The Distributed Text: An Annotated Digital Edition of Franz Boas’ Pioneering Ethnography

FAIN: HD-51565-12

Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-9800)
Aaron Glass (Project Director: October 2011 to May 2016)

Early-stage development of a digital edition of Franz Boas' The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians, which will be annotated extensively by joining distributed collections from archival and museum collections.

Under the rubric of a new Franz Boas Critical Edition book series, we propose to reprint and annotate Boas's important 1897 monograph The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians in both print and as a multimedia website. Framed with scholarly essays and contemporary Kwakwaka'wakw perspectives, the new editions will re-unite the original text with widely distributed archival and museum collections that shed new light on the book. This project will reveal the nature of co-authorship in Boas's work, use multimedia to return sensory richness to his ethnography, and make this historic research more relevant to contemporary scholars and indigenous communities. The Digital Humanities Start Up Grant (level II) will be used to fund a workshop to plan the digital edition; for design of a wiki for collaborative research; for travel to determine the full range of materials to be digitized; for production of sample webpages to test interfaces and functionality; for salary toward project administration and digital technology assistance; and for development of innovative software to reproduce and render searchable the large amounts of Kwakw'ala-language materials.

Associated Products

“The Distributed Text: Uniting Museums, Archives, and Indigenous Knowledge around Franz Boas’s 1897 Monograph.” (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “The Distributed Text: Uniting Museums, Archives, and Indigenous Knowledge around Franz Boas’s 1897 Monograph.”
Author: Aaron Glass
Author: Judith Berman
Abstract: Franz Boas's 1897 monograph, The Social Organization and Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians, was a landmark in anthropology for its integrative approach to museum collections, photographs and sound recordings as well as text. A result of participant observation and extensive collaboration with indigenous partners—especially George Hunt—the book set a standard for both ethnography and museum practice. However, both Boas and Hunt remained dissatisfied with the published text, laboring for decades to correct and supplement a volume that would forever mediate global knowledge of the Kwakwaka’wakw. They left behind a vast archive of unpublished materials relevant to the creation and afterlife of this seminal text and its related museum collections. These materials are now widely distributed across institutional, disciplinary, and international borders so that related ethnographic records have become fractured, thereby limiting the documentary potential at each site and the research possibilities for both scholars and indigenous communities. This paper discusses a current collaborative project to create a new, annotated critical edition of the work that unites published and unpublished materials with one another and with current Kwakwaka’wakw knowledge in an interactive, multimedia website. Archival revelations about the truly co-authored nature of the original text allow us to better situate the contexts and methods of creating ethnographic knowledge in terms of the indigenous epistemologies it purports to represent. Moreover, new digital technologies can harness multimedia to return sensory richness to Boas and Hunt’s synthetic text, to reactivate disparate and long dormant museum collections, and to restore cultural patrimony to its indigenous inheritors.
Date: 11/14/2012
Primary URL: https://aaa.confex.com/aaa/2012/webprogram/Session6046.html
Primary URL Description: Session listing at AAA conference
Conference Name: Presented at the session "Transcending Shifts and Frictions in the Museum 'Apparatus,'" American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA

“The Distributed Text: A Critical Digital Edition of Franz Boas’s 1897 Monograph.” (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “The Distributed Text: A Critical Digital Edition of Franz Boas’s 1897 Monograph.”
Author: Aaron Glass
Abstract: Panel abstract: "Returned & Received" This panel focuses on the reception of digital materials when there are multiple stakeholders involved. Specifically panelists will discuss the interaction between and within Indigenous communities, nation-states, collecting institutions, local and regional communities as they relate to the return and reception of digital materials. These various stakeholders all interact with and have various claims to the preservation and circulation of these cultural materials and the attendant knowledge embedded within them. This panel addresses the intended and unintended consequences of returning materials.
Date: 01/18/2012
Primary URL: http://digitalreturn.wsu.edu
Primary URL Description: Conference website
Conference Name: Presented at After the Return: Digital Repatriation and the Circulation of Indigenous Knowledge, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC

“The Distributed Text: An Annotated Digital Edition of Franz Boas's Pioneering Ethnography.” (Article)
Title: “The Distributed Text: An Annotated Digital Edition of Franz Boas's Pioneering Ethnography.”
Author: Aaron Glass
Author: Judith Berman
Abstract: A description of the Boas 1897 digital edition project.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://www.cas-sca.ca/culture/documents/Culture_Vol_6_1_Spring_2012.pdf
Primary URL Description: Downloadable file of the complete issue.
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Culture: The Canadian Anthropology Society Newsletter
Publisher: Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA)

“About the Back Cover.” (Article)
Title: “About the Back Cover.”
Author: Judith Berman
Author: Aaron Glass
Abstract: Brief description of the Boas 1897 critical edition project and extended annotation for a mask illustrated in it.
Year: 2013
Primary URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/article/511945
Primary URL Description: Link to the article for subscribers to the journal or to Project Muse.
Access Model: Subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Manoa
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

---