Brackette Williams

Last updated
Brackette Williams
Born
Brackette F. Williams

(1955-10-21) October 21, 1955 (age 67)
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater Cornell University
Johns Hopkins University
University of Arizona
Scientific career
FieldsAnthropology
Institutions Duke University
Queens College, City University of New York
The New School
University of California, Berkeley
Johns Hopkins University
University of Chicago
University of Arizona

Brackette F. Williams is an American anthropologist, and Senior Justice Advocate, Open Society Institute. She is currently an associate professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Arizona. [1] [2]

Contents

Williams graduated from Cornell University with a BS, from the University of Arizona with a master's in Education, and from the Johns Hopkins University with a PhD in Cultural Anthropology. She has taught at Duke University, Queens College, the New School for Social Research, the University of California, Berkeley, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Chicago, [3] and the University of Arizona. [4] [5] [6]

Her work has centered on the Caribbean region, and in particular, examined how racial and ethnic categories are reproduced in Guyana nationalism. [7] Categories and classification systems - how they are developed, what basis they have in cultural contexts, and how they are put to use, by whom and for whom - have been a general theme in her work as well. [8] Williams's ethnographic work on the categories informing capital punishment in the United States demonstrates has also been an interest. She was editor of the journal Transforming Anthropology.

Awards

Works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthropology</span> Scientific study of humans, human behavior, and societies

Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavior, while cultural anthropology studies cultural meaning, including norms and values. A portmanteau term sociocultural anthropology is commonly used today. Linguistic anthropology studies how language influences social life. Biological or physical anthropology studies the biological development of humans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cultural anthropology</span> Branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans

Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The term sociocultural anthropology includes both cultural and social anthropology traditions.

Race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society. The term came into common usage during the 16th century, when it was used to refer to groups of various kinds, including those characterized by close kinship relations. By the 17th century, the term began to refer to physical (phenotypical) traits, and then later to national affiliations. Modern science regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society. While partly based on physical similarities within groups, race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning. The concept of race is foundational to racism, the belief that humans can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tribe</span> Human social group

The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. Its definition is contested, in part due to conflicting theoretical understandings of social and kinship structures, and also reflecting the problematic application of this concept to extremely diverse human societies. The concept is often contrasted by anthropologists with other social and kinship groups, being hierarchically larger than a lineage or clan, but smaller than a chiefdom, nation or state. These terms are equally disputed. In some cases tribes have legal recognition and some degree of political autonomy from national or federal government, but this legalistic usage of the term may conflict with anthropological definitions.

An ethnicity or ethnic group is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of perceived shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include a common nation of origin, or common sets of ancestry, traditions, language, history, society, religion, or social treatment. The term ethnicity is often used interchangeably with the term nation, particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Anthropological Association</span> Learned society in Virginia, U.S.

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is an organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 10,000 members, the association, based in Arlington, Virginia, includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, biological anthropologists, linguistic anthropologists, linguists, medical anthropologists and applied anthropologists in universities and colleges, research institutions, government agencies, museums, corporations and non-profits throughout the world. The AAA publishes more than 20 peer-reviewed scholarly journals, available in print and online through AnthroSource. The AAA was founded in 1902.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kinship</span> Web of human social relationships

In anthropology, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist Robin Fox says that the study of kinship is the study of what humans do with these basic facts of life – mating, gestation, parenthood, socialization, siblingship etc. Human society is unique, he argues, in that we are "working with the same raw material as exists in the animal world, but [we] can conceptualize and categorize it to serve social ends." These social ends include the socialization of children and the formation of basic economic, political and religious groups.

The Caucasian race is an obsolete racial classification of humans based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. The Caucasian race was historically regarded as a biological taxon which, depending on which of the historical race classifications was being used, usually included ancient and modern populations from all or parts of Europe, Western Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa.

Political anthropology is the comparative study of politics in a broad range of historical, social, and cultural settings.

Feminist anthropology is a four-field approach to anthropology that seeks to transform research findings, anthropological hiring practices, and the scholarly production of knowledge, using insights from feminist theory. Simultaneously, feminist anthropology challenges essentialist feminist theories developed in Europe and America. While feminists practiced cultural anthropology since its inception, it was not until the 1970s that feminist anthropology was formally recognized as a subdiscipline of anthropology. Since then, it has developed its own subsection of the American Anthropological Association – the Association for Feminist Anthropology – and its own publication, Feminist Anthropology. Their former journal Voices is now defunct.

American Anthropologist is the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), published quarterly by Wiley. The "New Series" began in 1899 under an editorial board that included Franz Boas, Daniel G. Brinton, and John Wesley Powell. The current editor-in-chief is Elizabeth Chin.

Biocultural anthropology can be defined in numerous ways. It is the scientific exploration of the relationships between human biology and culture. "Instead of looking for the underlying biological roots of human behavior, biocultural anthropology attempts to understand how culture affects our biological capacities and limitations."

Various attempts have been made, under the British Raj and since, to classify the population of India according to a racial typology. After independence, in pursuance of the government's policy to discourage distinctions between communities based on race, the 1951 Census of India did away with racial classifications. Today, the national Census of independent India does not recognise any racial groups in India.

Dennis B. McGilvray is a professor in the Department of Anthropology in University of Colorado at Boulder. Dennis's research interest are focused on the Tamils and Muslims of south India and Sri Lanka. His research examines matrilineal Hindu and Muslim kinship, caste structure, religious ritual, and ethnic identities in the Tamil-speaking region of eastern Sri Lanka. It is also important to note that this region is deeply affected by the island’s civil war. He is also interested in visual anthropology and alternative modes of cultural representation. At University of Colorado, he teaches on Tamil culture; upper division courses on symbolic anthropology, Foundations of Theory, and South Asian ethnography and a graduate seminar on Ethnography and Cultural theory.

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.

Carol Lowery Delaney is an American anthropologist and author.

This bibliography of anthropology lists some notable publications in the field of anthropology, including its various subfields. It is not comprehensive and continues to be developed. It also includes a number of works that are not by anthropologists but are relevant to the field, such as literary theory, sociology, psychology, and philosophical anthropology.

Francis L. K. Hsu was a China-born American anthropologist, one of the founders of psychological anthropology. He was president of the American Anthropological Association from 1977 to 1978.

The Indid race is an obsolete term for the physical type most common among populations native to the Indian subcontinent. The Indid type was classified as belonging to the Mediterranean branch of the greater Caucasoid race in 19th and 20th century anthropological literature.

Morton Klass was an American anthropologist known for his studies of caste and kinship in India, as well as his work on religion and culture among the Bhojpuri-speaking Indo-Caribbean population.

References

  1. "Brackette F. Williams | the School of Anthropology". Archived from the original on 2013-06-27. Retrieved 2013-04-25.
  2. "Science, Technology, and Society Center". Archived from the original on 2010-06-10. Retrieved 2010-05-05.
  3. "University of Chicago News".
  4. "School of Anthropology - Faculty, Staff, and Students". Archived from the original on 2010-12-05. Retrieved 2010-05-05.
  5. "CAMPUS LIFE: Arizona; Campus Police Attend Classes On Sensitivity", The New York Times, February 16, 1992
  6. "Anthropologist Brackette F. Williams will give Flemmie Kittrell Lecture on U.S. ethnic relations, March 29". Archived from the original on 2011-06-07. Retrieved 2010-05-05.
  7. Williams, Brackette F. (12 April 1991). Stains on My Name, War in My Veins: Guyana and the Politics of Cultural Struggle. ISBN   0822311194.
  8. Williams, Brackette F. 1995. Classification Systems Revisited: Kinship, Caste, Race, and Nationality as the Flow of Blood and the Spread of Rights. In Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Analysis, ed. Sylvia Yanagisako and Carol Delaney, 201-236. London: Routledge.
  9. "Fellows List - W - MacArthur Foundation". Archived from the original on 2008-09-24. Retrieved 2009-01-29.
  10. "Brackette Williams | U.S. Programs | Open Society Foundations". Archived from the original on 2011-06-11. Retrieved 2010-05-05.