Introduction: Five theses on ethnography as colonial practice1 (original) (raw)

Introduction: Five theses on ethnography as colonial practice

History and Anthropology, 1994

Despite the influence of Thomas Kuhn on critical assessments of anthropology, disciplinary histories written by anthropologists still tend to be self-serving. To this day, it seems evident to look upon the great thinkers of anthropology, those whom we think revolutionized its theories and methods, as the main carriers of the history of anthropology. Our own research projects, concerning localized, contextual histories of ethnographic practices in colonial Tanganyika (Pels) and Vietnam (Salemink), made us consider the history of anthropology from another angle. We feel that the emphasis on the "big men" of anthropology in disciplinary histories obscures the way in which ethnography was linked to the construction of colonial and neo-colonial societies. In the following text we elaborate some theses on the historical relevance of ethnographic practice, understood in relation to the anthropological discipline and to its respective local and historical contexts. These theses are obviously not the definitive outcome of a rewriting of anthropology's history, but we consider them to be necessary steps toward a critical reflection on the relations between ethnography and colonialism. First Thesis: Disciplinary history obscures the way in which academic anthropology was linked to the construction of colonial and neo-colonial societies through ethnographic practice. When the collection of essays on Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (Asad 1973) was published, its message was drowned in heated arguments. Despite Asad's statement that "it is a mistake to view social anthropology

Pels and Salemink 1994 Five theses on ethnography as colonial practice

Understanding Colonial Anthropology: On the Ethnographic Situation Approach 1

Hespéris-Tamuda, 2020

I try to approach colonial anthropology as a social scientist thinking of the res ources and constraints of belonging to a community, in a formerly colonized country. The issue is not to oppose a 'true ethnography' to a 'deforming ethnography,' a 'true national history' to 'a false colonial history' or 'a true Orient' to 'a mythical Orient.' On the contrary, I aim to avoid treating colonial legacy as a sui generis object and analyze it with the same approach applicable to other postcolonial anthropological literature. I tried to understand the researchers by providing as much relevant information as possible about their social situations. Relevant information is inspired by the concept of ethnographic situation that includes cultural and ideological orientations, theoretical orientations, the social position of the researcher and the colonial context. The question is how those dimensions of the ethnographic situation affect the colonial anthropology.

Introduction: Locating the Colonial Subjects of Anthropology

Despite the initiative of George Stocking Jr. and others in the 19605, and the impressive amount of historical scholarship that has developed since, the historiography of anthropology is still marked by a certain "whig" interpretation. Its "principle of abridgment" (Stocking 1982:3) is to project the self-image of twentieth-century academic anthropology onto all ethnographic activities that played a role in the formation of the discipline. The history of anthropology therefore still concentrates largely on ideas, on the formation and background of the theories and methods that are supposed to constitute anthropology's core. For a large number of its practitioners, the "real" history of anthropology commenced only at the time that theoretical and research expertise were fused in the person of the professional fieldworker. This implies, more often than not, that ethnographic practices by nonprofessionals are measured against anachronistic standards, insufficiently set within their historical contexts, or written out of the discipline's history altogether. As a result, important moments in the development of anthropology are ignored. The following collection of essays aims to question this distinction between academic anthropology and other ethnographic practices and thereby to unsettle the comfortable boundary of professionalism that this distinction maintains around the former. We hope to do this by providing a number of examples of ethnographic practices under colonial rule, practices that suggest alternative interpretations of anthropological commonplaces in past and present: different genealogies of "fetishism," "virgin birth," or "Balinese character"; different constructions of the "native point of view" or the "field"; other, nonacademic roles for linguistics or anthropometry; and, as a result, more room for indigenous authorities, gatekeepers, and informants, for middlemen, and for traders, settlers, missionaries, and 2 Colonial Subjects colonial administrators, than is usually allowed for within disciplinary history. Since "practice" and "history" have been welcomed as twin pillars of anthropological theory since the 19805 (Ormer 1984), it is remarkable that such an approach toward the history of anthropology has not yet been developed systematically; that, in other words, reflexive theorizing by anthropologists has made rather less use of the notions of "practice" and "history" than Ortner's diagnosis would lead one to expect. This can at least partly be explained by the hierarchical relationship between "pure" and "applied" anthropology that has dominated the discipline since World War II. The very use of the term applied suggested the existence of a "pure" disciplinary core that was relatively autonomous from historical circumstance or practical use. In a review of anthropology outside the academy, Susan Wright has criticized such implicit hierarchies of "pure," ' applied," and "no longer" anthropologists, the latter being those who are trained as anthropologists but find employment outside the academy (1995). The latter were for quite some time assumed to be "lost to the profession," implying that the anthropological discipline and its identity were thought to be exclusively located within the academy. However, from the 19705 onward more and more anthropologists work in nonacademic settings, and their demands for representation on professional platforms are increasingly heard (Fluehr-Lobban 1991; Goldschmidt 1979-Wright 1995). The academic disavowal of practical application is, of course, an odd strategy of professionalization when compared to other professions. Medical doctors, lawyers, or psychologists do not lose their professional credentials when, after their academic studies, they start to work as general practitioners or therapists. In Anthropologyland, however-as in allied disciplines like sociology-those who are not exclusively preoccupied with the construction of academic knowledge, but are involved with its "application," are often considered a lesser breed of scholars. The implicit and, as Wright argues, unfounded assumption is that "applied" work does not lead to the higher-rated achievement of formulating theory (Wright 1995:72)-showing again that theory-formulation from something like clinical or experimental practice, as in medical or psychological therapy, is assumed to be impossible. If one starts from such an assumption, the history of anthropology can, indeed, be nothing but a history of ideas and methods. A historical perspective shows that this hierarchy of "pure," "applied," and "no longer" anthropologists has only recently become hegemonic: Malinowski's definition of "the average'practical' mnn" as someone incapable of good ethnography (1922:5) only became influential i. The distinction between strategy (implying a "proper" locus, or subject position outside tin' l.irgeled group) mid tactic (a bricolage of political calculations in which subject and target arc coeval) is gleaned from de Cerleau (iqH^:xix; for an application to the history of ethnography, sec Byrnes uyj-}). In this particular case, it is congruent with Foucault's distim lion between "discourse" and "discursive practice" (l97-:-oo). 2. For the rest of the discussion, see Di.imond n>yq; Clluekman 1974; Leach 1^174; and Sfholte 147.).

Shifting Ethnographic Paradigms and Practices: Unleashing From Colonialism

Journal of Education and Research, 2015

This paper demonstrates realist ethnographic paradigms and practices of engaging an extended period of time to collect the information of distinctive socio-cultural structures or institutions of alien tribal or indigenous societies and describing their cultural ways of life patterns in positivistic manner detaching them from the research process. It argues that the interpretive or hermeneutic wave of ethnography deconstructs this Western hegemonic research tradition giving birth to the interpretation of socio-cultural world of the researched attaching meaning to what they say and do. It further argues that the emergence of critical reflexive ethnographic tradition is the dramatic shift that challenges the colonial ethnographic practices giving space to the self as reflexive research participant. It helps to contest the colonial assumptions of structured and objective visualization of the world and authoritative representation of the other. The ethnographic tradition is further shif...

Assembling an Anthropological Actor: Anthropological Assemblage and Colonial Government

Ben Dibley (2014) Assembling an Anthropological Actor: Anthropological Assemblage and Colonial Government and Anthropology in Papua. 25 (2) 263-279 DOI:10.1080/02757206.2014.882831, 2014

This paper traces the networks through which particular practices of collecting cultures became imbricated in new relations governing colonial populations. It investigates the socio-technical arrangements associated with “practical anthropology” as they were enrolled in the Australian administered territory of Papua. The paper follows the assemblage of a new kind of anthropological actor: one which is framed in relation to new articulations of the administrative, academic and museum networks associated with a programme of “scientific administration” and the doctrine of “humanitarian colonialism”. In particular, it focuses on the office of the Government Anthropologist and the ways in which “native culture” emerged as an administrative surface.

Anthropology and imperialism: Past, present, future

Dialectical Anthropology, 2024

In 1968, during an intense period of anti-colonial struggles in Asia and Africa, Kathleen Gough famously asserted what is now largely taken for granted within the discipline: anthropology is a child of Western imperialism (1968). Since then, the discipline's engagement with imperialism has, I would argue, flowed in three broad currents-all touched upon in this collection-whose inter-connectedness and intensity have varied over time.

Introduction: Five theses on ethnography as colonial practice1 (original) (raw)

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