Culture & Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis

by Renato Rosaldo

Exposing the inadequacies of old conceptions of static cultures and detached observers, the book argues instead for social science to acknowledge and celebrate diversity, narrative, emotion, and subjectivity.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, Cultural, Sociology, Academic, Social Science, History

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Renato Rosaldo is Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and past president of the American Ethnological Society. He is the author of The Day of Shelly's Death: The Poetry and Ethnography of Grief, Culture and Truth and Ilongot Headhunting, 1883–1974, and two award-winning poetry collections, Diego Luna's Insider Tips and Prayer to Spider Woman/Rezo a la Mujer Araña.

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the main reasons I went to Grad School.

[Erik Said · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me centraré en la parte más crítica, como "After Objectivism" porque fue la que más me interesó, aunque las otras también son relevantes. En esta, Renato Rosaldo utiliza el ensayo paródico de Horace Miner —además, retoma y critica a Radcliffe-Brown— para evidenciar cómo el lenguaje técnico y formal de ciertas etnografías pueden exotizar "lo cotidiano". El desafío es cómo describir prácticas culturales sin distorsionarlas a través del lente etnográfico y el academicismo. Rosaldo sugiere una postura dialógica, en la que los sujetos de estudio participen en la construcción del conocimiento, evitando imponer categorías externas que alejen la etnografía de la realidad. Así, la antropología se vuelve una práctica colaborativa y no extractiva, respetando las voces de los sujetos en sus propios términos, en lugar de traducirlas a un lenguaje académico que las desvirtúe. Esto recuerda la crítica al "imperialismo de las categorías" señalado por Akhil Gupta.

[Fernando · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible compendium of different approaches to study and analyze culture. I was amazed at how many useful approaches I can use when studying anything related to culture. Rosaldo introduces the reader to many critical analysis and understandings that left me wanting more. This is a book that can be used as a reference when doing any future project. A book that I will be coming back to it for many years to come. I personally found the topics of nostalgia, power relations/authority, and Chicano identity very fascinating.

[Alexander Parra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reads maybe more like a textbook, but provides crucial challenges to our conceptions of culture and truth (it'd be weird if the book didnt lol). Some sections were easier to read than others, but overall should be a foundational text in contemporary anthropology.

[Emerald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it for class: the US is very much diverse but has all these bills and unwritten rules for people of color and then the country acts surprised when its people is not falling for their bullshi-.

[Conor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was assigned reading a few years ago, but I only got half way through it then. It was a bit of a struggle this time too.

A very heady book in which Rosaldo takes up many of the fundamental questions plaging (now post-colonial) human science. There is a profound amount of material on changing perception in anthropology (which is central to the book) and Rosaldo's position in the polemic of the changing political goals in universities. The latter point should be noted: a shift to more conservative topics is not purely a political one, as Rosaldo reminds the reader, but rather affects everything from office space, and promotions, to the educational visions of entire departments.

This goal-changing was started in America under the Regan Administration and in Britain under Thatcher (It's a Sin by Lawerence Grossberg approaches the British anthropologist's problem). This was of course continued in America during the Bush years, so the topic is still very relevant.

Because the book also points out the importance in social sciences of studying borderlands, interactions between field workers and informants, class struggle and so on, there is also a profound amount of information for the readers and writers involved in the study of globalization.

Rosaldo does all of this without bogging the reader, even the non-anthropologist reader, down. This is a book about social theory, not a death march through his thesaurus. He writes well and sparingly. His phrasing is as adroit as his diction.

These are some of the many reasons this was assigned for me in class. The book is well worth reading. If I have a complaint about it, it's that the writing style (very essayist) doesn't exactly reward the reader for continuing between chapters. One gets done with a section and wants a nap/ciggy/sandwhich, not another 10 pages right away.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rosaldo revisits cultural anthropology as more a scholarship of the humanities instead of a social science. His personal experience of living in a borderland between the Latino culture of his parents and the greater American culture is illuminating. He sees himself as someone not completely belonging to one or the other, but having the ability to see both uniquely. The book is well written and far more accessible than much of the postmodern drivel published by other culture scholars of the time.

[Annah · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's weird rereading college books without an academic impetus, but worth remembering why I've kept this one on my shelf for all these years! The male Rosaldo makes a poetic case for subjectivity and social critique in anthropology, rejecting the notion that classic impartiality is the only valid way to do ethnography. Aaaaaand that, if we're being truly honest, there's really no such thing anyway.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an amazing book for more reasons than I could highlight in a review. From an undergrad perspective in anthropology, this book is essential for clarifying some long standing debates, as well as informing contemporary ones that are still raging.

[LA · Rating 3 out of 5]

must all anthropologists write so dryly?? he starts with an emotional story, milks it, then the milk runs dry. no sense in crying over spilt milk since it is already Dry.

[A.H. Haar]

I've barely started the original preface for the text and already I am so excited by this book I'm getting distracted.

[versarbre]

The collection of Writing Culture was published in 1986, whereas the first edition of this was published in 1989. At the time, the discipline in the US was still responding to a domestic change of cultural political geography, which was an aftermath of the international movements of de-colonialization in the 1960s. Rosaldo introduced a lot of his personal biography in rethinking ethnography in a particular cultural-political milieu. His main thrust was capturing the force of a headhunter's rage, of course, an ethnographic achievement. But other than that, the rethinking theory parts were like working progress pieces. But this is how our discipline accumulates knowledge.