In Applying Anthropology, Assembling Community Nicholas Barron examines how members of the borderlands Pascua Yaqui Tribe selectively and creatively incorporated anthropologists, and anthropological research and writing, in their pursuit of cultural revitalization and political recognition in and beyond Southern Arizona. In subtle but impactful ways, Yaqui efforts have contributed to the coproduction of the public image of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, a local legacy of applied research, and anthropological theories of persistence. Barron's approach to archival research documents key instances from the 1930s to the present as Indigenous intellectuals deployed and shaped anthropological scholars, texts, ideas, and institutions in their efforts to refashion the diasporic and migratory Pascua Yaqui as a distinct American Indian community and polity. Applying Anthropology, Assembling Community skillfully reveals the intertwined histories of anthropology and Indigenous politics through the Pascua Yaqui and offers a critical contribution to theoretical debates in history, cultural anthropology, museum studies, and Indigenous studies about the coproduction of science and society. It also highlights the agency of organic Indigenous intellectuals and the problems of previously under-theorized Indigenous contributions to the formation and application of anthropological knowledge over the longue duree.
Nicholas Barron is an assistant professor-in-residence of anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is the coeditor in chief of the History of Anthropology Review and convener of the American Anthropological Association's History of Anthropology Interest Group.
"Nicholas Barron brilliantly shows why engagement with the history of anthropology is essential for anthropology's ongoing praxis. Taking on the vexed question of American anthropology's past and present relationship to Native American nations, Barron shows that Pascua Yaqui activists and intellectuals both worked with anthropologists and made use of their knowledge, resources, good will, and institutional connections as they forged their own historical ontology that took them from Mexico to Arizona, where they achieved federal recognition as an American Indian tribe."--Richard Handler, professor of anthropology at the University of Virginia "Tracing the history of anthropological involvement in the formation and transformation of political community among the Pasqua Yaqui, Nicholas Barron carefully examines not only the politics of anthropologists but how Yaqui intellectuals and activists engaged and deployed anthropology to their own ends, under conditions not of their own choosing. Meticulously researched, theoretically sophisticated, and highly readable, this exceptional book adds crucial insight and nuance to debates on the relationships between anthropology, Indigenous peoples, colonialism, and imperialism."--Mark Anderson, professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz
