The Color Line Redefined in the Twenty-first Century in Wake of the Anti-Affirmative Action Suits Against the University of Michigan

How are ethnographic photographs from the twentieth century accessed and represented in the twenty-first century? This report from the Tuzin Archive for Melanesian Anthropology at the University of California San Diego Library provides an overview of the photographic materials, arrangements and types of documentation in the archive, followed by summaries of specific digitization projects of the photographs from physician Sylvester Lambert and anthropologists Roger Keesing and Harold Scheffler, among others. Through the process of digitization and online access, ethnographic photographs are transformed and may be discovered and contextualized in new ways. Utilizing new technologies and forming broad collaborations, these digitization projects incorporate both anthropological and archival practices and also raise ethical questions. This is an in-depth look at what is digitized and how it is described to re/create meaning and context and to bring new life to these images.

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Multisituated

10.1215/9781478022206 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Kaushik Sunder Rajan

Keyword(s):

Knowledge Production ◽

First Century ◽

Conditions Of Possibility ◽

Political Intervention ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

The University

In Multisituated Kaushik Sunder Rajan evaluates the promises and potentials of multisited ethnography with regard to contemporary debates around decolonizing anthropology and the university. He observes that at the current moment, anthropology is increasingly peopled by diasporic students and researchers, all of whom are accountable to multiple communities beyond the discipline. In this light, Sunder Rajan draws on his pedagogical experience and dialogues to reconceptualize ethnography as a multisituated practice of knowledge production, ethical interlocution, and political intervention. Such a multisituated ethnography responds to contemporary anthropology’s myriad commitments as it privileges attention to questions of scale, comparison, and the politics of ethnographic encounters. Foregrounding the conditions of possibility and difficulty for those doing and teaching ethnography in the twenty-first-century, Sunder Rajan gestures toward an ethos and praxis of ethnography that would open new forms of engagement and research.

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Newcomers, Outsiders, and Insiders: Immigrants and American Racial Politics in the Early Twenty-first Century By Ronald Schmidt Sr., Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh, Andrew L. Aoki and Rodney E. Hero University of Michigan Press. 2009. 336 pages. $70 cloth, $24.95 paper

Social Forces ◽

10.1353/sof.2010.0094 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 89 (1) ◽

pp. 357-359

Author(s):

K. Ebert

Keyword(s):

Racial Politics ◽

First Century ◽

University Of Michigan ◽

Early Twenty ◽

Twenty First Century

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Sustaining Racial Retrenchment

Undermining Racial Justice ◽

10.7591/cornell/9781501748585.003.0007 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 164-187

Author(s):

Matthew Johnson

Keyword(s):

Affirmative Action ◽

Black Students ◽

Global Economy ◽

University Of Michigan ◽

Student Body ◽

New Policies ◽

The University ◽

Corporate Model

This chapter describes how the University of Michigan (UM) leaders fought to preserve the new affirmative action policies. In this context, diversity—the idea that a racially heterogeneous student body improved education and prepared students for a multiracial democracy and global economy—became a tool to defend and sustain the new policies. Diversity helped sever the purpose of affirmative action from addressing the inequality rooted in cities, offered ambiguous goals that helped officials avoid accountability, and advanced administrators' interests in introducing a corporate model for the university. The diversity ideal, in other words, did not spark racial retrenchment. Instead, diversity became a tool to sustain the university's policies of retrenchment. Administrators still had to work to retain control over the meaning of diversity and ensure it supported the new policies. When diversity took hold among administrators, black students and their allies tried to employ diversity language to undermine the policies of retrenchment. Administrators ensured that never happened.

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