Post-Modern Ethnography: From Document of the Occult to Occult Document

Tyler, Stephen A.

doi:10.1525/9780520946286-008

Cited by 481 publications

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“…2.2 In this manner, performative writing makes its case, a case, to borrow from Fisher's (1987) familiar argument, based in narrative plausibility and narrative fidelity. It is a case that is more interested in evoking than representing, in constructing a world than in positing this is the way the world is (e.g., Ellis, 1995;Tyler, 1986). It is a case that does not just rely on its descriptive portrayal, no matter how precise or poignant, but depends on its ability to create experience.…”

Section: Part 2: the Traditional Scholar's Game-an Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is a case that does not just rely on its descriptive portrayal, no matter how precise or poignant, but depends on its ability to create experience. Tyler's (1986) assertion about postmodern ethnography holds for performative writing as well: "It is not a record of experience at all; it is the means of experience" (p. 138). Thus, performative writing offers both an evocation of human experience and an enabling fiction.…”

Section: Part 2: the Traditional Scholar's Game-an Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Performative Writing as Scholarship: An Apology, an Argument, an Anecdote

Pelias¹

2005

Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies

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The article, divided into three sections, argues for the methodological power of performative writing. Part 1 borrows from the literary tradition by offering an apology on behalf of performative writing as it links the poetic and the performative. Part 2 continues the argument by structuring its claims in the form of a logical proof. Part 3 completes the case by offering a short story of how performative writing has functioned within the academy. The essay enacts the performative writing method as it calls for its use.

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Section: Part 2: the Traditional Scholar's Game-an Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Part 2: the Traditional Scholar's Game-an Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performative Writing as Scholarship: An Apology, an Argument, an Anecdote

Pelias¹

2005

Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies

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“…Actually, as Brightman argues, such critiques have been a part of anthropological theory for as long as the culture concept has been around (Brightman, 1995). However, I detect a self-referential circle in much contemporary literature, such that concepts like globalization, migration, urbanization, and hybridity are rightly given as evidence that anthropology requires revamping, threatening the very theory of culture on which the discipline has staked its claims (Abu-Lughod, 1991;Appadurai, 1990;Clifford, 1997;Gupta and Ferguson, 1997;Rosaldo, 1989;Tyler, 1986), yet when asked to produce new ethnographies which reflect these contemporary values, anthropologists produce evidence concluding that societies are unbounded, hybrid, and otherwise 'postmodern' (Basch et al, 1994;Hannerz, 1996;Kearney, 1995;Rouse, 1991). As Michael Lambek concluded his 406 page monograph on a Mayotte village, 'in conclusion, inconclusion'.…”

Section: Urban Anthropology and The Paradigm Of Inconclusionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Estranged belongings

Newell

2006

Anthropological Theory

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Arguing that ethnographies of cities must do more than highlight their fluid, boundless nature, this article seeks forms of social order produced in tension with forces of dissolution. I argue that even in the society of thieves I worked with in Abidjan, theft was ruled by relationships of exchange and obligation and social relationships were prioritized over financial gain. I discovered a tenuous moral community regulating the arbitration of justice in cases of social crisis, a process built upon the tracing of social networks and the determination of who really 'belongs'. Using my own experience of being robbed and its social aftershocks as an example, I trace the processes through which social networks constrain the interpretation of an event, while at the same time redefining their identities (as group and individual) through this interaction. The juncture of stranger and community is the axis through which such negotiations are carried out.

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“…Subsequently, she proposed her own experimental way to respond to the crisis in an influential book titled Partial Connections. In this work, she took as a starting point a call for nonrepresentational ethnography by Stephen Tyler, an American postmodernist (Strathern 2004;Tylor 1986). Following Tyler, Strathern argues that ethnography does not represent something outside itself, but ''evokes'' some thought and imagination in readers (Strathern 2004, 7-8).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ethnographic Machine

Morita

2013

Science, Technology, & Human Values

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Context holds a significant place mediating the conceptual and the empirical in ethnography. This modality of knowledge has also become a significant part of science and technology studies since the rise of laboratory studies. However, conventional modes of contextualization that locate the object of study within a whole—such as within a society or culture—have become a target of suspicion and criticism since the 1980s. This led to the radical alteration of the contextualizing strategies of actor–network theory (ANT) and multisited ethnography. Anthropologist Marilyn Strathern is also responding to this crisis by renovating the practice of ethnography in a way significantly different from both strategies. Since contextualization occupies a significant place in the formation of ethnography as a representation of a larger “out there” reality, her alternative contextualization requires a new characterization of ethnography other than representation. This article tries to expound the complicated, and often perplexing, ethnography of Strathern by making an analogy with objects familiar to most science, technology, and society scholars, namely, machines. By doing so, this article argues that Strathern is opening up a new way of dealing with context that is radically different both from ANT and from multisited ethnography.

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Post-Modern Ethnography: From Document of the Occult to Occult Document

Cited by 481 publications

References 0 publications

Performative Writing as Scholarship: An Apology, an Argument, an Anecdote

Performative Writing as Scholarship: An Apology, an Argument, an Anecdote

Estranged belongings

The Ethnographic Machine

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