Observers Observed: Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork (Volume 1)

by George W. Stocking Jr. (Editor)

History of Anthropology is a new series of annual volumes, each of which will treat an important theme in the history of anthropological inquiry. For this initial volume, the editors have chosen to focus on the modern cultural intensive fieldwork by "participant observation." Observers Observed includes essays by a distinguished group of historians and anthropologists covering major episodes in the history of ethnographic fieldwork in the American, British, and French traditions since 1880. As the first work to investigate the development of modern fieldwork in a serious historical way, this collection will be of great interest and value to anthropologist, historians of science and the social sciences, and the general readers interested in the way in which modern anthropologists have perceived and described the cultures of "others." Included in this volume are the contributions of Homer G. Barnett, University of Oregon; James Clifford, University of California, Santa Cruz; Douglas Cole, Simon Frazer University; Richard Handler, Lake Forest College; Curtis Hinsley, Colgate University; Joan Larcom, Mount Holyoke College; Paul Rabinow, University of California, Berkeley; and the editor.

Genres: Anthropology, Ethnography

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

Reviews

[Nadya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I skimmed the introduction and then read James Clifford's “Power and dialogue in ethnography: Marcel Griaule’s Initiation” (p. 121-156).

Essentially, Clifford critiqued the French anthropologist Griaule (mid 20th century) for his ideas that he would come upon pure information through either objective observation or manipulation/coercion to get his informants to speak truthfully and openly.
A good discussion of the history of anthropology and the way anthros have ascribed authority to our own methods and data collection.

“Some authorizing fiction of ‘authentic encounter,’ in Geertz’s phrase, seems a prerequisite for intensive research. But initiatory claims to speak as a knowledgeable insider revealing essential cultural truths are no longer credible. Fieldwork cannot appear primarily as a cumulative process of gathering ‘experience,’ or of cultural ‘learning’ by an autonomous subject. It must rather be seen as a historically contingent, unruly, dialogical encounter involving, to some degree, both conflict and collaboration in the production of texts. Ethnographers seem to be condemned to strive for true encounter, while simultaneously recognizing the political, ethical, and personal cross-purposes that undermine any transmission of intercultural knowledge” (p. 152-3).