Engendering Knowledge: The Politics of Ethnography, Part 1

Author(s): Pat Caplan

Source: Anthropology Today, Vol. 4, No. 5 (Oct., 1988), pp. 8-12
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3032749 .
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 tual aptitudesand moral dispositions on the other. Sec-
ond: that this heritage on which the aptitudes and dis-
positions are held to depend is common to all the mem-
bers of certain human groups. Third: that these groups
called 'races' can be hierarchized in terms of the
quality of their genetic heritage. Fourth:that these dif-
ferences authorize those 'races' held to be superior to
command and exploit others, maybe to destroy them.
The theory and the practice are indefensible for a num-
ber of reasons which, following other authorsor at the
same time as them, I set out in 'Race and culture' with
as much vigour as in Race and Histoiy. The problem of
relationships between cultures is situated on another
level.
D.E. So that, in your eyes, hostility felt by one cul-
ture towardsanotheris not racism?
C.L.-S. Yes it is, if it is active hostility. Nothing can
authorizeone culture to destroy or even to oppress an-
other. Such negation of other people has inevitably to
rely on transcendentreasons: those of racism, or equi-
valent reasons. But it is a fact which has always existed
that cultures, while respecting one another, can feel
more or less affinity with one another. That is a norm
of human behaviour. In denouncing it as racist, one
risks playing the enemy's game, for many naive people
will say to themselves 'Well, if that is racism, I am a
racist'.
You know how attractedI am by Japan. If in Paris,
in the underground,I see a couple that seems to be
Japanese, I will look at them with interest and sym-
pathy, ready to do them a service. Is that racism?
D.E. If you look at them with sympathy, no; but if
you had told me 'I look at them with hatred' I would
have replied, yes.
C.L.-S. And yet, I based my reaction on physical
appearance,behaviour, the sound of the language. In
daily life, everyone does the same to place an unknown
person on the geographic map... A lot of hypocrisy
would be needed to try and outlaw this kind of approxi-
mation.
D.E. Are there physical appearanceswhich generate
antipathyin you?
C.L.-S. You mean ethnic types? No, certainly not.
They all include sub-types, some of which seem attrac-
tive to us, others not. In some Indian communities in
Brazil, I felt surroundedby beautiful individuals;others
seemed to offer me the spectacle of a degraded hu-
manity. The Nambikwara women seemed to me in
general more beautiful than the men; the opposite was
the case with the Bororo. Making such judgments, we
apply the canons of our culture. But the only valid ca-
nons in the circumstancesare those of the people con-
cerned.
In the same way, I belong to a culture which has a
distinctive life-style and value-system, so that very dif-
ferent culturesdo not attractme automatically.
D.E. You don't like them?
C.L.-S. That would be saying too much. If I study
them as a social anthropologist,I do it with all the ob-
jectivity and indeed all the empathy of which I am ca-
pable. That doesnit prevent certainculturesfrom hitting
it off less easily than others with my own.

Engendering
knowledge
The politics of ethnography(Part 1 - to be concluded)

Ethnography cused upon ethnographyand definitions of it as a form

A poem written by R.D. Laing captures the mood of
PAT the postmodemist,reflexive era:
CAPLAN
This article is based on
the second Audrey
RichardsMemorial
Lecturedelivered at
Rhodes House, QAford,
on 18 May. We are
publishing it in two
parts, of which the
second, largely
concerned with
anthropologyand
feminism, will appear in
the December issue.
Dr Caplan started by
saying that Audrey
Richards(1899-1984)
had been a 'livingproof
for women studentsof
her generation that
'womencould be and
were good
anthropologists'.She
mentionedRichards's
presidential address to
the African Studies
Association in 1967,
which recalled what it Within anthropology,much attention is currentlyfo-
The theoretical and descriptive idiom
of much research in social science
adopts a stance of apparent 'objective' neutrality.
But we have seen
how deceptive this can be.
The choice of syntax and vocabularyis a political act
that defines and circunmscribes the manner in which facts'
are to be experienced.
Indeed, in a sense
it goes further
and even creates thefac ts that are studied
The 'data' (given) of research
are not so much given
as taken
out of a constantlyelusive matrixof happenings.
We should speak of captarather than data.
The quantativelyinterchangeablegrist
that goes into the mills
of reliability studies and rating scales
is the expression
of a processing that we do on r-eality
not the expression
of the processes of reality. (in Weaver1973)
of knowledge. Roy Ellen suggests that it has many
meanings - at one and the same time, it is something
we do/study/use/read/and write (1984:7). Ethnography
lies at the boundary of two systems of meaning and
raises the question, how do we translateanotherculture
through the vehicle of our own language? This in turn
takes us back to the oft-debatedquestion - what is cul-
ture itself? Increasingly, it has been seen as manufac-
tured, both by informants and anthropologists,and in
the process, as contested. The protagonistsin this con-
test are the ethnographer,the subjects/informants,and
the audience/reader.I shall deal with each of these in
turn.
How do we represent another culture - can we?
should we? What is the ethnographer?Archivist, trans-
lator, midwife, writer of fiction, trickster,bricoleur, in-
quisitor, and intellectual tourist (see various contribu-
tors to Clifford 1986) are just some of the recent sug-
gestions. The standard monograph which has charac-
terized British and American social anthropologyfor so
many years has come in for some heavy criticism.
Aside from the fact that, as many have pointed out, it is
usually extremely boring, it also fails to include the ob-
server in its analysis: the ethnographerappears briefly
in the preface, as if to establish the authorityand credi-
bility of having actually 'been there', but then promptly
disappearsfrom the main text. This means that his or

8
 had been like to be an her own activity is not scrutinized(K. Dwyer 1982, see ing itself, and our relationshipwith our readers?
anthropologistin the
also Mead 1977). This currentreflexive movement should not be over-
1930s. Thoughthere
were many otherfacets Some anthropologistsare now looking at how texts estimated: the number of its practitionersis relatively
of Richards's work that are constructed, what goes in, and what is left out. It small, and the same names recur with almost monoto-
could have been singled has even been suggested that a 'full account' would in- nous regularity. Furthermore,the number of those ac-
out, Dr Caplan chose in clude intermediatewritten versions of a text, as well as tually writing 'experimental ethnography' (as opposed
this lecture to focus on the final published versions (Marcus and Cushman to an anthropology of ethnography) is even smaller
ethnography,which was
a long-standinginterest 1982), although goodness knows who would publish let (e.g. Shostak 1983, K. Dwyer 1982, Crapanzano1980,
of Richards's: she alone read such an account. 1986). Nor should we over-estimate its innovativeness:
published an article in Anthropologists who write standardmonographs are we can find long-standing debates in anthropology
1939 on 'The now criticized not only for failing to include, let alone which presage these developments. Questions such as
developmentof scrutinize the self, but also for their representationof whether anthropology is an art (most often seen as a
field-work methodsin
social anthropology',
the other, i.e. the subjects, and particularlytheir inform- branch of history) or a science and whether or not it is
which stresses the ants. By adopting a contemplative stance the ethno- possible to do truly objective ethnography have been
element of selection, graphershields the self and denies that the other affects around for a long time (Evans-Pritchard1961,Maquet
unconsciousor the self; furthermore,such representationimplies that 1964).
conscious, in collecting whereas the self ('us') is monolithic, the other ('them') Indeed, it is striking that some British social anthro-
facts, and later in her
is specific (Marcus and Cushman 1982). Yet to under- pology, even in the heyday of ahistorical structural-
career she reflected on
the differencebetween stand the other, we would have to expose the self in its functionalism,engaged with anthropologyas history, an
French and British widest sense, since it is, like the other, culturallymedi- idea recently revived as some Europeanhistorianshave
interpretationsof ated and historicallyconstructed(K. Dwyer 1982). begun to write more like anthropologists(e.g. Macfar-
African religion. In this So how do we characterize ethnographers'inform- lane 1970, Le Roy Ladurie 1978, Ginzburg 1980), and
and other ways, some of ants - as authors?collaborators?assistants?colleagues? some ethnographies have become histories (e.g. Lan
Richards's concerns
anticipate those of (Ellen 1984). They themselves often shape our knowl- 1985, Nash 1979, Taussig 1980). But in North America,
'post-modernist', edge more than we realize. It has been suggested, for much anthropology has tended to become more intro-
reflexiveanthropology. example, that Evans-Pritchardwas forced to use partici- spective and closer to literature:it is perhapsnot insig-
Dr Pat Caplan is pant observationamong the Nuer because he had no in- nificant that quite a number of American anthropolog-
principal lecturer in formants(Rosaldo 1986). ists are poets.
social anthropologyat
Goldsmiths'College,
We need to take account of the double mediation of Even before the rise of reflexive anthropology,there
London. data by the very presence of the ethnographerand by was a genre of so-called 'confessional' literature, of
the kind of self- reflections we demand of our subjects which one of the earliest examples is LauraBohannan's
(Rabinow 1977), as well as the problems of translation, Return to Laughter, originally published in 1954, under
of the effect of the ethnographer's linguistic com- an assumed name, and in the form of a novel. For a
petence upon the subjects' responses, and on the dif- long time it was the only book of its kind until more
ference between 'weak' and 'strong' languages (K. experiential ethnographicaccounts began to emerge in
Dwyer 1982, Asad 1986). If anthropologistscannot think the mid 1960s, such as Hortense Powdermaker's
like natives, how is a knowledge of how they think, Strangerand Friend (1966).
Amadiume,Ife. 1987.
perceive and act possible (Geertz 1977)? The question This trend overlapped with another debate about
Male daughters,female
husbands.Zed P.
now is not simply 'what does something mean?' But ethics, accountability, and relevance, sometimes inter-
Amos, Valerie and rather,'How do we know what this means for them?' preted narrowly as a concern about confidentiality and
PratibhaParmar.1984. Many have argued that anthropology is inevitably potential harm to informants,but also more widely in
'ChallengingImperial hermeneutic,an approachwhich Ricoeur defines as the terms of plagiarism, alienation, and dehumanization.In
Feminism.' Feminist comprehension of the self by the detour of the other. its turn, this formed part of the critical theory of the
Review Autumn 17. But, of course, we need to acknowledge, and this hap- 1960s and 1970s which took anthropologyto task for its
Asad, Talal. 1986. 'The pens but rarely, that in making this detour, the self also links with colonialism, pointing out that its silence on
concept of cultural
changes. This is the hermeneutic circle, which means, the subject of European expansion has shaped tradi-
translationin British
social anthropology'in
essentially, that we are all intimately (personally, so- tional ethnographicdiscourse (see Pratt 1986). Critical
Clifford and Marcus cially and historically) involved with what we claim to anthropology argued that anthropology often pretends
q.v. know. Heidegger is reported to have said that what is to be apolitical and therebystands accused of defending
Atkinson, Jane. 1982. decisive is not to get out of the circle, but to come into the status quo; it ignores the context of the wider scene,
'Review essay: it in the right way, for in the circle is hidden the possi- whether this be region, nation-state, or world system.
anthropology'Signs 8, bility of the most primordialkind of knowing; he sees Furthermore,it was pointed out that ethnographersare
2, Winter. truth to be found in silence or the spaces between representativesof dominantmetropolitancultureswhich
Bohannan,Laura.1954. words. may in large part be responsible for the poverty and op-
(Elinore Smith-Bowen)
Returnto Laughter.
pression of their anthropologicalsubjects. This leads to
Harperand Brothers. Thus, in short, an ethnographyshould not be homo- an inevitable inequality of researcher and researched
Bowles, Gloria. 'The logical, plagiaristic, positivist, essentialist, or analogi- (K. Dwyer 1982).
uses of hermeneutics cal. The name of the game now is aesthetics, pastiche, Out of this corpus of critical anthropologyhas come
for feminist collage, juxtaposition, framing, heteroglossia, poly- a plea by some for a different way of doing fieldwork,
scholarship'Women's phony/polyvocality,or at the very least, dialogue. in which the subjects both help formulatethe problems,
Studies Int. Forum 7, And to whom do we representthis culture? What is assist in the collection of data, and are fed back written
3, 1984. our audience? Other anthropologists? Administra- material for their comment before it is published
Caplan,Pat. 1975.
tors/aid personnel? The lay reader? (do non-anthropo- (Huizer et al. 1979), the so- called 'action-research',
Choice and Constraint
in a Swahili
logists reallyread ethnographictexts?). What about the much of which has been inspiredby the work of Paolo
Community.OUP for subjects themselves, who are often ignored as an audi- Freire. Some would go so far as to argue that for practi-
Int. African Inst. ence even by the postmodernists (e.g. Marcus and cal and ethical reasons, such research should or could
- 1976. 'Girls' puberty Cushman1982) or the newly observed (by anthropolog- only be carried out in one's own country - that we
and boys' circumcision ists anyway) westerners? For whom are we writing? should all be practising Anthropology at Home, which
rites among the Swahili And in the process of trying to change what we write of course, spells the end of exoticism, or perhaps, for
of Mafia Island.' and the way we write it, are we not also changing read- many ethnographers,the exoticization of the West.
Africa 46, 1.

9
 - 1978. 'The Swahili of Reflexive, postmodernist anthropology is somewhat name. Secondly, non- anthropologicalfeminists among
Chole Island, different from action anthropology or indeed, critical you may be wondering what all the fuss is about in
Tanzania'in Anne anthropologygenerally. Although it also berates tradi- considering the hermeneutic turn in ethnography be-
Sutherland,ed. Face tional ethnographersfor failure to examine themselves cause much of it has a familiarring.
Values.BBC
and the culturalbaggage which they carrywith them, as I want to suggest that feminism had already raised
Publications.
- 1981.'Development well as the effect that they have on the societies they many of the major issues now preoccupying postmod-
policies in Tanzania - study, its basic concern is with interpretationof text, ernist anthropologistsbut that there are major differen-
some implicationsfor and with an understandingof how ethnographicauth- ces between them in the feminists' insertion of power.
women' in N. Nelson ority is constituted. Indeed, it has been criticized in its Using the example of feminist anthropology,I want to
(ed.) AfricanWomen turn for its failure to take sides and its lack of a moral argue that we can be both reflexive and political, that in
in the Development centre. fact, a feminist anthropology denies the split between
Process. FrankCass. The late Bob Scholte suggested that a major reason epistemology and politics.
- 1982.'Gender,culture
for this problem is the failure to join Marx and Weber - An importantaim of feminist scholarshiphas been to
and modes of
production'in J. de
production and meaning. Symbolic anthropology (and break down boundaries - between one discipline and
Vere Allen and T.H. he saw postmodernistsas very much heirs to that tradi- another, between domestic and public, between theory
Wilson (eds.) From tion) lacks a totalizing concept of context or situation, and practice, between expert and non-expert, for if the
Zinj to Zanzibar. and has an underdevelopedsense of the politics of cul- personal is the political, then much that was previously
Paideuma28, Franz ture. Its concern is with meaning, not the productionor consideredirrelevantis now seen to be highly relevant.
SteinerVerlag. maintenanceof culturaltexts. He points out that in the Furthermore,feminists have long insisted that objec-
Wiesbaden. work of Geertz, for example, one finds no mention of tivity is a very relative concept. What one sees or ex-
- 1984. 'Cognatic
colonial or even post-colonial violence (1986). Else- periences depends upon who one is, both individually,
descent,Islamiclaw
and women's property
where, he also attacks Geertz's notion of culture as a socially and historically. A number of feminist writers
on the East African 'web of signification', pointing out that cultures are have argued that so-called scientific objectivity is ac-
coast.' in R. Hirschon also webs of mystification; few do the spinning, most tually a version of male subjectivity. Some have gone
(ed.)Womenand just get caught (1984:140). so far as to reject altogether the notion of objectivity
Property,Womenas In his review of the recent influential collection (Bowles 1984). Others are more cautious, suggesting
Property.Croom edited by James Clifford and George Marcus, Writing rather that we should use feminist thought to become
Helm. Culture. the Politics and Poetics of Ethnography, more objective by conceptualizing objectivity as a dia-
Clifford,James.1986. Scholte (1987) applauds the important insights of the lectical process (Keller 1982). In the course of debates
'Partialtruths:
Introduction'to J.
hermeneuticapproach,particularlyits problematization like these, disciplines are being turnedinside out, trans-
Cliffordand George E. of language, and its shift from observational and em- forming not just knowledge, but the processes whereby
Marcus(eds.) q.v. pirical methodology to a communicative and dialogical knowledge is produced(Spender1981).
Clifford,Jamesand epistemology. However, Scholte beratesits practitioners Before going on to consider the impact of such ideas
George E. Marcus for their involutional relativism, and for their failure upon anthropology,I would like to spend a short time
(eds.). 1986.Writing (with a few honourableexceptions) either to addressthe consideringmy own fieldwork in East Africa, and look-
Culture:ThePolitics question of authoritativediscourse in other than structu- ing at how I have engenderedknowledge about it over
and Poetics of
ral terms, or to grapple with the fact that discourse is the last twenty years, and why particularquestions and
Ethnography.U. of
subject to external relations of production.He ends his ideas occurred when they did. This is part of a much
CaliforniaP.
Crapanzano,Vincent. review by accusing practitioners of the genre of de- wider project, an attempt to write an ethnography
1980.Tuhami- scending into preciousness, and warning of the possi- which is 'dialogical', which looks at a period of two
Portrait of a bility that an apparent concern with multiple ethno- decades not merely in terms of historical changes in the
Moroccan. Chicago U. graphic voices is actually a disguised concern for the society under question, but also at changes in myself,
P. academic career. In other words, Scholte is disap- my informants,and in anthropology.
- 1986. Waiting:the pointed to find an almost total dearth of politics in the
Whitesof SouthAfrica. book. As a recent commentator has expressed it, we The anthropologist's perceptions
Paladin.
have a poetics of politics, and a poetics of poetics, but I have been working in the same area of northernMafia
Dwyer, Kevin 1982.
MoroccanDialogues. hardlya politics of politics (Fardon1987). Island off the Tanzanian coast for more than twenty
John Hopkins U. P., Roger Keesing (1987), in similar vein, has recently years, and with each field trip, I have had new theoreti-
Baltimore. reminded us that texts are read differently, depending cal questions in mind. To some extent, my informants
Ellen, Roy. (ed.) 1984. on one's position. He argues against a retreatfrom the- have also shaped the nature of the data gathered, by
Ethnographic ory, history and politics, from the world into the text. their responses to my questions, and by the kind of
Research: a guide to As he sees it, the essential task for anthropologyat the questions they have themselves asked me.
general conduct. moment is to bridge the gap between political theories During my first period of fieldwork between 1965
Academic P., London.
of ideologies, and anthropologicaltheories of culture, and 1967, I was not particularlysensitive to gender. In-
Evans-Pritchard,E.E.
1961.Anthropologyas suggesting as a model the so-called 'subalternstudies' deed, like many women anthropologistsof the time, I
History. ManchesterU. which have come from recent work in Indian history steered clear of such 'trivia'. Yet women themselves -
P. (Guha 1982, 1983). He too criticizes writers such as articulate,confident, determined- constantly obtruded
Fardon,Richard.1987. Geertz for their ignoring of power and the way cultural themselves upon my notice. Since my subsequentthesis
'Comment' on M. meaning sustains privilege, and their blindness to the (Caplan 1975) was upon systems of kinship and de-
Strathem:'Out of political consequences of culture as ideologies, saying scent, and particularlysince it describeda cognatic sys-
Context' Current that 'Where feminists and marxists find oppression, tem, women could scarcely be left out, although they
Anthropology28, 3.
symbolists find meaning.' (ibid:166). might have had a larger slice had I written the thesis at
Geertz, Clifford. 1977.
'From the Natives'
So is anthropology inevitably split between a sym- a laterdate.
Point of View.' in bolic wing on the one hand, interested in culture, I was particularlystruck by Swahili women's sexual
J.L.B. Dolgin, D.S. meaning and epistemology, and a critical wing on the autonomy - an apparent paradox in an Islamic area
Kemnitzerand D.M. other, interestedin politics and ideology? Is the herme- where virginity was valued, and sexual segregation, in-
Schneider(eds) neutic project inherentlyneglectful of power? cluding some veiling, practised. In retrospect,I realise
Symbolic The observant among you may have noticed two that the paradox existed for me, not for them, and that
Anthropology. things - thus far in the lecture, though it is dedicated to furthermore,it was probablybecause I was coming out
ColumbiaU. P., New of the debates surroundingsexual freedom current in
Audrey Richards, I have scarcely mentioned a female

10
 York. the West in the 1960s that I was so impressed by the and to feasts.
Ginzburg,Carlo.1980 open celebration of women's sexuality which was par- Women explained this in a number of ways. Some
(1976). The Cheese ticularly apparent in women's puberty rituals and at said that they were afraidof the men's anger if they did
and the Worms:the weddings (Caplan 1976, 1977). I also realize that the not serve them nice food. Others said that men need
Cosmosof a Sixteenth women's determinationto shock me with graphic de- more food than women and stated that God had made
CenturyMiller.RKP. tails was probably one way they had of coping with an women better able to endure hunger than men. This is
London. anomaly such as myself - an unmarriedwoman in her perhaps comparable to Richards' findings for the
Guha,R. (ed.), 1982,
early twenties. Bemba where men and women also eat separately,but
1983.SubalternStudies
vols. I and II. OUP
In the early 1970s, I became interested in feminism, women will apparently cook for their husbands and
Delhi. and, like other feminist anthropologists,I began to rec- their sons, even if they are short themselves (1939:122,
Huizer,Gerrit(ed.). onsider my material,deciding in the process that gender 135, 140), although she does not state what the usual
1979. ThePolitics of relations in this area were relatively egalitarian, by distributionof food between the sexes is.
anthropology.Mouton. comparisonwith other societies including my own. The paramedicand the midwife in the village clinic
Keesing,Roger. 1987. When I went back to the field in 1976 to make a told me that a very high proportionof women were an-
'Anthropologyas film on gender relations with a BBC film crew, these aemic, and that their general morbidity was much
InterpretiveQuest'.
ideas were reconfirmed. The separateness of husband greaterthan that of men, and this was also confirmed at
CurrentAnthropology
28, 2.
and wife was brought constantly to my notice as they the District hospital. The health workers cited three
Keller, Evelyn Fox. always insisted on being paid individually when we causative factors. One is insufficient nourishment,the
1982.Feminismand filmed households or rituals. We filmed the New Year second is women's very high work-load, which I con-
Science' Signs 7, 3, ceremony about which people had constantly talked in sider in a moment, and the third is the frequency of
1982. the village for days before, and found that not a single pregnancy.
La Fontaine,Jean (ed.) man was present - the women carriedout the ritual on There is a very high fertility rate in this area, as in
1972.The behalf of the whole village. We also filmed a woman Tanzania as a whole. Both men and women desire
Interpretationof
who supportedand took care of her aged fatherherself, children and I was frequentlyreproachedfor only hav-
Ritual:Essays in
Honourof AI.
and anotherwho told us: ing two of my own:
Richards.Tavistock It is better to have girls than boys. A girl will pound for What's the matter with you? Are you afraid of this work?
Publications. you, she'll fetch water for you, she'll go for firewood for Never mind, God will send you some more.
- 1982. 'Introduction'to you and when you die, she'll wash your corpse. But a boy! Even so, women usually have more pregnanciesthan
Chisungu.Tavistock He doesn't pound, he doesn't fetch water, he doesn't do they want and to this extent, they do not control their
Publications.- 1985. anything- well, maybe he'll dig your grave! own fertility. No contraceptionwas available in the vil-
'The persons of We returnedto London to make a film which em- lage, although many women expressed a wish that it
women: the first
phasized the complementarityof men's and women's were. Men, however, saw contraception differently,
AudreyRichards
MemorialLecture.'
roles, and the strengthof women. I wanted to show that with few speaking in favour of it and many opposing it.
(unpub.paper). in spite of the fact that women often inhabitedseparate Most men said they wanted as many children as
Ladurie,EmmanuelLe space to men's, or perhapsbecause of it, they were not possible, seeing them as an asset in terms of future sup-
Roy. 1978.Montaillou: unimportant,either in their own eyes, or those of so- port and prestige. Women too viewed children in this
the Promised Land of ciety as a whole. I published several articles on this way, but they were well aware of the problems of preg-
Error.GeorgeBraziller. theme (1978, 1982, 1984), although another written nancy and birth, and of the subsequentburdens in car-
Lan, David. 1985. Guns around the same time warned of the likely worsening ing for children, and they thus perceived them as a cost
and Rain: Guerillas
position of women as a consequence of certaindevelop- too.
and SpiritMediumsin
mental policies - changes in land tenure, 'improved' In 1976, I had asked men and women about sex pref-
Zimbabwe.James
Currey. housing, and the increasing emphasis by the state upon erences in children: men mainly wanted boys, women
Macfarlane,Alan. 1970. a new entity called the 'familia' (1981). wanted children of both sexes; but it was only in 1985
Witchcraftin Tudor that I became aware of the consequences of this dif-
and StuartEngland. When I returnedto Mafia for the third time in 1985 ference. I spent some time at the Mother and Child
RKP. to study gender in relation to food, health and fertility, Health Clinic and took observations on 98 children. A
Maquet,Jacques.1964. food had become increasingly short in the village. This disproportionate number of underweight babies and
'Objectivityin problem is not peculiar to Mafia Island or even Tanza- toddlers were female. Whereas 76% of male children
Anthropology'
nia: much of sub-SaharanAfrica is in the throes of a were within the ranges of normality, only 41% of fe-
Curr entAnthropology
5, 1. growing food crisis, the roots of which go back many males fell into that category, the remainder being
Marcus,George. 1986. decades, as can be seen from Richards' early work on underweight.
'Afterword: food among the Bemba in the 1930s (Richards 1932, These figures surprised me because although I was
ethnographicwriting 1939). Some of the reasons for the situation in northern familiar with a similar situation for parts of India (cf
and anthropological Mafia are common to those elsewhere. One is men's re- Miller 1981, 1982), I had accepted the explanation that
careers' in Clifford and luctance to spend much time and effort on subsistence it was part of a complex in which women wveredeva-
Marcusq.v. crops, preferring to devote themselves to cash crops, lued largely because they did not play a significant role
- 1986b.'Contemporary
which result in far greatercontrol of cash by men than in productionand thereforethat such a situation would
problemsof
ethnographyin the
women. This process is intensified by their greater ac- be out of the question in an area of 'female farming'
modem world system' cess to a range of occupations in addition to or instead like Mafia.
in Clifford and Marcus of farming, as well as the patternof Islamic laws of in- It was, of course, difficult to obtain explanations
q.v. heritancewhich favour men. Households are now more about this situation- both sexes were breast-fedfor the
Marcus, George and dependentupon cash to purchase staple food, since less first two years - but one informantsuggested that male
Dick Cushman.1982. is produced,than they were twenty years ago. From my control of bought food in the household (such as fish,
'Ethnographiesas comparative reading on Africa, I had expected to find meat, eggs and milk) might go some way to explaining
Text' Annual Review
many of these trendsevident on Mafia Island. it. She said 'The midwife keeps telling me to get eggs
of Anthropology11,
25-69 But in other respects, I was not preparedfor what I for our underweight daughter but my husband won't
Mascarenhas,Ophelia found, for what was striking on my 1985 visit was a buy eggs for this child'. Observations in a number of
and MarjorieMbilinyi, realizationthat not only did women often eat after men, households also revealed that when men and women
1983. Womenin but also that they frequently did not get enough to eat, ate in separategroups, boys were likely to have a better
Tanzania- an a situation which applied equally to domestic eating diet than girls, since they ate with their fathers. The

11
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We Eat the Mines and the
Mines Eat us. ColumbiaU.
P.
Okely, Judith. 1975. The self
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'Field-workin common
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Richards,Audrey. 1932.
Hunger and Workin a
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Scholte, B. 1984. Comment
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by P. Shankman.Current
Anthropology25.
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Shostak,Marjorie.1983
(1981) Nisa: the life and
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12
other factor is the belief that girls, even as babies, are
supposed to be able to withstand hunger and not com-
plain.
Given this situation, one might expect that there
would be a higher rate of mortalityfor female than for
male children,and this does indeed seem to be the case.
There is thus a significant relationship between
women's health, their fertility, and their access to food.
A further important factor in this situation is their
work-load. At busy times, that is for about six months
of the year, women work all day in the fields, in addi-
tion to being responsible for fetching wood and water,
pounding grain and cooking food. They are often
chronically tired, although I did not find any instances
of them being unable to cook because they were too ex-
hausted, as did Richards among the Bemba over 50
years ago (1939).
Men, on the other hand, rarely work in the fields for
more than half a day. After returninghome for lunch
and a bath, they change their clothes, and go into the
centre of the village 'to do the shopping', an activity
which can take up the whole afternoon, and also in-
cludes talking to friends, playing cards, or attending
political meetings.
In sum, then, we find that women are disadvantaged
in relation to men in terms of economic power, occupa-
tion, access to food, rates of health and sickness, and
control of their fertility. Yet these measurableindices of
women's worth seemed to be so much at variance with
my views of them up to then. An apparently similar
contradictionwas raised by Jean La Fontaine in her Ri-
chards lecture when she considered 'the images of
Bemba women provided in ritual and in the reality of
their lives' (1985:4).How, then, do I explain this appar-
ent discrepancy?
Given the ratherbleak picture I obtained in 1985, it is
tempting to argue that here, as elsewhere in sub-Saha-
ran Africa, and indeed elsewhere in the Third World,
'development' has not benefited men and women
equally, and that this is bound to have repercussionson
gender relations. Could it account for the fact that girl
babies appear to be suffering, like their sisters in parts
of India, from neglect to the point where more of them
are underweight and vulnerable to disease and early
death?
It is possible, of course, that given the increased
economic difficulties in Tanzania, and particularlythe
drop in food production,customs which previously had
little harmful effect change their nature. Sequential
feeding is less important if there is enough for
everyone, otherwise she who eats last eats least.
But this explanation is somewhat undermined by
looking at the historical records for the last fifty years
which show that during this period, Mafia has never
been self-sufficient in food- stuffs. Furthermore,males
have outnumberedfemales on Mafia Island, and indeed,
some other parts of the coast, during the whole of this
period.
A second way of looking at this situation is to argue
that what we find depends on the questions which we
ask and on the angle of vision from which we approach
our material.If we ask differentquestions, especially at
different points in time, we may well get different
'answers'. One of the difficulties in interpretingthis
material is that I did not, of course, ask the same ques-
tions the first time I went into the field. I cannot be sure
how different my findings would have been twenty
years ago had I done so. But I can to some extent, see
how changes in my own consciousness feed into the
process of constructingethnography.
In retrospect, I realize that some of my perceptions
were coloured by my personal circumstances: at the
time of my first fieldwork I was single and childless,
and assumed that, as my supervisor often told me, the
world was my oyster, and that in any case, if there were
problems associated with my sex, fieldwork and a
Ph.D. would turn me into an honorarymale (see Okely
1975). By the mid 1970s, I was marriedwith two small
children and had come up against many of the difficul-
ties which this brings for women in western society.
From my vantage point at that time, Mafia society ap-
peared to have solved some of the worst problems with
which I was grappling: other people helped out with
children, women worked as well as having children,
women maintainedtheir property separatelyfrom their
husbands.
Furthermore,in my first visit to this area, in the mid
1960s, there was no 'feminist anthropology'. By the
time of my second visit, it was burgeoning. Many
studies around this time focused upon women, and
characteristic of not a few was their insistence that
women were actors, even in societies where they might
appearto be subordinatebecause of sexual segregation,
veiling, arrangedmarriages or whatever. Feminist an-
thropologists redefined power and politics and showed
that women were involved in these areas. Yet re-read-
ing some of the material which appeared at that time,
including my own, it does sometimes feel as if focusing
upon the women's world in this way enabled the very
real constraintson their lives to be dismissed.
By 1985, the end of the UN decade for women, a
more sombre note was being sounded. It was increas-
ingly clear that for the vast majority of the world's
women, the decade had seen a deteriorationin their po-
sition; at the same time ThirdWorld women themselves
had plenty to say about their own oppression, and their
own definitions of feminism (Amos and Parmar1984,
Amadiume 1987, see also Mascarenhas and Mbilinyi
1983 for an example from Tanzania).
But the third point is that gender relations cannot be
characterizedin any simple way, for gender is a very
complex field, and it would be surprisingif all the indi-
cators pointed in the same direction. The picture may
be disconcerting and untidy, gender relations may well
be both asymmetrical and complementary, a culture
may feature various and mutually contradicting state-
ments about it (Atkinson 1982:248).
Certainly we can distinguish, as can the women
themselves, areas of their lives where they are subordi-
nate to men, yet they are not passive victims: rather
they seek to strategize within the constraints imposed
upon them. Yet in other areas, women are autonomous,
and the value of their actions is respected by men too.
Nonetheless, we cannot claim that they are totally in
control of their lives, for plainly they se not. Few
people are, certainlynot in a poor Third World country,
but women here do have less elbow room than men.
Thus it is clear that in building up a picture of gender
relations, we need, as Clifford Geertz has suggested for
all ethnography,'thick description'.Many areasneed to
be considered - both ideologies and practices - and
these do not always fit together very neatly. In short,
we may well find both meaning and oppression as we
consider this topic.
I turn in the concluding part of my Lecture to the
question of the relationshipbetween anthropologyand
feminism.
To be concluded