Participation in the 2026 American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings special panel "On the Verge of Breaking Boundaries in Anthropological Scholarship and Practice: The Multidimensional and Longitudinal Influence of Norman E. Whitten, Jr." provides an opportunity for the Kawsay Ukhunchay Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Art Research Collection to share with broader academic publics our collective work on Amazonian Canelos Quichua ceramics and research insights inspired by the prolific scholarship of our donor, Norman E. Whitten.
The anthropological work conducted by Norm Whitten reveals a trajectory of breaking down categories within and across subfields of anthropological studies as well as transgressing disciplinary boundaries, long before such boundary-crossing became popular. He has described cultural entities not as isolated or timeless, but rather on the verge of transformations based on interactions with the state and with other societies throughout wide regional areas. Dr. Whitten has consistently defied categories separating Latin American and Caribbean anthropology into often opposing fields of Black/African American, Indigenous, Andean, or lowland South America/Amazonian studies. He has also resisted conceptual oppositional oversimplifications, such as traditional v. acculturated, urban v. rural, applied v. academic, and aesthetic v. intellectual. Dr. Whitten's work over more than half a century demonstrates adept understandings of broad, cross-cutting phenomena such as ecology, symbolism, ethnoaesthetics, gendered dynamics, history, capitalist exploitation, Indigenous rights, and state policy and nuanced approaches to aspects of cultural life deemed “micro” or trivial. He has demonstrated that to understand people we have to focus on interconnections, and to understand culture, we must look to history. The papers in this panel present anthropological studies influenced by Dr. Whitten's scholarship and focus on how people on the verge of cultural transformations not only endure and resist, but also adapt, recreate, and maintain their identities.
