DIALOGUE
To Laugh Or Cry?
BY ROBERTBOKOFSKY
PACIFIC u
HAWAII
am not sure if I should laugh
I
or cry in describing American
anthropology’s present public
status. On the one hand, an-
thropology is wildly popular with
the public. One reads about an-
thropologists in novels, sees them
in movies. Anthropologists appear
in Annie Dillard’s The Writing Lip,
Isabel Allende’s The Infinite Plan,
and Daniel @inn’s Ishmael. And
the references are
often more than casu-
al citations: Dillard
refers to Godfrey Lien-
hardt’s work among
the Dinka; Quinn
takes note of Wovoka‘s
Ghost Dance and the
John Frumm Cargo
Cult. Moreover, the
public seems to have
massively embraced
the concept most asso-
ciated with the disci-
pline-culture.
Yet, among anthro-
pologists, all is not
well. There is the intra-
disciplinary turmoil
regarding anthropol-
ogy‘s four subfield+
to what degree they
are able not only to
peacefully co-exist but
intellectually nourish
one another. Nor are
the citations of anthro-
- - in literature
pologists
and the popular press always posi-
tive. They appear, as Shore notes,
to often “reinforce negative and
derogatory stereotypes” (Anthro-
pology Today 12[2], 1996, p 4). A
New York Times report on the 1994
M A Annual Meeting asked: “Who
else has been studying colic and
spiritualism, sex and field work,
and redneck angst?”(December 11,
1994, p 7). For many years now
anthropologists have played only a
minor, supporting role in the intel-
lectual debates that swirl around
the cultural concept. A commen-
tary in the Chronicle of Higher Edu-
cation queried: “Why Do Multicul-
turalists Ignore Anthropologists?”
(March 4, 1992, p A52). And there
is Peacock’s observation that
should cause us to pause-that the
“anthropologicalideas that are cur-
rently significant . . . [among the
public] remain those that were
developed prior to the [second
world] war” (AA 1997, p 12).
What we have today, in Micaela
di Leonardo’s phrasing, is “anthro-
pology without ant‘hropologists.”
Although anthropology and an-
thropologists are used as anti-struc-
tural grist for a host of intellectual
mills, they are not themselves active
participants in these discussions.
They seem to lack agency-others
frame and reframe the images that
swirl around them.
An Anthropology of
Anthropology
What brings one to tears or
laughter is the tools for making
sense of all this lie within anthro-
pology itself. Anthropologists need
only apply the tools of their craft to
reposition and re-empower them-
selves. Let me offer some examples.
Recent anthropological writings
have emphasized the culturallycon-
structed nature of gender, culture
and ethnographic analysis. But
despite the simmering tensions
throughout the decade regarding
relations among anthropology’s
four subfields, few have talked
about the culturally constructed
nature of anthropology as an intel-
February 2000 Anthropology News
lectual discipline. The framing of
anthropology in teims of four sub-
fields was not god-given. Nor are
anthropologists a “people without
history.”The subfields may lack the
self-evidentiary character of Euro-
pean and American history, but
their historical ori@n seems clear.
The four fields represent the way
many Americans and Europeans
conceptualized nationalistic identi-
ties in the late 1800s. Race, language
and culture were perceived as inti-
mately entwined. Archaeology
added time depth to that identity.
The division, in other words,
belongs to an effort to “naturalize”
19th century nation-state identi-
ties-to make them seem part of the
natural order of things by the way
they encompassed both biology
and (pre)history.Anthropology car-
ried this nationalist framework to
others beyond the Euro-American
pale. Many of the groups anthro-
pologists studied were presented
almost as mini-nations with their
own life ways, their own (seemingly
independent) political structures,
their own pasts distinguishing them
from others.
Looking at anthropology as a
cultural construction allows us to
reframe the disciplinary debates
away from the present zero-sum
mentality (in which one subfield’s
gain ,implies another subfield’s
loss) to a broader set of questions.
We rnight ask, for example:
Having framed anthropology’s
subdiaision in one way for 100
years, what might the discipline
gain by reinventing itself in a new
form, with new subdivisions? Still
COMMENTARY
broader, we might ask whether it is
time to restructure the social sci-
ences and humanities as a whole
into new intellectual
configurations cen-
tering around new
projects. There is
nothing sacred about
our present discipli-
nary-bound projects
and debates. Finding
alternative ways to
frame the critical
issues that face us
today would not only
build bridges across
disciplines but reduce
the intra-disciplinary
bickering of recent
years.
Liminal Presence
The Margaret Mead
conception of cul-
ture, that persists in
the larger society, is
an example of Tylor’s
survivals. Following a
pattern (also noted by
Wissler), we perceive
on the margins of the
discipline-in the public realm-
an example of anthropology’s earli-
er popularity. Two things are strik-
ing: We see that an anthropologist
can indeed reframe public percep-
tions. How else can one explain the
conception of culture that popular-
ly prevails today in America? And
second, we gain a wistful sense of
how long anthropology has re-
mained disconnected-as an effec-
tive framer of intellectual forms
and forums-from public life. Not
since ‘Meadhave we effectively bro-
ken from the academic arena and
significantly reshaped public agen-
da.
Anthropology’s shimmering pop-
ularity is also explainable in an-
thropological terms: It illustrates
the attraction of what Victor
Turner terms “anti-structure.” An-
9
Anthropology News February 2000
thropology deals with those who
dwell outside the regular social
structures of Western audiences
with people at the margins, the
bottom or in liminal states of the
Western social order. The “anthro-
pologist as hero” (in Sontag’s
phrasing) draws readers beyond
the pale of their everyday worlds to
new possibilities of the human
spirit. In presenting these alterna-
tives however one perceives, again
following Turner, an ambivalence
toward the message and the mes-
senger. The anthropologist repre-
sents a liminal figure.
The obscure nature of our rheto-
ric can be seen, in Mary Douglas’s
terms, as an attempt to maintain
intellectual purity. We are very
much part of the larger world and
yet seek to maintain a distinctive-
ness from it. We differentiate our-
selves with a set of rhetorical flour-
ishes that emphasize our separate-
ness from the everyday-that those
outside the discipline need years of
training to grasp the subtlety of
what we assert as wisdom. Purity is
perpetuated through the special-
ized niches that few others can
grasp without similar research
experiences, as well as through the
10
Anthropologists need only apply the tools
of their craft to re-empower themselves.
theoretical formulations that reach
beyond local cases to higher and
higher levels of abstraction. Either
way, it separateskeeping others
(the impure) from the anthropo-
logical fold.
If we are to make sense of an-
thropology‘s relation to larger pub-
lics we might begin with the gap
between these two forms of com-
munication. Since its earliest years,
American anthropology has em-
braced the particular. Take volume
I1 (1889) of the “old series“ AA as
an example: One sees many of the
field’s prominent figures dealing
with fairly speafic topics. Mooney,
for instance, writes on “Cherokee
Mound-building.“ Throughout the
volume, an implicit hope exists
that a broader synthesis will even-
tually arise from the detailed
descriptions. But as L6vi-Strauss
notes years later in his criticism of
Elkin’s totemic studies: “The gap
between the two levels [of analysis]
recalls irresistibly that with which,
in the eighteenth century, certain
people criticized Gretry’s harmony,
saying that between his high notes
and his low you could drive a car-
riage“ (Totemism 1963, p 55). It is
the problem we face today: How do
anthropologists build on their vast
catalog of descriptions to frame the
big questions and concerns that
illuminate the world around us?
Especially with the decline of com-
parative analyses in recent years,
this remains anthropology’s uncer-
tain hope, its unfilled promise.
Mastering Our Fate
Anthropology has a ready audi-
ence: Readers are drawn to its ac-
counts of worlds beyond their
worlds. But if anthropologists are
to have any agency in the public
discussions that swirl around
them, they must not only describe
alternative realities but offer syn-
theses that make sense of issues
DIALOGUE
that readers wonder about in their
lives. That is why Jared Diamond’s
Guns, Germs and Steel recently won
the Pulitzer Prize. The book ex-
plores a commonly asked question
about differential development in
various parts of the world. Anthro-
pologists need address the hege-
monic formations that bear down
on people in their everyday lives in
ways that draw people toward new
possibilities and new hopes. Given
the discipline’s anti-structural pop-
ularity, there is no reason why
anthropologists might not find
renewed agency in wider public
settings if they have the courage to
engage the questions, that engage .
others in broad, conceptual ways.
It is the problem that Cassius
points out to Brutus (“Julius Cae-
sar,’’ I.ii.134) when he asserts the
fault lies not in their stars but in
themselves: “Men at some time are
masters of their fates.” The ques-
tion is: Are anthropologists?5!
Robert Borofsky is professor of anthro-
pology at Hawaii Pacific U.He is editor
of Public Anthropology. Rernern-
brance of Pacific Pasts: An Invitation
to Remake History is being published
in lune. He may be reached at borofiky@
hpu.edu.