Thanks for this Tim. It is kind of a privilege to see a scholar early on in their research struggling to organize a position in a field, or in fields, that were changing or needing change. Smith might seem like he's not recognizing all the possibilities but I'm guessing his attempt to navigate fixed positions was not esay. I didn't know of Douglas Hall's study and that's really interesting. On your first two critical readings of early JAH, it is a wonder it survived to present some incredibly important work. As I mentioned before, it would be really intriguing to review the editorial correspondence around the selection of these early pieces for the journal.
And of course here suddenly the most obvious thing in the world hits me: is there an archive of the Journal's correspondence? I should see. Though at this point it becomes dangerously close to an actual no-fooling research project and I am not sure I want to go entirely down this particular rabbit hole that much, not the least because I have a field full of partially-dug holes.
Yes, thanks for sharing this, Tim. I was quite fascinated by it and started to wonder if there were connections between this Smith and Raymond Smith, who was on my dissertation committee. (Not kinship connections but anthropological ones, which is maybe kinship by other means.) I’m enjoying this new series of yours,
Thanks! I'm trying to balance staying impressionistic and not getting it completely wrong, so quickly assessing people like Smith or Murdoch risks the latter--as one correspondent has noted, there's much more careful examples of this kind of re-reading of a field or a discipline increment by increment like George Stocking, but that's the fulcrum where this would shift from being a dip in the pool to being a deep dive.
Thanks for this Tim. It is kind of a privilege to see a scholar early on in their research struggling to organize a position in a field, or in fields, that were changing or needing change. Smith might seem like he's not recognizing all the possibilities but I'm guessing his attempt to navigate fixed positions was not esay. I didn't know of Douglas Hall's study and that's really interesting. On your first two critical readings of early JAH, it is a wonder it survived to present some incredibly important work. As I mentioned before, it would be really intriguing to review the editorial correspondence around the selection of these early pieces for the journal.
And of course here suddenly the most obvious thing in the world hits me: is there an archive of the Journal's correspondence? I should see. Though at this point it becomes dangerously close to an actual no-fooling research project and I am not sure I want to go entirely down this particular rabbit hole that much, not the least because I have a field full of partially-dug holes.
Yes, thanks for sharing this, Tim. I was quite fascinated by it and started to wonder if there were connections between this Smith and Raymond Smith, who was on my dissertation committee. (Not kinship connections but anthropological ones, which is maybe kinship by other means.) I’m enjoying this new series of yours,
Thanks! I'm trying to balance staying impressionistic and not getting it completely wrong, so quickly assessing people like Smith or Murdoch risks the latter--as one correspondent has noted, there's much more careful examples of this kind of re-reading of a field or a discipline increment by increment like George Stocking, but that's the fulcrum where this would shift from being a dip in the pool to being a deep dive.