Against Ethnography Author(s): Nicholas Thomas Source: Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Aug., 1991), pp.

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Against Ethnography
Nicholas Thomas
Australian National University

In March 1803 Lord Valentia was traveling through Awadh, a part of north India which, as he observed, had not yet been liberated by the East India Company from Muslim oppression. At Lucknow he was surprised to find in the Nawab's palace an extensive collection of curiosities, including "several thousand English prints framed and glazed . . and innumerable other articles of European manufacture." The dinnerwas French, with plenty of wine ... the Mussulmaunsdranknone, [although]the forbiddenliquorwas served in abundanceon the table, and they had two glasses of differentsizes standingbefore them. The room was very well lighted up, and a bandof music (which the Nawaubhad purchasedfrom Colonel Morris)played English tunes duringthe whole time. The scene was so singular, and so contraryto all my ideas of Asiatic manners,that I could hardlypersuademyself that the whole was not a masquerade.[Valentia 1809 1:143-144] This aristocratic colonial traveler's confusion could be taken to be emblematic of one of the predicaments of late 20th-century anthropology. The problem of interpretation arises not from an ethnocentric expectation that other peoples are the same, from a failure to predict the local singularity of their manners and customs, but from an assumption that others must be different, that their behavior will be recognizable on the basis of what is known about another culture. The visitor encounters not a stable array of "Asiatic manners" but what appears to be an unintelligible inauthenticity. This essay is concerned with anthropology's enduring exoticism, and how processes such as borrowing, creolization, and the reifications of local culture through colonial contact are to be reckoned with. Can anthropology simply extend itself to talk about transposition, syncretism, nationalism, and oppositional fabrications of custom, as it may have been extended to cover history and gender, or is there a sense in which the discipline's underlying concepts need to be mutilated or distorted, before we can deal satisfactorily with these areas that were once excluded? The current wave of collective autocritique within anthropology' has a paradoxical character in the sense that while reference is made to crisis, experimentation, and even radical transformation in the discipline, one conclusion of most efforts seems to be an affirmation of what has always been central. Clifford, for
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instance, affirms that "ethnographicfieldwork remains an unusually sensitive method" for cross-culturalrepresentation(1988:23-24) and Borofsky's relativizing explorationof anthropologicalconstructionsof knowledge concludes with ratherblandreflectionson the importanceof ethnography(1987:152-156).2 In a very differentgenre, a recent guide to method in economic anthropologyclaims thatthe "great future" of the subject arises from its "direct observationmethod of ethnographic analysis" (Gregoryand Altman 1989:ix). There seems therefore to be one point about which we are all convinced, one stable term in a highly eclectic and contesteddiscipline. The second featureof currentdebate relevant here is that while "writing" and "writing-up" have been increasinglyproblematized(in a mannerwhich is essentially necessary and constructive), distinctions are constantly effaced between fieldwork,ethnographic analysis, andthe writingof ethnography.3 Gregory and Altmanlike many conflate methodsof observationand analysis, and assume presentationin the standardform of the monograph (cf. Marcus and Fisher 1986:18-19). Of course, if the claims of culturalhistorians(e.g., Darnton 1984; Dening 1988) to write "ethnographichistory" are recognized, it might need to be acknowledgedthatethnography be writtenin the absenceof fieldwork(setcan extension of that term to encompassthe archives). ting aside the metaphorical This article, in contrast, sustains a harddistinctionbetween practicesof researchand the particular kinds of writingthat we recognize as "ethnographic."4 The purposeof such an assertionis not, of course, to permitnaive empiricistseparationsbetween observationand representation, since both researchand writing are clearlypolitical, discursivepractices. While methodsand researchtechniques such as inquiry through conversation and sociological questionnaires may strongly influence the form in which informationis presented, and the kinds of questions asked of it, the relationshipsbetween practicalresearchtechnologies andformsof writingshouldbe evoked in a notion of mutualentanglement,rather than some kind of determinism:it is obviously possible to generate similar analytic discoursesfrom very differentresearchprocedures,and equally to use similar researchprocedurestowarddivergenttheoreticalgenres. The survey, for instance, may be mainly associatedwith positivistic enumerationand claims about correlations,but Bourdieu'sDistinction (1984) absorbsthose styles to a limited extent in a work of "social critique" that seems closer generically to an 18thcentury philosophical and empirical dissertationthan it is to either the theory books or case studies of postwarsociology. My argumentis thus that while ways of observing and ways of representingare often tangled up, and while methods admittedlyconstrainand influence forms of presentation,fieldworkand ethnographyare separable,and that at present it helps to situatethe enduringproblems of anthropological vision in the constitutionof the ethnographic genre, while leaving open the potentialfor anotherkind of writing energized by the experience of the field. While most comments on what has been variously called reflexive or postmodernistanthropologyhave been reactive and negative (e.g., Spencer 1989), I take the overall perspective, if not the specific arguments,of works such as Writ-

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ing Culture (Clifford and Marcus 1986) and The Predicament of Culture (Clifford

1988) for granted.This articlehowever attemptsto move beyond the currentdebate by situatingproblematicfeaturesof anthropology,such as the tendency to discourse. One obstacle here is the exoticism, in the constitutionof ethnographic commonsense epistemology of the discipline-which no doubt accords with a broadercultural model-that understandsknowledge primarilyin quantitative terms. Defects are absences that can be rectifiedthroughthe additionof further topic by addingotherways information,andmorecan be known abouta particular of perceiving it. "Bias" is thus associated with a lack and can be rectified or balanced out by the addition of furtherperspectives. My preferredmetaphor would situate the causes of an arrayof moments of blindness and insight in the kinds of overlooking constitutionof a discipline's analytictechnology:particular arise from researchmethods, ways of understanding concepts, and genres of representation.This is essentially a model borrowedfrom feminist anthropology:as those critiques developed, it became apparentthat the essentially imbalanced characterof anthropologicalaccounts of society could not be correctedwithout complex scrutinyof methods and analysis, that "academic fields could not be curedby sexism simply by accretion" (C. Boxer quoted in Moore 1987:2-3). It is not clear, however, that the problemsI discuss are analogousto illnesses; the fabricationof alterityis not so much a blight or distortionto be excised or exorof cised, but a projectcentralto ethnography'srendering the properstudyof man. Exoticism Although EdwardSaid's work has arousedconsiderableinterest in anthropology, the responsehas often been qualifiedor critical(e.g., Marcusand Fisher 1986:1-2; Clifford 1988:255-276).5 It is sometimesassertedthatbecause anthropologists have engaged in many studies of Europeanor Americansocieties, and are concernedwith universalhumanityas well as culturaldifference, the charge of exoticism is only partlyjustified. Withoutdisputingeitherthatworkcarriedout underthe name of anthropologyhas been extraordinarily diverse, or that a misleading stereotypeof the discipline has wide currency, it must be said that this overlooks the fact that the presentationof other culturesretainscanonical status within the discipline. That is, despite a plethoraof topics and approaches,there are still strong prescriptionsthat certain anthropologicalprojects (such as those thanothers. The arguments dealingwith tribalreligions) aremoreanthropological heredeploy this stereotypicconstruct,even thoughtit is partlya misunderstanding continue prevalentoutside the discipline, and partlysomethingthat practitioners theirgraduatestudents.The oband most particularly to impose uponthemselves ject of my critique is thus an "analytical fiction" in Marilyn Strathern'ssense (1988:10),6 and this reified idea of a diverse discipline can only be unfair and of unrepresentative a variety of innovative approaches.But if what is said here applies only in a partialway to work remote from canonical types, the converse texts actuallydo also applies, and the critiqueis valid insofar as anthropological take the form of ethnographic depictions of other cultures.

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Anthropology'smost enduringrhetoricalformuses a richpresentation one of stableand distantcultureto relativizecherishedand unexaminednotions imputed to cultureat home. MargaretMead's Samoa destabilizedcertainideas about sex roles, while the Balinese polities of Geertz's Negara (1980) confound and deny the centraltenetsof Westernpolitical thought.7A strandin feminist anthropology establishesthatculturaloppositionselsewhere set up as universalsare peculiarto the West; in contrast Hagen people have "no nature, no culture" (Strathern 1980). Morerecently, the centraltheme of Borofsky'sMakingHistory was "how Pukapukans anthropologistscome to possess different 'ways of knowing' " and (1987:xvii). And the machineof relativistdisplacementcan work very effectively upon its own products:while Mead exposed the cultural specificity of certain Americanpersonalitytypes, Gewertz (1984; Erringtonand Gewertz 1987) has takenMeadto task for her own unreflectivedeploymentof Westernconstructions of the individual. This operationclearly gives the discipline enormousscope andpotential,because it can proceedfromtopic to topic exposing previouslyunrecognizedcultural differences:the Samoanshave a differentconcept of the person, the Balinese differentconceptsof time, the Australian of Aboriginesdifferentconstructions space and geography, the Tahitiansdifferent ideas of growth and age, while the Japanese presumablyhave a differentconceptualmodel of a restaurant menu. And no doubtthey do. Withoutwishing to deprivethe disciplineof a thousanddissertation topics, it must be recognized that there is great scope for slippage from the appropriaterecognitionof difference, and the reasonablereaction against the impositionof Europeancategoriesupon practicesand ideas which, obviously, often aredifferent,to an idea thatotherpeople mustbe different. Insofaras this is stipulated by this form of anthropologicalrhetoric, the discipline is a discourse of alteritythatmagnifiesthe distancebetween "others" and "ourselves" while suppressingmutualentanglementand the perspectivaland political fracturingof the culturesof both observersand observed. As Keesing has recentlyobserved, "because of the rewardstructures,criteriaof publishability,andtheoreticalprinciples of our discipline, papersthat might show how un-exotic and un-alienother people's worlds are never getting written or read" (1989:460, cf. 469). Although gesturesaremadetowardthe idea of common humanityand sometimesto cultural universals,the postulateoperatesat such an abstractlevel thatit does not override the radicaldifference imputed to such people as the Balinese (and those works that actually are concerned with universals, for instance in cognition and language, are generallyvery marginalto a discipline dominatedby the sensitivity of the local case study). Accurateethnographicrepresentation stable and unitary of culturesthus conveys the radical difference of other peoples' original practices and beliefs. It does not depict a succession of meanings and transpositionsthat make culturespartlyderivativeand mutuallyentangled. For instance, while caste in modem India has clearly been profoundlyinfluenced by Britishcodificationand the transformation warriorkings into bearers of of hollow crowns(Dirks 1987) the most famousanthropological account(Dumont 1980) is concernedabove all with the opposition between Indianhierarchyand

310 CULTURALANTHROPOLOGY

the individualismof the West (and ironically also with the alleged superiorityof purityover power). While the power-claims of culturalethnographyhave been basedon rigorin culturaltranslation,in a more faithful, less ethnocentricaccount of local belief, that facilitates a professionalpotlatchof sophisticatedinterpretations, thereis clearly a certainselectivity; it is notablethat matterto be translated must come from somewheredifferent. For instance, while informantsin the societies of the "kula ring" frequentlymake analogies between the famous shell valuables(thatthey sometimes call "Papuanmoney") and Europeancash,8 that strandof local discourse is not conspicuous in the culturalethnographyof the Massim. Beliefs and notions that are not differenttake on the appearanceof difference throughthe process of apparenttranslation,througha discourse of the of translation culture. Although there are sceptics within anthropology(Keesing 1989), those in otherdisciplines appearto have had a more balancedview of the and problemsof translation exoticism. In justifying the use of English categories such as "class" and "capitalist" in the analysis of Indianhistory, Bayly recently
suggested that although there are "dangers in glib comparison . . . excessive

Orientalistpurismhas done little except make India seem peculiarto the outside world" (1988:x). The claim that anthropologyis concernedwith difference within as well as between culturesis excessively charitable.There are, of course, works that deal with conflict, disagreementabout beliefs, and perspectivaldifferences between men andwomen, but these themescould hardlybe said to have the same centrality for the discipline as the operationof imputingdifference between cultures. This is in fact more accuratelydescribed as contrast, since the most persuasive and theoreticallyconsequentialethnographicrhetoricrepresentsthe other essentially as an inversionof whateverWesterninstitution,practice, or set of notions is the realobjectof interest.Hence Balinese theaterand aestheticsstandagainstthe meof chanicaland narrowlypolitical Westernunderstanding the state; and, without endorsingFreeman'sstyle of critiqueor ethological non sequiturs,it must similarlybe acknowledgedthatMead's theoreticalorientationand literaryflairled her to renderSamoanfreedomas the mirrorof Americanconstraint.The proposition thatthe gift is only intelligible as an inversionof the category of the commodity hardlyrequiresextendeddiscussion here (but cf. Parry1986:466-467). Many works of the relativizing style were or are intendedto be critical, at least in the minimalsense thatthey aimed to affirmthe value of otherculturesand express a certainscepticism about "Western" ideas that were takento be natural and eternal. But the culturalcritiquedepended upon the fabricationof alterity,9 upon a showcase approachto other culturesthat is now politically unacceptable, in its homogenizationof others and implicit denial of the significanceof migrant cultureswithin the West. After so many decades of "economic development" and conflict in tribal and third world societies, it is ludicrousif anthropological commentarycontinues primarilyto place such peoples in anotherdomain, in a space thatestablishesthe differenceand contingencyof our own practice(cf. Fabian 1983). I am not saying that people are all the same, and that culturaldifferthe ences areinconsequential; challenge is not to do away with culturaldifference,

AGAINST ETHNOGRAPHY 311

and with what is locally distinctive, but to integratethis more effectively with historicalperceptionsand a sense of the unstableand politically contested characterof culture. Hence, as Moore has noted, "understanding culturaldifference is essential, but the concept itself can no longer stand as the ruling concept of a modem anthropology,because it addressesonly one form of difference among many" (1987:9). The tendencyto exoticize otherscould be regardedas a quirkof the individuals who become anthropologists,or an inevitableconsequence of the encounter of fieldwork.The second suggestion might seem compelling, given the pervasive notionof fieldworkas the experienceof an individualfromone culturein another. Though elaboratedfor the purposes of collective professional self approbation, this notion of inquiryand interpretation from a liminal perspectiveclearly cannot be dismissed. But the point that is profoundlymystifiedin contemporary anthropological consciousness concernsthe forms and diversityof the differences at issue. If one is seeking out contexts in which a sense of "not fitting" or "being elsewhere" facilitatesheightenedawarenessof the singularityandcontingencyof both the cultureof the situationand one's own assumptions, then it is clear that therearemanycircumstancesin which these conditionsexist. Therearenumerous contexts in "Western" culturesin which alienationor foreignness facilitate culturalcritique (a south London black woman in an Oxbridge college), and it is obvious also thatthe crucialdifferencesrelateto age, sex, class, andvariousother criteria, as well as the implicit ethnic categories that separate different "cultures." Or, to express the point differently,the notionof whatconstitutescultural differenceseems to be restrictedto distinctionbetween an undefined"West" and anotherdomain of experience and meaning;the separationbetween these terms energizes the interpretive projectof ethnography,while difference might also be situatedbetween the sortof self-conscious exposition of local culturethatis often offered by senior men, and the voices of those without authority;between those who stay in the countrysideand those who have left; between those who hold fast to whatis valorizedas local identityandthose who appearto abandonit to become Christians,Mormons,or communists. It could also, of course, be situatedin difference among anthropologists,given that one of the reasons for engaging in researchis to gathermaterialthat serves a particular argument. Fromthis perspective, the notion that fieldworkentails partakingof alterity and thus requiresan accountof culturaldifference is manifestly insufficient. All the crucialquestionsare passed over because a multiplicityof culturaldifferences are condensed. The contrastiveoperationdiscussed is almost inherentin any text that explicates, or purportsto explicate, the distinctiveness of a "culture." A monographis not about "other cultures" but ratheranotherculture, and the fact thatthis must at some level be treatedas a boundedand stable system makes implicit contrastwith a home-pointalmost inevitableeven where thereis no explicit one-to-onejuxtaposition.However, the numberof cases in which showcase counterpositioningovertly animates analysis is considerable. Insofar as this is what ethnographic writingis about, exoticism can only be disposed of by disposing of ethnography,by breakingfrom one-to-one presentationinto modes that disclose

312 CULTURALANTHROPOLOGY

otherregistersof culturaldifferenceandthatreplace "culturalsystems" with less stable and more derivativediscourses and practices. These have a systemic character, but a dialectical account must do justice to the transpositionof meanings, 10 theirlocal incorporation. It might be added that the theme of the difference of the other has been as overplayedin anthropology has the body in the libraryin detective fiction;even as ironic renderings(the body in the video library)seem merely to reproducean establishedstyle thatis notjust unoriginalbut seems rapidlyto be becoming sterile. It might thus be argued merely on literarygrounds that it is about time for the rhetorical form to be disfigured. The Subsumption of Theory The status of ethnographymight also be problematizedfrom an epistemological perspective. This is to open up a second line of criticism seemingly less motivatedby a political consideration(the objectionableaspect of inventing algenre localizes questerity)thana theoreticalone: the view thatthe ethnographic tions and thus refractsratherthan generates any wider theoreticalresolution or culturalcritique.However, this epistemologicalargumentis also groundedpolitically: exoticism conveys a false view of historicalentanglementand the transeffect of ethnographic discourse is positionof meaning, while the particularizing not merely unproductivetheoreticallybut also associated with professional introversionand a failureto engage in wider discussion. An enormous amountof anthropologyis motivated by questions at a high level of generality. Anthropologicaltexts legitimize the specificity of their case materialsand the localized and particularcharacterof analysis by their bearing upon problemsthat are taken to be theoreticallyconsequential-the efficacy of ritual,the natureof gift exchange, the intersectionof statusand power, the ritual structuresof divine kingship, the basis of gender asymmetries, and so on. But what operationdoes the analytic technology of ethnographyperformupon these questions? The argumenthere presupposesthatour genre is a discourseof ethnography and not a discourse upon it. " The question here is of the extent to which writing is or is not containedby the process of representingits object; the second type that makes strongclaims to externalauthorityand supposes an analyticapparatus is not subsumedby the matterwith which it deals. A discourseof something, on the otherhand, may attemptto depict or analyze somethingthat is externalto it, butconstantlycreatesdiscursiveandanalyticaleffects thatcan only be understood in termsof categories that are alreadyinternalto the discourse. There is, for instance, an obvious difference between the ostensibly apolitical theoreticaldiscourse upon politics in the academic discipline of political science, and the discourseof politics manifestedin the speech of a professionalpoliticianor activist. claims of the latter are highly self-referential;there can be no The authoritative externalvalidationof statementsbecause the object, interpretative agency, and theoretical categoriesareconflatedin the very processof revealingandrendering.

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recursivelyintertwinesthe momentsof transcription, The mode of representation explicationof the terms for transcription,and the explanatorydevices that position the productsof transcription.Of course, it is clear that these binary categories, like all similar analytic fictions, cannot ultimately be sustained as polar types, but the distinctioncan have theoreticaleffect if it is associatedparticularly to with the discourse of ethnography.I take Strathern endorse Runciman's sugof gestion that the conventionalunderstanding the relationshipbetween explanation and descriptionbe inverted:"Good descriptionsin turnhave to be grounded
in theory . . . the synthetic aims of adequate description . . . must deploy delib-

erate fictions to that end" (1988:10). Strathern'sclaims about her own methods writing, but the may not reflectviews aboutthe generalconditionof ethnographic propositionput forwardhere is in fact thatdepiction, theoryand analysisarecharacterizedby a high degree of mutualdependence. This is very obvious in some recentculturalethnographies.For example, in The Fame of Gawa (Munn 1986) there is a strong sense that no operationtakes place outside the elaborationof indigenouscategories in theoreticalterms, or the by reverse-that the elaborationof theoreticalvocabularyis merely illustrated inIn digenous counterparts. this case, the analysis is brilliantlyeffective, but there plausibilityor implausibilityindependentlyof inare few spaces for adjudicating materialthat is little scope for rereadingethnographic ternalcoherence, and there is separablefrom the analysis from the perspectiveof a differentkind of inquiry. thus establishes things in an empirically isolated and strictly illusEthnography trativemanner;cases stand by themselves, and their adequacydepends more on than either externaltheothe effects createdthroughinternalanalyticalnarration retical validationor an interest in the replicabilityof findings (setting aside the naive positivistic claims associated, for instance, with Freeman's"falsification" book depends above all upon of Mead). The assessmentof a useful ethnographic the persuasivefictions of its analysis. Munn'sbook mightbe regardedas an extremecase, but fromthe perspective of this argument,it would be incorrectto consider this state of textual self-referentialityas a quantitypresentin some works to a greaterdegree thanothers. Such an impressioninsteadderives merely from distinct subjectivereactionsto different theoreticalparadigmsand devices such as Munn's neologisms. What for one readerappearas clear tools are highly contrived for another. The view adopted into is here, which may be counterintuitive, thatwritingethnography the premises of analysis is a basic condition of the genre. I am not saying thatpriorassumptionsplay too substantiala role in the productionof accountsof other cultures. The premise here is that any scholarlydiscourse is an illustrativeoutcome of a conjunctureof theoreticalinterests, disciplinaryprocedures,and case materials;questions of interestdo not relate to the relative proportionsof these terms-that quantitativeepistemological metaphor having been eschewed-but instead concern the particularways of seeing permittedor disabledby availabledisciplinaryforms. The most conspicuous featureof the discourse of ethnographyis a disjunction betweengeneralquestionsin social andculturaltheoryof the kind mentioned

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above and a way of writingthatby its naturecannotresolve them. The dominant process thattakes place as issues of theoreticalconsequence are workedthrough is ethnographically subsumption.The illustrativematerialcan be seen in a sincontained. gularway, but any revelationsare ethnographically This may be briefly illustratedthrough reference to the ethnographiccritiques of Ortner'simportantargumentthatuniversalgender asymmetrycould be explainedon the basis of pervasiveassociationsbetweenthe male/femaleand culcontrasts(Ortner1974). This was transposedto the registerof ethnogture/nature and raphyin an influentialcollection of critiques(Strathern MacCormack1980) opposition was a singular form in Western that argued that the nature/culture thought, could not be seen as a culturaluniversal, and was not necessarily articulated with gender. While similar contrastssometimes were present, and were associatedwith genderin indigenoussymbolic systems, the effect of the critique was to expose a form of difference between these societies and Westernthought thus disposed of thathad passed unrecognizedin Ortner'sanalysis. Ethnography the difference and specificity of other cultures. a general argumentand affirmed The point here is not simply that the particularthesis advanced by Ortnerwas disfigured,but thattherewas no way of moving back from these ethnographically critiquesto any similarargumentat the same level of generality.Nature, Culture and Gender offers no basis for any theory comparableto Ortner's, and it is not at surprising all thatthe equally significantand generalizedargumentsof Rosaldo and Chodorow, which epitomized the scope and force of Woman, Culture and Society (Rosaldoand Lamphere1974) have been criticizedon analogousgrounds (Moore 1987:22-24; see also Gewertz 1988 on Bamberger 1974). I am not, of course, arguingthatthe variouscriticismswere not reasonable,but am concerned with the epistemologicalpoint thatthe disciplineis supposedto tackbetweengeneral questionsand ethnography,but appearsto be capableof moving only in one direction,into shallowerwater. Departures At this point I wish to establish a certaindistance from the argumentthat I have developed, by stressing that analogous propositions could be developed methodaboutany academicdiscoursethat is tightly connected with a particular ology or form of writing. Insofaras prehistoryis a discourseof archaeology, it is that a prisonerof a certainkindof historical,social, andbehavioralreconstruction similarpoints mightbe madeabout is at once partialand inevitablycircular.Some the inevitabilityof denying the worth of oral traditionsfrom the perspective of conventionalhistory;such devaluationarises necessarily in a disarchive-bound cipline thatdefines itself aroundrigorouswork on a certainkind of material.Althoughthereis a directparallelwith the dismissal of travelers'reportsin anthropology, it should be stressed that the discipline's investment in the practice of fieldworkis less disablingthanthe dominanceof a narrowrangeof ways in which fieldworkis "written up." Hence the narrativeand biographicalgenres of conventionalhistorywere ultimatelymore importantthan the fact that certainkinds

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of "primary"researchmight be privileged. The point here, though, is that while this is a critiqueof ethnography'santhropology,it is not one that supposes that some otherscholarlydiscipline providesa model for a relationshipbetween initial general questions and the analytic form of the genre where the latter sustains ratherthan subvertsthe former;if the hegemonic genres of anthropologicalwriting now presentthemselves mainly as styles to be disfigured, the positive alternativesare not to be constitutedthroughthe old game of interdisciplinary borrowing, throughthe claim to fix up one line of inquiryby addingfrom another. The associationbetweenexoticism andthe markedtendencyfor ethnography to rendertheoreticalquestions internalto local analyses is thus not entirely contingent. Both of these features of contemporaryanthropologyhave a strong associationwith the dominanceof ethnographic writing, which presentsculturesas totalities.A book absorbedby a cultureabsorbedin a book cannotproduce unitary a discourse upon ethnography,a discourse that uses ethnographyto generate a widerargument.At the same time the one-to-onejuxtapositionthatthis form normally entails can only establish stabilityat a certaindistancefrom the cultureimputed to the reader;the truthof the ethnographiccase depends upon its original and nonderivativerelationwith the "us" to which it is opposed. It follows from this, of course, that ethnographiesthat turn upon local comparison (e.g., Fox 1977;Leach 1954; White 1981) arelikely to be less enmeshedin this orientalizing and particularizing logic to the extent thatdimensionsof differencedisconnected from the us/them fiction are analyticallyconsequential.The aim of this article is not to condemn anything like the whole discipline, but to suggest that crucial flaws are associated with the canonical model, ratherthan some superficialsubjective interestin culturalauthenticity.If there was merely a problemof self-deception, this would presumablyhave been expungedlong ago. The persistenceof exoticism arises from the fact that it is precisely what ethnographyis directedto produce. It is perhapsnecessaryto reiteratethe earlierpoint thatthese argumentshave nothingto do with fieldwork, which is obviously a crucial way of learning. The argument ratherthat fieldworkshould be drawninto otherkinds of writingthat is move into the space between the theoreticaland universaland the local and ethnographic,and thatare energizedby forms of difference not containedwithin the us/themfiction. The potentialresponses are diverse. Montage clearly refractsand displaces the pursuitof stable culturesthrougha succession of historical and experiential contexts (as in Taussig 1987) and offers the most effective and radical assault upon anthropology'stendency to fix a unitarysymbolic system at a distance.'2 Here, however, I argue for an approachthat in a sense is more groundedin conventionalinterestsin an interpretative project, in analysis that works upon larger problemstowarda wider generativeaccountof social and culturalphenomena. From this perspective the reinvigorationof comparativeanthropologyappears to be crucial. The value of a method not containedby ethnographyis apparentfrom its use from some feminist perspectives(Collier and Rosaldo 1981): there is still a sense of political urgency about clarifying the broadernatureof

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sexual asymmetries, which has resisted the tendency for these questions to be subsumedwithin a localized ethnography genderrelations. The importanceof of comparisonemerges also from the fact that some kind of explicit discussion of regional relationshipsand histories is necessary if older ethnological categories and adjudicationsare not to be implicitly perpetuated.Many areal categories, such as "Melanesia" and "Polynesia" live on in contemporary anthropological parlanceas thoughthey had linguistic or prehistoricalvalidity, while misleading typificationsof regional social structuresand culturalforms provide silent contexts for ethnographic case studies (cf. Thomas 1989b). At this point it might seem desirable to present an example of the kind of projectenvisaged here, but this would partlymisrepresentthe claims and intentions of the presentarticle.3 I do not appeal in a messianic mannerto a style of workthat is unprecedented, which would be supposedto magically transcendthe orientalizingcontrivanceandparticularism characteristic the disciplineat presof ent. Since this critiqueis directedat a kind of canonical work, it is obvious that much anthropologicalwriting is not to be subsumedwithin that canon, and that examplesof comparative analysis alreadyexist. The interestis thus in alteringthe marginalstatusof thatgenre, and elaboratingupon it in certaindirections. This is not to say, though, that there is an established style of comparison that should simply be adopted and generalized. To the contrary,it appearsthat much comparativework is inadequatebecause it is set up as a project secondary to ethnography; thatperhapsoperatesat a higherlevel of generality,and with one moretheoreticalambitions,but neverthelessone that is essentially parasiticupon the richnessof what can be describedas "primarysources" (Strathern1988:10). This is why it seems importantto establish an intermediatelevel of writing betweenproblematic universalismand ethnographic illustration,a kind of writing that incorporates to ethnographybut is not subordinated it. At a theoreticallevel this should be able to displace discourses of alterity by representingdifference within culturesand difference among a plurality(as opposed to one-to-one contrast). It should be able to combine nuanced firsthandknowledge of particular of localities with the interpretation a broaderrangeof "secondary" ethnographic or "primary"historicaldescriptions.This type of groundingthus depends upon a model of knowledge ratherdifferentto that implicit in various academicdisciplines, where there is a strong if generally implicit idea that writing ought generally to be based on one's own specialized and originalresearch.Otherwork is often consignedto a secondaryor residualcategory, such as thatof the "literature review" or textbook; even though it is obvious that many theoreticallycrucial workshave not derivedfrom work thatwas primaryin an empiricalsense. A new kindof post-ethnographic anthropological writingwould presumethe sortof local knowledge that has always been critical for representingcircumstancesboth at home and abroad, but would refuse the bounds of conveniently sized localities throughventuringto speak aboutregionalrelationsand histories. If case material from a range of associated places cannot expose the historical contingency and of determination social and culturalforms that might otherwise be upparticular

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held as relativizingethnologicalexhibits, it is difficult to see any other approach thatcould sever anthropology'sroots in the colonial imagination. WhatI'm suggesting, then, is not the old kind of positivist comparisonthat seeks to establish general theories, but a form of analysis that uses a regional frame to argue about processes of social change and diversity, that is critically of consciousof its own situationin a succession of Europeanrepresentations such places, thatdevelops its argumentsstrategicallyandprovisionallyratherthanuniversally. The significance of regional comparisonarises from the fact that it is concernedwith a pluralityof others, a field in which differenceemerges between one context and the next, and does not take the radical form of alterityin a gulf betweenobserversandobserved. Differenceis thushistoricallyconstituted,rather than a fact of culturalstability. The contexts that can be explored are not necessarily fenced around as "other cultures" but include historical processes and formsof exchange and communicationthathave permittedculturalappropriation and transposition.The second strandof this conclusion is thus that while anthropology has dealt effectively with implicit meanings that can be situated in the coherenceof one culture, contemporaryglobal processes of culturalcirculation and reificationdemand an interest in meanings that are explicit and derivative. Otherwisethe risk is thatour expectationsaboutothercultures, like those of Lord Valentia, will preventus from seeing anythingin local mimicryor copying other thanan inauthenticmasquerade.It's not clear that the unitarysocial system ever was a good model for anthropological theory, but the shortcomingsare now more conspicuousthanever. We cannotunderstand culturalborrowings,accretions,or locally distinctive variantsof cosmopolitan movements, while we privilege the richnessof localized conversationandthe stableethnography capturesit. The that nuances of village dialogues are unending, and their plays of tense and person beguiling, but if we are to recover an intelligible debate beyond the multiplicity of isolatedtongues we must surrender somethingto the corruptions pidgins and of creoles, tradingothers' grammarsfor our own lexicons. Derivativelingua franca have always offended those preoccupied with boundariesand authenticity, but they offer a resonantmodel for the uncontainedtranspositionsand transcultural meaningswhich culturalinquirymust now deal with.
Notes Acknowledgments. encouragementand commentsof HenriettaMoore, Pascal Boyer, The and MargaretJolly made it possible for me to write this article;but it should not be presumedthatany of these people agree with the positions advanced. 'Thediscursiveentity is obviously diverse, and the reificationrequiredby any disciplinary critiquemustbe inaccuratewith respectto a varietyof idiosyncraticand innovativeworks. My interesthere is not in establishingthat what is said applies to any single work (which would prove nothingaboutthe genre) or the statisticalextent to which the claims apply to the rangeof work. 2Theargumentshere should not be read to denigratethe work of writerssuch as Clifford and Marcus, upon which they obviously depend. While I take much of what they have

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advancedto be essential to any novel and critical anthropology,my complaintis that the questionof exoticism in contemporary anthropologyhas been passedover-as thoughsuch works as Anthropologyand the Colonial Encounter(Asad 1974) had expunged the problem. 3Thisperhapsaccountsfor the curiouslyprevalentmisconceptionthatthe authorsof Writing Culture(Cliffordand Marcus 1986) were puttingreflection, criticismor some kind of theoreticalself-consciousnessin the place of primaryresearch;"it seems more than likely thatthe book will provokea trendaway from doing anthropology,and towardsever more barrencriticismand meta-criticism"(Spencer 1989:161). It was quite clear from Anthropology as CulturalCritique(Marcusand Fisher 1986) that at least two of the writerssaw a kindof criticalethnography,ratherthanany criticismdetachedfrom ethnography,as the centralprojectof the discipline;it might also be pointedout thatsince WritingCulturewas publishedsome contributors least have producedother substantivestudies (e.g., Rabiat now 1989) and not works of "metacriticism." The notion that the 1986 collection and associated publicationsrepresentedan assault on ethnographyis thus clearly false; this article departsfrom both WritingCulture and its aggrieved detractorsby insisting on a fieldwork/ethnography distinction and using that as a basis for doing what the reflexive theoristshave been unjustifiablyaccused of doing-arguing that ethnography'stime has passed. 4Thiswas intended,but not made properlyexplicit, in Out of Time (Thomas 1989a). The presentarticleis intendedto some extent to be an amendmentto thatcritique,even though it does not take up the questionof ethnography'slack of history, which was centralto my book. 'This formof wordsmay suggest thatI do not regardcriticismsof Said's projectas justified; I hope to explorethe topic of the receptionof Said's work in a separatearticle, butcan note briefly here that I agree with some of the points made by Clifford, but believe that most anthropological critics have neglected the sense in which Orientalismis a work of specifically literaryscholarshipand secondly that it is but a partof a series of works thatoperate at distinct levels of generalityand with distinct purposes (Said 1978, 1979, 1981, 1984, 1986; Said and Hitchins 1988). Some of these works are referredto by Clifford, but most authorscite nothingotherthanOrientalism;I am not, of course, complainingaboutincomplete bibliographies,but draw attentionto the fact that Orientalismhas been criticizedfor not doing things thatSaid actuallyhas done elsewhere. 6Strathern however implies thatherpropositionsare simply intendedto generatenovel theoretical effects, as if the epistemological status of analytical fictions excludes both subof stantiveclaims, anddisputation basedon the noncorrespondence a fictionwith evidence. If this is in fact the position of the prefaceto The Genderof the Gift, it would seem at odds with what are in fact substantivepropositionsin the body of the text, and also a stance that ratherdisables one's own analysis. My view, which may or may not diverge from a position thatStrathern not succeed in expressing unambiguously,is that analyticalfictions did are, like other forms of knowledge, partial(in the sense of being both interestedand incomplete), and because of this condition (ratherthan in spite of it), may offer an account of thingsin the worldthatis adequatefor the purposesof a historicallysituatedcommunity or arrayof people. Insofaras a fiction is seen to be representative,its substantiveclaims are as trueas any of the otherthings we believe. 7My use of Negara as a model of the one-to-one contrastthat is fundamentalto ethnographicwriting is quite deliberate, since the historicalcharacterof the work makes it ob-

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vious that ethnographycan and must be understoodat a separatelevel from fieldwork. However, as Marcusand Fisherhave noted with respectto thatbook, the form of "cultural criticism [offered] as epistemological critique . . . is also characteristicof many other such works in anthropology"(1986:145). 8Martha Macintyre,personalcommunication. 9Thispoint thatthese varietiesof culturalcritiquehave a darkside is generallypassed over in Marcus and Fisher's discussion of various "techniques of culturalcritique in anthropology" (1986:137-164). It is still possible to take argumentsproceedingthroughphrases such as "By contrast,Balinese conceptions of the state . . ." (p. 145) as thoughthey operatedonly upon the "Western" ideas thatare displaced. It shouldbe noted, however, that they do discuss some of the shortcomingsof the "static, us-themjuxtaposition"(pp. 160162) and the ways in which consciousness has moved "to locate [an other culture] in a time and space contemporaneouswith our own, and thus to see it as part of our world, ratherthan as a mirroror alternative"(p. 134). However, their suggestions that cultural critiquewould revolve aroundanythingotherthanjuxtapositionor the repatriation methof ods employed to study the exotic are weakly developed. It is notable that what is loosely called reflexive anthropologyhas not engaged much with feminism, while the perspective advancedhere takes the feminist critique of perspectivaland political difference within culturesas a model for breakingfrom a discourse preoccupiedwith difference between. to '0According Sahlins, world systems theoristsargue "that since the hinterlandsocieties anthropologists habituallystudyareopen to radicalchange, externallyimposedby Western capitalistexpansion, the assumptionthat these societies work on some autonomouscultural-logiccannot be entertained.This is a confusion between an open system and a lack of system" (1985:viii). The question that is not addressed, however, is quite what this openness generates:in Sahlins' view, events and external intrusionsare creatively turned to the purposesof a local culturalorder. This is to save structural anthropology'sset of originalmeaningsfrom historicaltransposition,and is an apt approach(irrespectiveof the plausibilityof realizations)for historiesof early contact. The problemarises from the fact thatthese hardlyexemplify global processes or even laterphases of colonial contact;here the culturalramifications analogousto linguisticcreolization.I do, however, agreewith are Sahlinsthat global systems theory is not up to the task of accountingfor "the diversityof local responsesto the world-system-persisting, moreover, in its wake" (1985:viii). "This distinction is abductedfrom the work of Peter De Bolla (1989:34 andpassim). It will be obvious to anyonewho consults this book thatI have distortedandrecontextualized the contrastfor my own purposes. '2Thereare, however, arguablyrisks that authorialencompassmentis relocated covertly throughthe refusalto enunciateprecise arguments methodologicalclaims (cf. Kapferer and 1988). '3Acomparativestudy of exchange, transcultural movementsof materialculture, and colonial historyin the Pacific (Thomasin press) does however attemptto exemplify the style of comparativeand historicalanalysis advocatedhere.

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