User:Ryantjohnston8/sandbox

In the 1980s, the rhetoric of ethnography was subjected to intense scrutiny within the discipline, under the general influence of literary theory and post-colonial/post-structuralist thought. "Experimental" ethnographies that reveal the ferment of the discipline include Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man by Michael Taussig, Debating Muslims by Michael F. J. Fischer and Mehdi Abedi, A Space on the Side of the Road by Kathleen Stewart, and Advocacy after Bhopal by Kim Fortun.

This critical turn in sociocultural anthropology during the mid-1980s can, in large part, be traced to the influence of the now classic (and still contested) text, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (1986) edited by James Clifford and George Marcus. Depending on one's perspective, Writing Culture helped bring changes to both anthropology and ethnography often described in terms of being 'postmodern,' 'reflexive,' 'literary,' 'deconstructive,' or 'poststructural' in nature in that the text helped to highlight the various epistemic and political predicaments that many practitioners saw as plaguing ethnographic representations and practices. Where Geertz's and Turner's interpretive anthropology recognized subjects as creative actors who constructed their sociocultural worlds out of symbols, postmodernists attempted to draw attention the the privileged status of the ethnographers themselves. That is, the ethnographer cannot escape their own particular viewpoint in creating an ethnographic account thus making any claims of objective neutrality on the part of their representation highly problematic, if not altogether impossible. In regards to this last point, Writing Culture became a focal point for looking at how ethnographers could describe different cultures and societies without denying the subjectivity of those individuals and groups being studied while simultaneously doing so without laying claiming to absolute knowledge and objective authority. Along with the development of experimental forms such as 'dialogic anthropology' and 'narrative ethnography,' Writing Culture helped to encourage the development of 'collaborative ethnography.' This exploration of the relationship between writer, audience, and subject has become a central tenet of contemporary anthropological and ethnographic practice wherein active collaboration between the researcher(s) and subject(s) has helped meld the practice of collaboration in ethnographic fieldwork with the process of creating the actual ethnographic product that emerges from the research itself.


 * Clifford, James & George E. Marcus (Eds.). Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. (1986). Berkeley: University of California Press.
 * Marcus, George E. & Michael Fischer. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. (1986). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
 * Westbrook, David A. Navigators of the Contemporary: Why Ethnography Matters. (2008). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Update to Social and Cultural Anthropology section to reflect 25th anniversary of Writing Culture
The section on ethnography as practiced in social and cultural anthropology ended rather abruptly at the early 1980s and contained no information on developments in the field since this point. Also, the now canonical text, Writing Culture, was not mentioned at all (and neither was its companion piece, Anthropology as Cultural Critique). To me, this seemed to be a rather glaring omission given the profound influence the text(s) have both within anthropology itself and outside the discipline (in terms of critical ethnography in other disciplines, like sociology, literary criticism, educational studies and information studies). Given that 2011 is the 25th anniversary of Writing Culture and that there are still new books, articles and conferences being devoted to it (Duke's Writing Cultures at 25 being the most recent conference), I felt that at the very least a paragraph should be included to remedy this omission.

Also, I've added 3 more texts to the 'Suggested Reading' section. The first two reflect the new paragraph by including Writing Culture and Anthropology as Cultural Critique. The third book by Westbrook is a good overview of contemporary ethnography, especially as practiced by anthropologists, in that it is aimed at introducing non-specialists to ethnography. It offers a quick and succinct way for those new to ethnography to enter the conversation and get their bearings, as it were. Ryantjohnston8 (talk) 19:18, 25 October 2011 (UTC)