Gazing at the Puerto Rican Anthropological Landscape: The “Natives” Look Far and Wide

Before World War II, most anthropological research in Puerto Rico was led by US anthropologists. The most famous project, The People of Puerto Rico, was directed by American anthropologist Julian Steward and launched the career of renowned scholars such as Sidney Mintz and Eric Wolf. Gazing at the Puerto Rican Anthropological Landscape aims to delineate the development of the post-WWII anthropological field in Puerto Rico by Puerto Rican anthropologists, the so-called “native” anthropologists. The contributors to Gazing at the Puerto Rican Anthropological Landscape deploy the term “native” somewhat ironically, but they also know that who they are affects their positionality vis-à-vis their research subjects. Thus, they retain the term to spark a conversation addressing the complicated feelings that such labels still evoke among non-mainstream anthropologists.

Gazing at the Puerto Rican Anthropological Landscape purposely avoids making Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans a problem to study and instead focuses on a wide variety of epistemological and methodological questions related to the study of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans by “native” anthropologists within local, regional, and global spheres. We posit that the Puerto Rican anthropological landscape transcends the confines of the island of Puerto Rico to encompass its connection and engagement with the larger world, and that it is not limited to the inhabitants of the island of Puerto Rico but embraces members of its diaspora, as well as other groups and ethnicities. On that note, this book seeks to reflect critically on how the academic field of anthropology (research and teaching) in Puerto Rico has evolved, post-WWII, in various engagements with the current debates of contemporary anthropology — theoretical, methodological, socio-cultural, political, and otherwise.