Review of \u3ci\u3e Theorizing the Americanist Tradition\u3c/i\u3e Edited by Lisa Philips Valentine and Regna Darnell

The twenty-five essays in this volume enhance our understanding and appreciation of the Americanist tradition of anthropological theory and practice. The Americanist tradition, as several authors point out, has been concerned historically with Native-language texts and the knowledge they encode about the culture of Native communities and the individuals who compose them. The Americanists\u27 concern with texts was manifested in the efforts of Albert Gatschet, George Dorsey, James Dorsey, Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, and others in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to document and preserve the oral knowledge of cultures that were being rapidly transformed or erased altogether. Theoretically, the Americanists believe in the inseparability of language, thought, and reality; they see culture as a mutable, historically contingent system of symbols. Practically, the texts-which are the products of long-term fieldwork and involvement with single communities-continue to serve as the bases for both ethnographic and linguistic studies