The Potlatch Papers: A Colonial Case History

Christopher Bracken

ISBN 10: 0226069877 / ISBN 13: 9780226069876

Published by University Of Chicago Press, 1997

About this Item

Described as an exchange of gifts, a system of banking or a struggle for prestige, the potlatch is one of the founding concepts of anthropology. This book shows that the potlatch was invented by the 19th-century Canadian law which sought to destroy it, generating a batch of "potlatch papers". Num Pages: 224 pages, 9 halftones, 2 maps. BIC Classification: 1KBB; 1KBC; HBJK; HBLL; HBLW; HBTQ; HBTR; JHM. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational; (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly; (UU) Undergraduate. Dimension: 150 x 218 x 16. Weight in Grams: 356. . 1997. First Edition. Paperback. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780226069876

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Potlatch Papers: A Colonial Case History
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226069877
• ISBN 13: 9780226069876
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Variously described as an exchange of gifts, a destruction of property, a system of banking, and a struggle for prestige, the potlatch is one of the founding concepts of anthropology. Some researchers even claim to have discovered traces of the potlatch in all the economies of the world.

However, as Christopher Bracken shows in this elegantly argued work, the potlatch was in fact invented by the nineteenth-century Canadian law that sought to destroy it. In addition to giving the world its own potlatch, the law also generated a random collection of "potlatch papers" dating from the 1860s to the 1930s. Bracken meticulously analyzes these documents—some canonical, like Franz Boas's ethnographies, others unpublished and little known—to catch a colonialist discourse in the act of constructing fictions about certain First Nations and then deploying those fictions against them. Rather than referring to objects that already exist, the "potlatch papers" instead gave themselves something to refer to; a mirror in which to observe not "the Indian," but "the European."

About the Author

Christopher Bracken is professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. He is the author of The Potlatch Papers and Magical Criticism, also published by the University of Chicago Press.