[kadonoishi]

I once read a small book for an anthropology class, and got more and more puzzled, and rather incensed. It was covering its subject well but with this bizarre hodgepodge of different anthropological framings, some of them quite anachronistic, some current, jumping around with jarring inconsistency.

I got to the end (it was a small book, only maybe 110pp) wondering what in the heck this thing was, and flipped to look at the author at the back. And it was a missionary! Instantly my attitude flipped; I was in awe that a missionary could do such good anthropology, and the inconsistencies in framing made perfect sense.

This author has good psychological insights, but her theoretical framings are somewhat mis-specified, inconsistent, sometimes out-of-date by psychological standards, to my eye. But it's very good stuff.

artist : psychologist :: missionary : anthropologist

[raincom]

"Missiology is the academic study of the Christian mission history and methodology". Earlier, Missiology used to be called as "Practical Anthropology". Even today, the best materials for learning phonetics and linguistics practically come from Christians, because of their drive to proselytize everyone on this earth, with various languages, etc. "Summer Institute of Linguistics" is one such.

[ragazzina]

>I was in awe that a missionary could do such good anthropology, and the inconsistencies in framing made perfect sense.

The author graduated in Cultural Anthropology some 30 years before writing the book.

[quietthrow]

What’s the name of the book? Can’t just leave that hanging !

[kadonoishi]

Gah, that would be hard to dig out. It was over 30 years ago.

edit: Ok that wasn't too hard, it was in a box. It's

"Fields on the Hoof: Nexus of Tibetan Nomadic Pastoralism" by Robert B. Ekvall, 1968, 1983.

Thanks for making me go find that, the notebook for the class is interesting to look at again.