Indigenous Communalism

Belonging, Healthy Communities, and Decolonizing the Collective

By Carolyn Smith-Morris

Rutgers University Press

From a grandmother’s inter-generational care to the strategic and slow consensus work of elected tribal leaders, Indigenous community builders perform the daily work of culture and communalism. Indigenous Communalism conveys age-old lessons about culture, communalism, and the universal tension between the individual and the collective. It is also a critical ethnography challenging the moral and cultural assumptions of a hyper-individualist, twenty-first century global society.

Told in vibrant detail, the narrative of the book conveys the importance of communalism as a value system present in all human groups and one at the center of Indigenous survival. Carolyn Smith-Morris draws on her work among the Akimel O'odham and the Wiradjuri to show how communal work and culture help these communities form distinctive Indigenous bonds. The results are not only a rich study of Indigenous relational lifeways, but a serious inquiry to the continuing acculturative atmosphere that Indigenous communities struggle to resist. Recognizing both positive and negative sides to the issue, she asks whether there is a global Indigenous communalism. And if so, what lessons does it teach about healthy communities, the universal human need for belonging, and the potential for the collective to do good?

Inspiring and thought provoking, Indigenous Communalism is both an innovative ethnography of communalism and collectivist life and a conveyor of critical hope for our times. We move with the author along a compelling journey committed to Indigenous rights but also to viewing humanity’s future through the lens of Indigeneity, open to the possibility (if not necessity) of transforming the divisive politics that defines our individualist age into a more socially just communalist world. Mark K. Watson, author of Japan’s Ainu Minority in Tokyo: Diasporic Indigeneity and Urban Politics

‘Indigenous Communalism can serve as an introduction to those interested in indigenous studies, southern epistemologies, and decolonial thinking, as a resource for moving forward contemporary social theory, and as a complement to global south proposals by showing that it is in the complex realm of hybridity and diversity where struggles for sense making take place.’ César Abadía-Barrero, author of I Have AIDS but I am Happy: Children’s Subjectivities, AIDS and Social Responses in Brazil

Carolyn Smith-Morris is an associate professor of anthropology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. She is the author of Diabetes among the Pima, editor of Diagnostic Controversy: Cultural Perspectives on Competing Knowledge in Healthcare, and co-editor of Chronic Conditions, Fluid States: Chronicity and the Anthropology of Illness.

Preface
            Positioning
            Acknowledgements

Introduction
            To Begin, What is Communalism?
            Politics of Indigeneity - What is Indigenous?
            or
            Terms, Frames, and Representations
            Why is Communalism Missing
            The Dangers of Communalism
            Communalism and Health
            Community with the Name ‘Gila River’
            Committing to Communal Rights of Indigenous Peoples
            Outline of the Book

Chapter 1 - Belonging
            Introductions
            Relationships and Being Present
            Building Consensus
            An Introduction to Communalism
            The Dangers of Communalism
            The Touchstones of Belonging
            Conclusion - More than Membership

Chapter 2 - Generation
            Individuals in a Communal Context
            Western Individualism
            Pima Individualism(s)
            Generating Community Out of Individuals

Chapter 3 - Representation
            Authority and Representation
            Representing Communal Knowledge
            Representation & Race - Communal Genetics
            Representing Indigenous Diversity

Chapter 4 - Hybridity
            Hybridity and Human Community
            Extremes of Communalism
            Individual/Communal Conflict at Gila River
            Theories of Hybridity and Divisibility
The Communal Individual
            Protecting the Communal Individual

Chapter 5 - Asserting Communalism
            Case 1 - Communalism in Research
Case 2 - Communalism and the Body
Case 3 - Communalism in Healing
Fostering Communalism

Chapter 6 - Indigenous Communalism - Global Implications
            Is There a Global Indigenous Communalism?
            Place
            Global Indigenous Communalism
            Foundations in Place
            Communalism and Rights
            Conclusion - Representing Communalism

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Index

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