Background
Mrs. Durrenberger was born in Houston, Texas, United States, on July 2, 1943. He is a son of E. B. (a postal worker) and M. Y. Durrenberger.
(The first edition of the widely popular Anthropology Unbo...)
The first edition of the widely popular Anthropology Unbound prepared readers to see how the dynamics of Western economies were rapidly becoming unsustainable. This updated edition takes readers into the heart of the economic meltdown as it explains the many recent world events it had predicted. With the unique perspective of anthropology, this book offers a wider view of the present financial crisis-as well as pathways out of it. It describes the latest studies of fundamentalism, Al-Qaeda, and American culture, inviting students into an anthropological way of understanding our own society and the world at large.
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(American labor leaders are constantly developing new prog...)
American labor leaders are constantly developing new programs to revive the union movement. What happens when these plans collide with the daily lives of front-line union staff and members? This book examines the often conflicting interests of key players in the trenches of a national effort to bring back the American labor movement. Brutally honest, funny, never dull, this anthropological ethnography shows the daily struggles of union members today to bring about positive change and hold together their urban labor union in an era of globalization, outsourcing, and deindustrialization. A union activist and an anthropologist (the authors) pair up to offer insideoutside views of labor unions and of how anthropological fieldwork is done. Explaining, coaching, and warning Paul of hazards, Suzan, the communications director for the Local, provides inside views and details of day-to-day interactions. Paul, the anthropologist, provides outside analytical views that related Suzan's experiences and his own observations to the wider view anthropology offers through ethnography, holism, and comparativism. The result is a story of one dynamic union local, one anthropological study, and the lit fuse that connects them until the end.
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(Fisheries issues have been attracting increasing media at...)
Fisheries issues have been attracting increasing media attention in the wake of contamination scares, controversies over new government regulations, and environmental concerns about coastal zone management—especially the loss of wetlands, coastal erosion, pollution, and overfishing. Scrutinizing the people, policies, institutions, and issues tied to the shrimping industry in Mississippi, Paul Durrenberger provides this first examination ever of the complexities of an American fishing industry in a single geographical area. He presents an analysis of one elaborate system—from the toils and turmoils of the people who catch the shrimp to the quandaries facing the policymakers who try to regulate them. The shrimping industry, he contends, occurs on a series of interrelated levels and dimensions and is influenced by the ideas and actions of shrimpers, processors, fisheries managers, bureaucrats, creditors, environmentalists, and scientists. It is also one segment of a wider social, political, economic, and environmental totality. At a local level Durrenberger investigates the impact of competition from Vietnamese refugees, rivalry between bay and gulf fishermen, an escalating overpopulation of shrimpers in general, and wide-spread resistance to costly, federally mandated devices designed to save sea turtles. Exploring how the industry is increasingly bound to the global economy, he illuminates the threat to the livelihoods of independent shrimpers from ever increasing imports. Durrenberger assesses the adequacy of folk models of shrimpers and policymakers alike. Decisions about the industry's future, he argues, must be based on valid data and realistic expectations. Too often policies are derived from untested folk models—concepts formulated by participants to justify or rationalize rather than explain what they do. Based on detailed interviews, Gulf Coast Soundings will be a valuable resource for anthropologists, policymakers, public administrators, resource managers, sociologists, biologists, and anyone involved or interested in the economic and environmental future of the Gulf Coast, or more generally, in fisheries and coastal areas.
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("The only introductory anthropology text I have seen that...)
"The only introductory anthropology text I have seen that has the courage not only to address current humanitarian issues of class and state, but to tackle the problems with a clear, logical, empirical ethnographic approach." Karaleah Reichart, University of North Carolina "Conversational, explanatory, and provocative, with a clear point of view on the contemporary world." Josiah Heyman, University of Texas at El Paso For novice readers who may not regard anthropology as relevant to today's headlines this book is a break-through. Durrenberger and Erem show how seeing the world through an anthropological lens enhances our understanding of such current topics as globalization, the new economy, jobs and careers, world trade, the condition of inner cities, and racial and ethnic relations. Written in lively prose the book is vital to any social science collection.
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(Book by Durrenberger, E. Paul)
Book by Durrenberger, E. Paul
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(As witness to four hundred years of social, economic, and...)
As witness to four hundred years of social, economic, and political change, the sagas of medieval Iceland provide access not only to a single energetic past but to processes of continual change. In this innovative book, which connects the political economy of medieval Iceland and its rich cultural artifacts, E. Paul Durrenberger brings anthropological perspectives to bear on the study of medieval Iceland and brings medieval Iceland into the purview of anthropology. The social order of stratified, stateless medieval Iceland contained a dynamism that inexorably led to the discord of the Sturlung age. Icelanders interpreted their experiences within existing cultural categories and from these interpretations produced the family sagas and the Sturlung sagas. Durrenberger convincingly argues that the sagas are not simply thirteenth-century accounts of earlier times but also the cultural artifacts of the age that created them; moreover, the free translations of the sagas are really nineteenth- and twentieth-century artifacts that impose market and modern state perspectives on the radically different society of medieval Iceland. The rendering of the sagas as a political act revaluing honor, reciprocity, and law can be understood only in the cultural context of their time. For anthropologists unfamiliar with the Icelandic tradition, Durrenberger meticulously illustrates his arguments with contextual analyses of saga plots and episodes. He presents his anthropological theses in a way that will enlighten historians, social scientists, and saga and other literary scholars. By addressing methodological issues of translation and contextualization and using sophisticated models of medieval domestic economy and cross-cultural comparisons, The Dynamics of Medieval Iceland serves as an exemplary case study in the expansion of social contexts for literary analysis as well as in the anthropological use of literary and historical data.
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(Book by Durrenberger, Paul, Tannenbaum, Nicola)
Book by Durrenberger, Paul, Tannenbaum, Nicola
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anthropologist educator writer
Mrs. Durrenberger was born in Houston, Texas, United States, on July 2, 1943. He is a son of E. B. (a postal worker) and M. Y. Durrenberger.
From 1961 to 1962 E. Paul Durrenberger attended Texas A & M University. In 1964 he obtained Bachelor of Arts degree from University of Texas at Austin. In 1966 he graduated from Washington State University with Master of Arts. Mr. Durrenberger was a graduate of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, from which he received Doctor of Philosophy in 1971.
Between 1962 and 1965 E. Paul Durrenberger was an archaeological researcher and field worker for Texas Archaeological Research Laboratory, Texas Memorial Museum, Smithsonian Institution, and Washington State University. In 1966 he worked at Eastern New Mexico University, Portales, as an instructor in anthropology.
During 1971-1972 Mr. Durrenberger acted as an assistant professor of anthropology at Antioch College. From 1972 till 1976 he was appointed assistant professor at University of Iowa, Iowa City, associate professor during 1976-1982 and professor of anthropology since 1982. In 1984 E. Paul Durrenberger held the post of a Fulbright professor at University of Iceland. From 1987 to 1989 he served as a visiting professor at University of South Alabama.
Mr. Durrenberger conducted field work in Thailand and Iceland. He was a consultant to University of Chiangmai. National Public Radio, commentator for the series All Things Considered, 1995-1996.
E. Paul Durrenberger was a contributor to books, including Perspectives on the Informal Economy, From Sagas to Society: Social Approaches to Medieval Iceland, Understanding Witchcraft and Sorcery in Southeast Asia. Contributor of more than a hundred articles and reviews to professional journals, including Human Organization, Labor's Heritage, World and I, Journal of Anthropological Research, Ethnos, and American Anthropologist. He was a member of board of editors, Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 1979-1989.
(Fisheries issues have been attracting increasing media at...)
("The only introductory anthropology text I have seen that...)
(As witness to four hundred years of social, economic, and...)
(The first edition of the widely popular Anthropology Unbo...)
(American labor leaders are constantly developing new prog...)
(Book by Durrenberger, Paul, Tannenbaum, Nicola)
(Book by Durrenberger, E. Paul)
Quotations:
E. Paul Durrenberger told CA: "I write to communicate what I have learned as an anthropologist. This takes two forms: academic writing for journals and less stilted writing for wider audiences. The first kind of writing is necessary for professional credibility. You have to prove that you can make interesting people and fascinating places boring. The second kind of writing is more to my liking: trying to bring the insights of anthropology to a wider audience. I tried to this in my radio commentaries and in my recent book Icelandic Essays: Explorations in the Anthropology of a Modern Nation."
"There are two kinds of influences on my work: Positive and negative. I try to avoid what I don’t like in professional writing: obfuscatory rhetoric, pedantry, breathy rediscoverings of the wheel. On the Positive side are those writers who I think have managed a degree of clarity: Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Condon, Paul Corey, Halldor Laxness, John Steinbeck, among others. Not many of these are anthropologists or academics."
"My writing process is to do field work, figure things I'll try to tell other people what I think I’ve found 0ut, rethink things. I draw pictures, make outlines, start writing, keep writing. The most irritating thing about the whole process is trying to be my own agent. Since academic writing doesn’t pay at all, there are no agents to place the work. I have to do the drudgerous and thankless task of trying to get my work placed. That is the part I like the least."
fellow; member of executive board, 1994-1996; president of Culture and Agriculture Group, 1994-1996
American Anthropological Association , United States
American Ethnological Association , United States
member of executive committee, 1974-1985, president, 1978-1980
Council on Thai Studies , United States
founding member; member of executive board, 1982-1985; president, 1995-1996
Society for Economic Anthropology , United States
member of editorial board
Society for the Anthropology of Europe , United States
Society for Humanistic Anthropology , United States
Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study , United States
Association for Asian Studies , United States
Central States Anthropological Society , United States
founding member
Association of Iowa Archaeologists , United States
Phi Kappa Phi , United States
He married Dorothy Burr in 1963.
