In Applying Anthropology, Assembling Community Nicholas Barron examines how members of the borderlands Pascua Yaqui Tribe selectively and creatively incorporated anthropologists, and anthropological research and writing, in their pursuit of cultural revitalization and political recognition in and beyond Southern Arizona. In subtle but impactful ways, Yaqui efforts have contributed to the coproduction of the public image of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, a local legacy of applied research, and anthropological theories of persistence. Barron’s approach to archival research documents key instances from the 1930s to the present as Indigenous intellectuals deployed and shaped anthropological scholars, texts, ideas, and institutions in their efforts to refashion the diasporic and migratory Pascua Yaqui as a distinct American Indian community and polity.
Applying Anthropology, Assembling Community skillfully reveals the intertwined histories of anthropology and Indigenous politics through the Pascua Yaqui and offers a critical contribution to theoretical debates in history, cultural anthropology, museum studies, and Indigenous studies about the coproduction of science and society. It also highlights the agency of organic Indigenous intellectuals and the problems of previously under-theorized Indigenous contributions to the formation and application of anthropological knowledge over the longue durée.