Out of Context: The Persuasive Fictions of Anthropology [and Comments and Reply]

Strathern, Marilyn; Crick, Malcolm; Fardon, Richard; Hatch, Elvin; Jarvie, I. C.; Pinxten, R.; Rabinow, Paul; Tonkin, Elizabeth; Tyler, Stephen A.; Marcus, George E.

doi:10.1086/203527

Cited by 257 publications

(36 citation statements)

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“…Yet it also only works and convinces because it speaks to familiar national traditions and recognizable ‘basic needs’: that is, it works by way of repetition. Are examples, then, also ‘persuasive fictions’ (Strathern ) that we should be wary of? Žižek's account may be compelling, but it may also be more seductive than convincing .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: the power of example

Højer

Bandak

2015

Royal Anthropological Inst

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It is the contention of this introduction that examples are important prisms through which both reality and anthropological analysis are thought and, equally importantly, reconfigured. The aim of the introduction is to redress the theoretical disregard for exemplification by exploring the persuasive and evocative power – positive and negative – of ‘examples’ in social and academic life while also proposing exemplification as a distinct anthropological way of theorizing. Such theorizing points to a ‘lateral’ rethinking of the relation between the particular and the general. Our central argument is that examples highlight the precarious tension between the example as ‘example’ and the example as ‘exemplar’. All contributions to this special issue, in one way or another, explore this tension between the unruliness of examples and the stability‐enhancing power of exemplarity. The introduction further proposes that the example serves to confuse ontological divides, such as the one between theory and ethnography, and also draws attention to the fact that theory is as much suggestive as descriptive.

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confidence: 99%

Introduction: the power of example

Højer

Bandak

2015

Royal Anthropological Inst

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“…Like ethnography, it is a 'persuasive fiction' written about 'there' for us 'here'. 69 The travel writings featured in this article are impressions of Montserrat by writers all maximising and brokering their realities, all competing and contesting for voice and copy-space. In this section I would like to comment upon some of the implications of the texts featured above, particularly when they appear in places other than their intended publication newspapers, in the local Montserratian newspapers for instance.…”

Section: With Imperial Eyes: Laffey and The Unmentionablementioning

confidence: 96%

Glimpses into the Unmentionable: Montserrat, Tourism and Anthropological Readings of ‘Subordinate Exotic’ and ‘Comic Exotic’ Travel Writing

Skinner

2008

Studies in Travel Writing

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This article explores the relationship between anthropology and identity through the process of travel writing and reading. Specifically, the article examines a range of mid to late twentieth century travel writings about the British Caribbean colony Montserrat to read into the culture of the writer and the assumed reader. These deconstructive 'glimpses into the unmentionable' often reveal an implicit racism. The travel writing texts -built upon very brief and often sponsored visits to the island -are also found to copy ideas and themes from each other such as the idea of Montserrat as an imitation of Ireland. Broadly speaking, these travel writings about Montserrat divide into two types of representation -the 'subordinate exotic' ('The Other Emerald Isle') and the 'comic exotic' (an odd ethnic spectacle of the 'Black-Irish').

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“…Anthropology and archaeology are inescapably comparative enterprises because minimally they require us to understand and interpret at least one other culture or society in terms intelligible to our own-although our comparisons commonly draw on many cultures and societies. Malinowski's (1961Malinowski's ( [1922) contribution to anthropology-fieldwork and participant observation-was to make the comparative terms of engagement a two-way street (Strathern 1990). During fieldwork an anthropological subject had ample opportunity to act back, to challenge, humiliate, console, enjoy, empathize with, exclude, include, or ignore the intrusions of an anthropologist.…”

Section: Yvonne Marshallmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As someone who has been pared down, enriched, and regularly reshaped as a human being by encounters with both would-be ethnographic subjects and stratigraphic profiles, I cannot say that I agree with Gell. Personally, I prefer the comparative terms of engagement set out by Wagner (1981Wagner ( [1975) and Strathern (1988). Wagner (1981Wagner ( [1975) argues that in the process of conducting fieldwork "the anthropologist cannot simply 'learn' the new culture and place it alongside the one he already knows," a simple comparison, "but must rather 'take it on' so as to experience a transformation of his own world" (9).…”

Section: Yvonne Marshallmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“Worlds Otherwise”

Alberti¹,

Fowles²,

Holbraad³

et al. 2011

Current Anthropology

212

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The debate concerning ontology is heating up in the social sciences. How is this impacting anthropology and archaeology? What contributions can these disciplines make? Following a session at the 2010 Theoretical Archaeology Group conference at Brown University ("'Worlds Otherwise': Archaeology, Theory, and Ontological Difference," convened by Ben Alberti and Yvonne Marshall), a group of archaeologists and anthropologists have continued to discuss the merits, possibilities, and problems of an ontologically oriented approach. The current paper is a portion of this larger conversation-a format we maintain here because, among other things, it permits a welcome level of candor and simplicity. In this forum we present two questions (written by Alberti and Witmore, along with the concluding comments) and the responses of five of the Theoretical Archaeology Group session participants. The first question asks why we think an ontological approach is important to our respective fields; the second, building upon the first set of responses, asks authors to consider the difference that pluralizing ontology might make and whether such a move is desirable given the aims of archaeology and anthropology. While several angles on ontology come through in the conversation, all share an interest in more immanent understandings that arise within specific situations and that are perhaps best described as thoroughly entangled rather than transcendent and/ or oppositional in any straightforward sense. The Ontological Turn: A Question of Relevance and Contribution Recent years have witnessed a dramatic increase in academic labor concerned with ontology. Across the humanities and sciences this surge goes by many names: the (re)turn to things

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Out of Context: The Persuasive Fictions of Anthropology [and Comments and Reply]

Cited by 257 publications

References 0 publications

Introduction: the power of example

Introduction: the power of example

Glimpses into the Unmentionable: Montserrat, Tourism and Anthropological Readings of ‘Subordinate Exotic’ and ‘Comic Exotic’ Travel Writing

“Worlds Otherwise”

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