These files relate to several book/essay projects Karp was thinking about and working on in his last years. One was on the history of anthropological theory; another related one was on the history of anthropology and social thought in South Africa. In
both, notions of pluralism and the contradictory and contested/conflictual nature of social life (and intellectual life) were prominent (with Isaiah Berlin and Georg Simmel as two of his favorite theorists). "Israel.nts" likely relates to the paper by Macmillan in connection with South African notions of race, ethnicity and pluralism. The paper by Catherine Burns is on the history of public health in South Africa, specifically on approaches to breastfeeding. Karp and Kratz had just seen Burns at a December 2009 conference at U of Michigan in honor of David William Cohen's retirement. Her paper includes discussion of the roles of a number of South African anthropologists in that history, and was pertinent to the projects Karp was working on. Karp likely put the file "QUOTES" here also in relation to notions of society and human relations. Two files here relate to ongoing thinking about museums and exhibits. First is a brief comment Karp wrote on Kratz's paper "Rhetorics of Value" concerning attention in exhibit. The other is a Christen pdf on the politics of knowledge and archive access, as relevant to their work on museums and heritage, probably sent to Karp by Kratz. Another file here, "Lampl paper," is a draft paper by Karp and Kratz's colleague Michelle Lampl. They were in conversation with her about revising this paper as a co-authored one that would consider issues related to power and knowledge production in relation to the research described in the draft. Kratz placed the"ChicagoCentennialConference1992" file in this folder as part of Karp's ongoing thinking about gender. See also files in the folder "Conference Papers, Notes and Talks" which relate to presentations Karp developed and presented, mostly after 2006. He had duplicates of several the files in this folder there as well.
The subfolder here "Notes for Book on History of Anthro" includes notes that Karp had in InfoSelect that sketch part of the argument of the paper/project on the history of social anthropology. The note was originally created on 30 November 2009.
One chapter of the book of essays (and maybe the book itself) was to be called "Confessions of an Unrepentant Structural-Functionalist." It would also have included the reading and work he was doing around Jack Simons, the South African anthropologist and his wife Ray. Another chapter was to be "Why British Social Anthropology Isn't British," and would look at who was in Malinowski's seminar and the gathering of people from a range of colonies there. Karp created files from the notes and added them to this subfolder.
Collection Restrictions:
Recommendations that Karp wrote for his colleagues and students are restricted until 2061.
Access to the Ivan Karp papers requires an appointment.
Collection Citation:
Ivan Karp papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Sponsor:
This collection was processed with the support of a Wenner-Gren Foundation Historical Archives Program grant awarded to Corinne Kratz.
