History of Anthropology is a series of annual volumes, inaugurated in 1983, each of which treats an important theme in the history of anthropological inquiry. Objects and Others, the third volume, focuses on a number of questions relating to the history of museums and material culture studies: the interaction of museum arrangement and anthropological theory; the tension between anthropological research and popular education; the contribution of museum ethnography to aesthetic practice; the relationship of humanistic and anthropological culture, and of ethnic artifact and fine art; and, more generally, the representation of culture in material objects. As the first work to cover the development of museum anthropology since the mid-nineteenth century, it will be of great interest and value not only to anthropologist, museologists, and historians of science and the social sciences, but also to those interested in "primitive" art and its reception in the Western world.
George W. Stocking, Jr., is the Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. He is the author of many books, including Victorian Anthropology; After Tylor: British Social Anthropology, 1888–1951; Delimiting Anthropology, and The Ethnographer's Magic. He founded the History of Anthropology series published by the University of Wisconsin Press and edited its first eight volumes.