, sorcery and spirit possession. In 1992, he began to conduct fieldwork among West African immigrants in New York City.
Over the course of his 30 years career in anthropology, Stoller has been the recipient of numerous academic awards and grants from Wenner-Gren Foundation, Fulbright-Hays, National Science Foundation as well as the American Philosophical Society and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1994, he received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. [1] Out of his research, Stoller has published eleven books including ethnographies, biographies, memoirs and novels as well as copious articles that have been nominated for awards. His 1987 book, Fusion of the Worlds: Ethnography of Possession Among the Songhay of Niger was nominated for the J.I. Staley Prize. In 1992, The Cinematic Griot: The Ethnography of Jean Rouch was a finalist for the Herskovits Prize. In this examination of the documentary filmmaker and ethnographer, Stoller offers insights into the controversial pioneer of cinema verité arguing that Rouch's films blended artful narrative with grounded ethnography to produce an aesthetic fusion known as ethno-fiction. [2] To date, other than Jean Rouch, Stoller has conducted more fieldwork among the Songhay than any other anthropologists. His ethnography of African street traders in New York City, Money Has No Smell: The Africanization of New York City was the winner of the American Anthropological Association's Robert B. Textor Prize in Anticipatory Anthropology. It was also nominated for the J.I. Staley Prize. [3]
In 2013, The Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography selected him to receive the Anders Retzius Medal in Gold for his scientific contributions to anthropology. He received the award on April 26, 2013.
With his publications of The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology (1989) and Sensuous Scholarship (1997), Stoller has been at the forefront of the Anthropology of the Senses also known as sensory anthropology. He is an advocate of research methods grounded in long term fieldwork, cultural relativism and reflexivity. [4] In a review in Anthropology Quarterly, Constantine Hriskos referred to this work as a call for "a more engaged, lived, and embodied scholarship that would 'resensualize us' (p.xviii) and others". [5] Along with anthropologist, Michael Jackson, Stoller has questioned the hegemony of the senses (sensorium) in his cultural critiques. Catherine Aleen, Ruth Behar, Michael Taussig and others engage in blurring genres of writing that include interspersing critical analysis with personal reflection. [4]
Jean Rouch was a French filmmaker and anthropologist.
The Songhai people are an ethnolinguistic group in West Africa who speak the various Songhai languages. Their history and lingua franca are linked to the Songhai Empire which dominated the western Sahel in the 15th and 16th century. Predominantly a Muslim community, the Songhai are found primarily throughout Niger and Mali in the Western sudanic region. The name Songhai was historically neither an ethnic nor linguistic designation, but a name for the ruling caste of the Songhay Empire which are the Songhai proper of sunni and Askya dynasty found predominantly in present-Niger. However, the correct term used to refer to this group of people collectively by the natives is "Ayneha". Although some Speakers in Mali have also adopted the name Songhay as an ethnic designation, other Songhay-speaking groups identify themselves by other ethnic terms such as Zarma or Isawaghen. The dialect of Koyraboro Senni spoken in Gao is unintelligible to speakers of the Zarma dialect of Niger, according to at least one report. The Songhay languages are commonly taken to be Nilo-Saharan but this classification remains controversial. Nicolai considers the songhay languages as a afro-asiatic Berber subgroup or a new subgroup of semitic languages restructured under Mande and nilo Saharan influence, the lexicon of songhay languages includes many completes lexical fields close to Berbers languages, old and new semitic, northern songhay speakers are Berbers from Tuareg people : Dimmendaal (2008) believes that for now it is best considered an independent language family.
Salvage ethnography is the recording of the practices and folklore of cultures threatened with extinction, including as a result of modernization. It is generally associated with the American anthropologist Franz Boas; he and his students aimed to record vanishing Native American cultures. Since the 1960s, anthropologists have used the term as part of a critique of 19th-century ethnography and early modern anthropology.
In the mythology of the African Songhai people, Zin Kibaru or Zinkibaru is a blind, river-dwelling spirit who commands fish.
Clinical ethnography is a term first used by Gilbert Herdt and Robert Stoller in a series of papers in the 1980s. As Herdt defines it, clinical ethnography
is the intensive study of subjectivity in cultural context...clinical ethnography is focused on the microscopic understanding of sexual subjectivity and individual differences within cross-cultural communities. What distinguishes clinical ethnography from anthropological ethnography in general is (a) the application of disciplined clinical training to ethnographic problems and (b) developmental concern with desires and meanings as they are distributed culturally within groups and across the course of life.
Oumarou Ganda was a Nigerien director and actor who helped bring African cinema to international attention in the 1960s and 1970s.
Les maîtres fous is a 1955 short film directed by Jean Rouch, a well-known French film director and ethnologist. It is a docufiction, his first ethnofiction, a genre he is considered to have created.
The Hauka movement was a religious movement which arose in French Colonial Africa. It consisted of ceremonies, including mimicry and dancing, in which the participants performed the elaborate military ceremonies of their colonial occupiers. It was depicted in Les maîtres fous, a short film directed by Jean Rouch, a well-known French film director and ethnologist.
Ethnofiction refers to a subfield of ethnography which produces works that introduce art, in the form of storytelling, "thick descriptions and conversational narratives", and even first-person autobiographical accounts, into peer-reviewed academic works.
An ethnographic film is a non-fiction film, often similar to a documentary film, historically shot by Western filmmakers and dealing with non-Western people, and sometimes associated with anthropology. Definitions of the term are not definitive. Some academics claim it is more documentary, less anthropology, while others think it rests somewhere between the fields of anthropology and documentary films.
The Kurtey people are a small ethnic group found along the Niger River valley in parts of the West African nations of Niger, Benin, Mali, and Nigeria. They are also found in considerable numbers in Ghana, Togo, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso.
Kokorou or Kokoro is a town and rural commune in the Téra Department of western Niger.
Ethnocinema, from Jean Rouch’s cine-ethnography and ethno-fictions, is an emerging practice of intercultural filmmaking being defined and extended by Melbourne, Australia-based writer and arts educator, Anne Harris, and others. Originally derived from the discipline of anthropology, ethnocinema is one form of ethnographic filmmaking that prioritises mutuality, collaboration and social change. The practice's ethos claims that the role of anthropologists, and other cultural, media and educational researchers, must adapt to changing communities, transnational identities and new notions of representation for the 21st century.
Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In the United States, social anthropology is commonly subsumed within cultural anthropology or sociocultural anthropology.
Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan is a French and Nigerien anthropologist, and Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Marseilles. He is also Emeritus Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris and associate professor at Abdou Moumouni University in Niamey where he founded the master of socio-anthropology of health.
The battle of Anfao was fought between the troops of rebel General Muhammad Askia and Sonni Baru, the legitimate ruler of the Songhai Empire on April 12, 1493 at Anfao, outside the capital of Gao, on the upper Niger. Despite being outnumbered, Askia's troops won the day. The victory of Muhammad Askia ended the Sonni dynasty.
Jaguar is a 1967 French ethnographic film directed by Jean Rouch. Set in the 1950s, it follows three men from Niger, Damouré, Lam, and Illo, who travel to the Gold Coast for work. Much of the dialogue and narration in the film is provided by the three men themselves as they comment on their past experiences on their journey.
Cocorico! Monsieur Poulet is a 1977 Franco-Nigerien road movie by "Dalarou", a pseudonym for Damouré Zika, Lam Ibrahim Dia and Jean Rouch.
The Songhai proper are an ethnic group in the northwestern corner of Niger's Tillaberi Region, an area historically known in the country as Songhai. They are a subgroup of the broader Songhai group. Even though the Songhais have so much in common with the Zarma, to the extent that some Songhais may refer to themselves and their dialect as "Zarma," both see themselves as two distinct branches of the same ethnicity.
The Sohance are a social caste among the Songhai nobility. They are believed to be the direct descendants of the Sonni Dynasty and its last ruler, Sonni Ali Ber, the founder of the Songhai Empire, who reigned from 1464 to 1492.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
