ethnographic present

is a vague and essentially a temporal moment.

It has been described as a vague and essentially a temporal moment (Stocking 1983:107)

is not the period when the ethnographer was in the field, but a manner of writing according to the present which existed in some traditional past (i.e. The Japanese bathe at night).

the present which existed in the traditional past and not the period when the ethnographer was in the field' (McKnight 1990: 58).

Japan

is reflective of the ahistorical or synchronic pretense of anthropology.

reflecting the ahistorical or synchronic pretense of anthropology (Crapanzano 1986:51).'

is the practice of giving accounts of other cultures and societies in the present tense.The ethnographic present, for fabian,functions to take the society so described out of the timestream of history in which ethnographers and their own societies exist.

practice of giving accounts of other cultures and societies in the present tense. A custom, a ritual, even an entire system of exchange or a world view are thus predicated on a group or tribe, or whatever unit the ethnographer happens to choose.' (80) THE ETHNOGRAPHIC PRESENT IS THE PRESENT WHICH EXISTED IN THE TRADITIONAL PAST AND NOT THE PERIOD WHEN THE ETHNOGRAPHER WAS IN THE FIELD' 'the present which existed in the traditional past and not the period when the ethnographer was in the field' (McKnight 1990: 58). Both Fabian and McKnight see something wrong with the ethnographic present, but it is apparent immediately that they are identifying two different if related problems. Fabian is concerned with the artificiality and the freezing of time that descriptions in the present tense may impart. Ethnography written in the present tense implies a view of human behaviour as conventional, predictable and rule-determineda culturology. Such writing conveys none of the independence of rule and action experienced in the ethnographer'sown world, nor does it present behaviour as contingent, situationalor deliberate(see Diamond 1964: 37). The ethnographic present, for Fabian,functions to take the society so described out of the timestream of history in which ethnographers and their own societies exist. There is more to it than this, but let us first turn to McKnight's problem before we come back to Fabian's. (Sanjek 1991

is the present which existed in the traditional past and not the period when the ethnographer was in the field'.

the present which existed in the traditional past and not the period when the ethnographer was in the field' (McKnight 1990: 58). Both Fabian and McKnight see something wrong with the ethnographic present, but it is apparent immediately that they are identifying two different if related problems. Fabian is concerned with the artificiality and the freezing of time that descriptions in the present tense may impart. Ethnography written in the present tense implies a view of human behaviour as conventional, predictable and rule-determineda culturology. Such writing conveys none of the independence of rule and action experienced in the ethnographer'sown world, nor does it present behaviour as contingent, situationalor deliberate(see Diamond 1964: 37). The ethnographic present, for Fabian,functions to take the society so described out of the timestream of history in which ethnographers and their own societies exist. There is more to it than this, but let us first turn to McKnight's problem before we come back to Fabian's. (Sanjek 1991

is the wrongheaded tendency in anthropological writings and thought to award place and time differently to the industrial west (here, and now) and to the rest (there, and then).

denial of coevalness' in Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object, 'obligation towards coevalness' .. 'allochronic discourse' 'a splitting of temporality in representation in which the anthropological subject of the textis placed in 'another Time' from that of the narrator and the observer and so made ammenable to analysis' We may now return to Fabian's(1983) appraisal of the ethnographic present. He argues that anthropological writings and thought award place and time differently to the industrial West Here, and Now and to the Rest There, and Then. He identifies a radical contradiction between the 'coevalness', or contemporaneity, of the personal interaction between ethnographer and informants (the 'Other' in his vocabulary)during fieldwork (and indeed during the courses of their very lives), and the written assignment into time frames created by Anthropology, that removes the informants from a shared uman timestream.These frames have included Victorianandn eo-evolutionary stages and types, the functionalist ethnographic present, and categories such as 'preliterate' (waiting for something to arrive) and 'Third World' (out of thisworld). Writing thus results in relegation rather than interrelationship. At best, non-Western peoples might have their ethnohistories, to be determined by trait distributions, or decoded from indigenous conceptions of time, but this does not put them into the swim of the anthropologist' own historical currents. Fabian's critique, which I find compelling, is sustainedon the high ground of theoretical 'discourses'and eschews analysisof specific ethnographic works (1983: 74, 76). (I note here the provocative analysis he makes of pronoun use in ethnographic writing [pp. 84-5], even if this remains at a general rather than textual level.) He comes perhaps closest to an ethnographic example in proposing that the national character projects directed by Mead and Kluckhohn in the early1950s put Soviet culture 'at a distance' by essentializing it out of coeval time, thus adding (sanjek 614)

ethnographic present, n.Definitions

ethnographic present