Anthropology

Theoretical Practice in
Culture and Society

Michael Herzfeld

I] BLACl<WELL
Publishe,·s

mm
m~
Copyright© UNESCO 2001 This work is grounded in a collective endeavor.

First published 2001 The other contributors to the project that generated it are:
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 Marc Abeles, Nurit Bird-David, John Borneman,
Constance Classen, David Coplan, Veena Das, Sara Dickey,
Blackwell Publishers Inc. Arturo Escobar,
350 Main Street Nestor Garcia Canclini, Don Handelman,
Malden, Massachusetts 02148
USA Ulf Hannerz, Vaclav Hubinger, Kay Milton, Juan Ossio,
Michael Roberts,
Blackwell Publishers Ltd Don Robotham, David Scott,
108 Cowley Road and Nicholas Thomas.
Oxford OX4 1JF
UK
Their original formulations may be found in UNESCO's
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism International Social Science Journal, issues 153 (September 1997)
and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or and 154 (December 1997).
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Herzfeld, Michael, 1947-

Anthropology : theoretical practice in culture and society / Michael Herzfeld
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index
ISBN 0-631-20658-2 (alk. paper)-ISBN 0-631-20659-0 (pb. : alk. paper)
1. Ethnology-Philosophy. 2. Ethnology-Methodology. I. Title

GN345.H47 2001
301-dc21
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GN345 .H47 2001

Herzfeld, Michael, 1947-
Anthropolo gy : theoretical
practice in culture and
society
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by Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong
Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall

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 PREFACE
xvi
for me was a very new kind of authorship: Marc Abeles, Nurit Bird-David, John 1
Borneman, Constance Classen, David Coplan, Veena Das, Sara Dickey, Arturo
Escobar, Nestor Garda Canclini, Don Handelman, Ulf Hannerz, Vaclav Hub­
inger, Kay Milton, Juan Ossio, Michael Roberts, Don Robotham, David Scott,
and Nicholas Thomas. This was an adventure that their good-natured tolerance
Orientations: Anthropology as a
and intellectual forthrightness made both possible and enjoyable. Some of them Practice of Theory
continued to argue and to offer often provocative and always helpful sugges­
tions almost up to the final completion of the manuscript; I could not have asked
for better stimulation. I strongly urge readers to consult these colleagues' orig­
inal essays, published in issue 153 (September 1997) and 154 (December 1997)
of International Social Science Journal, in order to appreciate more directly the
remarkable synergy involved in the overall production of the ideas represented
here. In the preparation of the manuscript, I relied heavily on the tactful effi­
ciency and intellectual engagement of Yu-son Jung, and I am also deeply Anthropology: A critique of common sense
indebted to Thomas Malaby and Saipin Suputtamongkol for their editorial and
substantive input. At UNESCO, Nadia Auriat and David Makinson, ably
Social and cultural anthropology is "the study of common sense." Yet co­
assisted by Glynis Thomas, were a source of inspiring support during the journal
mmon sense is, anthropologically speaking, seriously mis-named: it is neither
phase, while at Blackwell Publishers I not only delightedly found myself once
common to all cultures, nor is any version of it particularly sensible from
again working with my old comrade-in-arms from American Ethnologist days,
the perspective of anyone outside its particular cultural context. It is the
Jane F. Huber - a special pleasure indeed - but also rapidly came to appreciate
socially acceptable rendition of culture, and is thus as variable as are both
the professional thoroughness as well as the compassion and friendship of Tony
cultural forms and social rules - those twin axes that define the formal objects
Grahame and the steady support of Simon Eckley: few authors can have been
of anthropological theory. Whether viewed as "self-evidence" (Douglas 1975:
the beneficiaries of such a fortunate convergence! 276-318) or as "obviousness," common sense - the everyday understanding
of how the world works - turns out to be extraordinarily diverse, maddeningly
inconsistent, and highly resistant to skepticism of any kind. It is embedded
in both sensory experience and practical politics - powerful realities that
constrain and shape access to knowledge. How do we know that human beings
have really landed on the moon? We are (usually) convinced of it - but how
do we know that our conviction does not rest on some misplaced confidence
in the sources of our information? If we have reason to doubt that others
are entirely successful in making sense of the world, how do we know - given
that we cannot easily step outside our own frame of reference - that we are
doing any better?
To be sure, this challenge to what we might call scientific and rational
credulity was not what the earliest anthropologists (in any professionally rec­
ognizable sense) had in mind. To the contrary, they were convinced of their own­
cultural superiority to the people they studied, and would have reacted with
astonishment to any suggestion that science could be studied in the same way
as "magic." They did not see that distinction as itself symbolic; they thought it
was rational, literal, and real. But their thinking was no less mired in the struc­
tures and circumstances of colonial domination than were those of the colo­
nized peoples they studied, although their angle of perspective was necessarily
different - so that it is hardly surprising that they reached different conclusions,
whether or not these had any empirical validity. In recognizing this embarrass­
ing ancestry for our field, I want to suggest more than an intellectual exercise
 ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY 3
2 ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY

in imagination or atonement for collective past sins. I want to suggest that Yet the task becomes correspondingly more difficult as the politics and
anthropology has learned as much - and can therefore teach as much - by atten­ worldview under study move closer not only to home but to the centers of effec­
tion to its mistakes as by the celebration of its achievements. That is, after all, tive power. Anthropology entails the unveiling of intimate practices that lie
behind rhetorical protestations of eternal truth, ranging from "that's always
what we urge students of anthropology to do in the field - so much so that the
responses to solecisms and poor judgement can often be more informative than been our custom", in almost every village and tribal society studied by
responses to the most carefully crafted interview protocol. The achievements are the anthropologists of the past, to the evocation of science and logic by every
largely matters of factual recording (and even these are often in dispute); but modern political elite (see, e.g., Balshem 1993; Zabusky 1995). We should
the social character of the most abstract theory has begun to be much more not be surprised if those whose authority may be compromised by such re­
apparent to us, and, paradoxically, this awareness of entailment has allowed us velations do not take too kindly to becoming the subjects of anthropologi-
to be much more rigorously comparative than ever before - to see our own cal research. Calling themselves modern, they have claimed above all to
worldview, with anthropology its instrument and its expression, in the same have achieved a rationality capable of transcending cultural boundaries (see
terms as we view those distant others on whom we have for so long fixed our Tambiah 1990). They have characterized other societies as pre-modern, and
have attributed to these a lack of specialization in domains requiring mental
gaze. So why not study science as an ethnographic object?
Much recent anthropological work has indeed inspected the claims of modern activity. Thus, the political was held to be inextricably embedded in kinship and
technology, politics, and science. Notably, the entire field of medical anthro­ more generally in the social fabric of such societies. In the same way, art was
pology (see especially Kleinman 1995) has challenged the claims of a crass not distinguished from craft or from ritual production; economic life was sus­
scientism that - as Nicholas Thomas observes in a somewhat different con­ tained by social reciprocities and belief systems; and science could not emerge
text - has failed to keep pace with developments in science itself .. There has as an autonomous field because human beings had not yet found efficient ways
clearly been an enormous expansion of the discipline's topical range since the of disentangling the practical from the religious (or the superstitious, as this
Victorians' preoccupation with what they called savage societies. That expan­ domain was sometimes called, presupposing a besetting incapacity to separate
sion, moreover, entails much more than a mere broadening of factual or even cosmological belief from pure philosophy on the one hand and practical knowl­
theoretical horizons. It is a rearrangement of the very principles of intellectual edge on the other). Thus, anthropology's main task was seen as the study of .
domains of the social - politics, economics, kinship, religion, aesthetics, and so \ '·
perspective.
Anthropology, a discipline that has thus developed an ironic sense of its own on - in those societies the members of which had not learned to make such
social and cultural context, is particularly well equipped to challenge the sepa­ abstract distinctions. Long after the demise of evolutionism as the dominant
ration of modernity from tradition and rationality from superstition - perhaps, theory of society and culture, this evolutionist assumption sustained the cate­
ironically, in part because it played an enormously influential role in the cre­ gories of modernity and tradition as the basis for teaching anthropology, and
ation of this antinomy. The constant exposure of anthropologists in the field to hence also the illusion that societies that had announced themselves to be
the cultural specificity of their own backgrounds undoubtedly played an impor­ modern and advanced had somehow managed to rise above the inability to con­
ceptualize the abstract and so had succeeded in rationalizing the social through
tant part in generating a sense of - and discomfort with - the cultural vainglory
of the centres of world power. Indeed, a famous spoof by Horace Miner (1956), the specialization of tasks.
an article in which he analysed the curious body rituals of the "Nacirema" (a Yet such assumptions could not be long sustained. They quickly clashed with
well-known tribal group, spelled backwards), makes fun of scholars' formal way the direct experience of field research, as Thomas observes: long immersion
of theorizing everyday matters. Instead of merely poking fun at the ease with among the populations towards which such condescension was directed under­
which scholars are seduced by the vanity of expertise, however, Miner raised mined the sense of absolute superiority and empirically discredited basic pre­
a serious question of epistemology: why should the supposed rationality of suppositions. Indeed, as Stocking (1995: 123, 292) has noted, the turn to
western lifestyles escape the sardonic eye of the anthropologist? The question fieldwork - even before Malinowski - was crucial in undermining evolutionist
is serious because it is fundamentally political, and the evidence for this perspectives even though their organizing framework was to prove disturbingly
confronts anthropologists in the field at every turn. A study (Ferreira 1997) of persistent: knowing those about whom one writes as neighbors and friends
Amazonian responses to Western-imposed mathematical conventions, for makes lofty ideas about the hierarchy of cultures both untenable and distaste­
example, shows that the denial of natives' cognitive capacities may be an inte­ ful. Increasingly anthropologists began to apply at home what they had found
gral part of their exploitation and even extirpation by the local agents of inter­ helpful in supposedly simple societies. Mary Douglas (1966), in arguing for a
national commercial interests. Anthropology is often about misunderstandings, cultural and social definition of dirt against a purely biochemical one, pro­
including anthropologists' own misunderstandings, because these are usually the foundly challenged the hygiene-centered preoccupations of European and North
outcome of the mutual incommensurability of different notions of common American societies that Miner had so mercilessly satirized. Marc Abeles per­
ceives politics in modern Europe, at least in part, as a resuscitation of local-level
sense - our object of study.
 ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY 5
4 ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY

lack of it) than through his perceptive recognition that the jaded ex-colonialist
values and relations, to the interpretation of which the anthropologist's grass­
French hotelier was at least as good a subject for ethnographic investigation
roots perspective affords especially immediate access.
as the romantic Berber denizens of the kasbah and the suq. Such moves help
Yet we should not expect too great a role for anthropology in the future: that
to make the "unmarked" carriers of modernity both visible and interesting
"the foreign relativizes the familiar" is less useful and startling today, when the
and to dismantle their rhetoric of cultural neutrality. Even as some European
knowledge that anthropologists produce is immediately open to criticism by
critics, for example, assail anthropologists for daring to study Europeans
those about whom it is produced as they come to share an increasingly large
themselves on the same terms as exotic savages, thereby exposing a cultural
range of communications technology with us. Nevertheless, this assessment
hierarchy that is indeed worth studying in its own cultural and social context,
might itself be cause for optimism about the potential for anthropology to con­
the recent, rapid intensification of this focus on "the West" has also helped to
tribute usefully to current social and political criticism. Hand-wringing about
dissolve much of the residue of anthropology's own embarrassingly racist
the crisis of representation should not obscure the fact that some of the more
origins. Fortunately, the absence of so-called Western societies from the roster
considered critiques themselves generated important new insights and depar­
of generally acknowledged ethnographic sites, a situation that implicitly repre­
tures. Even the disillusionment with fieldwork that began to appear in the 1960s
sented such societies as transcending culture itself, is now being trenchantly
- and especially with its claims to theoretically objective rigor - had the effect
redressed.
of strengthening this rejection of the radical separation between the observer
In Rabinow's book, moreover, we see one of the most perverse strengths of
and the observed and so created more, not less, empirically grounded forms of
anthropology: that its capacity for even quite destructive self-examination has
knowledge. provided a pedagogical tool of considerable value. Furthermore, anthropology's
It is especially telling that, as Nestor Garcia Canclini has emphasized, the
rapid growth of urban social forms has dealt a decisive blow to that separation now skeptical view of rationalism offers a healthy corrective to the more uni­
versalistic assumptions common in other social-science disciplines, while its
between observer and observed (and to the exclusive focus of some of the more
persistent localism provides a strong vaccine against universalizing the particu­
traditional or "exoticizing" forms of anthropology on "salvage" work). As he
laristic values of cultures that happen to be politically dominant. Whenever the
points out, anthropologists are themselves subject to most of the forces th_at
affect the urban populations they study. By the same token, however, the dis­ end of anthropology has been proclaimed from within there has been a renewal
of both external interest and internal theoretical energy. This, I suggest, is
tinction between the urban and the rural, which (in the binary form in which
because anthropology provides a unique critical and empirical space in which
it is often articulated) is to some extent simply an artefact of the history of
to examine the universalistic claims of common sense - including the common
anthropology itself, is also now increasingly difficult to sustain. Such insights
underscore the importance of being fully aware of the discipline's historical sense of Western social theory.
While I am cautious about the risk of inflated ideas about what the discipline
entailments. This more fluid relationship with our subject-matter emerges as a
can do for the world at large, I would also argue that - at least in the class­
result of increasingly reflexive approaches. As a basic orientation in anthropol­
room, hardly an unimportant place, but also in all the other arenas of opinion
ogy, it is both analytically more useful and historically more responsible than
formation to which anthropologists have access from time to time - there is
rejecting the whole enterprise as fatally and irremediably flawed either by
great value in the destabilization of received ideas both through the inspection
observer "contamination" (a symbolic construct found with surprising fre­
of cultural alternatives and through the exposure of the weaknesses that seem
quency in writings claimed as scientific) or by its indisputably hegemonic past
to inhere in all our attempts to analyze various cultural worlds including our
(which it shares with the entire range of academic disciplines). Both the prag­
own. We need such a counterweight to the increasingly bureaucratic homoge­
matic and the rejectionist responses can certainly be found in the ethnographic
literature, sometimes curiously conjoined in a single work. In such contradic­ nization of the forms of knowledge.
I would argue, furthermore, that the characteristic stance of this discipline
tory moments, in fact, we can sometimes see the first stirrings of a more flexi­
has always been its proclivity for taking marginal communities and using that
ble approach to the categorical confusions that, as Nestor Garcia Canclini
marginality to ask questions about the centers of power. Indeed, some of the
observes, proliferate in the complexity of urban life.
Take, for example, two roughly contemporaneous studies of Moroccan most exciting ethnographic studies are those which challenge the homogenizing
rhetoric of nation-states. Recent work on Indonesia - a country of riotous
society, both of which carry introspection to lengths that many have found
variety- makes the point with especially dramatic force, both topically and con­
to be excessive. Against the grim rejectionism of Kevin Dwyer's Moroccan
Dialogues (1982), a work in which a single ethnographer-informant relation­ ceptually (Bowen 1993; George 1996; Steedly 1993; Tsing 1993). But even in
ship is made to do the work of destabilizing a whole discipline, Paul Rabinow's the world of European power, there are marginal spaces that complicate the
representation of nationhood, culture, and society in ways that challenge
distinctly nihilistic Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco (1977) makes a very
long-cherished assumptions within the discipline (see Argyrou 1996a, 1997 on
different case: its contribution to current anthropological thought comes
Cyprus; Herzfeld 1987 on Greece).
less through the author's disgust with traditional method (or rather with the
 ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY 7
ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY
6
ago, notably in Australia (see Stocking 1995: 26). Conversely, however,
Field research, often in a tension-laden collaboration with respectably some key ideas associated with the evolutionism of Victorian Britain and the func­
grand theory, has always been the cornerstone of anthropology. It generates an tionalist modes of explanation systematized by Malinowski in the 1920s often
intimacy of focus - changing ways of framing ethnographic fieldwork make reapp~ar i~ the ~tructuralism of the 1960s and even in its successors, including the
the more spatial image of a bounded community somewhat out-dated - that reflex_ivehistonography of the 1990s. Let me elaborate on this by briefly com­
permits the recognition of indeterminacy in social relations. This is an empiri­ menting on the characteristic instance of Levi-Strauss' structuralism.
cal concern that too easily escapes the broader view but that nonetheless Among his many c~ntributions to anthropological theory, Claude ;
Levi1
has enormous consequences for the larger picture (in the prediction of electoral Strauss advanced the view that myth was "a machine for the suppression o
patterns, for example, where isolated communities with very specific procliv_i­ time" ~nd that it had the effect of concealing the contradictions raised by the c::t
ties may hold the casting vote in a tight race). The nature of ethnographic very existence of social life (see discussion and further references in Leach 1970:
research Nicholas Thomas has argued, may now be changing, in response 57-8, 112_-19). Thus, for example, society prohibits incest, but how to explain
to new ~ays of organizing social and cultural life. Indeed, there is a pragmati­ reproducti_on except through a primal act of incest? (By extension, we might say
cally sensible shift from insistence on the local focus of ethnography - a tiny that the_~irth of a new nation - an entity that characteristically lays claim to
unit often situated within an equally arbitrary "culture area" and defined by ~ure ongii:is - must presuppose an act of cultural or even genetic miscegena­
the supposed peculiarities of that area - and toward new efforts at finding the t10n. And indeed Levi-Strauss' views on myths of origin are especially apposite
intimacy necessary to successful fieldwork in large cities, electronic encounters, for the analysis of nationalistic histories.) How different is this from Mali-·
offices and laboratories, on buses and trains (see Gupta and Ferguson, eds., no':ski~s _(1948) celebrated definition of myth as a "charter" for society? Or
1997; Herzfeld 1997a). agam, if mcest taboos reflect the importance of maintaining clear categorical
Yet this shift does not invalidate the anthropological preference for micro- distin~tions between. insiders and outsiders and so enable each society to repro­
scopic analysis. Curiously enough, in fact, the huge increase in scale o_f~lobal duc~ its~lf ~y marrying out (exogamy), how far does this escape the teleologi­
interaction has intensified rather than attenuated the need for such an intimate cal implication - typical of most forms of functionalism - that such is the goal
perspective, as Thomas notes, and as we shall see particularly in the chapter on of rules prohibiting incest?
Media. If anthropologists still want to be "participant observers," hiding in vil­ The sobering evidence of such intellectual recidivism has an important corol­
lages while the villagers themselves are busily commuting (see Deltsou 1_995), lary. Once we see theories as expressions of a social and political orientation
tracking old friends through the communications superhighway, or refusing to and as heuristic devices for exploring social reality, rather than as the instru­
engage with the myriad national and international agencies that assist and con­ ments of pure intellect, the theories become visible in hitherto unsuspected
found people's everyday lives, will not suffice. places. We begin to realize, in other words, that informants are themselves
eng~ged in theoretical practices - not, for the most part, in the sense of a pro­
fessional engagement, but through the performance of directly comparable intel­
History and the Myth of Theoretical Origins lectual operations. Levi-Strauss's (1966) celebrated distinction between "cold"
and "hot" societies thus turns out to be one of scale rather than of kind.
Most summaries of anthropology start with an account of its history, or at It is one thing to recognize informants as producers of abstract social knowl­
least place that history before any discussion of such contemporary themes as that edge, but, as Thomas remarks, quite another to use it as the basis of our own
of reflexivity. My thought in partially reversing that convention here is to high­ theoretical understanding. Nevertheless, the increasing porosity of the contem­
light, as an example of what I am describing, the tendency to see the growth of porary world means that we shall be ever more dependent on our informants'
the discipline as one of unilinear progress - in other words, as an example of intellectual toler~nce a~d will therefore, willy-nilly, find ourselves doing just
one of the discipline's earliest master narratives, that of evolutionism that. For, to an increasing degree, they "read what we write" (Brettell, ed.,
(sometimes also known as social Darwinism or survivalism). It also makes it 1993). Moreover, they, too, write, and some of them write anthropology. This
easier to emphasize a related point: that, far from being arranged in a makes their ratiocination more perceptible (see especially Reed-Danahay 1997
tidy sequence beginning at some mythical point of origin, _th~"stages"_ of an­ [ed.]), alth?ugh it also perhaps means that the domination of "modern" writing
thropological thought often overlap, confound the usual predictions of their order systems might occlude other modes of reasoning. The rise of a few dominant
of appearance, and reappear as embarrassing anachronisms amidst
examp_le, the see?1- languages and ways of representing them is a development that would limit
supposedly progressive theoretical development s. Thus, for
key analytic categories rather than expand our intellectual possibilities.
ingly very "modern" and postcolonial insight that
The extension of "sense" from "common sense" to "the sensorium" and the
such as kinship and marriage may not be as universally applicable as we had once co_ncomitant rejec~ion of an a priori commitment to the Cartesian separation of
imagined is anticipated in the writings of explorers who had wrestled mmd from body 1s vital to expanding our capacity to appreciate the practical
practically with the inadequacies of these categories in the field a century
 ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY 9
ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY
8
So, too, is a willingness to recognize that informants' ideas about meaning
theorizing of social actors (M. Jackson 1989). (As with some of the complex ~ay not correspond to the ve_rbocentric assumptions usually held by western
kinship systems studied by early anthropologists, whether we realize it or not mtellectuals. I°: my ~wn ~ork_ i_na rural Cretan community, for example, I have
it is our own intellectual incapacity that is at issue.) Insights into those areas of found that the mhabitants ability to decode the semiotics of their own discourse
the sensorium that resist reduction to verbal description are challenges to our as well as that o~ _the enco~pa_ssing bureaucratic nation-state is fueled by an
capacity to suspend disbelief but, for that very reason, they demand a less solip­ acute ~ense of poh_tic_almargmahty. Other examples are given in this book. Local
sistic response than either the kind of objectivism that only accepts as signifi­ usa_gem some soCiet~esappears to conflate linguistic meaning with casual obser­
cant the limited compass of understanding already circumscribed by the values vat10n~ that somethmg "matters" (or "is meaningful," as we might say). But if
of one culture (see Classen 1993a), or the surprisingly parallel self-indulgence such views do reflect local usage, perhaps they can also do something to loosen
of writing about culture from the safety of pure introspection. The latter is th~ h_oldt~1at_the language-centered model of meaning has over our intellectu­
indeed a return to Victorian "armchair anthropology" in the name of a "post­ ahst imagmation.
modern" equivalent such as cultural studies. T~e idea of illiterate village theorists is not especially astounding when one
The dearth of older studies of the sensory is especially surprising when one con~id~rs t~at these peopl~ must ~ontend with enormous social complexities.
considers that evolutionists propounded at an early date the view that human 1:"heirsituation, enmeshed m sometimes mutually discordant allegiances to enti­
beings became progressively less dependent on physical sensation as the life of ties larger t~~n the lo~al community, requires adroit decoding skills as a matter
the active mind took over. Yet these self-satisfied Victorians were, for example, of s~eer political survival. As a result, informants may display an exegetical vir­
deeply interested in ritual - one of the discipline's hardiest perennials. As Don t~osity and a c~nceptu~l ecle~ticism that _would, in a professional anthropolo­
Handelman remarks, ritual may engage all the senses to an extent not usually gist, app~ar as signs of mconsistency, but m the local context simply display the
realized in (modern forms of) spectacle. Yet there has not until recently been pragma~ic deployment ~f t~eory at its most varied. One can find the equivalent
much anthropological curiosity about the role of senses other than the visual of functionalists, _evolutiomsts, and even structuralists among one's informants:
and the auditory in ritual practices, and only rather modest attempts have been types of explanation respond to the needs of the situation. This becomes an even
made to analyse these aspects as anything more than appendages to the main more complex issue when dealing with populations whose reading has been,
business of ritual action. perhaps unbeknowns_t to them, s~ffused with the vocabulary of past anthro­
Raising questions about such matters reveals the limits of purely verbal chan- pologies and_ that mcludes an mcreasing share of the world's populations.
nels of enquiry, and consequently poses a productive challenge to all the social Lo~;l ~xp~an:t10ns o~ "~ustom" are frequently legitimated with a heavy dose
sciences, especially those in which there is some recognition of social actors' of scientific evolutiomsm, for example - and, since theory often draws on
own theoretical capacities. Don Handelman has raised the issue of theory that currently popular notions, it is empirically unsound in such cases to treat
is implicit in ritual, yet he argues that we then construct a different theoretical popular 1isco_urse and anthropological theory as two wholly separate domains.
framework that allows us to disembed the indigenous theory from its manifes­ ~nly a histoncal account of the relationship between them makes it possible to
tations as ritual. Well and good - but this demands a dramatic increase in our disentangle them for analytic purposes.
ability both to record and to analyze those nonverbal semiotics through which . This is why I "."ould welcome a disciplinary history that paid far greater atten­
the actors' conceptual assumptions and insights are expressed, manipulated, t10n than was ~itherto acceptable to the role our informants play in the devel­
and, to use Handelman's terminology, transformed. For it is at least conceivable opment of our ideas. For there is some evidence for this role. In the 1960s for
that in transforming the condition of a group or an individual, the performance exa~ple, a major dis~ute pitted the structuralists (as "alliance theori~ts")
of a ritual may also transform the way in which its underlying assumptions are a?am~t structural-funct10nahsts (as "descent theorists") in the explanation of
perceived or conceptualized - something of the sort is presupposed in the idea kmship. It turns out that - with a few, albeit notable, exceptions - most of the
that rituals, often associated with the reproduction of systems of power, may former had worked in South ~merica an~ South East Asia, while the majority
also serve as vehicles of change. of_the latter had conducted their research m Africa and the Middle East. Could
Here it seems especially vital to avoid the common error of assuming that all ~his not be the resu~t of the impact of local traditions of exegesis on the think­
meaning can be rendered accurately in linguistic form. Much of what passes for mg of ant?~opologists? Ethnographic reports are replete with intimations of
translation should more accurately be called exegesis. Paradoxically this aware­ l~cal the?nzmg; an early, and ~amous, ~xample is that of Evans-Pritchard's expe­
ness of the limits of language entails a considerable command of the language nence with Nu~r :who dre"." dia_grams m the ground in order to explain the lin­
of the culture in which one is working. It is crucial to be able to identify irony, eaments of their ideal-typical lmeage structure to him (Evans-Pritchard 1940:
to recognize allusion (sometimes to politically significant shifts in language use), ~02). To ~rea~ these exercises as ethnographic vignettes rather than as theoret­
and to go beyond simplistic assumptions that a language that appears grounded ical contnbutions seems ungenerous by the standards of today's more reflexive
in social experience is "less" capable of carrying abstract meaning than one's ethos.
own (see Labov 1972).
 ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY 11
ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY
10
n:ietaph~r of nation~lis_m, in losing_its former autonomy it has gained a perva­
Anthropology, framed in these terms, is perhaps unusual among the sive soc1?cultural s1gmficance far m excess of what its erstwhile prominence
social sciences in the degree to which its practitioners acknowledge the allo~ed It. To?~Y, as we shall see, it may be sorely in need of reframing; but it
collapse of the once axiomatic separation of theorizing scholar and eth­ remams surpnsmgly central.
nographic "subject." Does this mean that their models are fatally flawed? Ethnicity, too, has achieved a new ubiquity. The concept itself has come in
On the contrary, I suggest, their claims to intellectual rigor are strengthened for a good_ deal of deconstruction, but it dies hard. Although anthropologists
by such acknowledgements of intellectual debt - acknowledgements that h~ve co~tnbut~~ massively to its. an~lysis, moreover, they have been especially
simultaneously undercut the arbitrariness of the scientistic (as opposed to alive to its polit1c~l adoption by mc1p1ent nationalisms (e.g., J. Jackson 1995).
scientific) insistence on perfect replicability and the equally self-referential It :herefore con~t1tutes an especially clear illustration of the difficulty of ana­
nihilism towards which some - but not all - forms of postmodernism threaten l~t1cally separatmg the anth~opological enterprise from its object of study - a
to propel the discipline. difficulty that (_asI am argumg here), far from invalidating the discipline, cor­
Among the latter, the assessments of ethnography in Writing Culture responds especially cl?sely to th~ empirical realities. Indeed, it is not only the
(Clifford and Marcus, eds., 1986) have been especially and appropriately case that anthropologists mcreasmgly find themselves repeating knowledge that
criticized by feminists (Mascia-Lees, Sharpe, and Cohen 1987-8; Behar local actors already possess, in a form that the locals may not find particularly
and Gordon, eds., 1995). Especially in the light of such criticisms from reveal_ingof new insights. That knowledge may also - to the extent that anthro­
those who might have been expected to be sympathetic, it would be easy ~~logICal prod~ction is still taken seriously - serve to legitimize emergent iden­
to dismiss the postmodern trend as simply another exploitative discourse. tities and practices.
But that would be to repeat, yet again, the offense that is most commonly This situation is something of a test case for the strengths and weaknesses
laid at its door. In fact, however, these instances of what Don Robotham o~ a postmodern perspective. On the one hand, awareness of being in the
has called "moderate" postmodernism have served as provocations to pICture offers_a salutary corrective to t~e_usual image of "cultures" as hermetically
expand the space of ethnographic investigation, thereby, I would argue, and ~namb1guously. bounded. entitles - whether as physically isola­
rendering it more rather than less empirical - a judgment with which extrem­ ted tnbal commumties or as mdustrial states severely defined (and often
ists of both the positivist and the postmodern persuasions would probably literally fenced i~) by national borders. But it also suggests that any attempt
be equally unhappy. to deny the reality of such borders for the actors themselves is indefensible
But can a discipline so often forced to examine itself in this way contribute and may, as Je_anJ_ack~on(1995) in particular has noted, undercut their attempt~
anything to human understanding, or are its internal squabbles simply too at self-determmat10n m the face of state brutality. It also forces scholars to con­
distracting or paralyzing? Certainly some of them seem dangerously silly. ~r~nt th~ inevitable problem that today's liberation of one population may bring
But the available evidence suggests that in fact the result has been an increase m its ~ram the exterminat~on or enslavement of others. At the very least, anthro­
in ethnographic work, held to a higher standard of both scientific (in the pologists can sound warnmgs about the reality of such slippage.
most general sense) and moral accountability. If that is so, there are at least In_conformit~ :With this vision of the interconnectedness of things, the dis­
two major gains to be discussed: first, in the realization of the intellectual cussion of ethmc1ty and nationalism percolates through numerous other focal
riches that scholars' increased humility might make generally available, and, the1:11es.. For example, we i~spect connections among ritual, bureaucracy,
second, and by extension, in the pedagogical task of fighting racism and nat10nalism, and the production of spectacle in religious and nationalist con­
other pernicious essentialisms in a world that seems increasingly inclined to ~exts - two_ do~ains that the~selve_s exhibit revealing similarities, notably
return to them. m the relat1onsh1p between nationalism and myth-making. Here it may be
useful to not~ Sara Dickey's brief but illuminating mention of the national­
character studies that relied on media as their principal source of data and that
I would add, themselves shared a long history with nationalistic folklore studie~
Anthropology and the Politics of Identity \see ~occhi_ara 1952;_ Caro _B~roja 1970). Anthropology was once powerfully
implicate~ ~n the nat10n-bmldmg and related enterprises of which its present­
The emphasis on agency has led to a partial dissolution of the once clear-cut d~y practitioners are now implicated in the "constructivist" critique - to the
divisions among anthropological topics, defined in terms of institutional signif­ distress of many host communities, as Argyrou (1996b), J. Jackson (1995),
icance (kinship, politics, religion, economics and so on). Kinship, for example, 1:'homas, and others_ ~ave observed. The constructivist position not only ques­
today enjoys a more organic entailment in other areas of research. Whether tlo?s present-day um~1es,bu_tdoes _sothrou?h ~he disaggregation of a nominally
as a dimension of the relationship between gender and state power (e.g., umfied past. In partICular, 1t entails quest10nmg the idea of a single point of
Borneman 1992; Yanagisako and Delaney, eds., 1995) or as the guiding
 ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY 13
ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY
12
of play to human agency, we may ask whether there have in fact ever been soci­
departure that we meet in both myths of origin and nationalistic histories,
~tie~ as conform~st as those portrayed by the evolutionist and functionalist imag­
and this may pose deeply serious threats to new entities that have not yet
mat10ns. The evidence suggests, not only that such uniformity and boundedness
adequately covered their heterogeneous traces (perhaps including ~nt?ropolo~y
a:e gr?ss ?versimplifications, but also that the persistence of social and cultural
itself?): time is commonly a source of validation - a means of estabhshmg cosmic
~hversity m the so-called global village of the new millennium portends an
rights of use, as it were. m~portant role for an anthropology newly sensitized to agency and practice. It
Ethnicity and nationalism are thus ubiquitous themes in anthropology: they
will be a valuable corrective to social analyses latterly co-opted by the discourses
circumscribe both its intellectual agenda and its potential for meaningful polit­
of state and supra-state power.
ical engagement. They demand of all anthropologists a willingness to consider
The th~oretical turn to concepts of agency and practice (see Ortner 1984) sig­
in good faith the potential consequences of what they write and publish, placing
naled an important moment in the discipline's self-realization. At the very time
the moral burden of responsibility - a burden that cannot be assuaged by pat
when som~ ~bservers - gleefully or sadly according to their own perspectives -
ethical prescriptions - squarely on the anthropologists' shoulders. They are, in
wer~ pr_ed1etm?_that the crisis of ethnographic representation and the partially
many senses, the very ground on which anthropology as a discipline must make
its case - whether as the object of its study, the basis for historical reflection
and reassessment, or the political context for action.
tan~ developments led m _the opposite direction. fc, ;,,..,().hl,~f~, Jt"'
self-mflicted critique of_anthropology would destroy its credibility, three impor­

First, many scholar~ mterpreted the criticisms as a challenge to aeepen

In this project I have therefore, consistently with the theme of anth~op~logy
and broaden t?e purview_ of_ ethnography rather than to abandon ship; the
as a systematic critique of notions of common sense, opted at the orgamzauonal
result was a sigmficant nse m the publication of theoretically engaged eth­
level to emphasize instead such less "obvious" domains as the senses, moder­
nography. Second, many of those who agreed with the criticisms never­
nities, and media; but there is no cause for concern, for the "obvious" themes
theless felt that they could be built back into the discipline's theoretical frame­
demonstrate their hardiness by reappearing in new guises within the framework
w?rk, thereby pe_rmitting greater sensitivity to issues that, in the final analysis,
adopted here. Such rearrangements are not merely cosmetic, nor merely acci­
still ~ad to do with the depth and richness of ethnographic description. Third,
dental: they are intentionally designed to encourage theoretical reassessment as
the nse of a text metaphor for ethnography was found to have severe limits (see
well. e._g.,A~ad 1993), yet it may be that some awareness of these was what forced
One important area on which this entire project focuses quite deliberately is
discussion ?ack to ~he social actors themselves - a development that counter­
that of modernity - or, rather, a plethora of modernities. Two themes are central.
acted the disembodied an~ over-generalized visions of society and culture gen­
First there is the question of whether modernity is radically different or whether,
erated by both the textuahst and the positivistic extremes.
view~d as a plurality in accordance with Don Robotham's formulation (with its
Textualism was also associated with a debilitating over-dependence on
attendant rejection of older and now clearly simplistic antinomies pitting sub­
languag_e-b~sed ~odels of m~aning. Yet language itself provided an escape route:
altern against colonial perspectives), one can view "it" as a distinctive entity at
the realization, still too partial, that ordinary language insights - the shift from
all. This is methodologically important because on it depends how far we treat
reference to use - can be applied as much to all other semiotic domains as they
in the same framework such pairs as state bureaucracy and the symbolic clas­
can to language. The new anthropological emphasis on visual media and on
sification of tribal rituals; moiety systems of kinship and competing legal regimes
multisen_sory analysis underscores the importance of avoiding a referential view
of family law and political ideology (as in pre-1989 Berlin: see Borneman 1992);
and scientific rationalities and religious practice. Is Miner's Nacirema spoof
?f meanmg that reduces everything to pure text - the practice of anthropology
mcluded.
merely an elegant joke, or does it prompt serious reflection on the extent to
It is nonetheless important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater: the
which we can make claims equating modernity with some universal notion of
t~xtual turn in anthropology, especially as pioneered by Clifford Geertz (1973a),
rationality? What does it mean to treat the political elites of modern industri­
~id much to force anthropologists' attention on meaning as opposed to an objec­
alized societies in terms of kinship and other face-to-face idioms of identity, as
ti~e? ~orm, even though it did so in ways that were to prove almost as deter-
Abeles recommends? And why has kinship returned so decisively to center-stage,
1:1ims~1C as what they had displaced. Malcolm Crick's (1976) early critique of
in studies ranging from nationalism to reproductive technologies and ideologies
literalism, a now neglected but fundamentally important text, can serve as a
(Strathern 1989; Ginsburg and Rapp, eds., 1996; Ginsburg 1989; Kahn 2000)?
~seful_and we~l-argued _i~troduction to these concerns. And such a critique of
If such studies are grounded on a metaphorical use of the "archaic" term in
h~eral~smenta~ls recogmzmg that an act (verbal or otherwise) can be profoundly
each pair, so are the modernities that they analyze. The kinship metaphors use_d
historical, yet m no sense reducible to the enumeration of events that we might
in nation-state construction will be especially familiar to most readers of this
therefore expect. History can be danced, felt, smelled, and, yes, spoken; and
book. every act and every sensory experience is a potential carrier of links with the
The second question concerns the plurality of possible "modernities." For
recent and the more distant past.
modernity is not a universalizing trend. Thus, if its riotous variety allows plenty
r_ '
L1eerl~~
 ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY 15
ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY
14
are unlikely to be happy about that, for it is their logic that comes under fire
A Sense of Application as a result. For those concerned with the cultural and social impact of "devel­
opment," _a~for those who argue that environmentalist programs must be far
more sens1t1veto cultural values in order to stand some chance of success this
I have suggested that anthropology might provocatively be defined as the c~m­
is indeed a necessary move for anthropology. Interestingly, we also find a ~imi­
parative study of common sense. This is an important tool to deploy agamst
larly activist perspective argued in areas of anthropology that in the past were
the insistent rationalism of a wide range of international agencies that seek to
usually_relegated to the zor_ie?f the purely academic (notably kinship) studies,
impose their particular renditions of common sense on societies that do not
for which John Borneman ms1sts we should seek a transformation that is both
endorse those ideas, on problems to which they are ill-suited because of local
intellectually m?re defensible and politically more just. Even areas once thought
values and practices, and on people who respond in unexpected ways. To so:11e
to ~~ the d?~au~ of pure aesthetics and thus to be socially epiphenomena! and
extent, of course, this is simply a remediable practical issue: it is no us_esendu~g
pol_1t1callyms1gmficant, such as music, become sites of a political engagement.
food aid to people whose religion will not permit them to touch the gift. But m
This makes the analytic separation of the intellectual from the political increas­
another sense it shows that a practice-oriented anthropology can and must also
ingly unconvincing.
be a critique of practicality. In this regard, I would particularly note recent work
All these arguments have to do with the distribution of power, and all in some
by Arturo Escobar (1995), James Ferguson (1990), and Akhil Gupta (1998),
sense reflect an uneasy awareness that globalization has reduced, or at least
among many others - work that does not deny the importance ~f various for~s
threatens to red_uce, the arenas of choice for all societies. Anthropology thus
of aid in a world struggling to survive extreme poverty and rapid demographic
becomes a. prec10us resource, not only because of the esoteric knowledge of
expansion, but that seeks to illuminate its abuses and misuses._These features
strangely d1fferen: cultures that it can offer (although this is not trivial in itself),
sometimes promote great suffering, as Veena Das has noted, m the name of
but also because its characteristic techniques of defamiliarization can be made
rationality. . to ~i:estion t_he globalizing assumptions that increasingly dominate political
To the extent that ideas of the sensible are increasingly presented m global
dec1s10n-makmg.
terms we can now thus also say that anthropology may serve as a discourse of
~his critic~l st~nce required a conscious effort to free anthropology from some
critic~l resistance to the conceptual and cosmological hegemony of this global
of its own h1stoncally accumulated associations with nationalism colonialism
common sense. Much of the work discussed in this book illustrates how anthro­
and globa~ economic control. Anthropologists now freely admit that their epis~
pology can protect a critically important resource: the_ve~y p~ssib_ility of ques­
temology 1s profoundly "western" in origin - this acknowledgment must be the
tioning the universal logic of "globalization" and exposmg its h1stoncally narrow
first stage in creating. the necessary critical distance - and, as Escobar points
and culturally parochial base by hearing other voices, is prese~ved ~hrou_ghthe
ou~, the anthropol~g1cal endorsement of some early development efforts in
critical investigations of anthropology. If, for example, economic rationality can
Third World countnes underwrote very particular forms of order and rational­
be seen as the driving force behind current representations of rationality, local
ity. When Escobar insists that the distinction between applied and academic
conceptions of economic wisdom make it clear why many ~f the ~orld's people
will not be persuaded. What from the perspective of the dommant d1scou~seloo~s I anthropology has _become tired_and unproductive today, he challenges a part of
th_ecurrently dommant symbolic order - of which the logic of development con­
like irrational traditionalism emerges, on closer inspection, as an alternative logic.
The comparison may also coincide with evidence that state global agencies do ?ot
I
if
st1tut~s another segment. By turning the spotlight of anthropological analysis
on th1_sglobal cosmology, we can identify its workings more clearly and so stand
necessarily act in accordance with their own stated rationality, an observation
that underscores the importance of maintaining a strong sense of the conceptual I
¥
back m order to make more informed decisions about the extent to which we
are prepared to go along with it.

I
and social diversity that still exists in the world.
Such concerns are practical as well as academic. The isolation of the "ivory
tower" from the "real world" has indeed been a remarkably significant politi­
cal development, in which anthropologists (among others) have allowed a p~r­
From Common Sense to Multiple Senses: Practising
ticular representation of reality to marginalize their perspectives_ and_s? _to stifle I theory in expanded spaces
their critical contribution. They can now resist this move by h1stonc1zmg and I
contextualizing the conventional wisdoms that have gained political ascendancy
in the global arena.
Thus, for example, Arturo Escobar has explicitly embraced a "poststri:c- I Ant~rop~logists have good reason to be especially sensitive to the implications
?f v1suahsm .. Here one might see in Don Handelman's argument, discussed
m some detail here and in greater detail in his Models and Mirrors (1990,
turalist" position, of the kind that uninformed critics particularly charge with
refusing to engage with the "real world." In point of fact, Escobar has a~~o­
cated active opposition to precisely that lack of engagement - and the cnt1cs I 1998), that the modern, bureaucratic state employs spectacles - visual
performances - in place of ritual, an illustration of the dramatic rise of the

I
I
16 ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY 17

visual in the modern economy of power. Spectacles, in this (admittedly however, the discipline has only recently produced a correspondingly intense
far from exhaustive) sense of the term, are a means by which power, analytical concern with visual media, although the situation is now beginning
especially bureaucratic power, perpetuates itself. The uncertainty that ~andel­ to change.
man sees as an essential component of ritual is erased by the all-seemg eye, The lateness of this development is not as strange as it may at first appear to
dramatically summarized in Foucault's (1975) metaphor of the Bentham_ite be. Not _only is there the curious paradox of the invisibility of the visual, but
panopticon, of spectacle that reduces the citizen to the role of passi:e the media seemed too "modern" to fit a discipline supposedly concerned with
witness. Citizens may believe that they are watching the show; but Big archaic societies. Viewing was something done by active observers rather than
Brother is - or may be - watching them. This is not (as in the evolutionists' by passive ethnographic subjects. Moreover, there was the problem of how to
view) the story of the rise of disembodied logic, but that of the historically de~l with the m~nif~st implications of the visual for recreation and thought,
contingent emergence of one embodied capacity - sight - that permitted which meant attnbutmg both to exotic peoples. It also raised difficult questions
an exceptionally comprehensive technology of control and ~hus also a !u;ly about how a discipline disinclined to probe psychological inner states except as
self-reproducing teleology of power. That teleology - sometimes called vis­ objects of representation (see Needham 1972; Rosen, ed., 1995) could address
ualism" - permeates anthropology as much as it does other social s~iences such phenomena. Yet addressing such issues is crucial to understanding the
(note the phrase "participant observation," commonly used to descnbe the social role of visual media, as Sara Dickey has emphasized. It is also a sensitive
principal field methodology of the discipline); only by making th~ senses issue because it breaches the defenses of collective intimacy in the cultures we
an empirical topic of anthropological appraisal, as in a chapter of this boo~, study, our own included.
can we hope to regain an appropriate sense of critical distance. There is But the major shift, one that is centrally important for understanding the rel­
something disproportionate, as Constance Classen and others have noted, e:7ance.of anthropology to the contemporary world, may not be the insight it
about the degree to which sight has been privileged as the locus of autho­ yields mto_ t~e secret spaces of national cultures, important and interesting
ritative knowledge. There is also a danger that analyses that appear to though this is. The change that particularly distinguishes anthropological
treat bureaucracy and spectacle as spaces in which agency can get no purchase approaches to the visual and other media from those of more textually based
may inadvertently do the state's own work of homogenizing society. But disciplines has been a strongly intensified focus on practice and agen~y. The
it remains useful - indeed, vital - to remind ourselves that spectacular media are anthropologically important today for two principal reasons, both
performances may indeed provide authoritarian regimes with the means to enact connected with practice and agency: first, because media often portray the
an especially pernicious form of visualism - as long as we also remember actions of differentiated subjects rather than of members of a supposedly homo­
to look behind the scenes and to catch the knowing winks and cynical geneous "culture"; and second, because the same concern with agency leads to
frowns of the spectators, as well as the nonvisual signals (such as the man­ ethnographic research on how social actors relate what they encounter in the
agement of food tastes) that may convey subtler but more durable messages media to their own lives and social settings, thereby generating ever more unex­
still. And in thus de-centering the visual, we may also gain a more critical pected fields for new forms of agency. It has become clear that the scale on
purchase on the verbal - another beneficiary of western (or even "global") which mass media operate has in no sense resulted in a homogenization of
technologies of information. agency; on the contrary, it has provided a means of magnifying differences at
·
The primacy of the visual in social control is a relatively recent (eighteen~h many levels.
century) and localized (western European) phenomenon, although m _Here the new ethnographic work on the media, notably including
some regions (such in those south European and Middle Eastern cultures Dickey's and Mankekar's (1993a), particularly comes into its own. This
in which the "evil eye" maps patterns of individual jealousy) ocular sym­ new scholarship, as Dickey notes, engages the roles of viewers as well as
bolism has long been associated with malign surveillance. Anthropology, producers, and joins a larger and growing literature on material culture in­
itself implicated in the colonial project, has not escaped that "visualist_" cluding, but not exclusively devoted to, consumption and material culture
bias (Fabian 1983 ). Indeed, it enhances the marginalization of whatever is (e.g., Miller 1987). In another dimension it should also be compared with
classified as "traditional." the extensive work on self-production and its relationship to the production of
Because visual idioms of representation have become quite literally artisanal objects (e.g., Kondo 1990). It is clear that mass production has not
the common sense of the modern, industrial world, they have also become necessar_ilymeant homogeneity of either interpretation or form, any more than
relatively invisible - a revealing metaphor in itself. Resemblance is usually the p~rsisten~e ~f _a strong sense of cultural identity necessarily entails the sup­
construed as a resemblance of visible form. Anthropologists have not press10n of mdividual forms of agency - western stereotypes of conformist
proved immune to this normalization of the visual. It is no~eworthy that Others notwithstanding.
even though - or, indeed, because - visualism has so fully displaced other Examining the ways in which viewers relate to the portrayal of roles also sug­
sensory preoccupations in the representational practices of anthropology, gests new methods for eliciting the underlying assumptions that people make
 ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY 19
18
about those roles. In assuming a homogeneous popular culture, we would be nar_ylanguage philosophers had already argued in the domain of everyday inter­
falling into a conceptual trap. Although it was once _thou~ht that on~y "ar~haic" action: the power of words to effect change, intended or not. For this reason,
societies were truly homogeneous and homeostatic, this tele?logica~ vi_ew ~f the power of the media has especially shown up the artificiality of the old dis­
society, culture, and aesthetics is an invention of the mo~er~ mdust:ial ima?i­ tin~tion betwe_en the material and the symbolic. But by insisting on the huge
nation about exotic "others" - and, as Handelman has mdicated, it has, sig­ variety of audience responses to the media and on the now dramatically mag­
nificantly, been most fully actualized in the aesthetic programs of such modern nified representation of agency as much as of normativity, anthropologists have
totalitarian ideologies as Nazism. been able to go still further: they have traced the complex processes, sometimes
.
The mvth of the homogeneous Other is deeply entrenched, and 1t has exer- culminating in surprisingly radical effects at the national and even international
cised a durable influence on anthropological theory even in such modernist levels, whereby extremely localized reactions may come to affect the life of
arenas as the study of visual media. It has also, in recent years, generated strong nations.
reactions. Even leaving aside the sheer vastness of the Indian fi~m indust~y an~ . In this_regard, it is especially useful to contrast Handelman's radical separa­
its complex impact on other Third World regions, the South ~sian foc_usm this tion of ritual from spectacle with Marc Abeles's view of a modernity in which
work is thus probably no accident. Ethnographers are strugglmg_espe~ially hard the relationship between the local and the national or supra-national is in con­
to disengage their view of this region from long pre:alent social-science con­ stant flux, and in which older "referents" combine with modern "processes" to
structions of rigid hierarchy and ritualistic conformism. T~e ~onvergen~e of yield a modern specificity that is nevertheless analysable with the instruments
media studies and an anthropological interest in agency thus sigmficantly directs developed in an older anthropology for the study of face-to-face societies exclu­
attention to newly empowered local voices (and to the ways in which some of sively. Abeles, like Benedict Anderson (1983) and Bruce Kapferer (1988), has
them may be disenfranchised as well). noted the resemblance between nationalism and religious community. I would
. . . .
This new individuation works against the older idiom m which the Other has add that the Durkheimian model of religion as society worshipping itself
always been represented as homogeneous. That hom~genizin_g process doe~ not (Durkheim 1925 [1915]) is far more apposite to the case of nationalism, as
always concern only the colonialist view of geographically distant populations, Gellner also _recognized (1983: 56), than it ever was to the Australian religions
since it may also be used of "peasants" and "the working class" closer to _home, that Durkheim regarded as elemental illustrations of his thesis. With national­
but, as a form of representation, it seems universally to serve as both the mstru- ism, we actually know, in many cases, who the Durkheimian gremlins were.
ment and the expression of power. Indeed, some of them - like Ziya Gokalp, framer of the secularist constitution
That coincidence of instrumentality and meaning is a11 additional feature of modern Turkey - were his ardent admirers. The French colonial effort in
of the current intellectual landscape in anthropology. Sterile debates long Morocco similarly directly translated Durkheim's teleological reconstruction
pitted idealist against materialist approaches. In these confrontatio:1s, the into a prescription for the government of exotic others (Rabinow 1989). Here
Cartesian sense of a radical separation of the mental from the material was again we see the power of a reflexivity that is historically and ethnographically
rigidly maintained at least until the rise of a critical Marxist structu~alis:11 grounded.
(see, notably, Godelier 1984, for a major critique). Yet already at that pom:, m We are what we study. This is reflected in anthropological fieldwork a
the influence of the heritage of ordinary language philosophy on both sid~s process akin to problem-solving in social life, the conceptual debrouillardise
of the Atlantic (e.g., Ardener 1989; Bauman 1977; Needham 1~72), rec~~m­ mentioned in the Preface, in which the learning of culture largely proceeds
tion of semiotic effects as material causes - the impact of rhetoric on political through an "edification by puzzlement" (Fernandez 1986: 172-9). As a reach­
action, for example - posed a productive challe1:ge_to what w_as, after al~, ing for larger, more inclusive explanations of experience at the level of the local­
the expression of a particular conceptual frame withm one, admittedly domi- ized and the particular, it is also and at the same time a questioning of order -
nant, cultural tradition. and especially of claims that a given order is rooted in eternal truth, whether
. . .
Here the anthropological significance of media becomes esl_'eciallyclea:. It is cosmological or scientific. It is, in a word, the critical appraisal of common
the enormous range and power of the media that turns them mto so1:1ethm~ of sense. It is thus a fundamental source of human understanding, accessible only
a test case for the analysis of modern social formations. The conventional view at moments when the categorical order of things no longer seems secure - when
has long been that they are forces for homogeneity and .t?e loss. of cultu_ral theory does not so much yield to practice as reveal itself as a form of practice
autonomy. Indeed, they amplify the symbolic force ?f political action, servmg in its own right.
ever larger and more encompassing forms of authority. . Theory as practice: that insight and the intimacy of the observational scale at
But by that token, as Abeles makes clear, they also magm~ the po':er of which it is activated largely distinguish anthropology from its closest neighbors
rhetoric and symbolism to the point where these can hardly still be considered on the map of the social sciences. It is abundantly clear that the vast increase
as mere epiphenomena. The performance _ofa ritual act o_ntelevision can be a:1 in available topics, scale of perception, and sheer complexity of subject-matter
important piece of "political action." It is a demonstration of what the ordi- do not seem to be compelling the discipline to an early retirement. On the con-
20 ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY

trary, it is precisely at such a moment that th~ mo~e intensive fo~us o~ anthro­
pology becomes especially valuable. The amplification of symbolic actions on a
2
global scale gives such actions a resonance that perhaps we can sense on~y
through the intimacy - now defined in a host of new ways - of ethnographic
research. Epistemologies

Circumstantial Knowledge

Social and cultural anthropology - the precise name is more of an indication of

local intellectual histories than of any substantial difference, despite the fur that
flew around the distinction in the 1970s - is above all an empirical disciphne.
Whether it is also empiricist is a very different issue. The vision represented in
this book encompasses the first aspect - the principled groundedness of the
discipline and its dependence on ethnographic research and description - but
effectively rejects the reductionism implied by the second. It is a mediation
between serious commitment to the evidence of pragmatic, on-the-spot research
on the one hand, and serious engagement with the criticisms of overweening
"ethnographic authority" often leveled against it (notably by Clifford {988) on
the other. Historically, this makes good sense: most of those who have expressed
unease with the colonialist and ethnocentric implications of the ethnographer's
gaze (e.g., Asad, ed., 1973; Clifford and Marcus 1986) have themselves been
accomplished practitioners of the craft - precisely, I would argue, because their
sensitivity to those implications led them to import a productively critical
sensibility into their fieldwork from the start.
In his classic 1973 essay, "Thick description: toward an interpretive theory
of culture," Clifford Geertz declared that the analysis of culture - with which
he equated anthropology - was "not an experimental science in search of law
but an interpretive one in search of meaning" (Geertz 1973a: 5). This was to
deploy one of the polarities that had haunted and still haunts the discipline. To
a greater degree, perhaps, than any other, anthropology has straddled the divide
between the social sciences and the humanities, and been stretched uneasily
between a broadly positivistic explanatory approach to social and cultural phe­
nomena, and an empathetic exploration of communication and significance. It
may be hard to imagine a synthesis of "experimental" and "interpretive"
science, but neither these terms nor the "laws" and "meanings" they sought
respectively to reveal appear in the same way today. Inevitably, then, anthro­
pology must occupy a middle ground that gives the lie to those who would claim
that empirical scholarship and reflexive critique are mutually incompatible.
22 EPISTEMOLOGIES EPISTEMOLOGIES 23

It occupies a middle ground in yet another sense, and one that must be grasped This chapter is consistent with the bias of the discipline toward its own prac­
in any approach to anthropological epistemologies. Clearly our ideas are often tical grounding, and sets the tone for the more topical chapters that follow. It
influenced by the people we study - even, perhaps, to the point where one could reflects, both historically and philosophically, the discipline's basis in fieldwork.
point to a direct correlation, in any given phase of the discipline's history, Fieldwork and its contexts have changed and continue to change, and the
between the areas that were especially prominent in ethnographic description pragmatic character of anthropology ensures that its theoretical orientations
and the current theoretical predilections of anthropologists. Indeed, as I have constantly reflect that condition of flux. The very intimacy that the ethnographic
already noted, many ostensibly central theoretical issues are not really global encounter requires is of a different order in the European Space Agency of the
anthropological issues at all, but rather are problems that arise from the 1990s than was that enjoyed by Malinowski with his Trobriand informants in
encounter between particular strands of the discipline and particular societies; the second decade of the twentieth century.
the resulting translation problems introduce a measure of circularity that can This is not to presume that anthropology is no more than ethnography;
be quite surprising as, for example, when Latin America is reduced to a one of the discipline's strengths in recent decades has been its capacity to incor­
"Mediterranean" region because of the prevalence there of something glossed porate historical research and to extend itself to commentary upon literature
as an "honor" code thought to be typically Mediterranean. Anthropological and art. But anthropologists tend to work in relation to the local encounter of
texts are formed, not by a pure encounter between a theoretical language and fieldwork even when they are doing something different, as they write ethno­
an unmediated experience of local fieldwork, but through regional traditions of graphically about history (e.g., Dirks 1992; Cohn 1996) and literature (e.g., A.
anthropological scholarship. In some cases these have long histories originating Cohen 1994; Herzfeld 19976; Rapport 1994; Handler and Segal 1990). The
in travel writing or colonial scholarship; in others the imprint of particular, very idea of separating ethnography from anthropology is to deprive it of its
eminent professional theorists can be lasting. The stamp of India and Louis distinctive method, removing the source of its sole effective answer to the
Dumont (1970) on the theory of hierarchy is a good example, as are the lineage common charge that its studies are not representative of larger entities: namely,
debate in British studies of Africa, honor and shame in the Mediterranean, that what it loses in broad statistical replicability it gains in the sheer intensity
evolutionism in Polynesia, peasants in Latin America, and so on. There is more: of the ethnographic encounter - as intimacy, as privileged access, as listening to
absence sometimes speak louder than presences. Vaclav Hubinger, writing from voices silenced on the outside by those who wield greater power. Against the
the viewpoint of a country where anthropological models have sometimes positivist view that only huge samples and the logic of western scientific ratio­
appeared as source of legitimation for the new capitalist domination in east and nality can provide solutions, anthropologists thus pit the prolonged intensity of
central Europe, notes that anthropology was born of the project of modernity field exposure (a statistical measure in its own right) and an analytical stance
itself (much as, one might add, was the concept of "tradition"), and traces to that is not solipsistically grounded in its own cultural milieu (or that is grounded
that hegemony the exclusion of such formerly Eastern Bloc countries from the in its own object of study but recognizes that circumstance). The resulting per­
dominant idioms in "European" anthropology today. spective draws its inspiration from unfamiliar ways of construing the social,
Thus, while "anthropological epistemologies" are of two sorts - those of natural, and material world.
anthropology as a profession and academic field and those of the people anthro­ For these reasons, too, anthropologists are often loath to give up their tradi­
pologists study - the discipline has increasingly had to confront the difficulty, tional concerns with marginal populations. By the same token, however, anthro­
indeed the absurdity, of separating them from each other altogether. To assume pology's capacity to treat in precisely the same intimate terms those centrally
that anthropological epistemology belongs only to anthropologists is both occupying the seats of power - as Abeles (1989, 1990, 1991, 1992) so effectively
arrogant and empirically wrong. But, as we shall see, to recognize the contri­ does when he describes French political life or the European Parliament, for
butions that informants make to our theoretical formulations is to engage in example, or (in a very different vein) as Marcus ( 1992) does for the elite families
a discussion that is not only epistemological but also ethical - and that resists of Galveston, Texas - makes the charge of obsession with the marginal and the
prescriptive solutions, despite many attempts to produce them. irrelevant not only untenable but also suspiciously self-interested. For it is often
Anthropology, as this introductory remark should make clear, is very much precisely those who exercise power who use the discourse of marginalization as
a practice of theory, to invert Bourdieu's ( 1977) famous phrase. It must balance an integral part of their efforts to maintain that power, and anthropology has
the advantages of both a pragmatic self-distancing and an ethical engagement often been the source of hostile attention for precisely that reason.
that is also grounded in direct field experience. Consistently with this perspec­
tive of principled ambivalence, anthropologists have resisted disembedding the
philosophy of the discipline from theoretical reappraisals and from ethnogra­ The Epistemology of Inquiry
phy: few monographs are devoid of reflection upon the making of anthropo­
logical knowledge, and there are fewer theoretical treatises on the subject that David Scott has suggested that the historicizing of anthropology requires an
are devoid of primary ethnography. approach that raises questions of relevance. Given our concerns with margin-
24 EPISTEMOLOGIES EPISTEMOLOGIES 25
alization and trivialization here, we must indeed ask: who benefits from these I suggest that this is an apt metonym of what anthropologists generally
discourses? What does the response to anthropology reflect? If we conclude that do, which is to focus on the uses to which people put the elements of their
the dismissal of anthropological concerns as marginal reflects a political stance, cultures, rather than on the objectified listing of those elements themselves.
we have not only learned something (assuming we did not already know it), we As with language, so with all aspects of culture: the elements gain meaning
have located a useful heuristic: a source of pointers to questions about who from their social deployment, not in the curio cabinet or the dictionary. The
adopts that stance, why, and with what results. parallel with Scott's argument about the history of colonialism is that the ele­
While Scott is primarily interested in showing how these questions can help ments of that history gain their meaning from the salience they have for our
us refocus our understanding of the significance of colonialism for the present present-day world.
situation in former colonies, I would argue that the principle can usefully be For Geertz, this stance required a nuanced account of people doing things
expanded to the entire gamut of questions that anthropologists ask - and that with cultural forms - what he famously called "thick description," summarized
others ask of them. Scott begins with R. G. Collingwood's An Autobiography by Nicholas Thomas as "the interpretive inscription of social discourse, pri­
(1939), in which the philosopher outlined what he called a logic of "quest_ion marily in its interpersonal and local rather than its institutional and global
and answer." This logic, Collingwood argued, merely restated a classical expressions." While it perhaps lacked descriptive precision, the idea of thick
principle, namely: "the principle that a body of knowledge consists not of description proved popular and enduring. It offered an appealing portrait of an
'propositions,' 'statements,' 'judgments,' or whatever name logicians use in analytical style, with a bias toward localized knowledge that remains attractive
order to designate assertive acts of thought (or what in those acts is asserted:
for 'knowledge' means both the activity of knowing and what is known), but
of these together with the questions they are meant to answer; and that a logic
i
I today, for many anthropologists, including those who would not count them­
selves among Geertz's followers (although there is now an increasing preoccu­
pation with the "local knowledge" of larger phenomena, such as nations and
in which the answers are attended to and the questions neglected is a false logic"
(Collingwood 1939: 30-1). On this view, says Scott, "to understand any propo­
sition it is first necessary to identify the question to which the proposition may
II transnational forms). Yet, as a characterization of ethnography, it seems now
to stop rather short. Ethnography is not just thick description (which as Geertz
acknowledged also characterizes the novel); it refers both to fieldwork and to
be regarded as an answer." And he adds: "This is an important principle ~or writing, to a practice and a genre, and both have ramifications for anthropo­
any practice of historical or philosophical understanding. Contrary to the ratio­
nalist view (as prevalent among contemporary anti-essentialist postmodernists
as among the essentialists they attack) you cannot simply read off the error of
a proposition without the prior labour of reconstructing the question to "'."hich
I
t

i
logical epistemology. It has particular resonance for the several later chapters
in this book in which the idea of local understandings - "indigenous theories"
- is advanced as both a necessary object of intellectual engagement and a
problematic concept in itself.
it aims to respond. This is because propositions are never answers to self-evident
or 'perennial' questions (for Collingwood there are no such things) and there­
fore you cannot assume in advance that you know the question in relation to
i The intimacy of the ethnographic encounter generally prompted ethnogra­
phers to adopt an affirmative attitude toward the people studied, and even to
write accounts of their culture that were to some degree complicit in dominant
which the text constitutes itself as an answer." Scott suggests that this principle
is of prime importance to a historically sensitive anthropology. But he also
,I local understandings. This largely arose from the idea that the anthropologist
I should "adopt the native point of view." This has been a powerful tenet since
extends it to what he calls "a strategic practice of criticism," which he defines Malinowski, and Boas had even argued that folk narrative was a people's own
as "a practice of criticism concerned with determining at any conjuncture what I ethnography - a view that has resurfaced today in the explicit genre of "auto­
conceptual moves among the many available options will have the most pur­ I ethnography," which allows a measure of self-examination to the anthropolo­
chase or bite." In other words, we need to know, not only what use the answer
will be to someone else, but what use it will be to us. Are the questions we ask
worth having answers to? I gist who is also willing to listen to local theorizings of society and culture and
to acknowledge them as such. It has also, more unusually, emerged in a sophis­
ticated juxtaposition of local speech forms with anthropological theory-talk in
a provocative study of the Appalachian poor by Kathleen Stewart (1996). Here

I
the anthropologist playfully juxtaposes her own "theory-speak" with the local
Taking Positions way of talking about events and experiences, not in order to mock either, but,
to the contrary, as a way of empirically disclosing the substantial intellectual
This is a pragmatic view indeed. Its correlate in terms of methodology is to grounds shared by those who study human society professionally and those who
ask what anthropologists actually do. To that question, Geertz's essay furnished study it because that is the only way to make sense of their very conditions
a highly influential answer - "they write" - and it was couched in appropri­ of life.
ately pragmatic terms: he focused, not upon a formal definition of the discipline Thomas, however, argues that this is a rather facile view of the relationship
or its theories, but upon what its practitioners did, namely ethnography. between anthropologists and their informants - at least in the context of cul-
26 EPISTEMOLOGIES EPISTEMOLOGIES 27

tures that are very far removed historically and linguistically from the anthro­ tell ed. 1993), but tends to reach diverse audiences, and be used by them. Not
pologists' own "native" experiences. (I add that proviso, because the ironic only anthropologists, but also a literate fraction of the people studied, will read
mastery of Stewart's study shows that it is in fact possible to bring local one's work. It will also, in all likelihood, reach some in the government of
commentary to bear on the limitations of professional discourse, and to find the nation researched; indeed it is a condition of many research permits that
in it also a critique of locally oppressive conditions.) Yet Thomas sounds a publications are supplied to various institutions and departments, perhaps only
warning on two fronts. First, sad though this may be, it may not be a matter to be filed away, but sometimes to receive surprising attention. In anthropolo­
of much interest to local informants whether their ideas are of conceptual gists' home countries, those in foreign affairs and official multiculturalism rou­
help to anthropologists (or other social scientists, for that matter). (I would cer­ tinely use anthropological knowledge. Insofar as anthropological writing is
tainly concede that my attempt to bring local concepts of meaning and Jakob­ drawn into these fields, and even into "area studies" such as Asian or Middle
sonian poetics into productive juxtaposition (Herzfeld 1985) is far more useful Eastern studies, it will be used in a way at odds with its anthropological reading,
- if it is useful - to my professional colleagues than it is to the villagers whose more for what it adds to knowledge of a place than for reflection upon a theory
ideas we are trying to understand by such comparativist means.) And second, or an issue. Under these circumstances, the question of how, and to what
to the extent that the anthropologists' ideas do in fact interest local people, the effect, a particular ethnographic account colludes with or subverts local per­
anthropologists may find themselves caught up, willy-nilly, in recastings of those ceptions is not an abstract epistemological issue, but something subject to open
ideas that make them acutely uncomfortable. Let us pursue each of these points contention.
in turn. The issue of the ethnographer's stance has become more acute in the wake of
Certain forms of methodological relativism are indispensable, and no serious an overall politicization of social scientific and cultural knowledge. Thomas sug­
inquiry is possible without a certain degree of common ground and respect for gests that this trend has unproductively exaggerated the political significance of
local understandings. But there are profound tensions between the aspiration scholarly work, but that it nevertheless points to a specifically epistemological
to grasp and share an indigenous "point of view" and the incorporation of issue that was not important to Geertz, at least in 1973. Even at that date,
that perspective into an analytical or theoretical discourse defined by Euro­ anthropology had been accused of endorsing and tacitly or actively supporting
American social science. Anthropologists are engaged in a professional activity, colonialism, and Marxist analyses were gathering a following. Although that
one that certainly gives them specific access denied to most other people who particular perspective was much diluted by the late 1970s, there was a shift
might be interested in their ideas. Notable among these is the sheer range avail­ toward a sense that social knowledge was inevitably political, and indeed ought
able for comparative study: whereas villagers may be interested in comparing to be political critique.
their own culture with that of specific others (people from the next village, the The understanding of knowledge as a project connected with, and justified
colonizers, the urban elite, the culture in which they have worked as migrant by, efforts to reform or transform society was bolstered by the growth of fem­
laborers), relatively few people are interested in the extraordinary tension inist anthropology with its overt commitments, no doubt a desirable reaction
between ethnographic detail and the search for global insights into the human against the bald assertion that social science could and should be value-free.
condition - they may be interested in both, but they do not ordinarily connect Interestingly enough, however, some of the feminist criticism was directed at the
them unless they are anthropologists themselves. The acknowledgment of infor­ very developments in anthropology that so optimistically claimed it as an effec­
mants as anthropologists (e.g., Crick 1976), while ethically attractive and tive form of cultural critique (e.g., Mascia-Lees, Sharpe, and Cohen, 1987-8).
respectful, must take account of this difference. It has taken a long time for the larger lesson to sink in - the lessons of what
There is also a misleading simplification in the thought that the varied per­ Thomas calls "the megalomanic pretensions of politicized scholarship and
spectives of local actors could be easily conflated in a representative point of theory." As he remarks: "The shifting economics of knowledge mean that no
view. The play of different interests was often obscured by such optimistic scholar today can be a Tom Paine, or is even likely to be a Margaret Mead,
assessments of the ethnographer's task. Who are the experts who speak for the even if anthropological works are often appropriated locally in significant and
whole society? Who authorizes them? It is only relatively recently that anthro­ unexpected ways. We need to define an intermediate point of view, which does
pologists have begun to consider the epistemological problems of confronting not attempt to recover the pretensions of value-free neutrality, but acknowl­
this often discordant chorus. edges that research and writing take place in domains, that may have impor­
If the tension between intrusive social science and indigenous concepts has tant connections for cultural policy, but are generally at some remove from the
long been implicit, moreover, it can only have been accentuated over recent most consequential theatres of political action and transformation." And he
decades, and this leads us to Thomas's second point. Anthropologists formerly calls for "a more localized sense of the place of the anthropologist as a com­
presumed that the peoples they studied - whether they were European peasants mentator and critic" - a productive reversal of the Enlightenment convention
or Pacific islanders - would not be among the readers of their published ethno­ that treated the anthropologist as possessed of universal vision while it was the
graphies. Professional scholarship is no longer contained in this way (see Bret- "natives" who were "local."
28 EPISTEMOLOGIES EPISTEMOLOGIES 29

This revised view of anthropology's role in the world entering a new millen­ out why he does not believe that something can change ... " (Chorvathova
nium is a realistic assessment, both politically and epistemologically, and it calls 1991: 85). Perhaps the best way to avoid disappointing such eager hopes -
for a more pragmatic engagement with the structures of power than anthro­ grounded, apparently, in a scientistic mirage - is to emphasize the limita­
pology has hitherto generally favored. It is no good bemoaning the misuse of tions of anthropology up front, and to draw attention to the fact that these
the culture concept by nonanthropologists, for example; we must be able to limitations are themselves highly instructive - again an exercise in cultural
show how and why its misuse is dangerous. We must be able to recognize reflexivity.
academic discourse that essentializes "cultures" and even "civilizations" (Hunt­ Thomas's objections to the self-importance that anthropology sometimes dis­
ington 1996) as insidious, not because it has nothing to do with reality as people plays, sometimes to the detriment of its actual importance in the larger scheme
experience it, but because it takes a culturally parochial "common sense" - one of things, are mostly directed at the prescriptive moralizing that turned many
could argue that western parochialism is especially pernicious because it is so readers of such works as Anthropology as Cultural Critique (Marcus and
well defended - and turns it into a universal truth justifying, in effect, an inter­ Fischer 1986) against the very thoughtful replay in that work of the idea that
national structure of political and cultural apartheid. Scholars are just as likely the distinctiveness of another culture questions received ideas at home - that
as other people to operate on the basis of long-cherished "folk theories," and the foreign relativizes the familiar. The difficulty is that the lines between "their"
when they advise powerful security and economic interests their inability to cultures and "ours" are no longer clearly drawn, if indeed they ever were. Mar­
realize how effectively they are globalizing their own "local" forms of prejudice shall Sahlins (1993: 19) has even suggested that we are witnessing a large-scale
and unreason is extraordinarily dangerous. process of structural transformation: the formation of a World System of cul­
Huntington, for example, does use anthropological ideas about culture but tures, a Culture of cultures, as people everywhere, from the Amazonian rain
these are ideas that were current before 1960, when anthropology was itself forest to the islands of Melanesia, in intensifying contact with the outside world,
much more critically engaged with Cold War projects, and when its customary elaborate self-consciously on the contrastive features of their own cultures. But
use of terms like culture more closely resembled those of nationalistic ideo­ this, if it is true, means that people's cultural aspirations have now become
logies. Cultures were like things with minds mutually incompatible minds, homogenized in the larger sense that everyone, everywhere, is engaged in a con­
guiding intractable things. This is the vision of culture that is so often repro­ ceptual framework that is one of the major consequences of the historically
duced today in the media, following popularizing academics who rely heavily dominant global role played by a relative handful of European powers at the
on those anthropological discards. Those who decry "Balkan nationalism," height of the Romantic era - the era that "discovered" nationalism as we know
"religious fundamentalism," and the like fail to realize the extraordinary resem­ it today - even though the uses to which this framework are put do vary from
blance of their own cultural fundamentalism with what they reject in exotic place to place.
"others." This sharing of global experience has consequences. Indeed, it could now be
But what are anthropologists to do about this strange and threatening misuse said that any method that we find inappropriate to the study of our own social
of such a key concept? As Ulf Hannerz realistically points out: "However much and cultural context is unlikely to satisfy at a broader, comparative level - and
we as anthropologists may feel that culture is really our concept, it seems doubt­ the old idea that anthropology must be comparative is not easy to dismiss.
ful that the world would now pay much attention if we abandoned it in pro­ Indeed, the idea of a "cultural critique" logically resuscitates it.
fessional discourse." (I would also add that it would be equally foolish to But there are other problems with comparativism. Perhaps the most obvious
abandon anthropology as a discipline simply because it has a colonialist and is the importation of terms used in one culture to describe features elsewhere.
racist past: it is precisely because anthropologists have recognized these flaws Whether these are r..ative terms like mana or tapu (taboo) (Crick 1976), ineffi­
and have addressed them constructively that a rejuvenated anthropology ever cient glosses based on outmoded concepts from the anthropologist's own culture
conscious of the dangers of misusing the concepts of culture and society - can (such as "honor and shame": see Herzfeld 1987), or imaginatively decriptive
serve as a useful bulwark against academically sanitized intolerance.) neologisms such as "cargo cult," such attempts at creating cross-cultural
There is also some urgency about this project, but there are also those who comparisons may end up merely exoticizing - relativizing, that is, in the most
will be disappointed to see their newly raised hopes - that anthropology would condescending sense. Here is one useful illustration of the dilemma. Against the
salvage their "own" cultures - so firmly dashed. Nowhere, perhaps, is this more notion that there has been a distinctive moment that we can characterize as
true than in what Vaclav Hubinger calls "post-totalitarian" states. In the words uniquely modern, we can certainly set the persistence of certain schemata that
of one Slovak enthusiast: "Anthropology should understand, first of all, what are not confined to the so-called primitive societies in which they were origi­
is going on because so far what we have are only mythological considerations nally identified by anthropologists. Symbolism itself is such a property. Vaclav
... there is no verifiable and methodologically sound analysis ... It is in this Hubinger, for example, productively invokes the idea of the "cargo cult" (orig­
sense that anthropology is the best equipped. It has the capacity to approach inally identified in Melanesia) to explain the almost messianic appeal of
even a beer-drinker ... to penetrate into his thought structure; it is able to find capitalism to the countries of the collapsing Soviet bloc. Lamont Lindstrom,
30 EPISTEMOLOGIES EPISTEMOLOGIES 31

however, warns us that generalizing representations of the imitation of the West often leaves the home-point of our society unanalyzed; it is no more than a
by Melanesian cultists to all the world's peoples curiously reproduces and rein­ stereotypic "West." (Recent studies of "occidentalism" [Carrier, ed., 1995] serve
forces a consumerist romance tale (Lindstrom 1995: 56-7). Yet it is surely useful as something of a corrective here.) As anthropological discourse circulates to a
to recall that symbolism is as much a feature of western industrial modernity greater extent that hitherto among the communities classically studied, and
as it is of the societies traditionally studied by anthropologists. Hubinger and turns its vision upon communities at home, the paradigm of an us-them juxta­
Lindstrom converge in implicitly acknowledging that the discrimination position seems increasingly inappropriate.
between European and other societies (and then between West and East Europe) It is, in fact, a version of that conceptual habit variously known as reifica- p.<
is part of a global taxonomy that serves distinct political and economic inter­ ~.2!12..~~~-~nt~li~--.?~~QJ~tL~~ation - against which the same moralwng i ;zt;1
0
rl
ests. Anthropologists may observe the effects of that taxonomy in the course of rhetoric has often been directed. To be able to say that a particular ideology9' t;,/f:;.,;v
their fieldwork among peoples classified as "other," who often actively resist - was essentialist provided a convenient moral cover; yet this was as essentializ­
and certainly resent its demeaning implications. The difficulty (and this seems ing as anything it opposed. As Vassos Argyrou (19966) and Jean Jackson (1995)
to be the major lesson to be learned from Lindstrom's critique) is that our own have pointed out, there are ethical limitations to this stance, which was in some
fables of global commonality can too easily seem to play into the very ideo­ sense born of an older tradition within anthropology of attempting to formu­
logies and hierarchies that we think we are attacking; yet our well-intended late an ethical posture for the discipline as a whole. That tradition arose from
of radical difference remains a powerful antidote to bigotry and dom- the application of a simplistic cultural relativism, which has now been seriously
embarrassed by challenges to Western concepts of human rights. As a result, we
The idea that the exotic relativizes the familiar is thus apt enough as a gloss can no longer feel sure that our moral indignation at the repressive implications
on the critical logic of major recent works such as Geertz's Negara ( 1980) and of, for _example, some nationalistic ideology will not in turn encourage a new
Strathern's The Gender of the Gift (1988), in both of which the elucidation (or repression.
defamiliarization) of a domestic common sense is one explicit purpose of the
analysis, or on my own attempt to treat anthropology itself as an object to be
compared directly with nationalisms that share its genesis as an expression of Relativism Relativized
the ideological rupture between the colonizers and the colonized (Herzfeld
1987). But such comparisons must also be able to prepare us for what Thomas Relativism is itself an important issue. Because anthropologists championed it
calls "an unavoidable division in the ethnographer's voice." As he notes: for so long, they have perhaps been unduly reluctant to recognize its limitations.
"Because the people studied have ceased merely to be scholarly objects, and It is, after all, a very comfortable - and comforting - doctrine: we should respect
become partially incorporated within an expanded field of discussion, the all cultures as equally moral, and therefore all systemic practices as equally valid.
anthropologist's text may be increasingly drawn in two directions, on the one Yet obviously this will not do.
hand toward a global (in fact typically a Euro-American) professional dis­ In practice, the principled recognition of local values does not commit us
cussion, that privileges the discipline's questions, and the elevated register of to extreme relativism, a position in which respect for all cultures is reduced
'theory', and on the other toward audiences within the nation if not the local­ to an absurd caricature: it becomes a socially impossible and logically self­
ity studied." And Thomas suggests that local people may not share the scholar's contradictory argument in which all moral and empirical judgment is suspended.
global interests in theorizing: "Scholarship may be geographically dispersed, but For how then does one deal with cultural values like ethnocentrism? How is
cannot count as universal in relation to local particulars." one to confront genocide? Clearly, cultural relativism, if it is to have any
Yet the divided locations of anthropological writing do have profound impli­ meaning at all, must be resituated in a pragmatic vision. Expressed as a general
cations. The exoticism that structures much classic anthropological argument ethical Diktat rather than as a socially responsible position, cultural relativism
loses salience if the argument itself has "exotic" circulation. And the question. ends up defeating the purposes for which it was originally, and with the best of
of the presence of the "native point of view" in a particular text ceases to be a intentions, formulated as an epistemological creed (see also Fabian 1983). As
literary flourish on the part of a Malinowski, an "I was there" gesture, but liberal nationalists have found to their conceptual cost (Rabinowitz 1996), all
becomes an assertion that may be readily tested by "native" readers who see social ideologies are situated in social contexts, and these contexts inevitably -
their point of view misrepresented or appropriated. The idea that anthropology if sometimes only gradually - compel acknowledgment of enormous amounts
produces a "cultural critique" of relations and mores "at home" leaves us unpre­ of ambiguity and contradiction in the implementation of such values.
pared for the question of its commentary on the relations and mores actually The rethinking of relativism requires a specifically historical reconsideration
studied. Does the discipline simply attempt to represent these, in some sense on of its role. And it is the specifically historical accessibility of the paths toward
"their own terms"? Or are they equally to be subjected to the politically delib­ the present configuration of power that makes a critical "purchase," as David
erate scrutiny of western social science? The rhetorical strategy, moreover, too Scott calls it, feasible as well as desirable. By the same token, it is the demon-
32 EPISTEMOLOGIES EPISTEMOLOGIES 33

strable effects of documented processes of environmental and social interven­ Epistemologically, the question is an extremely salient one for the anthropo­
tion that make it absurd - Kay Milton has been especially eloquent on this - to logical analyst, who confronts what in some cases turn out to be recast ethno­
regard all causal explanations as equally satisfactory or all outcomes as equally logical constructs. As Richard Handler (1985) has argued, there is indeed a
beneficial; but we must always ask whom they harm or benefit, thereby situat­ historical similarity between the anthropological concept of "culture" and the
ing them in a particular social environment. The common reluctance of anthro­ self-constituted national identities first thrown into sharp relief by the Roman­
pologists to get involved is an abdication of responsibility, easier to sustain when tic ideology of the nineteenth century. As in my own comparison of anthropol­
we rest on a universalist form of relativism. Against this catatonic condition, a ogy with the Greek nation-state as two products of that same ideology of
reminder that we inhabit a socially and historically specific moment, a different European distinctiveness, so in Handler's discussion we see what Thomas rec­
moment, is the best antidote. ognizes as an increasingly urgent concern: what is the proper response to the
Here, I suggest, the issue of accountability is crucial. We simply cannot predict use of "our" concepts by the essentializers and reifiers of what we had presumed
what will be the effects of our interventions, and moral prescription is a poor to think were "our" concepts? of what, in Thomas's terms, "we presume to call
substitute for accepting that responsibility. We are engaged with our informants a 'folk' version of an anthropological concept - or rather, the anthropological
in the work that we do; trying to devise a pat formula that will relieve us of the concept, of culture." Ethnographic research has often been wittingly or unwit­
consequences of that cooperation is simply dishonest. But at the same time, as tingly complicit in the codification of reified local "cultures" of this kind. Old
Thomas suggests, perhaps we should stop thinking that our actions are so con­ ethnographies are frequently mined for customs by culture-makers; publications
sequential: it is time to get matters into proportion, and this we can only do by may be upheld as authorized versions of particular cultures. More subtly, the
both downplaying the importance of our own roles and facing the engagement process of ethnographic inquiry frequently brings a new level of explication to
of our informants in the creation as well as the reception of our ethnographic ideas and behaviors.
accounts. Indeed, ethnography can appear as a kind of repetition or transcription, not
There is a certain irony in this. The issue of accountability is a very old only of what informants already know, but of the form in which they know it:
one in anthropology: it was, for example, central to Evans-Pritchard's early "I arrived among the Kwaio announcing my intention to record their customs
work (1937). But then it concerned how "they" constructed blame and respon­ ... Since [the political movement] Maasina Rule (1946-53), they had them­
sibility. A truly reflexive anthropology will address the same issue among prac­ selves, in interminable meetings with millenarian overtones, sought ... to codify
titioners of the discipline, and in equally ethnographic terms. That would invite their customary law ... the political goal ... was to create the equivalent of
engagement and might even increase the consequentiality of what anthropolo­ colonial legal statutes ... As a professional chronicler of "custom" ... I could
gists do - although always, as Thomas insists, in a particularistic, locally rele­ be enlisted in their cause both to write kastom and secure its legitimation. As
vant sense, rather than as a global conscience. long as I collected genealogies, recorded stories of ancestors, explored the struc­
tures of kinship, feasting, and exchange, and recorded ancestrally policed taboos
... my work and the expectations of traditionalist (male) leaders meshed closely
Constituting Cultures ... Indeed, their politically motivated commitment to (the impossible task of)
codifying customary law and my theoretically motivated commitment to (the
This is especially applicable to a line of research that flourished during the 1980s impossible task of) writing a "cultural grammar" in the manner of Goodenough,
and early 1990s: the invention of tradition and identity. A global trend of signal Conklin and Frake doubtless, in retrospect, entailed a good deal of mutual
importance has been the elaboration of explicit constructions of local custom co-optation" (Keesing 1985: 28-9). In this case, there is indeed what Thomas
and identity. Although related to earlier ideas of local folklore, national calls "a deep collusion between the anthropological account and the 'native
distinctiveness, ethnicity, and the like, and thus not wholly unprecedented point of view'." But in response to these codifications and affirmations, anthro­
as a cultural phenomenon, the objectification of culture at national, regional, pologists like Roger Keesing shifted their ground, to engage the construction of
and local levels has become singularly powerful over the last twenty years. culture itself, as an analytical object (Keesing 1989). If this was for a time a
Everywhere from the margins of Britain and eastern Europe to Oceania and fertile step - there was, at least, a proliferation of studies of cultural inventions
the Amazon, peoples have become conspicuously oriented toward the rhetori­ and codifications - it also temporarily deflected anthropology from a sympa­
cal elaboration of their identity, often toward cultural affirmation, autonomy, thetic understanding of the aspirations of the people studied. Anthropologists
or separatism. No doubt, these projects of identity are more heterogeneous tended to identify their perspectives with people against governments - consider
than they appear, but the vocabulary employed is often that of a popularized the title of Bruce Kapferer's uncompromisingly critical Legends of People, Myths
anthropology: though all peoples' cultures are different, they seem to be becom­ of State (1988), a powerful comparative demonstration for Sri Lanka and Aus­
ing the same to the extent that they are concerned to affirm their different tralia of how ostensibly benign ideologies can be bureaucratized into machines
cultures. for the production of systematic violence and hatred. But one consequence of
34 EPISTEMOLOGIES EPISTEMOLOGIES 35
this development, a consequence that Kapferer's study partially anticipates, is It represents the translation into field practice of a bias that has its roots in the
that anthropologists sometimes find themselves ill-equipped to deal with the history of "Western culture" - itself a problematic generalization, by all means,
transformation of societies they once knew affectionately as colonial victims but one that at least has the virtue of having been largely self-constituted. As
into states that, in the name of "national aspirations" learned too well under the balance of power shifts so that the ethnographer no longer appears in the
former oppressors, now turn violence against others within. field as the representative of a powerful colonizing force, individual habits of
For Thomas, the powerful notion that another culture ought to be presented observation may come to seem more like unwarranted hubris than as the logical
on its own terms, in some undefined sense, is morally rather than intellectually means of acquaintance with an unknown society.
compelling. It is a consequence of the Maussian logic through which ethnogra­ For anthropology this is a heady moment - full of dangers, but also of oppor­
phers understand the profound indebtedness incurred toward one's hosts in the tunities. Robotham remarks: "From world systems theory, to interpretive
field. However those people themselves understand the relationship, our sense anthropology, to deconstruction, reflexivity and constructivism, to 'dialogic' and
is that there is no way their support and their patience can be reciprocated, yet 'polyphonic' writing, to orality and visuality, to the study of consumption as
we nevertheless feel the need to attempt to do so through the register of writing: 'the vanguard of history,' through the 'logic of things which just happen,' back
our writings are sometimes morally framed as efforts to validate or help those to plain homespun positivism through all the varieties of postmodernism,
others, yet surely more typically help us ourselves instead (cf. Fabian 1991: 264). anthropology is experimenting with a bewildering variety of genres" (Moore
The anthropological project will thus generally be at least Janus-faced, toward 1994; Miller, ed., 1995; Drummond 1996; D'Andrade and Fischer, eds., 1996).
"home" and its intellectual traditions and disciplinary questions, as well as So diverse are the studies which now fall under the rubric of anthropology that
toward the presumed second home, into which one has generally invited oneself. one might almost sympathize with the view that in this postcolonial period the
And one has invited oneself there as the representative of a tradition of development of anthropology has culminated in "a process which leads towards
respecting the "native point of view" a tradition that has also allegedly given its effective dissolution today" (Giddens 1984: 97). But to accede to that per­
local people some tools for expressing that point of view transnationally. When, spective would mean surrendering a hard-won sense of critical engagement: it
therefore, an anthropologist expresses discomfort with what has now been is precisely the tensions that make anthropology vibrantly resistant to easy
absorbed - "the culture" - as too essentialist, the resulting sense is often one of closure.
betrayal. Where, now, is the respect for local culture to which the visitors made Direct recognition of the epistemological problems brought into focus by
such resounding claims? In these conditions, and given the common historical these global processes offers a more productive path. Thus, for example,
genesis of anthropology and nationalism, it is difficult to see how the anthro­ Johannes Fabian's critique of the anthropological failure of engagement with
pologists could avoid being accused of bad faith. local cultures rests heavily on the charge that "visualism" - the reduction of all
As a result, work in the construction-of-culture genre is being vigorously experience to the representational means available to only one sensory medium,
criticized by local intellectuals, in effect for failing to collude with the "native that of sight - has created a strong sense of inequality, of us studying them, that
point of view", for insisting on, and perhaps too zealously overstating, the point objectifies "natives" as "specimens" rather than as colleagues in a negotiation
that cultures are remade in and for the present. The arguments of Keesing of potentially shared understandings. This, obviously, does not mean that "we"
and others have been contested by a Hawaiian scholar (Trask 1991); while F. should stop looking at "them," but that we should use our understanding of
Allan Hanson's account (1989) of the "making of Maori culture" - widely how this came to be viewed as a simple, commonsensical operation in order to
reported and excerpted in American and New Zealand newspapers -was angrily trace its limitations - a tactic that is empirical in a fundamental sense, being
rejected by Maori scholars and Maori activists (see discussion in N. Thomas grounded in a critical appraisal of what actually happens in the field and where
1997). A sympathetic attitude toward indigenous reaffirmations might acknowl­ that approach originated. In tracing the current technology of graphs and charts
edge that these are themselves efforts of cultural interpretation and reinterpre­ to its Renaissance beginnings, Fabian suggests that a serious commitment to a
tation, perhaps not radically unlike the anthropological project in its earlier noncolonial anthropology - an anthropology that is seriously postcolonial -
days; and it is certainly true in historical terms that some of the materials must tackle this historical burden.
for this kind of indigenous "cultural fundamentalism" came from anthropol­ In Europe, sight came to distance itself significantly from the other senses in
ogy itself. terms of cultural importance only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
when vision became associated with the burgeoning field of science. The enquir­
ing and penetrating gaze of the scientist became the metaphor for the acquisi­
Visualism tion of knowledge at this time (Foucault 1975; Le Breton 1990). Evolutionary
theories propounded by prominent figures such as Charles Darwin and later
A key dimension of ethnography has been the idea of "participant observation." Sigmund Freud supported the elevation of sight by decreeing vision to be the
This concept has been absolutely central to virtually all discussions of fieldwork. sense of civilization. The "lower," "animal" senses of smell, touch and taste, by
36 EPISTEMOLOGIES EPISTEMOLOGIES 37

contrast supposedly lost importance as "man" climbed up the evolutionary pretations of the works (Gill 1982; Parezco 1983). It also shows scant respect
ladder. In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the role of sight in western for the religious preoccupations of the artists.
society was further enlarged by the development of such highly influential visual The visualist preoccupations of many contemporary academics are evident in
technologies as photography and cinema (Jay 1993; Classen, Howes and the extent to which "writing" or "reading" and "texts" have been employed as
Synnott 1994: 88-92). models for culture and cultural analysis, notably in Geertz's famous statement:
As a result of this western emphasis on vision, the description and interpre­ "The culture of a people is an ensemble of texts ... which the anthropologist
tation of a society's visual culture (such as may be seen in artefacts or styles of strains to read over the shoulders of those to whom they properly belong"
dress) is often as far as anthropologists will go in search of "sensory" meaning. (Geertz 1973a: 452). The employment of this approach across cultures by
As we shall see in the chapter on the senses, this has historically had the effect anthropologists means not only that European-derived textual ideologies are
of relegating cultures in which the visual is given less prominence to an inferior applied to societies that do not share them, but also that the dynamic multi­
role. Some anthropologists - basically those who are committed to an "anthro­ sensory dimensions of culture are suppressed or transformed in order to make
pology of the senses" - now argue that we must try to understand the values of culture a static, visual document which can then be read using the tools of
of the various senses within the context of the culture under study and not textual criticism - an act, in the terms of Fabian's critique, of both "the denial
within the context of the sensory model of the anthropologist's own culture. of coevalness" and "visualism."
The very idea of a "native's point of view" is visualist in form, and suggests Yet this act, too, can be replicated by local intellectuals. What is the anthro­
that the adoption of a broader range of understandings might at least reduce pologist to do? The folklorization of peasants and pastoralists the world
the obvious distortions arising from a relationship of political inequality. Asad, over represents the uses of "tradition" to glorify an emergent cultural or
on related grounds, has recently (1993) attacked verbocentric metaphor of national entity at the expense of its constituent subaltern parts. But the latter
"translation of culture." It may well be that we cannot entirely dispense with may not take kindly to the arrival of representatives of the former colonial
any of these models, flawed though they clearly are, but that the pragmatic powers who inform them that they are being victimized. Not all minority
solution lies in retaining them with their deficiencies in full view, so that the persons are anxious to have their minority status championed. Again, the ethical
discussion of what their deficiencies cause to be lost in the ethnographic response - which again is inseparable from the epistemological issue - is to
encounter - a discussion in which informants are increasingly engaged, as noted accept responsibility for the consequences of one's own assessments of the merits
will provide the means of intensifying the understandings that ethnography is of each case.
intended to generate. It is also in this context, I suggest, that we are to read David Scott's episte­
Focusing on the visual, argues Constance Classen, can "introduce a rupture mological reflections on colonialism. As he remarks, "If we want our discipline
in the interconnected sensory system of a society." This occurs most notably to be able to recognize the extent to which it is implicated in the reproduction
with artefacts, which are frequently abstracted from a dynamic context of mul­ of a colonial problematic then the deconstruction/reconstruction of anthropo­
tisensory uses and meanings and transformed into static objects for the gaze logical objects ... is an indispensable exercise. But its yield is largely an inter­
inside the glass cases of museums or within books of photography - a point nal disciplinary one." Thus far he is very much in accord with Thomas. Here,
recently acknowledged in art history as well (Nelson 1989) - and it also has however, he takes a more ambitious and proactive turn for the field: "if we take
ethical implications. Navajo sandpaintings, for example, are much more than Asad's argument seriously this deconstructive/reconstructive exercise has itself
simply visual representations for the Navajo. Created in the context of healing to be folded into another enterprise whose purpose is organized around a dif­
ceremonies, they are made to be pressed onto the bodies of the participants, and ferent critical yield than internal disciplinary reform. To cite Asad (1991:
not simply seen. From a conventional western perspective, picking up sand from 322-3 ): 'I have been arguing that we also need to pursue our historical con­
the sandpainting and applying it to the body "destroys" the painting. From the cerns by anthropologizing the growth of Western power, because unless we
Navajo perspective, this act "completes" the painting by transferring the healing extend our questions about the cultural character of that hegemony, we may
power contained in the visual representation to the patient's body through the take too much for granted about the relationship between anthropology and
medium of touch. According to Navajo religion it is, in fact, sacrilegious to pre­ colonialism .... It needs to be stressed, however, that it is not enough for anthro­
serve a sandpainting untouched: such an act of visual hubris is said to be pologists to note that [Europe's] hegemony was not monolithic, or that Western
punished by blindness. The interest of western art collectors and scholars in the power continually provoked resistance. It is not enough because conventional
visual designs of Navajo sandpaintings, however, has led to a number of political history of colonial times and places has always been a record of
attempts to "fix" this ephemeral art form in the manner of Western paintings. conflict: between different European interests, between different groups of
Such attempts include photographing sandpaintings, gluing them onto canvases, non-Europeans, as well as between colonizers and colonized. We do not advance
and preserving them in airtight glass cases. The tactile element of the sand­ matters much if we simply repeat slogans about conflict and resistance in place
paintings is thus suppressed and receives little or no attention in scholarly inter- of older slogans about repression and domination. An anthropology of Western
38 EPISTEMOLOGIES EPISTEMOLOGIES 39

imperial power must try to understand the radically altered form and terrain of nity is itself a kind of identity - a contested space invested with notions of priv­
conflict inaugurated by it - new political languages, new powers, new social ilege, wealth, and knowledge. This is the ironic key to Vaclav Hubinger's wry
groups, new desires and fears, new subjectivities.' This is the crucial argument. observation that the discipline is apparently well equipped to deal with moder­
And one way of trying to situate it and understand its point, is by means of a nity: as he tells us, "it has not been doing anything else since its very begin­
contrast with aspects of the currently prevailing paradigm - what one might call ning - initally, however, by defining modernity as what it was not supposed to
the anti-colonial paradigm of anthropological inquiry and criticism." So Scott study."
suggests that "Asad's argument registers an implicit recognition of an alteration As an anthropology of "Western" inspiration moves into new spaces, it
in the cognitive-political problem-space we occupy, and therefore of the nature encounters new challenges. In southern Europe there have been debates about
of the demand of (anthropological) criticism .... [and] that what he has done, whether it represents a neocolonialist intrusion or an opportunity for recon­
in fact, is alter the strategic question about colonialism (and thus the descrip­ ceptualizing subjectivity in ways that trsnscend essentialized national frontiers
tion of colonial power) on the basis of which an anthropological response is (see Llobera et al. 1986; cf. Bakalaki 1993). In the former East Bloc countries,
solicited." The key narrative, exemplified by Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the identification of (especially) anglophone anthropology with modernity
the Earth ( 1963 ), is one of repression and resistance. And Scott recognizes that, similarly excites both emulation and resentment. Hubinger expresses the
especially since World War II, when anticolonial nationalist movements were latter dilemma succinctly: "In the post-totalitarian societies of Eastern Europe
gaining momentum, this master narrative gathered significant moral force. our discipline is seeking its raison d'etre, and is trying hard to separate itself
Indeed, an important dimension of its presence in anthropology was the disci­ from what it had been doing before. It is a fear both political (not to be con­
pline's advocacy - perhaps nai:ve, as Thomas suggests, but certainly the expres­ nected with the totalitarian regime) and topical (to get involved in the discipline
sion of a powerful academic morality - of "the native's point of view." Scott, as it is practiced 'elsewhere'). The protagonists take this as a process of mod­
however, now reads Asad as "saying that these are not questions to which we ernizing the discipline. Clearly it has nothing in common with the recent debates
ought (or ought any longer) to be trying to formulate responses. They are ques­ about modernism in the Western world. But it has very much to do with the
tions whose moment has passed, or better, whose moment, over the past decade­ modern."
and-a-half, has been steadily dismantled. With the collapse of the Bandung Marxism always had its own notion of how to gain modernity - a more or
(Third World/anti-imperialist) and Socialist projects, and with the new hege­ less religious idea of paradise, with a just and omniscient manager. In practice,
mony of a neo-liberal globalisation, it is no longer clear what 'overcoming' communist regimes were frustrated by their inability to remain untouched by
Western power actually means." And, on the other side, there are few socialist influences from the outside. Socialism was presented to people who lived under
states to be defended. "There is now, in short, a fundamental crisis in the Third it as a society of justly distributed wealth, but it was easy to see that there was
World in which the very coherence of the secular-modern project ... can no greater wealth "out there," in the world of modern technology. The discipline
longer be taken for granted. This crisis ushers in a new problem-space and pro­ in post-totalitarian societies of Europe finds itself in a state of hesitation. There
duces a new demand on anthropological criticism." The challenge for anthro­ is a very strong and, in its own way, extremely interesting tradition of classical
pology lies in recognizing this shift and responding pragmatically to it by ethnography (more or less identical with what in German is called Volkskunde),
investigating the transformations and reorganizations that were effected by the which dominates the field despite the efforts to introduce anthropology as it is
new form of power that has now, in turn, bequeathed postcolonial nationalism generally understood in countries where the French, British and US traditions
to the world. prevail. It is by no means surprising that the process of introducing anthropol­
ogy is widely interpreted as one of modernization. Modernity, according to
many of the post-totalitarian scholars, bears greater openness, formulating
Modernity at Stake opinions and opening issues that were taboo under the previous regime.
Inevitably, along with the new possibilities of studying familiar topics, new ones
Such an exercise requires a radical rethinking - perhaps even the abandonment enter into the purview of more or less unprepared professionals.
of the concept of modernity. Anthropology has a complex relationship with The theoretical point of departure has not changed profoundly, which would
this ill-defined notion. First, in most senses in which the term "modernity" is have been hard in the short time since 1989, but in eastern Europe scholars
used, anthropology is one of its products - an attempt to place unknown worlds have begun to claim that what they actually practice is social and cultural
within a clearly defensible classification of knowledge. Second, this by now anthropology: "The magic of the concept of anthropology is so strong in Eastern
outdated (and evolutionist) view of anthropology as concerned only with Europe," observes Hubinger, "that it makes some colleagues believe that by
societies representing the past condition of humankind raises questions about changing the name of their subject they will also liberate themselves from both
its capacity to deal with a world in which the illusion of isolated societies afford­ traditional ethnography (Volkskunde) and Marxism-Leninism." A Romanian
ing perfect laboratory conditions can no longer be sustained. And third, moder- anthropologist and philosopher has remarked that apparently "cultural anthro-
40 EPISTEMOLOGIES EPISTEMOLOGIES 41

pology is able to play in the larger field of social sciences the paradigmatic role Hubinger attributes much of this perspective to the very strong centralism of
which physics plays in the field of natural sciences" (Geana 1992: 313). Others the former communist regimes and their predecessors; in that order of things,
are more bluntly interested in using ethnography for the pursuit of identity moreover, the true center of the world (and the source of political and cultural
politics: "Croatian ethnology today writes its own history as the emancipation wisdom) was necessarily Moscow. A good example is the Soviet-inspired treat­
from hegemonic and ideological networks" (Prica 1995: 11). This is also ment of ethnicity from the 1960s on (see Bromley 1973, 1983), perhaps partly
painfully clear in widespread reports during the 1990s of a Russian ethnologi­ inspired by US-style sociology in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The topic,
cal establishment shot through with a virulent and recidivist anti-Semitism. unprecedented in other socialist countries for fear of being accused of encour­
Some of this concern with identity politics lurks behind "nativist" arguments in aging nationalist feelings, was very soon adopted all over the Soviet bloc. 1 This
southern Europe (e.g., Moreno Navarro 1984). And anthropology has a research stopped almost instantly in the turbulent period between fall 1989 and
complex interaction with the reconstitution of Maya identities in response spring 1990, although a few works surfaced later. The collapse did not occur
to oppression by repressive national governments attempting to impose by because the topic was exhausted; it was simply that the research idiom was too
force an ideology of mestizaje in which indigenas have no place (see espe­ tightly associated with a now discredited political universe. The collapse of
cially Warren 1998). But the East European experience is perhaps the most communist regimes also brought about the breakdown of this strong center­
revealing because the debate entails decisions about which kind of anthropol­ periphery bond.
ogy to adopt; to a lesser extent, the countries of Mediterranean Europe must And so one of the last intellectual traditions to accept a reified concept of
confront a similar issue in deciding what to do with their departments of ethnicity, which elsewhere had surrendered to the empirically grounded logic of
(national) folklore. critiques such as the celebrated collection edited by Fredrik Barth (see Barth
There is thus a process of seeking a place in a world that has changed pro­ 1969), dissolved in the collapse of other, political certainties. But this is not to
foundly. Old topics that dominated the discipline in eastern Europe in the last say that anthropology abandoned its cherished essentialisms overnight. To the
few decades are considered obsolete, antiquated, and pseudo-scientific, mostly contrary, there was a marked tendency to think in terms of area studies cate­
because of their close connection with communist ideology and previous sub­ gories - themselves, as Gupta and Ferguson (in Gupta and Ferguson 1997: 13)
jection to repressive control. In this crisis of identity, any discipline that can have observed, largely generated by geopolitical considerations. It is only in
furnish reassuring stereotypes is sucked into the vacuum of uncertainty. It is a recent years that anthropologists have begun to criticize the underlying assump­
difficult and painstaking effort (see Dragadze 1995), in which old truths crumble tions, and this has had radical effects also on the ways, and especially the kinds
in the wake of the regime that gave birth to them. As an example of an attempt of places, in which they have carried out their ethnographic research. If those
to change as much as possible we may consider the most influential of eastern geopolitical considerations are associated with modernism as an ideology, this
European ethnologies or anthropologies, that of the former Soviet Union: "By is all the more reason for anthropologists to challenge the conventional division
the mid-1980s a greater part of Soviet scholars de facto refuted Morgan's/ of the world into regions, nation-states, or "culture areas," organized in cul­
Engels's conceptions ... Incidentally, the current criticism of the totalitarian her­ tural hierarchies with persistent overtones of survivalism.
itage in Russian anthropology represents additional interest. The attempts to
defy remnants of Soviet ethnology are carried on in a typical Russian manner,
with traditional extremes. For instance, the current Director of the Moscow Eth­ Regions and Selves
nological Institute asserts that Russian anthropology should be radically
reshaped according to Western concepts (German, American?). Today Russian In this spirit, Nicholas Thomas has questioned the common view of anthro­
anthropology, earlier called 'Ethnography', even changed its name to 'Ethnol­ pology as a discipline defined by a simple tension between local ethnog­
ogy'" (Znamenski 1995: 186). raphy and global theory. Consistent with the middle-ground perspective,
Here we can see with particular clarity how deeply relative our classifications however, while fully recognizing that this idealized view is complicated by
are. What for Znamenski is a goal is for others a point of departure in their all the many political and ethical entailments of the discipline, as well as by
attempts to situate themselves in relation to the West. For some in the West, the evidence that many of its theories are more useful somewhere in the middle
moreover, it was the East that was modern. Many Easterners, however, find range between the local and the universal, we might wish to retain the idea
this hard to understand and at odds with their own vision of modernity. Nowa­ of this tension as a goad to these same sensitivities. That tension offers us,
days, the reality of post-totalitarian countries is sometimes considered post­ not a credo, but an ultimately impossible goal that leads us to learn much
modern in the sense of a dissolution of clearly defined ideological systems, with simply in the effort of trying to reach it. This, in fact, is much like Evans­
postmodernity also becoming an ideological concept. In this spatialized view of Pritchard's famous (if perhaps apocryphal) observation that social anthropol­
social evolution, which recalls the early anthropology of nineteenth-century ogy was nothing if not comparative and that comparison was, of course,
Britain, modernity defines the center, backwardness the periphery. impossible.
 EPISTEMOLOGIES EPISTEMOLOGIES 43
42

Be that as it may, Thomas recognizes an important difficulty when he remarks: a clearer understanding of what it means for people in "local places" to find
"Another sense in which the seeming complementarity of universal theory and themselves designated as "Melanesians," "refugees" (Malkki 1989), "Gypsies"
ethnography is misleading arises from the marginalization of the regional (Okely 1983), "stateless persons," and so on.
as a frame for anthropological discussion" (redressed in an important but
neglected collection, Fardon, ed., 1990). All anthropologists work, if to a
varying extent, within intra-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary area studies Reflexivity and Postmodernism
milieux, and this produces both specialized vocabularies and seemingly esoteric
preoccupations that themselves define political fields of academic discourse Don Robotham argues that the reflexive posture has not delivered on its
about "the Mediterranean," "China," or "Melanesia." There is some irony in promises, in part because it remains trapped in the logic of a western self­
this: if one were to compare the Mediterranean and Melanesia as they have absorption. This is a challenge that we clearly must face. How do we learn from
been typecast in their respective area studies discourses, for example, one might the textual critiques of anthropology without engaging in a wholly self-refer­
be tempted to merge them, what with the heavy emphasis in both on strong ential exercise in textual criticism?
gender ideologies and differentiations (especially aggressive masculinity), The burden of the work Robotham calls "moderate postmodernism" focuses
raiding, witchcraft, and a deep concern with display and the instabilities on the anthropological text as a constructed document. In other words, it chal­
of status, not to speak of troubled forms of nationalism competing with paro­ lenges the claims of that text to transcendent common sense a truly anthro­
chial and yet fluid conceptions of local identity. Why should this be more absurd pological perspective. Thus, in addition to representing the people of a
than some of the conflations that have occurred within each so-called region? community in an ethnography, such work destabilizes certain principles and
Such an exercise - perhaps a book titled Mediterranean/Melanesian: A Study in concepts such as culture and kinship, all taken from the cultural universe of the
Anthropological Imagination - would be necessarily ironic, but for that reason anthropologist. As we shall see in the discussion of caring, these categories can
also useful. Thomas, perhaps rather too optimistically, remarks: "If 'area be challenged to productive effect.
studies' debates indeed tend to be introverted and anti-theoretical, they may also Such critiques challenge the "scientific" authority claimed by an academic dis­
be theoretically marked by engagement with the site of research, and thus reflect cipline and ultimately deriving from the political and economic supremacy of
a more genuine compromise between a Euro-American discipline and a theatre the West - as Weber recognized long ago (1958 [1904]). Robotham, however,
of field research." At the moment when the global pretensions of cultural studies also points out that the desire to create an "experimental moment" in anthro­
are becoming more evidently exhausted, the interplay between area studies and pology (Marcus and Fischer 1986) "operates firmly within the paradigm of a
wider disciplines may suddenly provide something anthropology needs. rationalistic epistemology, seeking in time-honoured fashion to renew, re-invig­
To be fair, however, many of those who have for so long advocated regional orate and modernize anthropology's old role as critique of Western culture and
foci have similarly recognized the trap of viewing regions simply as natural geo­ society ... [and J to bolster both anthropology and ... science, between which
graphic entities that frame research and professional discussion and have made there is no perceived contradiction, quite the contrary - a theme pursued to this
efforts of varying intensity to trace their histories and particular implications day in Fischer's most recent work (D'Andrade, Fischer et al. 1996)." The aim
(e.g., J. Davis 1977; Gilmore 1987). Yet the logical circularity remains, pro­ is to point out that what is true of anthropology is also true for science, says
ducing ever more conferences and learned works on "the Mediterranean," Robotham, which then itself becomes another type of discourse, with its unique
"Chinese culture," and so on, and even - in a depressing illustration of the properties, but with its "poetics" also subject to critique. What we have here
politics of citation - leading some ambitious scholars to cite critiques of these then is a rescue mission for anthropology to remain as a "human science" but
regional foci as "evidence" of their importance! not on the basis of the old Newtonian models.
Here the solution strikes me as lying in the provision of a political account The overwhelming focus of this "moderate postmodernism," as Robotham
of the significance given to the regions in question. Such studies would focus, calls it, is on the problematic of the text and its possible (often unconscious)
not on Melanesia, but on "Melanesia"; not on the Mediterranean, but on the manipulations by its lone anthropologist. In order to avoid these pitfalls and
"Mediterranean." This would provide a means of contextualizing both the cul­ to have accounts which are more true to their reality, proposals for "dialogic"
tures under study and the practices of anthropologists engaged in that study, and "polyphonic" writing are put forward. Robotham's eminently sensible
and would again be entirely consistent with a posture of reflexive mediation. It point is that this is still an empirical issue - a matter, as I have said, of intensi­
also engages productively with the rethinking of ethnographic location so elo­ fying the ethnographic account rather than of displacing it. From this point
quently advocated by Gupta and Ferguson (eds., 1997) and their collaborators: of view, it is self-indulgent nonsense to suppose that we can somehow bypass
if we redesign our ethnographic projects to cross the boundaries on which that commitment altogether (see also D. Scott 1992: 384; 1996; Chatterjee
anthropology and global politics have until recently concurred, we will achieve 1986: 17).
44 EPISTEMOLOGIES EPISTEMOLOGIES 45

But there is a more uncompromising postmodernism, represented especially Empirical Reflexivity

by Stephen Tyler, as Donald Moore summarizes the matter: "The dia­
logic ethnography advocated by among others Clifford, as 'rendering negoti­
ated realities as multi-subjective, power-laden and incongruent' was argued By reflexivity, therefore, we cannot mean the kind of self-indulgent solipsism
to be, like the realistic genres it was supposed to replace, 'monologue mas­ with which it has frequently been identified, and into which its self-proclaimed
querading as dialogue.' 'Polyphonic' ethnography was of course suscep­ practitioners do occasionally slip - although not as often, perhaps, as is claimed
tible to a similar critique. Similarly, rhetorical analyses of ethnographic accounts (e.g., Spencer 1989). Although reflexivity as a technical term is associated with
would get one nowhere under a rigorously applied poststructuralist critique, the "postmodern" turn in anthropology, notably since the Clifford and Marcus
since the rhetorical analyses would be again interested and fictional meta­ collection (1986) and Talal Asad's collection on Anthropology and the Colonial
accounts of the initial account, themselves susceptible to yet more rhetori­ Encounter (1973), some degree of recognition of the problems of importing an
cal analysis. Rhetorical analysis is no way to escape rhetoric. Reflexivity, alien selfhood in the field has arguably always and inevitably been an impor­
finally, would also require an infinite regress, since if one accepted reflex­ tant feature of anthropological writing.
ivity in the first place, one would be obliged to admit that one's 'up-front' Self-accounts occur early - in Malinowski and Evans-Pritchard, for example
account of 'where I stand in writing this acknowledged fiction' would itself be - and to dismiss their ironies as expressions of the luxury of confident power
a fiction, and so on, and so on" (D. Moore 1994: 349; see also C.W. Watson (e.g., Asad 1986; Clifford 1988; Rosaldo 1989) is, while true and a useful
1987: 35). insight, nevertheless perhaps also to miss the point that all reflexivity is in some
What distinguished Tyler from the moderate postmodernists is that, unlike sense such a luxury. Asad and Clifford show how Evans-Pritchard deftly deploys
the moderates, Tyler located the fundamental problem outside the text. For him his self-deprecating humor and understatement to foster an attitude of trust in
the issue wa~ one of epistemological repression. The only way out of this was the reader in his account of Nuer life. In another essay Clifford even claims to
to abandon any kind of rationalism at all. One had to move from representa­ detect 'Edenic overtones' in this book and that it is not difficult to hear a long
tion to "evocation" (Tyler 1986: 133-4). Here, as Ahmad pointed out in his political tradition of a nostalgia for "an egalitarian, contractual union" (Clif­
critique of Edward Said, the anti-rationalistic influence of Nietzsche is unmis­ ford 1988: 111). The problem is that this critique, which may be entirely justi­
takable (1992: 159-219). This is easy to ridicule from the point of view of the fied, omits other aspects of these texts, which in turn represented an attempt
comfortable rationalisms of the modern world, as Robotham points out, but from within the centers of academic power to gain some respect for "native
Robotham wants to exculpate Tyler in order to show that the unbridgeability peoples." But it is useful to read beyond such well-meaning intentions as well.
that even his extreme position failed to resolve is not Tyler's personal failure Moreover, some accounts - such as Boehm's description of his digestive prob­
but a consequence of the postcolonial situation: "Not even 'evocation,' no lems in Montenegro (1984) - may even simply be disingenuous devices to liven
matter how therapeutic and heavenly, proved capable of bridging this post­ up an entirely scientistic study. By the same token, however, it is no less impor­
modern, postcolonial gulf." tant to emphasize that postmodernism does not have a lien on self-knowledge,
David Scott responds to this by turning to politics. Robotham's preferred and its pieties may even interfere with that virtue.
solution is to return to an analysis, politically informed, of economic history, But the moralizing focus on reflexivity pro and con conceals an important
in order to document the transformations that today have produced, not distinction. On the whole, I agree with Thomas's gently sardonic reflection:
so much a "postmodern condition,'' as "multiple modernities" - what he "Although novelists and painters may write or talk in interesting ways about their
calls the "new modernities." But there is a danger here, too: that of yielding own creativity, one does not look to them for the most critical or revealing account
analytical primacy to a rationalism that, even within the emergent "alternative of their own moment in literature or art. Given that anthropology is predicated
modernities (A. Ong 1996), has yet to demonstrate that its departures on the revelatory potential of the unfamiliar, we should always have known that
from western rationality are more than a matter of political rhetoric. Rather, the richest critique of anthropological writing would not be an auto-critique.
the constant tension among competing modernities and rationalities would seem What might have followed from the observation that ethnographic texts obeyed
to form a worthwhile object for anthropological research - an object that various conventions and used various devices to evoke a sense of reality and par­
includes anthropology itself as a multiply constructed object. Here we are ticularity could have been a historical examination of traditions in anthropolog­
perhaps back to "moderate postmodernism." But it is clear that the good faith ical writing and anthropological knowledge" - a project Thomas sees as having
of the discipline cannot be rescued by "evocation" alone, still less by self-accus­ indeed been taken up by Geertz (1988) and Stocking (see especially his edited
ing accounts of ethnographic malpractice, important those these attempts may series, History of Anthropology ffrom 1987]) and others.
be for alerting us to the shifting ethical grounds - the changing definition of But I would also point out what this implies at a more general level: that the
accountability - on which our professional practice must be constantly most useful kind of reflexivity is not that of pure self-examination, but the kind
rethought. that places the cultural assumptions of the ethnographer in question - that
46 EPISTEMOLOGIES EPISTEMOLOGIES 47

clarifies the ethnographic encounter and its limitations as predicated upon (see Needham 1972; cf. Leavitt 1996). On the other hand, those conditions
the imperfect meshing of two different codes, with its multiplicity of divergent may include extensive access to the cultural idioms in which emotions are
identities and presuppositions. This kind of reflexivity is genuinely empirical represented, and these - to be found especially in some good comparative
(but not empiricist), and it is deployed to a specific purpose, that of intensify­ work on local psychologies (Lutz and Abu-Lughod, eds., 1990; Heelas and Lock
ing (perhaps a better term than the progressivist "improving") the analysis. 1981; Rosen, ed., 1995) - provide a useful baseline against which to set our
It is a reflexivity that actually amplifies the empirical thrust of the discipline. own assessments. One path with which I have experimented is that of writing
To understand what (in the terms of current debates) might seem to be a totally the life of a local novelist, setting his and his critics' views against the more
paradoxical formulation, we must make a clear distinction between two quite collective tone of the ethnographic work already done on his home town, region,
different varieties of reflexivity: the personal and the sociocultural. Discussions and country (Herzfeld 19976). This device also permits a clearer view of the
of reflexivity have ranged from accusations of bad faith (it is a self-indulgent ways in which various forms of agency may challenge the supposed homogeneity
luxury at the expense of the various threatened populations we study) to pas­ of "a culture."
sionate advocacy (only through radical self-examination can anthropology shed Indeed, the concept of discrete cultures is becoming increasingly problematic,
the taint of its colonial past). not only because anthropologists are uneasy about the parallel reifications that
Pragmatic considerations, however, might suggest that this is a misdirected they encounter in various ethnonationalist ideologies, but also, in an ironic
debate and lead us to ask instead what kind of reflexivity is on offer. This is inversion of the same development, because the increasing permeability of all
where the distinction between the personal and the sociocultural becomes manner ot administrative borders makes the very idea of a bounded entity
especially germane. Reflexive exercises that seem merely to be a public form of unpersuasive.
psychoanalysis seem to offer far less insight than those which permit us to see There are practical consequences that stem from this shift. As Arturo Escobar
our own cultural practices, anthropology prominently included, in a compara­ so eloquently writes, "Societies are not the organic wholes with structures and
tive context. laws that we thought them to be until recently but fluid entities stretched on all
Thus, for example, the critique of functionalism in social anthropology does sides by migrations, border crossing and economic forces; cultures are no longer
help us to recognize the logic adopted by the framers of rituals, constitutions, bounded, discrete, and localized but deterritorialized and subjected to multiple
and bureaucratic systems. Indeed, the more "modern" and contemporary such hybridizations; similarly, nature can no longer be seen as an essential principle
systems are, the more clearly we can identify the social agents - the committees and foundational category, and independent domain of intrinsic value and truth,
of Durkheimian gremlins, as it were - who made conscious decisions to set them but as the object of constant reinventions, especially by unprecedented forms of
up. They are real people, acting in real social spaces at specific historical technoscience; and, finally, nobody really knows where the economy begins and
moments and participating in processes rather than being suspended in timeless ends, even if economists, in the midst of neo-liberal frenzy and seemingly over­
structures. As such, they are ethnographically that is, empirically - accessible powering globalization, steadfastly adhere to their attempt to reduce to it every
(see S. Moore 1987). aspect of social reality, thus extending the shadow that economics casts on life
Moreover, viewing their actions in these terms does not entail imputing and history" (see also Gupta and Ferguson, eds., 1997). Clearly, an anthropol­
psychological motives to them. It is simply a matter of realizing that their actions ogy that works against the reifications perpetuated by the logic of nation-states
give form and substance to cultural artefacts in which others - often their - and now carried forward into the overarching structure of international orga­
followers - are able to find the sense of structured order that encourages nizations (Gupta 1998) must, at the very least, place concepts like "culture"
conformity and sets the standard against which rebellion acquires its identity. under historically grounded, critical examination.
There is much to be gained analytically by discerning the similarities between The irony is palpable: "while," as Ulf Hannerz remarks, "their old favourite
anthropological and state functionalism, or between anthropological theories of concept is thus triumphantly spreading through the jungles, the streets and
ethnicity and myths of origin (including nationalist historiographies) (Drum­ the conference centres of the world, some anthropologists have been having
mond 1981 ), or anthropological concepts of culture and society and state­ second thoughts about culture, in the sense of culture/culture differences." But
sponsored reifications of identity (Handler 1985). the irony goes deeper still. Impelled by their good-faith desire to resist the exoti­
The question of psychological motivation - of what is often called "inten­ cism of yore, they now worry, notes Hannerz, that "to speak of culture - espe­
tionality" is both a minefield and a goldmine. If we try to understand "what cially cultures - tends to become a way of underlining, even exaggerating,
people are thinking," we are likely to come to grief, because our ability to difference" (see also Abu-Lughod 1991). Meanwhile, the production of "how­
"read" intentions - even assuming that we are able to get past the opacities of to" manuals for cultural "management" (e.g., Mole 1995) - often by practi­
cultural difference - is entirely speculative. This does not mean that we are tioners in development and in the business world - parallels the equally
always wrong in making such guesses, but it does mean that we must specify destructive deployment of the culture concept in the service of international
the cultural conditions under which we feel able to make such assessments apartheid, as noted above.
48 EPISTEMOLOGIES EPISTEMOLOGIES 49

In an age made increasingly aware of the possibilities of the strategic ways in culture, with its specialized needs and preoccupations, as an appropriate object
which the culture concept can be invoked and deployed for political ends, there­ of study in its own right and as a way of shoring it up against reversion to older
fore, anthropologists are much more reluctant to treat "cultures" uncritically habits of thought. As Marilyn Strathern has similarly indicated in The Gender
as definable entities. To some extent, perhaps, they are reacting against the of the Gift (1988: 10), and as I have also argued in Anthropology through the
simplistic cooptation of "their" concept by political scientists (notably S. Hunt­ Looking-Glass (1987: 202-5), that project has the virtue of deepening and
ington 1996) for purposes that seem designed more to perpetuate foreign policy intensifying the practice of knowledge that we call anthropological theory.
stereotypes than achieve real understanding. No doubt, too, the sudden bur­ Indeed, Ulf Hannerz has nicely expressed its practical implications in thinking
geoning of electronic technology has generated a new awareness of the possi­ abou~ the fate of the culture concept in public discourse: he urges "public
bilities, always present but now vastly maginified and thus more visible, for the scru_uny of our ~wn as well as other people's uses of the notion - whether they
creation of "virtual reality." In some sense identity is, and for anthropologists are mterculturahsts, cultural fundamentalists, or just ordinary citizens and lay
has long been, if not virtual, at least negotiable. people in the street." And he notes further: "There is ethnographic work in such
This has had a galvanizing effect on theory. Indeed, we must be careful not scrutiny as well ... We may think of it not as 'studying up' - to use an older
to underestimate either the impact of technology on theory or its capacity to anthropological notion - or 'down,' but as 'studying sideways,' focusing on
adjust to the new situation. In this regard the work of Marilyn Strathern is other groups who like anthropologists make it their particular business to cross
exemplary. Not only has she shown that kinship theory can illuminate and must borders for the purpose of portraying what is on the other side: the travel indus­
respond to the new reproductive technologies of in vitro fertilization (Strathern try, the missionaries, and not least the foreign correspondents of the news
1992; see also Ginsburg and Rapp, eds., 1996; and, for a striking variant, Kahn media,'' and the people who produce "how-to" handbooks on "survival" in
2000), but she has also tackled the problem of defining culture in a world that other cultures as well. And in that study, the anthropologists, too, should be an
is racing to suppress any knowledge of alternative strategies (Strathern 1988; ~bject_of ethnographic scrutiny: their position in the larger society, perhaps a
see also Strathern 1991). She has recast culture, as Thomas notes, as something little like that of medieval jesters or Somali smiths, is sufficiently ambivalent to
other than a field or container for actors and relations. In her analysis, Melane­ serve as a touchstone for more general insights.
sians might busily be evoking collectivities through events such as ceremonial In Thomas's words, "descriptive ethnography can be seen as a higher-level or
exchange, rites and dances, but these were not social systems as much as rhetor­ second-order discourse that is only intelligible by virtue of its theoretical and
ical artifacts - "insecure evocations of particular occasions, imaged entities," analytical grounding. More than any other discipline, anthropology constantly
remarks Thomas, and "more like nations in Benedict Anderson's Imagined reminds its practitioners of the pretensions of our analyses, that may differ fro~
Communities (1983, 1991) than the societies of conventional anthropological those of our subjects, but are not obviously privileged or authoritative in rela­
and sociological reference." If older anthropological notions of culture and tion to them. To acknowledge the formative character of 'the field' with respect
society were somehow much like the official formulations of nationalists, this to anthropological knowledge, is not only to prefer practical theory to theoret­
view is much more like what is left after the deconstruction: again, it is pro­ ical practice: it is to realize that one works not· with informants ' but with
ductive to contemplate the parallels between our own intellectual activities and
.
co-mterpreters." Every field encounter is thus necessarily a renegotiation of cul-
those we aspire to study. tural presuppositions and identities, and the anthropological project is conse­
But the dangers are, on the one hand, that such introspection can lead to quentially caught up in that process. We could not write the texts without our
the self-defeating despair of the positivist at the continuity between observer informants; but we could not write those texts without ourselves, either - and
and observed; and, on the other, that such comparisons might become an our practices, like theirs, have histories that are embedded in our actions and
end in themselves, validated by the moralism that currently marks the self­ attitudes, and in the ethnographies that we write.
congratulatory rhetoric of some of those nation-states that have been especially In that context, the attention to genres and forms initiated by the authors of
prominent in the development of anthropology. Without them, however, it is Writing Culture (and significantly and necessarily expanded in Writing Women's
hard to see how anthropology can make good on its claims to be empirical, for Worlds [Abu-Lughod 1993a]) ceases to be the solipsistic self-indulgence and
the comparisons themselves are clearly revelatory of new insights. literary game-playing that some have found in it, and becomes instead an impor­
This reflexivity, then, regards culture rather than the ethnographer's self alone, tant part of the creation of a historical consciousness for the discipline - a topic
and that is perhaps its best protection against the unattractive self-absorption on which many have already worked (see the series of works by Margaret
with which some have charged it. In saying that reflexivity should be culture­ Hodgen (1936, 1964), George Stocking, James Urry (1993), Henrika Kuklick
rather than self-regarding, I do not wish to revert to the simplistic modular (1991), and many others.
"cultures" imagined by earlier anthropologists and nationalists alike. Given the Moreover, such an approach expands the perspective to include other genres
international character of anthropology today, as evidenced by the project that such as museum bulletins, genres that are now remote from dominant styles
generated this book, we might more usefully think of the hybrid professional but remain important for their accumulations of data that are still drawn upon
50 EPISTEMOLOGIES EPISTEMOLOGIES 51
(cf. N. Thomas 1989). In other words, as Thomas observes, "the questions est to non-anthropologists, but because the social and political history it shares
ought to have licensed not talk about ourselves, which _wou~dlead inevitably t? with many of the encompassing institutional structures - nation-states, colonial
disguised self-justifications, but a richer sense of the d~ve:sity of anthropol~gi­ empires, religious bureaucracies - can be made markedly more accessible
cal genres, of the strengths and limitations of descnptive modes at vary~ng through that discomfiting procedure. The criticism of anthropological theories
times." That would be a serious reflexivity; it already has a long and vaned as excessively based on the treatment of exotic others as living in another kind
history of its own; and it rescues the ethnographic proje~t from t~e t_wi_n of time (see Fabian 1983 ), for example, leads us to the analytic dissection
solipsisms - both forms of self-admiration - of textual preenmg and scientistic of similar practices in state policies on minorities and on the preservation of
righteousness. "tradition" in populations marginalized by their very association with its muse­
The benefits of such an approach are especially substantive at this moment ological glories (e.g., Danforth 1984). In a similar vein, Asad's (1993) critique
in history. Anthropology is firmly abandoning the (empirically untenable) vision of the common metaphor of anthropological analysis as translation, whatever
of clearly bounded cultural isolates - the "laboratory" of Levi-Strauss's (1966) its own merits, also suggests a way of looking at the ways in which state bureau­
optimistic imagination. Don Robotham, arguing from the position of the post­ cracies reframe local traditions as national ceremonial - a pragmatic and largely
colonial intellectual, suggests that we move beyond both positivism and what non-linguistic process that resembles translation in the way it appropriates a
he calls the "defensive anguish" of postmodernism to embrace the rich variety text for a new context.
of social experience that now becomes accessible and simultaneously to reject Given that anthropology, nationalism, and colonialism have complex inter­
(or at least contextualize) the western-constructed order of things implied twined pasts, these comparisons are less outrageous historiographically than
even by such well-intentioned coinages as "postcolonialism." This is a signifi­ they might appear to be from the perspective of maintaining myths of scientific
cant change. Until now the cultural relativism of anthropology has alw~ys detachment and transcendence. Indeed, Robotham has pointed out how the
been relative to one constructed collective self, that of the "West" (see Carner western grip on world history has relegated other "traditions" to secondary
1992). This expanded and variegated view of anthropology does also allow status, a phenomenon also matched in internal colonialisms such as those
us to focus on regional entities in the critical sense I have sketched above - not, indexed by British discourses about "localism" (Nadel-Klein 1991 ). The history
that is, in the idiom of the old culture area formulations, but in recognition of of anthropology is a side-show although a very revealing one - in that larger
political realities that include the use of regional identity as a means for effec­ spectacle. To take another example of the productive use of this kind of c.om­
tive mobilization. parison, teleology may be inadmissible as an analytic presupposition, but it may
The vital task is to sustain the microscopic focus of field research at the same also exist as an object of observation - as in the "state functionalism" described
or even greater intensity, but to do so in ways that illuminate the overlapping, by Malarney ( 1996) for certain totalitarian regimes, or as in the intentional
partially concentric larger entities in which it is emb~dded. This is. p~ssib!e social shaping at which much state spectacle is directed.
because anthropological fieldwork itself entails expenences that comcide m Seeing teleology as conceived and put into operation by intending social
instructive ways with processes that are important to informants (Jenkins 1994: beings takes it out of the domain of common sense and instead re-frames it
445-51 ). Moreover, the social intimacy of the field situation - the source of as a form of social agency in other words, as itself constituting the very phe­
anthropologists' earliest and most fundamental reflexivity - permits a cri~i~al nomenon it denies, and, as such, something with which it is theoretically pos­
investigation of the cultural intimacy of the state and other supra-local entmes sible to argue. (The crudest example of this is the political rhetoric that denies
(Herzfeld 1997a). When a fieldworker discovers that ordinary people admit to that it is political. Its bluff can certainly be called! But there is often a price for
knowing about minorities and cultural traits the very existence of which is offi­ doing so.) More particularly, what in modern theory would be rejected as crass
cially denied; when the anthropologist uncovers the reproduction of coloni~l essentialism appears in social practice as the outer form of a successful bid for
practices at the local level under postcolonial regimes; when the official r~etonc power.
of social and political harmony fails to blind the ethnographer to the persistence Awareness of agency in this sense reinscribes history in the analysis of the
of practices deemed to be "uncivilized" (in a rhetoric that owes much to Vic­ social - one of the most direct effects of the general growth of interest in agency,
torian anthropology!) - at just such moments, anthropological field research can as Michael Roberts has noted. As Malarney (1996) wisely points out, there are
balance the sweeping generalizations of more macroscopic disciplines such as limits to the functional efficiency demanded by the most controlling of regimes:
political science, economics, and cultural studies. . . the denial of agency does not mean that it has been truly eclipsed in practice,
It is here, especially, that the reflexive critique of anthropology is conducive any more than - conversely - the existence of a powerful state automatically
to a new kind of analysis of the role of the state (see also J. Scott 1998). To means that everyday contraventions of its authority necessarily constitute acts
achieve that goal, however, reflexivity must be viewed, not as an end in itself, of deliberate resistance - although they may indeed be just that (see J. Scott
but as a means to the refinement of our analytic sensitivity. This makes a com­ 1985; cf. Reed-Danahay 1993). It is because such questions cannot be generi­
parandum of anthropology itself, not because it is necessarily of special inter- cally answered, and bec:rnse they are often accessible only through non-verbal
52 EPISTEMOLOGIES EPISTEMOLOGIES 53

(or at least non-referential) codes - Marc Abeles's brief mention of the role of representations, substances as well as significances, doing as well as meaning,
gesture in political action is especially suggestive here - that they demand are of vital and constitutive importance in most domains addressed by cultural
painstaking, grass-roots field research. Even then they leave large areas of doubt, analysis. From the 1960s on, it seemed exciting when theorists in philosophy,
especially given our slow development of techniques for reading the less r~~er­ literature, and history as well as anthropology pointed to the cultural constitu­
ential modes of meaning (on which, see Farnell 1995); but at least recogmzmg tion of the body, as it did when Roland Barthes and others drew attention to
their significance is a step in the right direction - away from the surprisingly the semiotics of consumer goods. Yet, as Thomas remarks, "subsequent work
anti-empirical view that what cannot be measured should simply be left out of tends to take us back to the commonsense point that critics had rhetorically
the picture. This view is usually associated with a "top-down" persp~ctive that distanced themselves from: the body is always more and less than a text, and
avoids the messiness of social reality and that dismisses ethnographic data as the values and desires invested in consumer objects depend on their materiality
mere anecdotes. Such positions, always at odds with field experience, have very as well as their imputed meaning."
few adherents in social and cultural anthropology today, although a minority My own sense has been that it is useful to think in terms of a distinction
position expresses a disdain for fieldwork that simply serves to reinforce the between language-based and language-derived models of meaning. The former
external critics' deliberately uncomprehending view of both the fieldwork and reduce all semiotic forms to language: everything becomes a text, and is decod­
of these (often self-styled postmodern) critics. able because it is predictably grammatical. This is the common ground of
theorists as distinct as Clifford Geertz and Claude Levi-Strauss. In language­
derived models, by contrast, the relatively immediate access one can gain to
Agents and Practices linguistic meanings - they are the ultimately reflexive ones, in that we use
language to talk about language - permits the heuristic deployment of models
Indeed it is the weakening of referential ideas about language in both anthro­ originally worked out for language. The goal is to explore both commonalities
pology' and linguistics that probably paved the way for an~hropology's hesitant and differences among a range of codes - architecture, music, cuisine, sports,
but increasingly determined questioning of language-denved models for the and, indeed, language. Sometimes we confront issues that cut across these
understanding of cultures. The first move in that direction was a gradual rap­ various categories: the tension between convention and invention is, to a varying
prochement, largely unheralded (but see Rossi-Landi 19~3;_ Ulin 198_4) but degree, applicable in all of them, and permits the application of what I have
nonetheless pervasive, between political economy and sem1ot1cs, exposmg the called a "social poetics"; tensions between official and intimate norms may
old opposition between idealist (or "symbolic") versus materialist as an ideo­ similarly undergird a whole range of semiotic domains (Herzfeld 1997a). Such
logical dead-end. Perhaps the climax of this rethinking was Pierre Bourdieu's models also permit the identification of practices and above all of the uses people
critique of mechanistic semiotics and affirmation of practice (1977). Hannerz make of the codes - they are pragmatic rather than formal, heuristic rather than
nevertheless reminds us that this "close-up view" of culture in fact has an predictive, and responsive to meaning rather than semantically deterministic.
extended history within the discipline, going back at least to Edward Sapir's They play on the basic tension of all human production: the fact of structure
(1938) reflections over the significance of an early American ethnographer's creates illusions of fixity, but is itself a necessary precondition of invention - for
report that his Omaha Indian informants were not in agreement: '.'Two ~ro~s all social production is necessarily also a matter of process, not of static forms
denies this." While dissension is not the sole indicator of agency, 1t certamly 1s (see also S. Moore 1987). In consequence, no symbolic form is immune to trans­
an important one. But it has only been since the reaction to the for1:1ality of formation, transmutation, or straightforward abuse (defined in terms of its prior
structuralism in the early 1970s that agency really began to be recogmzed as a commitments). It is also instructive to find that while anthropologists who study
central issue (see Karp 1986; Ortner 1984). economics and development issues have embraced the discourse-oriented
Moreover, this reaction was not a unitary theoretical effort, but rather a insights of postmodern or poststructuralist thinking, it is those who deal
highly dispersed one, conducted on different fronts in different fields, against with the arts who have, in a contrary move, sought instead to rediscover struc­
textualism and for performance in one context, and against communication and ture and order. This, too, is a reversal of our conventional expectations. What
for materiality in another. Studies of embodiment, emotion, material culture, these anthropologists share, however, is the empirically grounded understand­
and art have all, in quite different ways, shifted away from what was previously ing that effective knowledge is to be sought in the dialectical space in which
almost axiomatic: that anything socially consequential or efficacious was per­ neither positivism nor deconstruction predominates, but where the pragmatics
force meaningful and significant in a primarily linguistic sense. Even if not of the field experience open up our readiness to accept and embrace surprising
understood as a message in relation to a code, or specifically as a text, a prac­ concatenations.
tice or artifact was understood to communicate. Although it would, of course, The structuralist use of linguistic models was predicated on the idea that all
be unproductive to deny that language, iconography, and discourse are tremen­ semiotic systems, and thus by extension all societies and all cultures, could be
dously important, it has become increasingly apparent that presences as well as seen as total systems - semiotic langues, as it were. That tolerance for static
54 EPISTEMOLOGIES

wholes is seriously undercut by the notions of agency and practice, through

which the transient sense of a permanent system or structure is continually
3
created anew. It is, to use the current jargon, "emergent in performance"
(Bauman 1977; Giddens 1984). It is, in other words, a virtual reality; but it is
no less real for all that - all reality is, in this sense, virtual, since all reality is Histories
mediated by the senses. This is an insight that Giambattista Vico was perhaps
the first in the West to oppose explicitly to the Cartesian worldview. Just how
far the anthropological project can go in exploring the consequences of that
insight, and how serious are the limitations that remain, will be evident espe­
cially in the chapter on Senses, and should already be apparent in what I have
said here about the impact of the visualist bias on anthropological thinking
itself. To reduce smell to a language is clearly misleading; to ask what simi­
larities and differences might be revealed by exploiting the flaws in this model
should be revealing; and to explore the role of smell, taste, and the other senses
in the creation of a sense of structure is a crucially important project that A History of Histories
remains yet ahead. It not only complicates our understanding of the present,
but it also questions our often summary understanding of the past: it invites us, Anthropology and history have danced a flirtatious pas de deux throughout the
as I will make more explicit in the next chapter, to substitute for master narra­ past century. While historians either seethed with irritation at what they saw as
tives of a single, dominant history the rich play of multiple histories. the unsystematic and anecdotal habits of anthropologists or embraced anthro­
pological theories with an alarming dearth of critical caution, anthropologists
have fluctuated between opposing their "scientific laws" to history's "idio­
Note graphic" propensities (Radcliffe-Brown 1952) and claiming the historian's craft
as their own, transmuted to the field (Evans-Pritchard 1963 ). This fluctuation
See the plethora of articles published in 1970s and 1980s in periodicals such as Sovi­ has had a marked effect on the anthropological side, at least, because the sup­
etskaya etnografia in the USSR, Cesky lid and Slovensky narodopis in Czechoslova­ pression of temporality produces in anthropological theory a quality not unlike
kia, Traditiones in Yugoslavia, and Ethnologische und Archaelogische Zeitschrift in what Levi-Strauss claimed for myth - a timelessness of structural form that
the German Democratic Republic. allows investigators to ignore the fact that the people they study are actually
living in the same time period as they (Fabian 1983).
Debates about what constitutes myth and history, although sometimes ana­
lytically useful to the extent that they represent informants' recognition that
some stories tell of actual events while others are instead true in a symbolic and
generic sense (see Hill, ed., 1988), always risk a plunge into nominalism. In this
chapter, therefore, I shall recast the object of discussion as the uses of the past
in the present. This is inherently a reflexive exercise: we cannot examine how
various populations and interest groups use their images of the past to consti­
tute or reinforce present interests unless we are prepared to include in our
purview the question of how far anthropologists and other scholars have them­
selves become players in such processes. The idea that we somehow stand
outside our object of study is preposterous. So is the notion, implicit in much
nationalistic historiography, that a single historical narrative suffices to capture
a people's past. Indeed, much of the anthropological engagement is with the
multiple histories that one finds in a single social context, often articulated by
the same people as they respond to the conflicting exigencies of their social,
political, and cultural predicaments.
All this is now relatively familiar territory. Moreover, there are able critiques
of archaeology and "Western civilization," of "orientalism" and "occidental-
56 HISTORIES HISTORIES 57
ism," and ethnographic approaches to the local consequences of these ideolo­ nial past and Scott's critique of the present state of postcolonial anthropology.
gies (notable in the field of historic conservation). The Vichian paradigm of Finally, in a question not often posed (but one that I think is a necessary con­
history as a series of tropes, variously revived by Hayden White (in Metahis­ sequence of these others), I shall ask what anthropologists can do to illuminate
tory [1973]) and Edward Said (the author of Orienta/ism [ 1979], whose Vichian the processes that take place in the shadows of colonialism rather than under
project is really laid out in Beginnings [1975]), have become part of the stock­ its heel - in countries that were never formally colonized, and societies whose
in-trade; a volume on Occidentalism (Carrier, ed., 1995) helps to complete the weaker members were dragooned into the colonial project and are today con­
critical framework. The peculiar engagement of anthropology with the past has fronting its consequences at home.
become a topic for mature reflection.
In writing for the present project, Michael Roberts tackles the more general
question of how anthropologists deal with history, while David Scott - in Methodological Issues
his extended comment, already visited in the previous chapter, on the work
of Talal Asad - refocuses the discussion, specifically with regard to the history Are Scots songs that conflate Culloden and Bannockburn historically inaccu­
of European colonization around the world, on the criteria of relevance. rate? Do the Andean peasants who claim that Columbus brought the "Law of
As Scott remarks: "One important aspect of the discursive reality of European 1898" by which their lands were reorganized and sequestered simply not under­
power concerns the relation between the objects of colonialist discourse and stand chronology (see J. Rappaport 1994)? Are the Andalusian farmers who
those of modern professional anthropology. The discourse and practice of colo­ reconstruct the events of Casas Viejas (J. Mintz 1982), or the Galicians who
nial power constitutes a crucial element of the conceptual and ideological recall forced roadbuilding under the Franco regime (S. Roseman 1997), simply
context in which anthropological objects are constructed and anthropological distorting a record they ought to know well? Is the account of the Inca past
knowledge formed. However, despite the admirable attention to history recorded by Guaman Poma (and discussed further in the chapter on Cosmolo­
that characterizes much contemporary anthropology it is still very poorly gies) a historical text or a religious fiction?
grasped that histories of the non-European social, cultural and political reali­ Clearly people can and do, by the criteria of their own societies, misrepresent
ties that anthropologists are interested in have also to be histories of the con­ past events. They are judged to do so by their peers. But both the consensus
cepts through which such histories are constructed" (see D. Scott 1994; and the dissenting voices are no further removed from historical accuracy than
Asad et al. 1997). are those who, in Western society, debate the significance and morality of a war
One reason for which anthropologists may now be more willing to contem­ or a strike. The anthropologist's task is to determine the criteria by which accu­
plate this turn is a spate of theoretical writings on the significance of the ethnog­ racy (or faithfulness to an ideal of representation) is attributed, and to use these
raphy of western - and more narrowly, European - societies. Some of these to understand the ways in which the members of a society relate the past to the
address the reverse flow of immigrants from former colonial countries into present.
"Fortress Europe" (e.g., Carter 1997), whose reaction reveals the dirty secret Questions of truth are largely predicated on relations of power, as Foucault
that it, too, has a vulnerable cultural identity. All these developments are con­ and others have taught us. Thus, the other side of this task is to define the polit­
sequences and examples of the shift to the more systemic reflexivity described ical context within which such assessments are made. Much of what authori­
in the previous chapter. As a result, the history of anthropology appears today tative discourse represents as "ignorant" might more precisely be seen as a form
less as a simple reflection of colonialism than as a critical commentary upon it. of resistance - or at least deliberate recalcitrance - in which the terms of a dom­
Yet, as Scott argues, we must go beyond even that perspective, morally appeal­ inant historiography are recast by a subaltern population, for whom the capac­
ing though it may be, for the present-day realities are such that a simple moral­ ity to decode the discourse of the powerful may be a matter of life and death.
ity tale will not suffice. Instead, we must develop a history of the conditions When Cretan sheep-thieves point out that the heroes of the national Greek rev­
that created the concepts of domination, which means a more exhaustive his­ olution were called "thieves" (kleftes), are they simply distorting the truth - as
torical anthropology of colonialism (and, I would add, a more sustained ethnog­ the authorities would have it - or are they discerning a real historical connec­
raphy of race relations as well). tion now occluded by the state's careful management of categories and histori­
That task, however, also applies to the analysis of the uses people make of cal periods?
the past in their everyday lives. To some extent, this is a question of method, As in this example, the alleged distortions arise from the same sources as the
but it is also epistemological: how do we respond to accounts of the past crafted criticism. Thus, in a very different context explored by Michael Roberts and
according to criteria of relevance that do not fit our notions of truth? Does shift­ others, Captain Cook figures in the stories related by several Aboriginal peoples
ing the ground of investigation in the manner Scott recommends alter our own in Australia. In rare cases he has been incorporated into their sacred tales of
criteria? I shall begin this chapter by trying to tackle some of these issues, before mythic origin. Among the Aboriginal people of the Victoria River Downs (VRD)
returning to both Roberts's account of local, alternative readings of the colo- region in the Northern Territory he is a central figure in more straightforward
58 HISTORIES HISTORIES 59

narratives, where he is "understood to be the first white fellow to invade Aus­ sarily ~elective, those sometimes loud silences remind us that forgetting can be
tralia" and where his landing points and actions at specified locations along the an active strategy.
coast of Australia are detailed (Rose 1992: 188-9). In these stories there is fre­ In either case, past and present necessarily inform each other: the anthropol­
quent reference to "Captain Cook's law" - a representation which Debbie Bird ogist's task is to identify the idioms in which they illuminate each other. Thus,
Rose understands to indicate "the set of rules and the structured relationships" for example, Andrew Shryock, to whose analysis of history-making in the
to which the VRD Aboriginals have been subject since the late nineteenth context of segmentary politics I shall return more fully later in this chapter,
century. In their summary view, the Whites treated them like dogs; "Captain shows how successfully a Jordanian political candidate could both claim descent
Cook's law" must be read as one dimension within a variety of "resistance from the Prophet and invoke the history of Muhammad's own rise to author­
stories [seeking to l explain how certain things came to be while yet sustaining ity while invoking "providential cant" (about good fortune and God's will) "to
the essential moral structure of the universe." In these reviews Captain Cook is protect his success ... from the imitation of others" (Shryock 1997: 280). Social
"an outlaw, morally speaking" (Rose 1992: 187-8). To the Cretan sheep­ dramas have actors; and actors are the - often mutually antagonistic - agents
thieves, the present government is run by virtual Turks. of a process that draws in circular fashion on historical predecent in order to
Among the VRD storytellers is an elderly man named Hobbles Danayarri l~gitimat~ the present: when successful, this move in turn revalidates the spe­
whom Rose, in a persuasive recognition of intellectual equivalence, describes as ofic readmg of the past that has been invoked.
a "political analyst." On one occasion Rose sought to reverse their roles and I emphasize the circularity of this process because it is the kev to under­
told Hobbles the story of Cook's death in Hawaii. Hobbles had no interest what­ standing history, not as a set of referential data, but as something ·that people
soever in hearing such a tale. He said that Aboriginal people all knew that use to buttress their identity against the corrosive flow of time. For it is clear
Captain Cook was dead - unlike Europeans, who refuse to allow him to die that history, while ostensibly a celebration of time, often serves instead to sup­
because they still "follow his law" (Rose 1993: 43-4). press its specificity: when it becomes the discourse of any totalizing regime -
Such indigenous analyses are not to be read as claims about matters of ~het_her acaden_ii~or political - it acquires precisely that capacity for suppress­
detailed fact, but as readings of the cultural and political world of the domi­ mg time that Levi-Strauss identified as the specific property of myth.
nant Other. Captain Cook's logbook, that epitome of objectivist facticity, But this does not necessarily make history static. It may provide a creative
demonstrates that his men never set foot on Australian shores. But Hobbles, we rethinking of pasts mythologized in very different fashion by previous
may suppose, had other interests in mind. He clearly understood Cook as a suit­ sou:ces of a_u~hor!ty. While Jennifer Cole's Malagasy informants largely
able metonym for all oppressive Europeans, just as the Cumbales metonymi­ avoided explicit discourses about the colonial past, other peoples rework
cally represented Columbus as the Hispanic oppressor and the mestizo leader t_hestated facts to account for its effects in the present. Roberts has provided a
Simon Bolivar as the antecedent of their own local leaders, whose seizure of fi~e exa~ple of the dis~ourse of anticolonial resentment as it operates in exactly
land from state authorities and mestizo landowners was a metonymic act of rev­ t~is fashion to reconstitute the facts of invasion as an exploration of its oppres­
olution and liberation resurrecting the heroics of El Liberador. Each such act is sive consequences. The parallel with the tales of Cook and Columbus are
inforrped by a sense of the past that derives its meaning from the present. This instructive.
is the realm of what Victor Turner (1974) called "social dramas" - the infusion Here is Roberts's account: "After Vasco da Gama sailed round the Cape of
of present experience and action by the resurrection of key events from the past. Good Hope in 1498 a number of Portuguese ships under Lourern;:o de Almeida
Such reproductions of the past may not be self-conscious. Whether as invoca­ turned up in the bay of Colombo in 1505. The little port was about six miles
tions of long-forgotten cosmologies of chance and divine intervention in excuses from the seat of the principal Sinhalese kingdom, the Kingdom of Kotte. A
or as rituals, dance, and bodily gesture, social performances may provide actors Sinhala jana kata, or folk tale, purports to describe how this arrival of exotic
with the assurance of having a past, however inchoate it may seem to outside newcomers was received and conveyed to the Sinhalese king: 'There is in our
observers to be. That past may be reproduced in attempts to come to terms with harbour in Colombo a race of people fair of skin and comely withal. Thev don
a discomfiting present: the horror of West African slavery relived as the cata­ jackets of iron and hats of iron; they rest not a minute in one place; they· walk
strophic disruption caused by unrestrained consumerist greed (Shaw 1997: here and there; they [gobble] hunks of stone and drink blood; they give two or
868-9). And there may be circumstances under which specificity is dangerous, ~hree pieces of gold and silver for one fish or one lime; the report of their cannon
oblivion a virtue. In the controlled spaces of totalitarian state systems, Pierre is louder than thunder when it bursts on the rock Yugandhara. Their cannon
1
Nora's (Nora, ed., 1994) "places of memory" may be matched by "zones of balls fly many a gawwa and shatter fortresses of granite.'
forgetting" (see R. Watson, ed., 1994). The horrors of memory may overwhelm ."This tale entered a palm-leaf book known as the Alakeshvara Yuddhaya
the desire for commemoration, so that the erstwhile victims of a repressive colo­ \circa 1592) and was then incorporated in the late 16th and early 17th centuries
nial regime may today show little interest in recalling such a defining phase of ~n the various recensions of the Rajavaliya (The Story of Kings, a work written
their collective past (Cole 1998). Given that all historical narratives are neces- m a popular rather than classical style), from which it migrated to printed texts
60 HISTORIES HISTORIES 61

in English and Sinhala over the last two centuries. Among the English-educated requires the lilt and tilt of oral recitations to derive this import. In other words,
circles in 20th-century Sri Lanka it was read as an indication of the rustic char­ the riddle would, in the past, have imparted its message most effectively in its
acter of the indigenous people (C. R. de Silva 1983: 14). The focus in that oral form: the performance and intonation would capture a spirit of resistance
reading is less on the Portuguese than on the Sinhalese. The result is an unin­ at the same time that they guided the audience towards hidden plays and sym­
tentional colonialist interpretation." bolic connections." Thus, its social embeddedness is what rescues the structural
Roberts has recontextualized this story, however, in terms of the Sinhala folk analysis from the timeless abstraction to which such analyses so often fall prey.
poetry-cum-tales known as teravili, and as a local response to the brutalities As John McCall (1999) and Johannes Fabian (1990) both remark in other con­
accompanying the Portuguese mercantile colonization of Sri Lanka. In the texts, performance - not necessarily of a verbal kind - restores temporality to
Sinhala hatana (war) poems of the middle and late seventeenth century, the Por­ historical consciousness, linking the pace of presentation with the passage of
2
tuguese emerge as "parangi, heretical evil-doers, cruel and brutal" - a charac­ the tongue dunie.
terization that reflects their destructive methods and their massive assault on
Buddhism through proselytization and the seizure of monastic properties. Mass
conversion, notably among recent migrants on the coastal littoral, evoked the Textualizing Performances
Sinhalas' especial ire in the 1560s (C. de Silva 1982: 238-41, 246). And Roberts
remarks that the story of de Almeida's arrival should therefore not be read as Even when we are forced to depend on fragmentary versions appearing on paper
an event that took place in 1505: "Rather, it should be treated as a parabolic as reported talk (e.g., Guha 1983: 100, 112, 150), oral narrative is an impor­
representation of the Portuguese after the Sinhalese people had experienced their tant source of alternative visions of the past. Moreover, the rendition of such
practices and their rule over parts of the island. Thus refigured, it can be treated narratives as printed text, by a huge range of agents from colonial managers to
as a condenzed representation of the primordial Portuguese." The reference to anthropologists and local intellectuals, can provide valuable insights into the
the Portuguese as "gobblers of stone" and "drinkers of blood" serves, Roberts relationship between text and power. The process of "entextualization" (Sil­
argues, as a symbolic representation of the sacrament of communion and thus verstein and Urban, eds., 1996) is itself both the expression and an important
of the Catholic religion, linking the latter and its Portuguese bearers with the instrument of colonial and other forms of hegemony. Gloria Raheja (1996), for
Sinhala netherworld - "whose creatures, the yakku and peretayo (demons and example, has shown in an exceptionally elegant analysis how the British colo­
ancestor spirits), crave blood and flesh." Roberts deploys a series of binary nial academic establishment entextualized proverbs about particular ethnic
oppositions to show that this cosmology "can be said to associate the Portuguese groups in India as a way of essentializing convenient political ineqalities as
with an absence of restraint and with the forces of disorder" (see also Roberts exigent cultural ones. Even the simple representation of texts as "oral" as
1989). Parentheticaly, it is worth noting the similarity of this analysis with opposed to "literate" is a form of hegemonic entextualization, especially in soci­
Ossio's treatment of Guaman Poma's chronicle of the Spanish Conquista of the eties - today in the overwhelming majority - where the act of writing is itself
Andes, not only for its evidence of the way in which existing cosmologies chart imbued with implications of power and referentiality.
cataclysmic human interveptions in terms of the forces of chaos and order, but Thus, we must beware of exaggerating the contrast between literate and oral
also because both analysts deploy a traditionally ahistorical methodology to cultures (see also Barber 1989: 13). It can itself become a device for represent­
elicit a historical reading not tied to the western sources. This in turn suggests ing subaltern populations as lesser or reduced in some intrinsic way. Moreover,
that the current fad of rejecting structuralist analysis as ahistorical may turn on the separation does not entirely make sense from a literary standpoint either.
a culturally very limited understanding of what history should be although, Oral narrative is never completely driven out by literacy, and the relationship
be it said, structuralism is itself beset with assumptions about human cognition between oral and literate sources is not simply that of colonized and colonizer
that derive from a notably western philosophical tradition. Including our own or (in folklore studies) that of peasant and savant. Recalling that "history" and
theoretical perspectives in the repertoire of phenomena being compared pro­ "story" are etymological cognates helps somewhat, as does the fact that the
vides a useful "reality check" for the anthropologist. Greek root of "anecdote" means "unpublished" rather than "unreliable" or
Note, too, that the Sinhala tale discussed does not mean that the Sinhalese "foolish." Anthropologists, operating in the intimate spaces of social life where
accepted the terror with which the Portuguese tried to cow them into submis­ the wisdom of official discourse is often questioned by the voice of experience,
sion. The "restless, meat-craving, demonic beings" to which the tale assimilates are in a position to assess the extent to which knowledge of the past is depen­
them may have inspired real fear in the Sinhalese, but, as Roberts points out, dent on the vicissitudes of the present. Simplistic distinctions between "oral"
they are also regarded as beings worth trying to control: "[T]hey can be tricked and "literate" cultures - as though entire cultures could be defined in such
and subject to ridicule in ways that restore them to their proper place below single-stranded terms - occlude that key insight.
humans in the hierarchical cosmos. When confronting the tale of the Portuguese Older approaches (e.g., Vansina 1965) were an extension to oral discourse of
arrival as a written text, the silly face of the yakku is not easy to discern. One stemmatics - the reconstruction of "original texts" from later manuscript
62 HISTORIES HISTORIES 63
sources. Here "objective" history was the scholars' account of the narratives' felt stubbornly and often contradictorily today. They represent a way ... of
origins, rather than what the narratives themselves recounted. Because the re-experiencing the past and reintegrating it into the present." It is partly for
processes of oral transmission are usually immune to close examination after this reason that the oriki are so valued by the Yoruba (Barber 1989: 14). It does
the fact, and because the transmission of information is rarely unilineal, the certainly seem to be an assumption of western European historical discourse
stemmatic view of the relationship among a set of contemporaneous texts - that that history must be textual. Even oral historians depend on a textual model.
they constitute partial survivals of some authentic and complete original - is Yet even within Europe, as for example Seremetakis (1993) has shown for
patently misleading. Greece, historical memory may be embedded in bodily markers, "sedimented"
It is made all the more so by its failure to account for the various forms of in the body (Connerton 1989), encoded in modes of preparing food, musical
figurative language through which all narrative relates events to an overarching forms, landscapes (K. Basso 1996), the imagery of responsibility and blame
structure of ideas. Hayden White and Edward Said (both following Vico) have (Herzfeld 1992: 127-57), and, as John McCall (1999) has argued in detail for
argued, albeit in different ways, that the master narratives of western histori­ Ohafia (Nigeria), dance. There may be an entire series of mnemonically laden
ography represent a succession of devices none of which can be said to offer a objects, embeeded in a complex semiotic linking place, relationships, and
literal reading of the past (although some are literalist - that is, they make claims history, and collectively understood by a single term - as with the Belauan
to literalness). By the same token, all historical narrative, including the evanes­ olangch described by Parmentier (1987: 12): "These include carved narrative
cent formulae of "sound bites" media headlines, not to speak of the more obvi­ pictures, named ceramic and glass valuables, anthropomorphic monoliths, pre­
ously "symbolic" assertions of folksong and etiological myth, is to be read in scribed seating patterns, names and titles, ceremonial protocols, stone grave
terms of such interpretational devices rather than as a plain record of events. pavements, and oral narratives." Thus it is with the oriki. Their intertextual
Claims to literalness are often fiercely defended against such anthropological relations with other forms of oral poetry are enmeshed in a wider context of
and historiographic agnosticism, and they carry the authority of a long impe­ interpretation in which reference is less important as a source of meaning than
rial tradition. Their performance has a context - which, as ethnographers, we are allusion, sensual recall, and relations with other genres (see also Bauman
should include in any subsequent account. Michael Roberts records his own 1986, for a model of this approach, applied to Texas folklore).
experience of such hostility meted out to his interpretation of the Portuguese Roberts has criticized the anthropological tendency to impose a textual model
arrival (K. de Silva 1990; Roberts 1994: 28), and comments, "The force of prac­ of coherence on forms of historical knowing, and argues that an open-ended
tical reason in the academic world of Sri Lanka marks the degree to which hermeneutics more precisely fits the philosophical idiom of African societies.
British empiricism and its epistemology have dominated its forms of knowl­ T. C. McKaskie (1989: 71), whom Roberts invokes in this regard, explicitly
edge." He is severely critical of the effects: "The corpus of historical publica­ invokes the idiom of Richard Rorty: "epistemology proceeds on the assumption
tions about Sri Lanka that have been produced in recent years is quite that all contributions to a given discourse are commensurable. Hermeneutics is
impressive, but even a nodding acquaintance with the histories of Black Africa largely a struggle against this assumption." McKaskie's argument is that in his
and the Pacific is sufficient to indicate that, broadly speaking, the work on Sri field of inquiry "the Asante historical and cultural context is itself hermeneuti­
Lanka (including my own) does not match the degree of sophistication shown cal" and that in this respect it differs from established Western modes of analv-
in the best essays on Af;ican and Pacific localities." sis in history and anthropology (1989: 72). ,
Roberts attributes to this difference the much greater degree of methodolog­ There is, however, a danger with this approach also. What does it mean to
ical innovation found in those areas where indigenous written records were not treat our informants as theorists, as hermeneuticists, even as intellectuals, given
available for reduction to a European model of literate semantics. Lacking that these terms are all grounded in their own particular histories in the West?
indigenous written records prior to the colonial intrusions, he argues, scholars The motivation may be benign, a principle of mutual respect, but this will only
were forced into innovative methodologies and theories. One of the pathfind­ work if the Western observer relinquishes control of the meaning of such his­
ers was Jan Vansina. While subsequent criticisms and other ethnographies have torically embedded terms as "theory" or "philosophy" - a task requiring her­
forced him to amend his innovative decipering of oral traditions (Vansina 1985), culean efforts at detachment. As Hountondji (1983; see also Mudimbe 1988) -
however, even these modifications perpetuate the idea that there are African oral himself a supporter of the view that Roberts espouses - has noted, even attribut­
texts "whose object [is] recognisably consonant with that of the European his­ ing "philosophy" to African societies risks representing their thought in Euro­
torian" (Barber 1989: 14). centric terms. Similar concerns attach to the reductive implications of "oral
In contrast to this view, Karin Barber's analysis exemplifies the approach that literature" and "indigenous theory," in which the professional activities of
anthropologists bring to the historical record. In writing about the oriki, she Western intellectuals become the touchstone of excellence.
argues that their performers' intention is not to chronicle events, but that they But this is the classic dilemma of an anthropology committed to respect for
are nevertheless "intrinsically and profoundly historical" in that they "repre­ the intellectual and aesthetic life of all the peoples its practitioners study. Rather
sent 'the past in the present', the way the knowledge of the past makes itself than simply trying to make it disappear through some inventive neologism, we
64 HISTORIES HISTORIES 65

should deploy this uncomfortable awareness to critical advantage, in part by events take in segmentary societies, to adopt Paul Dresch's (1986) useful phrase,
recalling that our own supposedly abstract theories are a form of social prac­ suggests that the statist veneer is already in place, requiring an initial defense
tice - a concept that has been especially present in Italian social theory from of the cultural intimacy of experienced differences of both opinion and alleged
Vico through Gramsci, De Martino, and Eco long before it became an integral quality before the anthropologist's own familiarity - acquired in the field -
part of a practice-oriented anthropology in politically more powerful European makes such dissembling untenable. If the bland face of unity is taken to be the
academies. objective truth, as official state rhetoric usually demands, the segmentary rep­
In this view, anthropologists themselves become the reflexive source of a resentation of the past must logically be as mendacious as it is taken to be by
critical comparativism. Instead of a purely self-indulgent narcissism, reflexivity the standards of a positivistic western canon.
becomes the art of keeping the assumptions of a necessarily relativistic This dilemma is especially real for those who live in societies not yet fully
discipline always in question. It is for this reason, too, that we cannot afford absorbed into a state system. History-making of the sort Shryock describes cap­
to ignore the long and sometimes shameful history of anthropological in­ tures precisely the difficulty of knowing with certainty anything about a past
volvement in the colonial project. As Vico reminds us, forgetting the social that has such grave consequences for those living in the present. The goal is not
entailments of our present knowledge undercuts that knowledge - decontextu­ to treat it as though it belonged to exactly the same mode as western histori­
alizes it, as we would say today - and so renders it meaningless and useless. ography, but simply to compare the two idioms in order to elucidate the dif­
Indeed, much of what has happened to historical epistemology in postcolonial ferences as well as the similarities between their respective sets of criteria of
settings is, like the political life that encases it (Mbembe 1991), itself a reaction reliability and accountabiliy. This makes respect for both a more manageable
to - and parodic reproduction of - antecedent colonial forms. If we place our proposition.
own assumptions about the past in direct comparison with those of other The kind of reflexive comparativism I am suggesting here offers precisely
peoples, this does not mean that the gloss "history" must entail a reduction to this advantage: instead of making "our own" mode the immovable touchstone
European models. for the evaluation of all others, we treat it as an interesting cultural object
Yet the risk of misinterpretation is always strong. Hanson's (1983) discussion in its own right. This is surely what taking comparativism seriously and re­
of Maori historical modes of thought, while made accessible by a direct com­ flexively must entail. It is also the corollary of Shryock's tactical decision to
parison with western semiotic models, shows how we may maintain the tension engage directly in the history-making methods of his informants instead
of analogy - between similarity and difference - against reductionism. But this of trying to stand aloof and observe them from outside. In this manner he
did not save Hanson from considerable opprobrium when he insisted (1989) not only gained a fine-grained ethnographic understanding of Bedouin ideas
that much Maori cultural revivalism entailed a kind of strategic essentialism. about the past, but he also came to see his own sense of history - and of anthro­
As a remarkably important experiment in broadening the category of pology, for that matter - as the culturally located practices that they are. Note,
"history" in critical fashion, we should note Shryock's ( 1997) remarkable too, that, unlike positivist historians, he does not separate his account of the
deconstruction of Arabic tarikh as a form of history-making in which truth is data collection from the analysis proper: indeed, it is this immediate engage­
locally understood to be socially embedded and therefore changeable. Here the ment that leads him to realize that, under conditions of segmentary social and
issue is not a simplistic division of labor between oral and literary modes. political relations, "the binary rhetoric is real" (Shryock 1997: 135) - a point
Shryock shows that, just as an honest man may lie in order to expose the falsity that also has relevance for the problems associated with the binary (structural­
of another's claims and so claim access to a higher truth, Bedouin historians so ist) analysis of cosmologies. History, too, is refracted through such cosmologi­
fully recognize the evanescence of present political alliances - which are cal principles. Shryock deployed the field situation to achieve a measure
grounded in shifting interpretations of clan genealogies - that they intensely dis­ of distance from the principles that governed official history and was thereby
liked the idea of the reduction of their narratives to any form of permanent led to a fuller sense of how Bedouin tribal sheikhs were making theirs. Since
record, whether on tape or in print (Shryock 1997:16). This is the kind of his­ this inevitably led him into alarming (and entirely context-dependent) discus­
torical account that works in a segmentary society; just as in my own fieldwork sions about who was lying and which narratives should be discarded, he also
the denial of animal-theft fell by the wayside of interclan rivalry as each narra­ provides a vivid portrait of the fieldwork vicissitudes necessary for the achieve­
tor became aware of his peers' access to me and wished to surpass them in tales ment of this grounded understanding. And given that some Arab social attitudes
of derring-do, so Shryock found that discord and history were often virtually encapsulate the possibility that a tactical lie may reveal a deeper truth - that
the same thing. Only the official history of an institutional structure such as the one might morally subvert the truth in order to provoke worse liars into reveal­
nation-state will present the past as inevitably leading to unity in the present ing themselves (Gilsenan 1976) - it is clear that we can evaluate the historicity
age. of these sheikhly genealogies only if we are prepared to situate them in a
Such history-making eventually yields to the unitary vision of nation-state. larger moral universe in which lying in defense of one's patrilineal kin may be
Indeed, informants' initial reluctance in such societies to admit to the form that a high moral stance.
66 HISTORIES HISTORIES 67

But the question of how we position ourselves in the quest for knowledge as epistemologically mad. Nor is the problem whether they ... can speak. The
about "other histories" (Hastrup, ed., 1992) is not only one of methodology. problem is whether they can be heard and understood." This simple assertion
It is also epistemological. One dramatic example of what happens when of a principled modesty, whether followed in practice or not, restores the respon­
we insert our own historiography into the comparativist project brings us back sibility for interpretations to those who presume to make them, and away from
to the case of Captain Cook. The Aboriginals who insisted that they knew better the generic claims to representation from which Obeyesekere, as Borofsky
than Europeans that Cook had truly died were challenging his elevation to (1997: 278) notes, has properly distanced himself. The debate has been useful
godhead even while, in disputing "Cook's Law," they were also pointing to a - if for nothing else, then at least for showing up the limits on the extent to
form of self-perpetuation quite different from the literal apotheosis with which which an anthropologist - any anthropologist can assume an authoritative
Europeans thought the Tahitians had imbued him. For them Cook was the VO!Ce.
emblematic colonizer, and they certainly knew that even if he had died the Other debates, similarly embedded in the cultural politics of the late
oppression he represented had not. But it is among the Hawai'ians that anthro­ twentieth-century West, come to mind. Prominent among these is the Afrocen­
pologists have most forcefully encountered their own entailment in the con­ tric claim, buttressed by the publication of Martin Bernal's magisterial but con­
struction of the past. troversial Black Athena (1987), about the supposedly "African" (but also
It was among the Hawaiians, after all, that Cook was supposedly received as Semitic) genesis of western civilization (see also Lefkowitz 1996). This debate,
a god. In response to Marshall Sahlins's argument that the death of Captain indeed, illustrates how truth claims are filtered through differing interpretations
Cook can be attributed to consequences of the Tahitians' conviction that he was of key cultural categories. Precisely what it means to say that the ancient Greeks
their returned god Lano, the Sri Lankan anthropologist Gananath Obeyesekere owed much of their culture to "Africa" treads a da~gerously ill-defined line
(1992) accused Sahlins (1985) of uncritically accepting European fables that between racial and cultural definitions of nationhood, drawing the debate into
constructed the Hawaiians as incredulous primitives and inserted self-serving the perilous waters of ethnonational pride.
ideas of the Hawaiian view of Europeans into this picture. The Hawaiian myth Indeed, the hostile reaction evinced by Black Athena among conservative
that Cook was the god Lono, a point central to Sahlins's thesis, is, says Obeye­ Greek scholars - that is, scholars of Greek nationality - and the educated public
sekere, actually a European myth - a neat and ironic reversal of epistemic in Greece shows that we must carefully scrutinize all claims by intellectuals to
categories. represent a national or even a broader constituency ("the Third World"). It is,
Sahlins, in response (1995), charges Obeyesekere with two logical and after all, through the same neo-Classical elite ideology that today rejects Bernal's
procedural errors: on the one hand, he says, Obeyesekere has read modern arguments out of hand that Greeks were taught to reject everything familiar in
(eighteenth-century) European rationalism into the Hawaiians; on the other, he their vernacular culture as "foreign" to the Classical Hellenism invented by the
has taken it upon himself to speak for all Third World victims of imperialism. eighteenth-century German scholars who had sired both the "autochthonous"
Both errors, in Sahlins's view, are category mistakes, entailing ideological deci­ theory of Greek ethnogenesis and, in the lineage of "Aryan" linguistics, the so­
sions that do as much violence to the ethnographic and historical record as does called racial science of the Nazis. This is also the ideology that has today made
the most egregious Eurocentrism. In Roberts's words, the Hawaiians thus it necessary to specify whenever one means modern Greeks, as I have just done,
"become the epitome of 'practical rationality.' Through this emphasis they are because the West has made Classical antiquity the only acceptable touchstone
assimilated to the Sinhalese; and together constitute the universal native, the of their cultural worth. As with the Sahlins-Obeyesekere debate, it is less inter­
homogenized Other battling the precious West." esting to take sides than it is to inspect the political implications of each posi­
The Sahlins-Obeyesekere debate has inspired numerous commentaries and tion. Whatever we mean anthropologically by "the truth" must lie as much in
even one fictional replay. Roberts describes it as "unresolved," but I would argue the debate itself as in the facts marshaled by either side. And to ignore the social
that it is, and should remain, unresolvable: the fissures may be best kept open and cultural embedding of such debates is hardly a convincing way of being
so that we can more fully discern the ideological and political consequences of empirical.
both lines of argument. Thus, for example, it is entirely clear that one key issue The example of modern Greece provides a useful key to historicizing those
concerns the question of whether First World scholars are entitled to pronounce whom Eric Wolf has ironically dubbed "the people without history" (Wolf
on the cultural and religious values of others; or, conversely, whether a scholar 1982). For the modern Greeks a people arguably plagued by an excess
emanating from the Third World is, purely for that reason, entitled to represent of history, but of a kind invented for them by more powerful others - face
that bloc in its confrontation with the West. Robert Borofsky (1997) has pro­ real-life dilemmas of self-description (for example: "are we European?") that
vided, with significant input from the protagonists, an extremely useful and dis­ lie at the same point of intellectual origin as the question of ancient Greek roots
passionate account of this debate, in the course of which Sahlins (in Borofsky and as anthropology itself. Those who espouse extreme nationalist positions,
1997: 273), endorsing Borofsky's general perspective, sensibly observes: "To claiming (as they invoke Alexander, Philip, and Aristotle) that the name
assume the right to speak for Hawaiians would be morally repugnant as well of Macedonia is exclusively Greek and that there is no such thing as a Mace-
68 HISTORIES HISTORIES 69

donian minority, are reacting to the exigencies of a perhaps genuinely danger­ as Scott observes, "it is very often the case that the objects that come to
ous local situation in which their country faces potentially hostile neighbors organize a professional anthropological inquiry (a religious discourse, a ritual
on several fronts; but they are also resuscitating the very logic that has always practice, a kinship structure, a trading pattern) are first constituted as visible
compromised their supposed independence to begin with - the logic according objects in missionary, administrative, or travel narratives, reports, and diaries."
to which all the country's modern claims must be evaluated by the yardstick Recall Nicholas Thomas's call to look at such genres as museum reports: these,
of ancient history. The recent furor over the publication of a relatively mild too, are documents of that particular history, that particular construction
historical and ethnographic account of the progressive hellenization of the Greek of knowledge.
province of Macedonia (Karakasidou 1997) exhibits both the nervousness It also makes very little sense, from this standpoint, to argue whether Obe­
of the Greek establishment and the persistence of stereotypes of Greeks as yesekere or Sahlins is correct. Rather, we should attempt to describe the
irrational, hysterical Balkan lunatics among supposedly sober commentators in competing cultural logics that permit the simultaneous production of very
the West. It also demonstrates the neuralgia that anthropology can induce different versions of the past even within anthropology itself - precisely, in
in those who are committed to unitary myths of national origin, as it also does fact, as we do for the populations we study. Here, in fact, an analogy from
the sometimes unavoidable entailment of anthropology in its object of study. the study of fiction may be especially helpful: arguments about whether a work
And it raises anew the question of how far anthropology should go in ques­ is history, a chronicle, or a novel have important consequences for the kinds
tioning the defensive essentialisms of weaker nations and other groups: since of truth that are at stake, and one of the tasks the anthropologist must under­
these framings of identity are often grounded in a positivistic model of history, take is to explore the classification of genres in relation to concepts of truth
arguments about the debatability of the past must always carry ethical over­ and falsehood, or more generally to idioms and conventions of representation.
tones. While, for example, one might justify the critiques of Balkan national­ This is what Shryock did with the Jordanian shaeikhs' narratives. As we
ism on the grounds that they have inspired the symbolic but also very material examine cultures in which the genres of narrative about the past diverge in
practice of "ethnic cleansing," one should also note the role of more powerful intended content from those with which we are familiar, the question of what
international agents in promoting the logic they are so anxious to attribute constitutes history becomes all the more obviously embedded in the specificities
to exoticized Others. of culture, politics, and pragmatic concerns ranging from the interactional to
In these terms, it should be clear that a clear adjudication of the debate the institutional.
between Obeyesekere and Sahlins is probably an unrealistic goal. "The dispute Roberts argues that the significance of the Obeyesekere-Sahlins debate is
is a polemical one," remarks David Scott. "But it is not hard to see that it is enhanced by the self-conscous innovativeness of Sahlins' initial work on Hawaii.
only superficially about the details, about whether eighteenth-century Hawai­ Where the historian Braudel seeks to sideline event history and where Levi­
ians actually took Cook to be a manifestation of their god Lono. What gives Strauss discards sequential time as irrelevant to the perduring cognitive struc­
the dispute its cash-value is that it highlights the larger epistemological tures he seeks to identify in all cultures, says Roberts, "Sahlins attempts to
question of what is (or what ought to be) entailed in the construction of knowl­ bridge anthropology and history by developing a 'structural, historical anthro­
edge of non-European peoples and places." For Scott, however, its further sig­ pology' " Or, in Aletta Biersack's words, he attempts "to recover event, action,
nificance is "that the anxiety generated by the critique of colonialist discourse change, and the world for structural analysis. Conversely, he lseeks] to recover
often turns on mis-stated questions such as the following: When Western schol­ structural analysis for history" (Biersack 1989: 85). In Sahlins's work, famously,
ars write about non-Western societies, do they inevitably perpetuate the myths we see that structured meanings "are revalued as they are practically enacted"
of European imperialism? Can Western scholars ever articulate the meanings (M. Sahlins 1985: vii); contingency and cultural form, like agency and struc­
and logics of non-Western peoples?" Dismissing such questions as misguided, ture, are mutually entailed and, again like agency and structure, cannot exist -
because they essentialize "the Western [or colonial] oberver" in a singularly that is, we cannot apprehend them - in isolation from each other.
unhelpful fashion, he echoes Nicholas Thomas's skepticism about the real While Biersack regards Sahlins's dialectical model as a reconciliation of
impact of anthropological theories: "whether they do or do not perpetuate structural and cultural analyses and an intertwining of "questions of genesis
such myths, depends neither upon their moral attitude toward the colonized or and meaning," others have accused Sahlins of cultural or semiotic determinism
ex-colonized (the natives), nor upon their implicit or explicit anticolonial (e.g., Friedman 1987: 74; Peel 1993: 173). Peel also tackles Sahlins on his
political sympathies. And it certainly does not depend upon whether the anthro­ own chosen ground, arguing that "the model of history that is put forward is
pological hermeneutic involved is Marxist, structuralist, or psychoanalytic." of transitions between given cultural orders." In the result, the Hawaiian
Rather, he argues, their compliance in the perpetuation of such myths depends representations of their past, with all their potentiality for contestation and
on their ability to see these, no less than the essentialized identities of today's reflexivity, are not given adequate attention, insofar as they are treated as
struggling Third World nations, as constructions, located "in particular an "unproblematic cultural endowment" (Peel 1993: 171). This, in other
conceptual and ideological histories." Colonialism is such a context. And, words, is mainly a question of agency. It is also a recognition that structure
70 HISTORIES HISTORIES 71

often only becomes apparent when it is disputed. It is the actors, moreover, who competing forms of agency - the most serious effect, in human affairs, of the
recognize analogies between events widely separated in time and space. This is logical error known as the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
the basis of the predominance, already noted, of social dramas at times of great The image of origins as the source of political unity is clearly central: it is a
social or cultural strain. translation of history into pragmatics. This is the sense of Evans-Pritchard's
One consequence of this recognition of agency is that we can contextualize (1940) genealogical concept of "structural time," in which the degree of social
different kinds of text and understand that local actors use them according to distance between two groups corresponds to the number of generations that
shifts in context as well as intention. Of such a kind is our own distinction separate them from their common ancestor. Nationalist historiography renders
between academic and popularizing history, for example, or that between social this relativized logic absolute: if you are not of our stock, you are alien to us.
and diplomatic history. Some scholars have used formal semiotic models to flush It also takes over the genealogical principle of "telescoping" or "structural
out such important internal discriminations. Hanson (1983), for example, used amnesia" to generate officially sanctioned silences about sources of internal dif­
the notion of the syntagmatic structure (or structural sequence) to identify ference: embarrassing historical. interventions and invasions by "foreign"
Maori understandings of historical experience in terms of a variable relation­ peoples are decreed not to exist. And colonialist historiography turns the process
ship with the present - which, while continuous with some aspects of the past, around, acknowledging difference as the justification of hegemony. Origins
is not always seen as equally consequent upon it. clearly do legitimate; Mary Helms (1988) has argued, moreover, that more
In a related methodological vein, Valerio Valeri found that Hawaiians used distant origins - or control over more distantly produced goods - legitimate
two quite distinct modes of historical text: prose narratives and genealogical more fully: they have the ungainsayable force of inaccessibility.
chants. In the narratives the emphasis is on content and its history is argument. But origins can also be disputed. Not only are they the direct focus of polit­
The genealogical panegyrics, on the other hand, are "total works of art" with ical debate; actors often use them to infuse everyday disputes with competing
magical as well as aesthetic effects. He then clarifies the mutual interplay and claims to authority, and such repeated invocati9n is what creates habitual
effect of these differing forms of indigenous history through the theoretical dis­ respect for their significance, if not agreement as to their correct interpretation.
tinction between syntagmatic relations and paradigmatic relations in the repre­ It is this reenactment of past events in the present that gives such force to
sentation of events. With syntagmatic relations, the emphasis is on events Turner's (1974) "social drama" - a recognizable type of event, corresponding
defined by their position on a temporal chain, so that they are signs presenting to the methodological model of the "diagnostic event" (S. Moore 1987) in the
history as a cumulative process. Paradigmatic relations, on the other hand, study of social process, but given authority precisely because it analogically
establish connections "between events as members of classes of actions"; and, conjures up a respected past.
as such, are metaphoric. They "exemplify rules" and are memorable for this Social drama, sometimes in the form of major events (such as national revo­
reason, thereby possessing a capacity to conflate past and present (Valeri 1990: lutions playing themselves out as renditions of the Passion of Christ), may also
157, 160). They are the very stuff of social drama. In the comparison of nar­ subsist in relatively everyday, recurrent moments: it is then their commonplace
rative and genealogical history, "paradigmatic and syntagmatic dimensions exist character that makes them persuasive. Moreover, they suggest, as Roberts notes,
in both, although for purposes of legitimation, the paradigmatic one dominates an important reason for rejecting the functionalist view of myth (or history) as
in the narratives and the syntagmatic one in the genealogies" (Valeri 1990: 174). a charter for the present popularized by Malinowski (1948). Such explanations
In the genealogical chants, "the supreme value of continuity is magically repro­ presuppose an inner purpose, a Durkheimian social genius, that decides in
duced out of the discontinuities represented, and justified, by narrative history" advance which version of the past is to be legitimated and whose interests it
(Valeri 1990: 188). The discussion leads to the conclusion that although his­ will serve. In practice, everything is always up for grabs: the enactment of a
torical precedent may be used to legitimate change, "the relationship between social drama is one of the ways in which power, precariously gained, may be
past and present is never conceived as one of mechanical reproduction. It is kept or increased, or perhaps redirected, and to invoke a functionalist expla­
instead analogical and thus implies difference, not only similarity, between past nation is simply to collude in the just-so stories told by the victors as the instru­
and present. It implies, moreover, a choice between alternatives. This is precisely ment ("charter") of their vindication. In this sense, in fact, functionalism is a
what is implied by [the] use of the term paradigmatic to describe its dominant social drama in its own right.
mode" (Valeri 1990: 190). In analyzing the fleeting social dramas of everyday life, moreover, we can
correct the imbalance - the conflation of the analytic perspective with the inter­
ests of the currently powerful - by observing who uses what allusions to what
Why Does the Past Legitimate? past and for what purposes. Michael Roberts, drawing on recollections of his
home country, Sri Lanka, nicely illustrates the fluid character of such moments:
This question, while important, is misdirected. It should be: who gives the past "A trivial incident from the ethnographic present of Sri Lanka illustrates the
its legitimating authority, and why? To ask "what the past does" is to ignore empowerment provided by historical understandings. The little drama unfolded
72 HISTORIES HISTORIES 73

at a cricket match in Colombo in 1981. It involved two Sri Lankan players not thoroughly contextualized in relation to that other "native's" point
whom I will call Laddie and Sinha. Laddie appeared to be a burgher (i.e. an of view, that of the anthropologist. The latter carries a great deal of histor­
ethnic label describing European descendants). But he was participating in a ical baggage, and the negotiation that leads to the production of ethnogra­
contest in which Sri Lanka was confronting Australia. It was as a patriotic Sri phy must reflect the effects of both sets of historical understandings entailed
Lankan that he teased Australian fielders within earshot, with an occasional in the encounter. This is where Scott's gloss on Asad will prove particularly
sally at local spectators. When Sinha befriended an Australian fielder, he too helpful.
was subject to intermittent teasing. Amiably defensive for the most part, Sinha In an Afterword to a recent volume of George Stocking's History of An­
bore the banter - till Laddie questioned his patriotism, at which point his retort thropology series dedicated to the question of colonialism (see Stocking 1991),
was devastatingly effective: 'I am a Sinhalese,' said he, pointing to his chest affir­ Asad urged a shift in preoccupations "from the history of colonial anthro­
matively. Laddie was silenced and after that left Sinha alone, directing his taunts pology to the anthropology of Western hegemony" (Asad 1991). Whereas
elsewhere. In one stroke Laddie, the aggressor, had been disempowered" the former has been concerned with tracing out the role of anthropological
(Roberts 1994: 271-5). Sinha's retort was in restricted code. It was as evoca­ discourse and practice (and of anthropologists) in colonialism's career, the
tive as lucid, its meaning fully understood by all the indigenous bystanders. He latter, he argues, would be concerned primarily with exploring the implications
transported Laddie beyond the cricket field to the surrounding political arena of the discursive and nondiscursive transformations produced by European
of Sri Lanka. Laddie was reminded of the conventional view that Sri Lanka had power (especially modern European power) upon the non-European world.
been, from centuries back, a predominantly Sinhalese country; and that this The story of European colonialism, Asad argues, is now often told in terms
claim had received a resounding majoritarian sanction at the general elections of a dialectic of expansion and reaction, domination and resistance. This is
of 1956 when Sinhalese linguistic nationalism had secured the foreground of the story that when Europe conquered and ruled non-European peoples
politics. And Laddie was sharply made aware of his own identity as a Sri Lankan these peoples were not mere passive victims of colonial power. They themselves
of European descent, a newcomer with less of a lien on the place than a son of responded to the colonizers in various ways, most importantly in various
the soil. For what Sinha in effect said was: "Who are you lansi puta [son of a forms of (sometimes armed) resistance. Asad suggests, however, that the story
burgher] to question my loyalty?" of colonialism should also be a story of how the conditions for resistance,
From our position today the incident can be deemed trivial, but its very and for response in general, were, as he puts it, "increasingly defined by a
triviality enhances its significance. Sinha and Laddie were ordinary middle­ new scheme of things-new forms of power, work, and knowledge" (Asad 1991:
class people, not tied to a powerful party. This was an "everyday" affair, 314). It is toward illuminating this transformation that Asad wants to direct
one that provides grist for those interested in the mill of popular culture. anthropological attention.
The exchange also reveals the dynamic possibilities of interpersonal interaction: This view differs from its predecessors especially in its insistence on the
namely, that specific images of the past, with their associated values and uniqueness of the European colonial expansion. It is a call to recognize histor­
legitimations, can emerge from within the minutiae of everyday exchanges. And ical specificity, and especially the unique and irreversible transformation that
these images are then registered in the memory-banks of those who witness/hear European expansion produced in the world. No human population was unaf­
such exchanges. fected by it; none can revert to the way things were before.
And in such "triviality" anthropologists play their strongest card: for the David Scott wants to "read this challenge along two separable but inter­
question of who defines what as trivial is itself a commentary on the politics of connected registers." One of these registers has to do with the problem of
significance underlying the role of the social sciences in public debate (Herzfeld the formation of anthropological objects, with the discursive relationship,
1997c). Attention to the supposedly trivial can disturb the complacency of in other words, between the reflexive objects of professional anthropology
the dominant, whose construction of what constitutes common sense sud­ and those (ideological) objects constituted as objects as such in and through
denly appears a good deal less objective, and a good deal more self-interested, colonialist knowledge. The other of these registers has to do more directly
than before. Common sense is the world-classifying face of power; the social with what Asad calls an anthropology of Western hegemony - what Scott
dramas of everyday life forever oscillate between reproducing and disputing its wants to call a "historical anthropology of the postcolonial present." Scott
authority. sees this register as "concerned with the transforming effects of European
power in non-European (conceptual, institutional, and social) spaces, and
in particular, with the transforming effects of modern European power." And
Colonialism and its Reverberations he points out that this is where Asad is specifically concerned with that story
of European power "not as a temporary repression of subject populations
Attempting to gauge local common sense - "the native's point of view" but as an irrevocable process of transmutation, in which old desires and
(Geertz 1983: 55-70) - is, as we have seen, an inadequate approach if it is ways of life were destroyed and new ones took their place - a story of change
74 HISTORIES HISTORIES 75

without precedent in its speed, global scope, and pervasiveness' (Asad 1991: The Convergence of History and Anthropology
314).
Asad, providing a historical backdrop to Nicholas Thomas's deflation of the
discipline's pretensions to an important role in the modern world, has pointed Detailed ethnography, then, offers daily challenges to the dominance of certain
out that the role of anthropologists in the colonial project was, by and large, a political structures, and conventional historiography has largely been impervi­
relatively minor one. "The role of anthropologists in maintaining structures of ous, even resistant, to its call. In fact, however, some historians have been open
imperial domination," he writes, "has, despite slogans to the contrary, usually to the possibility of a "history from below." It is also noteworthy that some of
been trivial; the knowledge they produced was often too esoteric for govern­ this effort has come from anthropologists working on European· societies (e.g.,
ment use, and even where it was usable it was marginal in comparison to the Hastrup ed. 1992): their concern has not been to reduce anthropology to the
vast body of information routinely accumulated by merchants, missionaries, and status of all the other Eurocentric cultural disciplines, but, on the contrary, to
administrators" (Asad 1991: 315). He goes on to say, however: "But if the role relativize the European experience while also recognizing that ordinary Euro­
of anthropology for colonialism was relatively unimportant, the reverse propo­ peans were also in some degree subjected to the effects of the project of world
sition does not hold. The process of European global power has been central to domination in ways that were not of their own making. A related theme, from
the anthropological task of recording and analyzing the ways of life of subject the other side of the colonial relationship, has been extensively explored by John
populations, even when a serious consideration of that power was theoretically and Jean Comaroff (1991, 1997).
excluded. It is not merely that anthropological fieldwork was facilitated by Anthropologists were quick to salute the rapprochement between the two dis­
European power (although this well-known point deserves to be thought about ciplines.3 While, as Roger Chartier's (1988) sharp rejoinder to Geertz's Prince­
in other than moralistic terms); it is that the fact of European power, as dis­ ton colleague Robert Darnton makes clear, generalizations about durable
course and practice, was always part of the reality anthropologists sought to cultural symbols can seem simplistic to those who claim "native" knowledge,
understand, and of the way they sought to understand it" (Asad 1991: 315). and while some uses of anthropological theory also give an impression of toolkit
From this, Scott argues that "despite the admirable attention to history that methodologies rather than of mutual exploration, the debates that this cross­
characterizes much contemporary anthropology it is still very poorly grasped fertilization generated only served to intensify a dialogue for which Evans­
that histories of the non-European social, cultural and political realities that Pritchard, another devotee of the strongly Vichian R. G. Collingwood, had laid
anthropologists are interested in have also to be histories of the concepts the foundations. In the "cultural history" advocated by Lynn Hunt and Chartier,
through which such histories are constructed" (see also D. Scott 1994). For one sees a partiality for modified deconstructionist and narratological theories
Scott, the point at issue is, as he argues from his reading of Collingwood, that and a full textual awareness of complex patterns of communication (Nussdor­
we must always ask questions that have some "purchase" on - relevance for - fer 1993; Hunt 1989; Chartier 1988). History acquired an ethnographic sensi­
the world we inhabit. Issues of resistance and domination may no longer be as bility, notably in the work of Peter Sahlins's (1983) examination of the
germane as they were in the immediate period of decolonization, and what is segmentary underpinnings of pre-modern French and Spanish identity forma­
now needed, in Asad's and Scott's view, is a history of the postcolonial present. tion (a fascinating counterpart to Shryock's exploration of modern Jordanian
To this I would add that such a history must always also take into account the nationalism), and, rather differently, in historical sociology such as that of
situation of places that were never explicitly colonized - or at least that claim Charles Tilly and E. P. Thompson.
this for themselves - and how such discourses of independence have been able The explicitly Marxist E. P. Thompson was closely attentive to the force
to flourish. of religious ideas in the early phase of industrialization in Britain. Roberts
Here the situation of the anthropologist may indeed be diagnostic. The late writes: "Within radical circles in Britain and their extensions his work opened
arrival of European ethnography as a "respectable" occupation and especially the door to greater significance being attached to cultural values in social
as a source of new theoretical insight is surely indicative. What anthropologists analysis. From the late 1960s the availability of Gramsci's work in translation
actually do may be of little interest to others. Why what they study is so often and the growing reputation of the literary scholar Raymond Williams enhanced
regarded as marginal ought to be of great interest to those same others: it is a Thompson's influence in the circuits of the New Left Review and Past
question that disturbs the received wisdom about the criteria of significance. It and Present and promoted increasing attention to cultural domination
is for this reason that the Asad/Scott project must find its counterpart in the and modes of resistance" - themes that were to yield radical departures in
ethnography of contemporary societies, western and non-western, for the lived "cultural studies" at Birmingham, as well as to influence the "resistance theory"
consequences of the enormous transformation that preoccupies these scholars - of James Scott and of the Subaltern Studies group (launched in India in
consequences that are inscribed in the architecture, languages, and embodied 1982). Ranajit Guha's Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency (1983)
daily habits of the world's peoples - do not reveal themselves easily in printed exemplified the work of this last group: a study of peasant insurrections in
sources. nineteenth-century British India portrays "the peasantry as a subject of history,
76 HISTORIES HISTORIES 77

endowed with its own distinct forms of consciousness and acting upon the history, in the Ohafia production of historical memory through dance, and in
world in its own terms" (Chatterjee 1993, 160). Roberts remarks that "its the Cibecue Apaches' reading of the physical landscape that they inhabit, we
detailed interrogation of texts to glean peasant practices and the semiotics of can hear alternatives to the stories told by those with power. They, literally,
resistance render the work eminently one of historical anthropology." Other speak "truth to power"; and power is thereby discomfited.
parallel developments similarly challenged existing hegemonies. Feminist histo­ Such reversals do not only concern former colonies and Third World peoples.
rians, notably Luisa Passerini and the Milan Feminist Cooperative in Italy, The rejection of history from below would also exclude significant parts of the
notably rescued the voices of those oppressed by fascism, patriarchy, and the European population as well. Just as anthropology began life as a pillar of colo­
consumerist society of late capitalism. nialism, so folklore studies similarly supported the hegemonic goals of educated
Roberts remarks that "it is Thompson's focus on episodic moments and sub­ elites - precisely those people whose "invention of tradition" has been addressed
jective agents in ongoing action at such moments which merits attention." The by Hobsbawm and Ranger (eds., 1983). And yet their solution - to view the
resulting "people's history," which sought "to write an archive-based 'history construction of national folk culture as purely an elite construction - is also
from below' " and focused on the underclasses and neglected segments of society inadequate and, ironically, elitist. It overlooks the role of ordinary people in the
in particular (Samuel 1981: xv), matched the localized microhistories of such incessant processes of reformulation, and, much as did Hobsbawm's own earlier
writers as Carlo Ginzburg in Italy. Ginzburg's influence in anthropology has work on social banditry (1959), treats them as dupes of the dominant ideology
meanwhile been considerable, and has influenced the production of at least one rather than sometimes quite deliberate agents of their own fate.
fine ethnography - a study of the modern effects of a process of "cultural dis­ Here anthropological fieldwork comes to the rescue. An especially brilliant
enchantment" leading to the collapse of the belief system that Ginzburg had so example is provided by Jerome R. Mintz's ethnographic study of Casas Viejas,
minutely researched in the same region of Italy (Holmes 1989). site of one of the bloodiest conflicts of the Spanish Civil War (1982). By con­
Microhistory, a term especially popularized by Ginzburg (1980), has not been centrating on the oral accounts of survivors and situating these within his inti­
without its critics. The objections it has evinced largely parallel the charge of mate knowledge of local social relations, he was able to show how far local
"anecdotalism" so often leveled against anthropology. Thus, for example, Philip actors were swayed by considerations of ideology and how far both official
Abrams has argued that it is naive to present selected moments or persons as a fascist and Marxist accounts of their acceptance of anarchist principles and of
representation of past reality; and it is doubly naive to assume that individuals charismatic leadership overlooked their own active interest in recasting the
could "give the historian or sociologist unreflective but accurate accounts of the tyranny of church and state in familiar principles of morality. "Free love"
meaning of their own lives - or even reflective ones." Against such efforts, he unions, for example, entailed a rejection of the church's control of morality,
argues that "the past ... can only be known in terms of some conscious effort rather than a revolt against morality as such, and the sense of moral commu­
to theorize it, and that any such effort involves a recognition of the sense in nity provided a more persuasive reason for sustained resistance than did the
which social realities are strange, relational and not directly accessible to us - dubious talents of local rabblerousers. Such insights bring new data to bear on
a recognition of the extent to which knowledge has to be an act of estrange­ the past, permitting reinterpetation that is now vastly more respectful of local
ment" (Abrams 1982: 328-9). memory (e.g., Maddox 1995).
The notion that knowledge is a form of "making strange" is entirely sympa­ Examples could easily be multiplied. Sharon Roseman's account of road­
thetic to the anthropological imagination, and resonates also with some views building in Galicia ( 1996), for example, provides an especially convincing
of the literary art. But this does not mean that such "defamiliarization," to use insight into the connections between cultural separatism and resistance to the
the literary term, is never vouchsafed to those we study. Indeed, those who live Francoist regime. In my own work on historic conservation on Crete, I have
on the political margins of state societies may be especially sensitized to the tried to illustrate the ways in which official renditions of cultural history
semiotics of power. It is no coincidence that destablizing forms of word play, notably their emphasis on neo-Classical and "Western" models - run afoul of
for example, seem to flourish in precisely those liminal places (see, for example, local economics, gender dynamics, family histories, and the assertion of regional
Labov's [1972] classic study of inner-city speech in the United States). The shep­ at the expense of national pride (Herzfeld 1991). And in the United States
herds with whom I have worked in Crete were highly aware, not only of the Richard Handler and Eric Gable (1997) have demonstrated the tensions that lie
oddity of their own marginal situation, but also of the historical processes that beneath the smiling surface of a national historic site and the narratives that
had exiled them to the margins of Greek society while claiming their stereo­ staff - with their different origins in colonial settler and slave populations - are
typical virtues - courage, inventiveness, hospitality, and above all resistance to expected to recount for the visitors.
imposed authority - for the nation-state itself. An instructive result of the glorification of local "tradition" by nationalist
Hobbles Danaiyarri, too, a perceptive commentator if ever one existed, and regionalist ideologies has been to place on a pedestal the bearers of the glo­
demands to be heard by anyone claiming not to hear the voices of the power­ rious heritage - and it is a pedestal that neatly confines them: they find their
ful alone. In the Yoruba oriki, in the Cumbales' retreading of national legal agency seriously restricted, since they can easily be dismissed as "backward" or
78 HISTORIES HISTORIES 79

"localist." Indeed, the discourse of localism in Britain has had precisely that the recasting of their habitual social universe; it is, so to speak, the blueprint of
effect (Nadel-Klein 1991). One result is that local people often resort to "author­ their reconfigured habitus (see Low 1996).
itative" sources for "their traditions" in ways that index a powerfully unequal And spatial arrangements may themselves persist in memory, proving more
dynamic (e.g., Collier 1997). Anthropologists are not immune to entailment in durable therein than bricks and masonry. Thus, the startling genius of Joelle
this dynamic: I was once told that a young man in a nearby village was the Bahloul's (1996) account of Jewish-Muslim relations in Algeria lies in the mul­
owner of a personal "archive" on animal-theft in Crete, only to be shown, with tiple fragilities that it evokes: a curtain, easily whisked aside, represents in
much ceremony, my The Poetics of Manhood (Herzfeld 1985)! Anthropologists memory as it once did in practice - the ritual separation of two confessional
are far from immune to cooptation by local groups' intent on coopting them as communities sharing the same domestic space and the same easy relationships,
authoritative scholars for the purpose of legitimizing specific readings of the until the horrors of international conflict disrupted this symbiosis for ever. By
past. reconstructing that space from her own refugee relatives' accounts, narrated to
Anthropologists, however, are usually committed to resisting forms of narra­ her in France, together with her direct observations and encounters with the
tive closure that would grant power to a particular faction or group. One sign Muslims still living in the compound two decades later, Bahloul was able to illu­
of the anthropological shift away from formal sources of historical knowledge minate the complex relationships that subsist among space, memory and iden­
has been the current focus on memory - and forgetting - as the source of history. tity, and to provide an explanation of the nostalgic affection with which each
Of these, memory has a more august lineage in social theory, having been given side recalled the other despite the bitter hostilities that by now had rent them
especially cogent expression by Maurice Halbwachs (1980). But its negative as~nder. She_ delicately explores historical processes of fission and solidary
counterpart has also had a venerable history. The analysis of genealogy, for action, showmg how local actors spatialize these processes - in which the vio­
example, has had to account for the selective devices whereby a nominally uni­ lence done to deep affections marks a seemingly indelible trajectory across the
lineal society maintains the authority and shared social capital of an apical landscape of dwelling places - both in current practice and in their reconstructed
ancestor by allowing the intervening generations to lapse - lineage "telescop­ memories.
ing" or "structural amnesia" (Lewis 1961). Similarly systematic replications of Commemoration and oblivion may in fact be more closely related than
oblivion may occur in the rhetoric of passing generations, as in my own coinage is apparent. Commemorative naming practices that aim to "resurrect" earlier
of "structural nostalgia" (Herzfeld 1997a). Indeed, nostalgia is a useful term generations ultimately have the effect of erasing historical identities through
for the crystallization of personal desire as a temporally and socially embedded repetition, creating a structural amnesia that corresponds, at the level of
representation of the past, and it takes many forms and legitimates many his­ nationalist discourse, to the obliteration of individual identities in the name
tories (see, e.g., Rosaldo 1989; S. Stewart 1984). of a common cause (as in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier) and to a pro­
It is useful at this point to distinguish between memory, a psychological prietorial attitude toward a national name instead (B. Anderson 1983 );
process, and remembrance, a social one; and between forgetting on the one hand indeed, where the transmission of personal names balances commemoration
and more systematic forms of obliteration ("oblivion") on the other (see Dakhlia in the short term with the idea of ultimate reabsorption in the collective iden­
1990). Remembering and forgetting may be the desired ends of the corre­ tity of the kin group, this can lead to powerful expression of possessiveness
sponding social processes, but the success with which they are induced is never as much toward a regional name as toward the territory that it denotes (e.g.,
certain, for all psychological inner states are by definition ultimately opaque and Sutton 1997).
therefore resistant to the ministrations of "thought police." Indeed, several ~aming is one space in which the tension between an externally displayed
essays in a recent and important collection of essays on memory in socialist and umty and the internal recognition of difference and disagreement can
postsocialist societies (R. Watson, ed., 1994) show clearly that oblivion may be be expressed. National symbols a monarchy, a flag, a set of monuments -
a strategy of dissimulation, permitting the long-term conservation of forbidden are another such space. In Shryock's ethnographic analysis of Jordanian nation­
thoughts - the preservation of memories, in fact. alism, we see the continuing conflict that seethes around questions of
Monumentalization is the official face of a more general phenomenon commemoration just below the bland surface of the rhetoric of national
whereby spatial arrangements are imbued with past associations. Struggles over unity. Shryock's analysis is also an excellent illustration of what I have called
historic conservation laws revolve around precisely this issue: particular dispo­ cultural reflexivity: he considers the effect of his own cultural expectations
sitions of space encode corresponding ideas about the cultural past, so that resis­ on his data and, reciprocally, that of local social values on academic and au­
tance to official conservation laws may encapsulate a sense - never verbally thorial practices in Jordan. This collective self-comparison is especially useful
articulated, indeed often denied - that the state's vision of history does not move for making different modes of history-making explicit, because it challenges the
local actors except, perhaps, to irritation. But that irritation is the sign of a more assumption that all history is about recovering the most detailed factual account
radical engagement, because people are well aware that the shaping of their possible: most of it, we discover, is not. Shryock's analysis raises to the inclu­
space actually portends, through inculcation of a particularly insistent variety, sive level of cross-cultural analysis a more general awareness that history is
80 HISTORIES
HISTORIES 81
always dependent on underlying assumptions, many of them political but also
I am less at ease, however, with Roberts's view of the voices of the dispos­
ethical and social (not that these are really separate domains). These assump­
sessed as expressing "those actions and cosmologies which, following Valentine
tions are usually so self-evident, so much a matter of "common sense," that
Daniel, one can call the mythic ontic as distinct from the epistemic knowledges
they are locally resistant to challenge even - or, sometimes, especially - to parties
privileged today." My unease has less to do with what these two authors are
whose tournaments of interpretation depend on their common acceptance of
saying than with the uses to which such a distinction could be put. Roberts
the assumptions themselves. Read in this light, accusations of violating histor­
argues that Daniel's theoretical distinction should not be confused with the usual
ical truth - a favorite of nationalist leaders and litigious heirs alike - emerge as
efforts to separate myth and history to which I alluded at the beginning of this
clearly dependent on some sort of agreement about what kind of thing consti­
chapter. Certainly this is the logic of organizing the discussion around "cos­
tutes "real" history. mologies" and "histories" rather than reverting to myth and history. But to say,
The principles involved constitute a local, cultural classification of events, and
with Daniel, that the mythic ontic consists in ways of being in the world in par­
a hierarchy of significance - of what will be considered important. We thus
ticipatory awe - contrasting with the epistemic ways of seeing the world, ways
return here to an old anthropological staple: the analysis of classification. This
which have an "aboutness" to them (1990: 227-33, 243) - risks reverting to
time, however, the system of classification under study is not necessarily that of
the old Levy-Bruhlian discrimination between a primitive mentality and a ratio­
exotic peoples or illiterate peasants (although the analysis does not exclude those
nal, modern one (but see also, for a more revisionist formulation, Tambiah
who are still sometimes so described). The modalities of history themselves
1990). We can certainly rescue the distinction that Daniel is making by retain­
become ethnographic objects, in an exercise - exemplified in one idiom by the
ing it for industrial societies as well - that is, by rejecting the Weberian ortho­
work of Hanson and Valeri - that matches Hayden White's Vichian project of
doxy that modernity is a condition of disenchantment. One may wish to follow
identifying the dominant trope in each phase of western historiography, in intent
the processes of disenchantment, to be sure; that is the historical perspective
if not always in method.
that Holmes pursued in his ethnographic follow-up to Ginzburg's researches in
Two further shifts away from conventional anthropology accompany this
northern Italy. But we cannot assume - and Daniel and Roberts clearly do not
move. First, we recognize the historicizing capacities of people who may not
assume - that such developments are unilinear, logically necessary, or qualita­
speak like western academic historians, and indeed may not historicize by speak­
tively evolutionary, for that would entail reducing history to the mythological
ing at all; they may be eloquent in silence, gesture, or dance. And second, we
structures of colonialism itself.
recognize that classification is not itself the agent of thought but m~rel~ - ~h?ugh
This, in thin disguise, is the dilemma of whether it is useful to speak of
importantly - its immediate medium. In this way, we recogmze md1v1dual
"modern" and "traditional" societies. These terms represent a characteristic dif­
agency - that of Hobbles Danayarri, for example - and its capacity, through
ficulty for anthropology, because they are part of our own received rhetoric but
irony or other means, to play havoc with the categories imposed on the past by
they have also become increasingly important to many of the peoples we study,
those who currently hold the reins of power.
some of which are engaged in actively salvaging their heritage, their traditions,
even their culture - terms with which earlier anthropologists, in more uncom­
plicated times, were once at ease. Definitional exercises necessarily do little more
Is Past to Present as Tradition is to Modernity?
than affirm that modernity is "an ideological attitude, an expression of a spe­
cific way of seeing and comprehending things in time with continuity and
Michael Roberts sees anthropologizing history as "a general project which holds
rupture as well." As Olivia Harris (1996: 3) puts it, the "modernist moment is
that historical knowledge is neither straightforward nor easily knowable; and
constituted by the idea of rupture" - but one must ask: rupture with what? And
which seeks to highlight voices that are neglected in the master narratives of the
one must also ask: who defines the rupture which for some actors, such as
contemporary global order." I have followed his prescription closely here,
those who found Soviet repression no different from Czarist, may simply be
although I shall shortly also complicate it with David Scott's insistence that we
"more of the same."
also examine the production of colonial discourse - a good illustration of what
Indeed, the Soviet-style experiments with "really existing socialism" were in
I have called "cultural reflexivity." The trick here is that of studying elites as
some regards no less consumerist, bureaucratic, and rationalistic than the
though they were marginal: George Marcus, for example, does this with his
western systems labeled "capitalist." The directions that both these movements
analysis of the "dynastic uncanny" among the wealthy oil families of Galve­
took grew out of bourgeois intellectual concerns, which can be loosely sum­
ston, Texas - a phenomenon strikingly similar to "traditional" symbolic con­
marized as a progressivist ideology resulting in the sense of a certain "contem­
structions of heritable personhood in village and tribal societies (1992: 173-87).
porary" condition - although it has never been entirely clear what that condition
In much the same way, we can treat the discourses and practices of the colo­
was, beyond a successful emulation of western industrial achievements. Despite
nizers, including their history, as ethnographic objects - an appropriate rever­
(or perhaps because of) its centrality to anthropology's own identity as a schol­
sal of the visualist gaze.
arly field, "modernity" has only started to appear recently in anthropological
82 HISTORIES HISTORIES 83

book titles. But it is already clear that we cannot reasonably speak of a single source of those few countries' extraordinary wealth. This has generated acute
essential modernity, for each has its own history (Faubion 1993); even assum­ dilemmas for the poorer European countries. On the one side, as we have seen,
ing for the moment that the term is susceptible of definition, it must have some is the issue of whether the East bloc's communist past should be treated as
kind of temporal and spatial specificity - plural modernities - if it is to be of "modern" or "backward"; on the other, Greece and Cyprus - sites of one of
any analytic value. the most protracted debates about the meaning of "Western" or "European"
In Asia, for example, the very idea of equating "modern" with "Western" identity precisely because these countries, together with Turkey, constitute a geo­
is not only understandably insulting, but is demonstrably meaningless (A. graphical realization of the conceptual boundary between east and west -
Ong 1996). Aihwa Ong recounts how notions of the special characteristics explore models in both emulation of and antithesis to what is seen as typical of
of the Chinese people are being fostered and the prestige which is now Western Europe and North America.
being accorded to the role of the overseas Chinese, especially from Singapore. The predicament of the Greeks is perhaps most revealing of all because their
"Capitalism with Chinese characteristics" is redefining itself as a global ambivalent position - ancestors of "Western civilization" but also "oriental­
force, distinct from Western capitalism and rationality and deriving from a ized" to the margins - throws the relationship between modernity and identity
Confucian familial ethic and a range of interpersonal networks (guanxi). China, into sharp relief. At least three recent studies of Greek society have addressed
so the argument goes, has its own centuries old superior Confucian rationality modernity as such: Vassos Argyrou (1996a) has documented the process of mod­
and has no need to borrow western ones. In other words, the very factors ernization on Cyprus as an investment in "Western" symbolic capital; James
that Weber saw as obstacles to initiating capitalist development in China Faubion (1993) has argued that Greek modernity both fits the requirements of
are being proposed as the secret of current Chinese business success. But a Weberian understanding of the term and yet also possesses its distinctive cul­
it is also clear that "Western" modernity is equally rooted in symbolic struc­ tural features, as do all other modernities; and David Sutton ( 1994) has docu­
tures and arbitrary cultural values - and has no more successfully achieved uni­ mented the rhetorical play of "modernity" and "tradition" ethnographically in
versal transcendence. "Globalism" is itself a symbol and an ideology, not a order to show how these epistemological questions become politicized at the
transparent truth. level of local interaction. (It may be worth noting that the Greek-speaking
Other Asian countries are developing a similar sense of a larger, pan-Asian world, situated in a state of great anxiety and ambiguity about the exact nature
modernity that includes them as well. Such formulations are no less and no more of its relationship to "Europe," experiences parallel sources of unease when con­
ethnocentric than what they displace. Ong discusses the works of the Japanese fronting the equally problematic specter of "modernity.")
revisionist historian Hamashita, who argues that it is a distortion to connect Thus, for example, Sutton's argument gives an intriguing twist - perhaps
Japanese modernization with the bombardment by Commodore Perry. Rather, one that could only be revealed through the use of ethnographic methods to
she says, this was the inauguration of a crude interruption of a development Hubinger's ironic assertion that "the concept of modernization has taken on
which was already underway on the basis of the tributary system of South Asian the meaning of "belonging to contemporary Western civilization," the latter a
trade controlled from China but in which Japanese and Chinese merchants con­ goal to which the world supposedly aspired en masse. Whoever does not seem
tended during the earlier years. Similarly, Richard Hall argues that there was a to share this opinion, for whatever reason, is classified as "backward" or
highly developed network of trade stretching from the Gulf States to China and "remote" - locally internalized metaphors of space here reproducing the pre­
which centered on India. It was the Portuguese, coming at the end of the fif­ sumed temporalities of an evolutionist vision - and doomed to disappear in the
teenth century who began the disruption of this trade and its reorientation foreseeable future. But modernity, thus conceived, is not an exclusive property
around the interests of European nations (R. Hall 1996a and 19966; Subrah­ of "the West," or even of countries claiming to be industrialized. It would not
manyam 1990). And the situation has reappeared today in acute form, as Don take much effort to find illustrations of this in many teleological ideologies, from
Robotham, following Aihwa Ong, points out. It is clearly indicated by the fail­ ancient mythologies to present day religious and political doctrines including
ures of the former colonial powers to retain control of their own modernities - Marxism-Leninism (see Fukuyama 1992).
as witness the heavy Japanese investment in the City of London, Korean control In this respect, an anthropologist might look askance at Anthony Giddens's
of major French firms, and so on. The result is a crisis of identity matched, for many formulations of modernity as representing a radically unique, Western­
the former rulers, by the crisis represented by the rising local power of "new driven rupture. That there indeed has been such a rupture is beyond question,
Europeans" who hail from the former colonies or other countries once seen as as we see in Talal Asad and David Scott's assessment of the aftermath
safely distant and exotic. of colonialism, but calling it "modernity" is problematic for two reasons:
But the crisis of modernity in Europe appears in another, no less acute form it invites the conflation of many different responses to the specific causes
as well. It used to be that a few countries defined what modernity was: there of the rupture, especially colonialism and the sudden spread of certain tech­
was a hegemony internal to the European states, as powerful in its own way as nologies; and it overlooks the frequency and near-ubiquity with which
the colonial, and largely mapped onto it after all, colonialism was a major such before-and-after ideologies have occurred. "For the most part it is
84 HISTORIES HISTORIES 85

Western intellectuals who show themselves to be prisoners of traditional is probably anthropologists' constant discovery during fieldwork of the
conceptions holding to a rigid and exclusive distinction between the 'tradi­ practical limits of their own understanding, sometimes under the most em­
tional' and the 'modern' ... We are trapped in the logic of received barrassing social conditions, that encourages this resistance to intellectual
dichotomies" (M. Sahlins 1992: 21). closure even when their own models would have made the most convenient
But it is not only we who are trapped there. And Hubinger observes that stance.
in a discussion of the ethics of ethnographic observation conducted at the Tambiah (1990), like Daniel, has revived the notion of participation. But
1992 conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists in his account - as, by extension, in Daniel's, and quite unlike what we see
(EASA) in Prague, "it was noted with some bitterness that in the debate that in the evolutionary schemata of a few decades ago - there is nothing to prevent
followed no Eastern Europeans took part and when the debated paper was us from seeing science and reason as immanent qualities of a social group
subsequently published in Czech (Scheffel 1992), virtually nobody paid any that closely recalls the Nuer divine essence (Kwoth) or the notion of musical
attention to the question." He adds, "What was a burning issue in Canada "talent" (Kingsbury 1988); the West here looks no different from the societies
and elsewhere, found the Czech anthropological (and ethnographic) community traditionally studied "in the field." This is perhaps the most useful conclusion
immersed in quite different problems." The political irrelevance of anthropol­ that we can draw from studies like Shryock's. They do not come down heavily
ogy to some visions of modernity may itself be a sign of how people are con­ in favor of a view that divides the West from the Rest. Instea·d, they point
struing modernity as an ideology: as the march of progress, measured up unexpected resemblances among ways of making history - resemblances
in economic and technological terms, and as such a startling and worrisome that are made possible and visible only because they encompass the very possi­
revival of the nineteenth-century evolutionism that anthropology itself has long bility of difference.
since abandoned. Most anthropological definitions of myth can be applied quite directly to
western history-making, especially of the official varieties: as a charter for
the present (Malinowski), as an exploration and obliteration of social con­
Pervasive Dichotomies tradiction (Levi-Strauss, Leach), as an explanation of origins (Eliade). Na­
tionalistic historiography is especially appropriate to the Durkheimian view
The dichotomization of the world between traditional and modern societies - that religion is society worshiping itself (Durkheim 1976): when a nation­
between those mired in an earlier time and those who belong in the forward state is created, not only do political committees and legislative bodies write
flow of the present, as Fabian (1983) has noted- is part of the context in which laws and constitutions with palpably teleological intent, but entire schools and
anthropology is understood by the public at large. The discipline's struggle to disciplines appear in universities and schools with the purpose of teaching and
escape that image may itself be educationally useful as a way of demonstrating finding evidence in support of - a unitary history. Their goal is to legitimate the
how culturally specific the seemingly noncultural claims of self-attributed new status quo, exploiting the ideas of origins distant in time and space that
modernity really are. Helms (1998) has preferred to see as sources of legitimacy only in preindustrial
For we face here a characteristic dilemma. Like Levi-Strauss, attempting by societies. They aim to give the new entity, usually a nation-state, a past that is,
distinguishing between "cold" and "hot" societies to recognize intellectual in fact, outside time - has existed, in a spectacularly revealing phrase, "since
parity between these two forms of thought and society (Levi-Strauss 1966), we time immemorial."
end up reproducing the very distinction that we are attempting to dissolve. The As Valeri so reasonably inquires (1990: 161-2), however, "why is such impor­
usual procedure at this point would be to go on to a further round of decon­ tance attached to finding the rules of the present embodied in the past?" Shryock
struction and regrouping. But I would argue that the value of such formulations (1997: 322) inverts the question by attributing to western anthropologists a per­
lies, paradoxically, in their inadequacy. This is consistent with a critical and ped­ vasive reluctance, grounded in their own ideological inheritance, to conceive of
agogical model of anthropology, which helps us to see them, not only as as inad­ a genealogical model of the past, arguing that this attitude has not allowed them
equate analytic tools, but also as a disturbingly persistent strain in popular much space in which to take genealogical forms of history seriously as repre­
thought around the world. sentations of the past in their own right. Nor have they seemed to think it nec­
The dilemma may in any case not be amenable to resolution. This use­ essary to explain "why legitimation [should] reside in duration" - why "time
fully conflicts with Cartesian assumptions about the nature of knowledge; it becomes a measure of value" (Roberts 1994: 202). And Roberts notes Taussig's
certainly risks awkward moments in the classroom, where students sometimes explicit questioning of Malinowski's utilitarian functionalism, with its stress on
seem to crave authoritative answers. But to surrender to that desire would magic (and, we may add, myth) as a form of therapeutic action: "this mode of
be unfair to them as well as to the people we study. For such an easy re­ interpretation is unacceptable because it presupposes most of what needs
solution obliterates the complexity of the hermeneutic task in which all an­ explaining - the richly detailed motifs and precise configuration of details that
thropologists, even the most positivistically inclined, necessarily engage. It constitute the beliefs and rites in question" (Taussig 1980: 14). Roberts, like
86 HISTORIES HISTORIES 87

Taussig and Valeri, rejects such explanations as too crassly teleological ("func­ of the end: the collapse of the socialist regimes, for example, exercised a rather
tionalist"). sobering effect on Third World intellectuals, who had seen materially expressed
Indeed they are. But so, at times, is the notion of value. We have still in them, however imperfectly, the only viable means of combating the evils
not explained why the past appears to confer legitimacy. To answer that of capitalism and colonialism. The postcolonial condition looked more dismal
question, we must revert to ethnography. Only thus, in a process that resists than ever.
easy assumptions about psychological or economic need, can we begin to iden­ Don Robotham and David Scott have argued, however, that there are now
tify the agency whereby the past is both realized and converted into a source new opportunities, and that these are not best understood exclusively in terms
of contestable value. Until now, the dominant mode has been to take that of postcoloniality. Robotham, in particular, would reject the term "postcolo­
conversion for granted and to treat it as uncomplicated and culturally unvary­ nial" (and with it "postmodern") in favor of recognizing, as do Aihwa Ong and
ing - which is why, as Shryock and others now argue, it has been so difficult James Faubion, the possibility of defining multiple modernities. While the com­
to understand the sheer range of cultural idioms in which history can be made pression of his argument here will necessarily distort its logic and conceal some
meaningful. of its complexity, it is important to juxtapose its Third World focus with the
By the same token, we may wish to consider treating the various teleological dynamics of emergent modernities in other places, notably eastern Europe, in
and instrumental explanations as part of the ethnography rather than of the which parallel incentives exist to detach "modernity" from the one particular
theory. We can, in other words, try to discover who invested utilitarian expla­ historical formation of a dominant "West."
nations with local authority. I have often been told by Cretan villagers, for As he points out: "The current postcolonial pessimism springs also from inter­
example, that the blood feud is a fine deterrent to homicide, in contrast to the nal factors connected to the external. Today, in many developing countries -
weak authority of the state. Whose interests do such functionalist claims serve Mexico and India are obvious but by no means isolated cases - there is a
locally? These are questions about agency - about the concealed agency of the strong feeling of despair based on what is perceived as the failure of the local
powerful as well as the discounted agency of the weak. nationalist elites to be true to the cause and to realize the objectives of
This maverick analytic mode - which belongs to a larger historical project of the nationalist movement. Whether it be the spread of Hindu chauvinism
recognizing how much anthropological theory has originated with informants' in India or the surge of crime and corruption in Mexico, Columbia or Jamaica,
commentaries rather than solely in our own philosophies - can do much useful an internally generated malaise seems to grip many developing countries,
mischief to received prejudices. Here the anthropological study of historically most despairingly of all perhaps in Africa." Robotham suggests, however,
documented societies becomes particularly important, because it allows us to that this pessimism, which is also a crisis of identity, may no longer be justified:
trace through time those processes whereby encompassing teleologies are "The true global story is appearing to be not the negative one about the fall of
invented, not as theories (abstract explanations of what is "out there"), but as socialism, but the far more complicated one about the rise of Asia. It is this
practices (pragmatic justifications of what is "in here"). Thus, when we examine growth of what Ong calls 'alternative modernities,' and what I here call 'the
societies in which the process of making history can be documented, we can new modernities,' that is the hallmark of the new period" - for, Robotham
seek the sources of that teleology in the expressed motives of nationalists, explains: "It is not that other forms of knowledge and ethical production were
bureaucrats, and others: "We must have this history in place so that our author­ ignored. Some traditions were embraced as an enchanted garden for the alien­
ity will be secure." And the history will only stay in place - if it does - if it ated to find refuge from the 'iron cage' of a rationalized world, in a drama of
follows the currently regnant cultural idioms of authority. alienation, resignation, fortitude and redemption even more heroically Western.
The impermanence of the permanent: this is the challenge for secular author­ Many (not all) occupied honored places but within a pantheon framed and dom­
ity, and it is also the point of intersection between history and anthropology. inated by the all-subsuming Enlightenment of the rationalistic, individualizing
Although earlier anthropologists tried to stabilize their observations in terms of West. No matter how much they were admired for their profoundness, aesthetic
static systems, models, and structures, it is clear that social life is always in some harmony or ethical strength, they became marginal - at best source materials
sense processual (S. Moore 1987): even when nothing changes that condition is for, or a foil to, the great historical metanarrative of the all-conquering ratio­
experienced in historical terms - as a lack of responsiveness, as a bulwark nalistic West, enhancing its distinctive supremacy" - and the same processes
against immorality or contamination, as the tragedy of the neglected margins. were also at work within Europe, marginalizing peasants and workers to the
Yet it is also in that condition that anthropologists, working in the field, often greater glory of nationalist and socialist elites, respectively. This aspect of the
discern the first stirrings of observable change. story, which is too often ignored, does not invalidate the postcolonial plaint: on
When massive change does arrive, it brings other temptations, notably the contrary, by showing how localized forms of domination within the West
the desire to stake out a new era, to place a fence of "posts" across the were often the practice grounds of colonialism on the grand scale (e.g., Nadel­
epistemological and political landscape: postmodernism, postsocialism, Klein 1991 ), it shows how pervasive was the entire project of hierarchizing the
postcolonialism. At times this line of posts looks rather like the beginning world once and for all.
88 HISTORIES HISTORIES 89

The collapse of that project has been no less radical in its effects and poses Victor Turner and deployed symbolic anthropology to use symptomatic as well as
odd incidents as clues to value systems. Rather than tackling causality, both Darnton
particularly interesting challenges and opportunities for anthropology. The col­
(1984) and Davis (1973) drew on ethnographic models of "thick description"
lapse of communism and the transition to capitalism in eastern Europe and (Geertz 1973) to explore meaning in specific situations. Thus, from the 1970s one
central Asia, the ending of the Non-Aligned Movement, the crisis of Africa, the witnesses a number of historians working as what Roberts calls "hindsight anthro­
economic, social and political travails facing the European Union, the rise of pologists," bringing to life the experience of subjects in the past.
east Asia (in particular Japan and China), the struggle by the United States to
maintain its unique status as the single world superpower, the electronics revo­
lution and the globalization of finance and communications, the so-called
"informationalization" of society (Castells 1995) - all these processes raise new
challenges for all the fields of the social sciences which have long taken for
granted the validity of the "modernization equals Westernization" paradigm. If
Hubinger is right that anthropology has always been in some sense about
modernity, this is also an important moment for a self-examination that is cul­
tural and politicai rather than personal - an exercise in cultural reflexivity, again,
rather than in autobiography.
And so we find ourselves turning the critique straight back at anthropology
itself. "Tradition" and "modernity," "the past" and the various posterior
conditions, "myth" and "history" all emerge as meaningful categories operated
for specific ends; and so we begin to make the awkwardness of received
categories work for us as a productive irritant to further insight, rather than
dismissing it as inefficient and inconvenient. It restores the pedagogical goal
of inducing a critically productive discomfort that is so central to the an­
thropological enterprise. And it paradoxically, but constructively, removes
anthropology from the role of referee in a game of truth in which there are
no winners.

Notes

1 From the English translation in B. Gunasekera (1954: 63) - with one altera­
tion: where sapakanava has been translated as "eat," Roberts has substituted
"gobble" ("devour" would be another alternative). The author of this segment is
not known.
2 Culavamsa 1953, II, 231, an update of state history written by monks written around
1780; see also the more extended commentary in the hatana poems (see C. de Silva
1983).
3 Such journals as History and Anthropology (from 1984 ), Ethnohistory, and Com­
parative Studies in Society and History (CSSH) in the 1960s all illustrate the devel­
opment of this trend, as does the Culture/Power/History series of Princeton
University Press, ed. Nicholas Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry Ortner. Eric Wolf, an
anthropologist with fieldwork experience in Latin America who was later to ironize
the predicament of "peoples without history," not only served on the editorial com­
mittee of CSSH, but also became a joint editor in 1968. By the early 1980s the rap­
prochement was truly under way (Cohn 1981; Peel 1993: 162). Significant
borrowings from anthropological theory were given legitimacy in Britain by the work
of Keith Thomas and in USA by the writings of Natalie Davis, Robert Darnton and
Rhys Isaac. Isaac expounded a dramaturgical mode of analysis that was indebted to