Biography of Anthropologists

For the record, there is nothing about the subject matter (human behavior, material culture, human communication, cognition, receiver-oriented perspectives, and inference) that marks any of it as particularly postmodern, scientific, or humanistic. But Schiffer's data language and theoretical principles do seem to be consistent with mainstream positivist science. Thus, this un-named approach is in direct opposition to the calls of many postmodernists to resist temptations to formulate and test formal positivist theories of any kind.

This article recalls a discussion about Barack Obama’s mother and her biography which emerged during the course of the American presidential elections in 2008. S. Ann Dunham was a cultural anthropologist holding a PhD from the University of Hawaii and specializing in Indonesian peasant blacksmithing and cottage industry. She passed away in 1995 relatively unknown to the American anthropological world and totally unknown to the American public. Interest in Obama’s family made Dunham and her biography as well as her anthropology appear publicly. Even though she was labeled an “uncaring mother,” who was to “abandon” small Barack, a biographical book by Janny Scott published in 2011 depicts a deep and complex portrait of Dunham which does not go along with popular opinions. It is interesting to observe how Dunham’s biography has been constructed and how her family history mirrors transformation of American society and reveals entanglement between private life and anthropological interests.