anthropologist

anthropology

participant observation

light bulb joke

is a (highly masculine) intellectual who successfully lives out the desire of all contemporary intellectuals for a dialectic self-identification with the other.

The condition of the contemporary intellectual for Sontag is a constant and frustrating attempt at a dialectic self-identification with the Other: Europe seeks its self in an exotic Other, a disenchanted rationality seeks itself in the ecstasy of sex and drugs, philosophical problems seek their 'oblivion' in the empiricism of science (Sontag 1994:69). For Sontag, however, only the anthropologist has actually lived this desire to lose the self in the Other through the emotionally cathartic disorientation of fieldwork: the anthropologist is the only practicing intellectual who is master of 'his own intellectual alienation' (ibid:74).'

Clifford Geertz has called anthropologist. 'merchants of astonishment.'

is an amputated man: One who, having been separated from his own group for long times feels 'at home' anywhere and suffers a chronic uprootedness.

The conditions of his life and work cut him off from his own group for long periods together... and he himself acquires a kind of chronic uprootedness from the sheer brutality of the environmental changes to which he is exposed. Never can he feel himself 'at home' anywhere: he will always be, psychologically speaking, an amputated man' (Levi-Strauss 1961:58)

is an eccentric interested in bizarre things.

eccentrics' 'interested in bizarre things'

is not an actor in the story, but a frame of mind that has the effect of recreating 'aesthetically' the possibility of anthropology.

Starting from the same premise as those ethnographies that it is impossible to speak of ethnographic 'data' independent of their collector and analyst the account does the opposite of putting the ethnographer in the picture, that is, it makes of the ethnographic state of mind a frame or form. The ultimate result does more than render the ethnographer as a character in the story. . . ..The ultimate result does more than render the ethnographer as a character in the story. In recognizing that there is nothing outside the ethnographic mind, one might say, it turns that mind inside out.28 The effect is to recreate aesthetically the possibility of anthropology after post-structuralist critiques: in turning our model inside out, the very modem knowledge practices that are the subject of Strathem's analysis are confirmed by their enactment even as a critical distance on those practices is achieved' (Riles 2001:19)

is not concerned, as an anthropologist, with whether such things as slavery or cabalism, or the institutions of the US or Russia, are or are not right, good, reasonable, or just.

In any case the anthropologist is not concerned, as an anthropologist, with whether such things as slavery or cannibalism, or the institutions of the United States or Russia, are or are not right, good, reasonable or just. Among the Malays there is an institution known as amok... in certain circumstances a man runs amok and kills as many persons as he can before he himself is killed... the authors say that all so-called functionalist think that this institution is right, good, reasonable and just. Is this absurdity the sort of thing that deserves to be put before the readers of the AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST (R-Brown 1949: 321)

is one who has spent a considerable amount of money and time, and compromised his health for the purpose of having his presence forgiven by a handful of wretched people whose main occupations are sleeping and picking their lice.

his profession: he has abandoned, after ail, his environment, his friends, and his habits, spent a considerable amount of money and time, and compromised his health. And the only apparent result is that his presence is forgiven by a handful of wretched people who will soon, in any case, be extinct... whose main occupations are sleeping and picking their lice... and whose whim can decide the success or the failure of his whole enterprise. (levi-strauss 'tristes tropiques' 374)

is one who often suffers the contradiction of being a ready conformist elsewhere and a staunch critic at home. It is a contradiction that will be resolved once it is taken for granted that, even at home, the anthropologist's business should be to know, not to pass judgement.

The anthropologist who is critic at home and conformist elsewhere is therefore in a contradictory position. But beneath this contradiction is another, from which it is even less easy to escape. If he wishes to contribute to the improvement of his own social system he cannot but condemn, wherever he comes upon them, conditions analogous to those which he deplores at home. He loses, in so doing, all claim to be objective and impartial. Conversely the detachment enjoined upon him by moral scruples, and by the rigorous methods ofscience, will prevent him from finding fault with his own society, once it is taken for granted that his business is to know, not to pass judgment. The man who takes action in his own country cannot hope to understand the world outside: the man who takes all knowledge for his ambition must give up the idea of ever changing anything at home. (levi-strauss 'tristes tropiques : 384)

anthropologist, n.Definitions

anthropologist