" Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental moment in the Human Sciences.", G.E. Marcus and M.J. Fischer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1986.
Virtual introduction by Mitzub'ixi Quq Chi'j
The crisis of Anthropology, the crisis of Representation, the crisis of Social Sciences.
"[H]ow an emergent postmodern world is to be represented as an object for social thought in its various contemporary disciplinary manifestations."(p.vvi)
In the paradigm of anthropology,
how to do a fieldwork?
how to write an ethnography?
"This essay ....... is an effort at clarifying the present situation of cultural and social anthropology."(p.viii)
British Anthropology
American Anthropology
French Anthropology
New Anthropologies in Brazil, India, Israel, Japan, and Mexico.
How to read the classics of Anthropology?
""What is happening" seems to us to be a pregnant moment in which every individual project of ethnographic research and writing is potentially an experiment"(p.ix)
"Anthropology is not the mindless collection of the exotic, but the use of cultural richness for self-reflection and self-growth."(pp.ix-x)
There are many experimental trials of the ethnography:
"characterized by eclecticism, the play if ideas free of authoritative paradigm, critical and reflexive views of subject matter, openness to diverse influences embracing whatever seems to work in practice, and tolerance of uncertainty about a field's direction and of imcompleteness in some of its projects."(p.x)
Institutional Crisis of the American Anthropology, pp.xi-xii.
How they have written this book & Acknowledgment.
Two Great Tradition of the Enlightenment in Anthropology:
i) "the salvaging of distinct cultural forms of life from a process of apparent global Westernization.."
ii)"to serve as a form of cultural critique for ourselves"
Two Books on the Cultural Critiques......,
they represent two predicaments of anthropology
i) Said, "Orientalism",1979 (pp.1-2)
ii)Freeman, "Margaret Mead and Samoa",1983 (p.3)
[the detail was discussed in the previous lecture]
how to reply for the two predicament:
i) Self-Critiques in 1960's
ii)"have not as yet generated as rich an experimental literature"(p.4)
Historical Tradition of Cultural Critiques of anthropology:
from 1920's to 1930's
"The present is a period of no riveting theoretical debates of fashions that unify the interests of social and cultural anthropologist"
riveting theoretical frame: functionalism?, structuralism?
linguistics (1950-60's)
literary criticism(1970-80's)
The Inside and Outside Stories of Anthropology
outside: the "shift from attempts generalizing theories of society to discussions about the problems of interpreting and describing social reality"(p.6)
inside:"the ethnographic monograph ....has occupied as a professional practice and the changes it is undergoing"(ibid.)
Chap 1. A Crisis of Representation of the Human Sciences, pp.7-16
(1)Clifford Geertz,"Blurred Genres",1980(in "Local Knowledge")
the current trend by nothing the fluid borrowing of ideas and methods from one discipline to another.
What is the New Criticism in the literary theory ?
(2)Jean-Francios Lyotard, "The Postmodern Condition",1979
Roots of the Crisis of Representation and the Cultural Critique
pp.-10
1) On Parsonian Sociology
2) On Marxism as a cultural critique
The impact and implication of White's "Metahistory",1973
"any historical or anthropological work exhibits emplotment, argument, and ideological implication",p.12
on irony
the strategy of emplotment
1) Romance
2) Tragedy
3) Comedy
In the historiography of nineteenth-century
" movement from Romance to Tragedy to Comedy, ending in a deep ironic mode"p.13
" The task....is..., to embrace and utilize it(irony) in combination with other strategies for producing realist descriptions of society.",p.14
Generalist works on social theory
Giddens, New Rules of Sociological Method,1976
Giddens,Central Problems of Social Theory,1979
Gouldner, The Coming Crisis in Western Sociology,1970
Bernstein, The Restructuring of social and Political Theory,1976
Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice,1977
Chap.2 Ethnography and Interpretive Anthropology pp.17
(introduction or overview) pp.17-
Difference between the twentieth-century anthropology and the mid- and late nineteenth century anthropology.
"Ethnography is a research process in which the anthropologist closely observes, records, and engages in the daily life of another culture -- an experience labeled as the fieldwork method -- and then writes accounts of this culture, emphasizing descriptive details." p.18.
Argonauts of the Western Pacific , the great classic
Two trends of anthropologies form the 20s to 30s. p.19
American anthropology; Cultural relativism
British anthropology; Functionalism
Two justifications of the ethnographic research process, p.20
(i) Capturing of cultural diversity
(ii) Cultural critique of ourselves
Three roles of the significance of ethnography in the professional careers of anthropologists. p.21
1. " the reading and teaching of exemplary ethnographic texts have been the major means of conveying to the students what anthropologists do and what they know. "
2. " ethnography is a very personal and imaginative vehicle by which anthropologists are expected to make contributions to theoretical and intellectual discussions, both within their discipline and beyond. "
3. " ethnography has been the initiatory activity which has launched careers and established reputations."
Two ambitions of the modern? anthropologist
1. " the anthropologist focuses his efforts on a different sort of holism : not to make universally valid statements, but to represent a particular way of life as fully as possible." p.22
2. " [t]he underdeveloped, relatively implicit side of ethnographic description focused on a cultural other is the reference it makes to the presumed, mutually familiar world shared by the writer and his readers." , p.23.
What is "good" ethnography ? pp.24-25
THE EMERGENCE OF INTERPRETIVE ANTHROPOLOGY pp.25-
In the historical situation and the academic condition of 60s and 70s
Culture as text, by Geertz(esp.1973)
What is interpretive anthropology ?
" The anthropologist, as Clifford Geertz was eventually to conclude (1973c), choose anything in culture that strikes his attention and then fills in detail and descriptive elaboration so as to inform readers in his own culture about meanings in the culture being described." p.29.
THE REVISION OF INTERPRETIVE ANTHROPOLOGY pp.33-
Three internal critiques of anthropology that appeared during the 1960s.
1. the emergence of interpretive anthropology
2. the critique of fieldwork as distinctive method of ethnographic research.
3. the critique of the ahistoric and apolitical nature of ethnographic research.
THE SPIRIT AND SCOPE OF EXPERIMENTAL ETHNOGRAPHIC WRITNG pp.40-44.
Challenge of Carlos Cantaneda(1968)'s "Teaching of Don Juan"
How do we evaluate of Bateson's "Naven",1936
The myth of Ethnographic Realism
Intension, Strategy, Critique,.....
Reflection of the experience of our own field work
Two currents of the writing ethnography
How does the cultural difference represent ?
Ethnography of Experience
Can we describe the process of the political economy ?
Globalized conditions of the realpolitik
Chap.3 Conveying other cultural experience: The person, self , and emotions, pp45-
the concept of the human
methodological individualism
Louis Dumont, 1970, Homo hierarchicus
Historical conditions
Mauss, Freud
Innovations in writing strategies
Geertz's "Person, Time and Conduct in Bali",1973
Is Balinese a different kind of human ?
David Schneider's work on American kinship
From exotic other to philosophically sophisticated other
Three modern experimental text on personhood
psychodynamic, realist, and modernist
I. Psychodynamic ethnographies, pp.48-54
On Freudian psychology
Levy's "Tahitians",1973:
Kracke's "Force and Persuation",1981:
Obeyesekere's "Medusa's Hair",1981
Summary of psychodynamic ethnographies
II. Realist ethnographies,pp.54-67
Objectivistic point of view of the realist ethnographer
Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown, 1920's- 30's
the whole by the part
Language competence
Fuctionalist:
Evans-Pritchard's "The Nuer",1940
Turner's "Schism and continuity in an African Society",1957
Evans-Pritchard's "The Nuer"
Turner's "Schism and continuity in an African Society"
Manchester School
What is the experimentalistic ?
Five "commonsence" frames for ethnographic display
life history, life cycle, ritual, aesthetic genres, dramatic incident
1) life history, pp.57-
Shostak, "Nisa",1981
Crapanzano's "Tuhami",1980
Nisa of !Kung
2) life cycle, pp.59-
Michell Rosaldo's "Knowledge and Passion",1980
3) ritual, pp.6-
functions of ritual, why so multi-functionals ?
Crapanzano's "Rite of Return",1980
Shieffelin's "The sorrow of the lonely and the burning of the dancers",1976
4) aesthetic genres, pp.63
Feld's "Sound and Sentiment",1982
5) dramatic incident, pp.64
Shore's "Sala'ilua",1982
Summary,p.67
III. Modernist texts, pp.67-73
the modernist against the realist
Text "is focused primarily on delivering a message by manipulating the form of a text and is radically concerned with what can be learned about another culture from full attention to the enactment of the research process itself.", pp.68-9
Some experience of the experiments
Dialogue
Some Critiques
Modernist strategies
1) dialogic,
2) construction of verbal interaction,
3) cooperative text composed by informant and anthropologist,
4) reading of "Tuhami"
A note on ethnographic poetics, film, and fiction
Other genres
Ethnographic poetics
The fiction and literature of the third world
Film medium
The ethnographic novel]
4. Taking Account of world Historical Political Economy: Knowable Communities in Larger Systems, pp.77-
Critiques against the interpretive anthropology
Raymond Williams ,1977,1981, on social-realist fiction
" Structure of feeling "
Against " some self-contained, homogeneous, and largely ahistoric framing of the cultural unit toward a view of cultural situations as always in flux, in a perpetual historically sensitive state of resistance and accommodetion to broader processes of influence that are as much inside as outside the local context ".p.78
Historicized ethnography
ethnographies of the political economy
1) attraction of ethnography for the student of P-E
2) meshing of interpretive and P-E perspective
3) texts " in the air "
THE ETHNOGRAPHIC MOOD IN POLITICAL ECONOMY ,pp.79-
What is the P-E ?
three major references for P-E
choice and dilemma in democratic society, latter-day Marxism, on world system
International settings of P-E
the World-System theory, by I Wallerstein
the attraction of W-S theory
Debate on the geographical regions of W-S theory
Paul Willis's Learning to Labor , 1977
the linkage of local situation and resistance
why does Willis use the Marxist frame of reference ?
Charles Sabel's , " Work and Politics ", 1982
In Italy
topics of labor
three authors influence the writing in P-E
THE MESHING OF POLITICAL ECONOMY AND INTERPRETIVE CONCERNS IN ANTHROPOLOGY , pp.85-
colonial conditions, Marxism, and anthropologist
Eric Wolf's " Europe and the People without History ", 1982
the idiom of PRACTICE and PRODUCTION
Cultural production
How do we articulate the interpretive framework to P-E theory ?
counter-ethnography
Strategic options of writing ethnography
1) peasant societies that are transforming
2) ethnography of the middle-class, elite, and the reorganization of labor
Images of capitalism
on " commodity fetishism "
the formation and condition of working-class
Michael Taussig's " The devil and commodity fetishism in South America ", 1980
1) secret pacts with the devil in Columbia
2) TIO in Bolivian mine
June Nash's , " We eat the mines and the mines eat us "
Difference between Taussig and Nash concerning capitalism and culture
ETHNOGRAPHY AND THE INVISIBLE HAND : p.90-
we could not describe the total society in which lager systems penetrate into their subjects's lives.
larger system vs. local society
two strategies of text construction
1) To try to represent in a single text by multi-vocality
2) Simultaneous description (local and global)
Textual difficulty of the simultaneous description
HISTORICIZING THE ETHNOGRAPHIC PRESENT , pp.95-
problematic " ethnographic present "
historicizing the ethnographic context, " historical ethnography "
Wallace, " The death and rebirth of the Seneca ", 1969
The conventional ethnography is neither " synchronic " nor " diachronic ".
Johannes Fabian's " Time and the Other ", 1983
We do not wipe out the evolutionist scheme
The bourgeois concept of TIME is actually spatialized
" how ethnography has tended to devalue its subjects relative to the west, often in spite of its best intentions, by premises about time embedded in its rhetoric and categories of thought. ", p.97
Three types of text
1) ethnohistorical text
2) text written in synchronic mode
3) text describing how the historical memory defines the present
Renato Rosaldo's " Illongot headhunting 1883-1974 "
interpretations of TIME between Renato and Illongot people
Richard Price's " First-Time ", 1983
"fisi-ten"
Marsahall Sahlins's " Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities ", 1981
Todorov's " The conquest of America ",1982
History .... is a shift in structures (p.106)
Michael Meeker's " Literature and Violence in North Arabia ", 1979
THE TWO BROAD TRENDS OF EXPERIMENTATION COMPARED , PP.108
Most of ethnographies " do register apolitical and historical sensitivity to the circumstances of their fieldwork and their writing. ", (p.108)
Two major experiment of writing ethnography
1) representing difference in itself
2) representing difference in larger and global context
From critical reflexiveness of ethnographer to Cultural Critique of our own culture
Chap. 5 The Repatriation of Anthropology as Cultural Critique. pp.111-136.
1. (introduction) pp.111-113
2. THE IDEA OF CULTURAL CRITIQUE p.113-117.
3. THE CURRENT FASHION OF CULTURAL CRITIQUE AND ITS PRECEDENTS. pp.117-119.
4. THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL. pp.119-122
5. SURREALISM. pp.122-125.
6. DOCUMENTARY CRITICISM IN AMERICA. pp.125-128.
7. THE TRADITION OF CULTURAL CRITIQUE IN ANTHROPOLOGY.pp.128-131.
8. THE CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE OF ANTHROPOLOGY. pp.131-132.
9. THE APPEAL OF ETHNOGRAPHY. pp.132-133.
10. THE DECLINING APPEAL OF THE PRIMITIVE/EXOTIC. pp.133-136.
Chap.6 Two Contemporary techniques of Cultural Critique in Anthropology. pp.137-164.
1. (introduction) pp.137-141.
2. EXAMPLES OF DEFAMILIARIZATION BY EPISTEMOLOGICAL CRITIQUE. pp.141-152.
3. STRONGER VERSIONS OF EPISTEMOLOGICAL CRITIQUE. pp.152-157.
4. EXAMPLES OF DEFAMILIARIZATION BY CROSS-CULTURAL JUXTAPOSITION. pp.157-162.
5. STRONGER VERSION OF CROSS-CULTURAL JUXTAPOSITION. pp.162-163.
6. THE MULTIPLE RECEPTIONS OF ETHNOGRAPHY. pp.163-164.
A Concluding Note. pp.165-168.