- Michael E. Harkin
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Michael Eugene Harkin is an American anthropologist specializing in the ethnohistory of indigenous people of the western U.S. and Canada.
From 1985 to 1987 he conducted fieldwork in the Heiltsuk community of Bella Bella, B.C. More recently he has worked with the Nuu-chah-nulth (formerly "Nootka") people of Vancouver Island, and several groups of the northern Great Plains.
He received his Ph.D. in 1988 from the University of Chicago, where he studied with Raymond D. Fogelson, Nancy Munn, and Marshall Sahlins.
His early monograph on the Heiltsuks employed a dialogic perspective to understand issues of power and representation of both self and other. This was influenced by Lévi-Straussian structuralism and the historical structuralism of Sahlins. In more recent works, he has pursued a range of interests, primarily in the analysis of indigenous culture in a historical context. His work on revitalization movements revisits one of the classic ethnohistorical theories. He has also contributed to the literature on ethnoecology, arguing that traditional Northwest Coast ecological models expressed via ritual and myth non-linear system dynamics.
He is professor and chair of anthropology at the University of Wyoming. Previously he taught at Emory University and Montana State University. In 2007 he was a visiting professor at Shanghai University.
He is editor of the journal Ethnohistory. He is theme editor for cultural anthropology of UNESCO's Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems.
He has edited several important books on Native Americans and the environment, revitalization movements, and Northwest Coast ethnology. He has published extensively on anthropological history and theory, especially the Boasian tradition, and the structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss. He was a visiting fellow in Lévi-Strauss' laboratory in 1997.
He is currently working on a project on the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island, in which he argues that the visual and textual record of the coastal Algonquians represents the origin of a modern anthropological consciousness.
Bibliography
- Harkin, Michael E. (1993) Power and Progress: The Evangelical Dialogue among the Heiltsuk. Ethnohistory 40(1):1-33.
- Harkin, Michael E. (1994) Contested Bodies: Affliction and Power in Heiltsuk History and Culture. American Ethnologist 20(4):586-605.
- Harkin, Michael E. (1995) Modernist Anthropology and Tourism of the Authentic. Annals of Tourism Research 22(3):650-70.
- Harkin, Michael E. (1996) Carnival and Authority: Heiltsuk Schemata of Power in Ritual Discourse. Ethos 24(2):281-313.
- Harkin, Michael E. and Sergei Kan (eds.) (1996) Native American Women’s Responses to Christianity. Ethnohistory 43(4).
- Harkin, Michael E. (1997) The Heiltsuks: Dialogues of Culture and History on the Northwest Coast. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.
- Harkin, Michael E. (1998) Whales, Chiefs, and Giants: An exploration into Nuu-chah-nulth Political Thought. Ethnology 37(4):317-32.
- Harkin, Michael E. (2001) "Ethnographic Deep Play: Boas, McIlwraith, and Fictive Adoption on the Northwest Coast." In Strangers to Relatives: The Adoption and Naming of Anthropologists in Native North America, ed. by Sergei Kan, pp. 57–79. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.
- Harkin, Michael E. (2001) Potlatch in Anthropology, In International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes, (eds.) vol. 17, pp. 11,885-11,889. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
- Kornfeld, Marcel, Michael Harkin, and Jonathan Durr (2001) Landscapes and Peopling of the Americas. In On Being First: Cultural Innovation and Environmental Consequences of First Peopling, Proceedings of the 31st Annual Chacmool Conference, Jason Gillespie, Susan Tupakka, and Christy de Mille (eds.) pp. 149–162.
- Harkin, Michael E. (2002) (Dis)pleasures of the Text: Boasian Anthropology on the Northwest Coast. In Gateways: Exploring the Legacy of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, 1897-1902, Contributions to Circumpolar Anthropology, v. 1. Igor Krupnik and William Fitzhugh (eds.) pp. 93–106. Washington, DC: Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution.
- Harkin, Michael E. (2003) Staged Encounters: Indians and Tourism. Ethnohistory 50(3):573-583.
- Harkin, Michael E. (2003) Feeling and Thinking in Memory and Forgetting: Towards an Ethnohistory of the Emotions. Ethnohistory 50(2):261-284.
- Mauzé, Marie, Michael E. Harkin, and Sergei Kan (eds.) (2004) Coming to Shore: Northwest Coast Ethnology, Traditions, and Visions. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.
- Harkin, Michael E. (2004) Northwest Coast Sacred Places. Acta Americana 12(2):5-13.
- Harkin, Michael E., 2004, Lévi-Strauss en Amérique : L’ « indigénisation» du Structuralisme. In Claude Lévi-Strauss Michel Izard (ed.) pp. 373–382. Paris: Éditions de l’Herne.
- Harkin, Michael E. (ed.) (2004) Reassessing Revitalization Movements: Perspectives from North America and the Pacific Islands, foreword by Anthony F.C. Wallace. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.
- Harkin, Michael E. (2005) The House of Longing: Missionary-led Changes in Heiltsuk Domestic Forms and Structures. In Indigenous Peoples and Religious Change, Peggy Brock (ed.) pp. 205–226. Leiden: Brill.
- Harkin, Michael E. (2006) ‘I’m an Old Cow Hand on the Banks of the Seine’: Representations of Indians and Le Far West in Parisian Commercial Culture. In New Perspectives on Native North America: Cultures, Histories and Representations, Sergei Kan and Pauline Turner Strong (eds.) pp. 815–846. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.
- Harkin, Michael E. and David Rich Lewis (eds.) (2007) Native Americans and the Environment: Perspectives on the Ecological Indian. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.
- Harkin, Michael E. (2007) Performing Paradox: Narrativity and the Lost Colony of Roanoke. In Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact, John Lutz (ed.) pp. 103–117. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
- Harkin, Michael E. (2008) The Floating Island: Anachronism and Paradox in The Lost Colony. In Small Worlds: Method, Meaning, and Narrative in Microhistory, James F. Brooks, Christopher R. DeCorse, and John Walton (eds.) pp. 121–44. Santa Fe: SAR Press.
- Whitehead, Neil and Michael E. Harkin (eds.) (2009) Anthropology of Violence. Anthropology and Humanism 34(1).
- Harkin, Michael E. (2009) Lévi-Strauss and History. In The Cambridge Companion to Claude Lévi-Strauss, Boris Wiseman (ed.), pp. 39–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Categories:- Living people
- 1958 births
- American anthropologists
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