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In Memoriam: Thomas A. Abercrombie (1951–2019)
Colonial Latin American Review Pub Date : 2019-10-02 , DOI: 10.1080/10609164.2019.1681145
Brooke Larson 1
Affiliation  

Thomas Abercrombie succumbed to liver cancer in the prime of his scholarly life. Having invested almost two decades in research and writing his second major monograph, Tom’s new book, Passing to América: Antonio (née María) Yta’s transgressive, transatlantic life in the twilight of the Spanish Empire (2018), appeared only months before he died. Waiting in the wings was another massive book project, tentatively entitled, ‘Silver Leviathan’ : geo-biosocial entanglements in the global city. Mountain and heritage site of Potosí (Bolivia), 1545– 2018. And, as if those projects were not enough to keep this prodigious researcher occupied for decades at a time, Tom had started a new research project on a Spanish wine-growing region that recovered its ‘virtual commons’ (sense of cultural heritage and locality) against the atomizing forces of the global economy. This astonishing new body of work is, if I may be allowed a pun, vintage Abercrombie. All three projects sit at the intersection of Anthropology, History, and Theory. His ethnographic work plumbs the cultural depths of his Andean and Spanish subjects, while his historical horizons encompass the trajectories of transatlantic journeys, Potosí’s silver mining economy, and commodity capitalism over five centuries. And, in the grand tradition of the Chicago school of symbolic Anthropology, Tom’s granular approach to his subjects was enriched by his deep immersion in theory and methodology. The reader would be delighted by Tom’s vivid depictions of plebeian life in the colonial mining town of Oruro; or Doña María’s strange life and escape from the convent; or the intricacies of colonial mining technology. But the reader would also be privy to Tom’s engagement with Bourdieu’s concepts of habitas, schema, and field; or cultural theories on the interplay between ‘narrativity and performativity,’ or the ‘intersectionality of sex and gender.’ There were always many layers of meaning to excavate—to the delight of students in graduate seminars. But Tom’s books were also infused with thick description—vivid stories based on deep archival research that grounded his occasional flights of theory. It was this rare interdisciplinary combination, and the interplay of genres of analysis and writing, that perhaps most distinguished Tom’s scholarly contribution to Andean Ethnohistory. Long before he embarked on those three research projects, Tom Abercrombie made an indelible mark on the field of Andean Studies with the publication of his first book, Pathways of memory and power: ethnography and history among an Andean people (1998). Dropping his ethnographic anchor in the K’ulta villages of rural Oruro, Tom set out to study how the Aymara-speaking people of that region understood and represented their collective past of oppression and survival under almost 500 years of Spanish colonialism and republican domination. The research journey took Tom into the field, where he began work by studying the K’ulta’s ritual forms of communal life and local statecraft. After a year or so in the field, Tom embarked on another year of archival research. What might have been a standard ethnography of Andean ritual life among the K’ulta grew into a monumental ethnohistorical study that explored the reciprocal interplay between Andean and European traditions of power and memory in dynamic, power-laden contexts over almost 500 years of colonial and postcolonial domination. As always, Tom pursued an underlying theoretical agenda, which tried to navigate

中文翻译:

缅怀:Thomas A. Abercrombie (1951–2019)

托马斯·阿伯克龙比 (Thomas Abercrombie) 在他学术生涯的黄金时期死于肝癌。投入了近二十年的时间进行研究并撰写了他的第二本主要专着,汤姆的新书《穿越到美国:安东尼奥(原名玛丽亚)在西班牙帝国的黄昏(2018 年)中越过大西洋的生活》,在他去世前几个月才出版。等待在翼的是另一个庞大的图书项目,暂定名为“银色利维坦”:全球城市中的地理-生物社会纠缠。波托西(玻利维亚)的山脉和遗产地,1545 年至 2018 年。而且,好像这些项目还不足以让这位了不起的研究人员一次忙上几十年,汤姆开始了一项关于西班牙葡萄酒产区的新研究项目,该项目恢复了其“虚拟公地”(文化遗产和地方感)以对抗全球经济的原子化力量。这个令人惊讶的新作品是,如果我可以用双关语,老式 Abercrombie。这三个项目都处于人类学、历史和理论的交叉点。他的民族志工作探索了他的安第斯和西班牙主题的文化深度,而他的历史视野涵盖了跨越五个世纪的跨大西洋旅行、波托西的银矿经济和商品资本主义的轨迹。而且,在芝加哥象征人类学学派的宏伟传统中,汤姆对他的学科的细致入微的方法因他对理论和方法论的深入沉浸而得到了丰富。汤姆对殖民矿业城镇奥鲁罗平民生活的生动描绘会让读者感到高兴。或多娜·玛丽亚 (Doña María) 奇异的生活和逃离修道院;或复杂的殖民采矿技术。但是读者也会知道汤姆对布迪厄的栖息地、图式和场域概念的参与;或关于“叙事性和表演性”之间相互作用的文化理论,或“性与性别的交叉性”。总是有很多层次的意义需要挖掘——让研究生研讨会上的学生感到高兴。但汤姆的书中也注入了大量的描述——基于深入档案研究的生动故事,为他偶尔的理论飞行奠定了基础。正是这种罕见的跨学科组合,以及分析和写作体裁的相互作用,这也许是汤姆对安第斯民族史最杰出的学术贡献。早在开始这三个研究项目之前,汤姆·阿伯克龙比 (Tom Abercrombie) 出版了他的第一本书《记忆与权力之路:安第斯人民的民族志和历史》(1998),在安第斯研究领域留下了不可磨灭的印记。在奥鲁罗乡村的库尔塔村落下他的民族志锚,汤姆开始研究该地区的艾马拉人如何理解和代表他们在近 500 年的西班牙殖民主义和共和统治下的集体压迫和生存过去。研究之旅让汤姆进入了这个领域,在那里他开始研究库尔塔人的公共生活仪式形式和地方治国方略。在该领域工作一年左右后,汤姆开始了又一年的档案研究。可能是库尔塔人安第斯仪式生活的标准民族志发展成为一项具有里程碑意义的民族历史研究,该研究探索了安第斯与欧洲权力和记忆传统在近 500 年的殖民和殖民时代的动态、充满权力的环境中的相互作用。后殖民统治。一如既往,汤姆追求一个潜在的理论议程,试图导航
更新日期:2019-10-02
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