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Auto/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social:Auto/Ethnography:

Rewriting the Self and the Social

Article  in  American Ethnologist · May 2000

DOI: 10.1525/ae.2000.27.2.551

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Auto/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social by Deborah E. Reed-Danahay
Review by: Neni Panourgia
American Ethnologist, Vol. 27, No. 2 (May, 2000), pp. 551-553
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
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book reviews
is driven by the many smallish firms that are
family oriented but connected horizontally to
each other through relations of trust (guanxi).
These smallish firms are sources of capital and
producers of different pieces of the whole,
which is assembled, packaged, and exported
by the "final" company in the chain (pp.
64-65). Hamilton explains why he thinks fam-
ily firms did not become large and hierarchi-
cal. Why did they in Java?Could the growth of
family firmsin Indonesia have something to do
with the Indonesian state-often accused of al-
liances with Chinese merchants, a quid pro
quo arrangement in which state officials bene-
fitted from an economy in which the 4 percent
Sinolndonesian population is estimated to
control 70-75 percent of private capital
(Hefner, p. 229)? Hefner does not address this,
as his subject is rising Islamic nationalism, al-
though he identifies Chinese commercial
domination as a cause of these movements.
The dissatisfaction of the marginalized Indone-
sian Muslim majority is the direct resultof Chi-
nese success.
All of these southeast Asian indigenous
populations presumably construct their identi-
ties in relation to Chinese in their countries. A
constant theme in all the articles is the self-ful-
filling prophecy in ethnic stereotypes. Thus,
Japanese in Japan may have taken to capitial-
ism like ducks to water; but, in Hawaii, where
they coexist with the Chinese, they respond to
the belief that commerce is a Chinese monop-
oly by entering the professions. David Szanton
writes about an ethnic division of labor be-
tween Filipinos and Chinese that is resistantto
many changes. In a Philippine commercial
fishing village, Filipino entrepreneurs own
boats and their crews are Filipino while Chi-
nese supply the venture capital and purchase
and marketthe catches. Filipino entrepreneurs
urge their children to enter the professions
while Chinese merchants expecttheir children
to continue in the business. Here, in contrastto
other settings in the book, the church rather
than the state reinforces stereotypes.
A secondary theme pursued by several
authors deals with the implications of gen-
dered economic activities. JenniferAlexander
discusses women in the pasar trade of rural
Java. Shaun Malarme and Hy Van Luong ad-
dress changing women's engagement in enter-
prise in Vietnam, where traditionally males
were educated for the Mandarinate. This sys-
tem freed females to engage in commerce and
551
manufacturing, which were economically im-
portantbut low prestige. Colonial policies and
socialism undermined female entrepreneur-
ship. Michael Peletz links the ambiguous hus-
band role in matrilineal Negiri Sembilan in
Malaysia to male incentives to enter politics
and enterprise; he attributesthe greaterdegree
of entrepreneurialism among matrilineal Mi-
nangkabau of Sumatracompared to Malays to
colonial differences between British(who im-
ported Chinese and restrained Malay enter-
prise)and Dutch (who did neither).
Ethnic stereotypes prompt Singapore Ma-
lays, according to Tania Lee (p. 153), to view
Chinese as "naturalentrepreneurs,"an activity
for which Malays' morality badly suits them;
on the other hand, I recall a 1980s seminar in
Singapore aimed at correcting the low level of
entrepre-neurship among Chinese (a result of
prosperity and high salaries), and Li admits
most Chinese are satisfied to be salaried.
Market Cultures is a useful text even though
it recycles old arguments and much of the in-
formation is published elsewhere. The contri-
butions of Hamilton, Hefner, and Szanton
alone justify its publication.
Auto/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the
Social. Deborah E. Reed-Danahay, ed. New
York:Berg, 1997. xiv + 277 pp., contributors,
notes, bibliography, index.
NENI PANOURGIA
Rutgers University
Inthe words of editor Deborah Reed-Dana-
hay, this collection of essays "respondsto two
majordevelopments in culturalstudies:debates
about representation . . . and the increasing
trend toward self-reflexivity"(p. 1). The collec-
tion's nine essays are distributed equally
among three sections: "Power,Documentation,
and Resistance," "Exile, Memory, and Iden-
tity,"and "Voice, Representation,and Genre."
In the introductory chapter, Reed-Danahay
states that the collection concerns and limits it-
self to "contemporary literate societies" (p. 1);
but, in actuality, and with the exception of an
essay by KayWarrenon pan-Mayan writers, its
breadth encompasses only the circum-
European region-meaning here, Easternand
Western Europe-the postcolony (represented
by Algeria), and Israel. This self-imposed limi-
tation has, of course, its own interdictions,
since it has excluded "auto-ethnographers"
552 american ethnologist

who work and publish in other parts of the lapsed into Kikuyuand was carried out exclu-
world that are just as literateand contemporary sively between Leakey and Kenyatta.This an-
as the region chosen forthis collection. A great ecdote and the use of the term auto/ethnogra-
opportunity has been lost here to include the phy in this particular context has set the
work of people such as Valentine Daniel, Dor- parametersfor its use: a self-representation by
inne Kondo, Jose Lim6n, and KathWeston, to trained anthropologiststhat includes a critique
name only a few. of privileged points of view from the outside
In the same introductory chapter Reed- and which incorporates a resistance to struc-
Danahay also explores the permutationsof the tures of knowledge as power. This position is
term and concept of auto/ethnography. She one that always recognizes the multiplicity of
firstdeals with the concept, which she catego- identities inhabited by the auto/ethnographer,
rizes according to genre as "native anthropol- the person who is simultaneously and always
ogy," "ethnic autobiography," and "autobio- already not only a native, not simply an eth-
graphical ethnography" (p. 2). Then she goes nographer,and not innocently Europeanor Af-
on to explore the term itself from its introduc- rican. Reed-Danahay attemptsto fix that multi-
tion by Karl Heider ("What Do People Do? plicity when she recognizes the dislocation of
Dani-Auto-Ethnography,"Journal of Anthro- the anthropological subject: "whether the
pological Research 31:3-17, 1975) who re- auto-ethnographer is the anthropologist study-
ported on the New Guinean Dani concepts of ing his or her own kind [sic], the native telling
"whatDani do" based on responses by 60 Dani us his or her Iifestory,or the native anthropolo-
schoolchildren, which he termed "Dani gist, this figure is not completely 'at home.' The
autoethnography" (p. 4); through David Hay- ability to transcend everyday conceptions of
ano's 1979 definition ("Auto-Ethnography: selfhood and social life is related to the ability
Paradigms,Problemsand Prospects,"Social Or- to write or do auto/ethnography"(p. 4). Given
ganization 38[1 ]:99-104, 1979) of the term "as this particular categorization of the term, it is
a set of issues relatingto studies by anthropolo- curious why Reed-Danahay has opted to use
gists of their 'own people'" (p. 5); to Mary "auto/ethnography"as a referentthat conflates
Louise Pratt("Artsof the Contact Zone" MLA itwith anthropological reflexivity,a concept in
Profession London: Tavistock Publications: which the ethnographer understands and ac-
33-40, 1991) and MarilynStrathern("Limitsof knowledges the power relations inevitably
Auto-Anthropology,"in Anthropologyat Home, present in any ethnographic encounter and her
A. Jackson, ed., pp. 16-37, 1987), among oth- or his role and presence in the process of de-
ers. What connects previous writers is the sim- coding native actions and meanings. Reflexiv-
ple use of a rathernebulous conceptualization ity is an important concept in anthropology,
of self-representation (not even the term itself, but not the same as auto-ethnography.
since they have introduced other terms, such In light of this, the selection of these essays
as Marilyn Strathern's auto-anthropology) under this title becomes problematic. Despite
without any stated agreement as to what the the disclaimers noted above and given by the
concept and the term constitute. It is curious, editor with regardsto the term, Reed-Danahay
therefore, why Reed-Danahay, without really has opted not to include any of the auto-eth-
explaining her reasons, chose from among the nographers who have published in this genre.
multitude of (epistemological) options the par- The last two essays of the volume, by Pnina
ticular genre of auto-ethnography that she Motzafi-Haller ("WritingBirthright:On Native
presents in this collection-"a form of self- Anthropologists and the Politics of Represen-
narrative that places the self within a social tation")and, especiallythat by Caroline Brettell
context" (p. 9). ("Blurred Genres and Blended Voices: Life
Auto-ethnography, as explained by David History, Biography, Autobiography, and the
Hayano, is a term first coined by Raymond Auto/Ethnographyof Women's Lives")are the
Firth in his seminar in 1956 where he re- closest one would come to the problematic of
counted the by then famous story of an en- native or, in the case of Motzafi-Haller,
counter and argument between L.S. B. Leakey "halfie"anthropology (L.Abu-Lughod, "Writ-
and Jomo Kenyatta concerning some Kikuyu ing Against Culture" in Recapturing Anthro-
practices to which each man laid claims of in- pology, Robin Fox, ed., Santa Fe: School of
side knowledge as a "native"of the area-an American Research Press. 1991, p. 137). Pre-
argument which, as Hayano notes, soon cisely for that reason, their inclusion in this
 book reviews
volume becomes even more curious, almost
token. Readers do not really see any "anthro-
pologist[s] studying his or her own kind"-a
most peculiar choice of term, especially com-
ing from a cultural anthropologist (p. 4, em-
phasis added)-nor any native anthropologists
(and the difference between this category and
one's own kind is lost, at least to this reviewer).
Readersdo see in abundance native reflections
on the native condition mediated by the an-
thropologist. One could wonder how, other-
wise, these texts would have become known in
the anglophone literaturewithout the media-
tion of the anthropologists. I would argue that
such an endeavor would, indeed, be worth-
while, and its results bold and intriguing.
Rather than the anthropologists commenting
on the natives, the editor could have requested
that the same anthropologists make the same
texts available to her. In such a case, the an-
thropologists would have been the agents of
communication, rather than the brokers of
knowledge. Butthere is another problem, one
that is encoded in the selection of the mediated
texts. Only two of the texts presented and com-
mented upon by these anthropologists come
from professional, trained anthropologists and
ethnographers (the ones by Pnina Motzafi-Hal-
ler, who brilliantly explores the political di-
mensions of the act of representation, and by
Caroline Brettell,whose piece is an ethnogra-
phy of her mother, not a sociocultural unit, that
she wrote after becoming an established
scholar of Portugal).
I have used most of these essays in this col-
lection with great success in undergraduate
courses on the anthropology and ethnography
of Europe, on political anthropology, and on
the anthropology of the body. The ones by Bir-
gitta Svensson ("The Power of Biography:
Criminal Policy, Prison Life,and the Formation
of Criminal Identities in the Swedish Welfare
State"); Henk Driessen ("Lives Writ Large:
Kabyle Self-Portraitsand the Question of Iden-
tity");Alexandra Jaffe("Narratingthe 'I' versus
Narratingthe 'Isle': LifeHistories and the Prob-
lem of Representation on Corsica");and Bret-
tell have been exceptionally helpful and
thought-provoking, and always enthusiasti-
cally received by students. This is to the credit
of the contributors themselves for presenting
readers with texts that can be used informa-
tively and critically in the classroom; however,
every time I read this collection as a whole-as
a project-I cannot butthink thatthere is a mis-
View publication stats
553
match between its contents and its title. They
do not belong together. Perhaps the book
should be retitled "WhatWe Can Do with Na-
tive Texts."
People Are Not the Same: Leprosy and Iden-
tity in 20th-Century Mali. Eric Silla. Ports-
mouth, NH: Heinemann, 1998. vi + 220 pp.,
photographs, maps, sources, index.
JOHN JANZEN
University of Kansas
Here is finally a book about leprosy in Africa
thattells the story like it is, like itwas, and like it
may become. Eric Silla gives leprosy-a dis-
ease that has long been an icon of otherness in
the third world, especially Africa-the schol-
arly treatment it deserves. In addition, this
work should become a model for social histo-
ries of particulardiseases, especially those that
transform their sufferers' identities. After an
opening section on recent social scientific and
historical studies of illness in Africa, Silla re-
views approaches to stigmatizing and identity-
transforming diseases, as well as the biology
and global distribution of leprosy. Silla's ap-
proach is to privilege the individual suf-
ferer-he rejects the idea of a homogeneous
leprosy experience in Mali or anywhere else.
Silla has organized his material well and
written clearly. Chapter 1 is exclusively de-
voted to developing the life story of Saran
Kieta, a Malian woman who, before she con-
tracted leprosy, was fully involved in her soci-
ety as woman, wife, mother, and grandmother.
In describing one who fills all these roles, Silla
points out that those persons who happen to
acquire leprosy are first and foremost social
persons. He also argues forcefully that there is
no need to isolate those infected with the sev-
eral types of leprosy. Treatment is relatively
easy and available, contagion is very low com-
pared to other diseases, and all of the stigma-
producing reasons for giving lepers their spe-
cial image of otherness are invalid. Silla's
particularization of the experience of leprosy
in Mali in the book's initial chapter promotes
correct scholarship and will no doubt lead
Mali as a national society to push for complete
destigmatization of the disease.
Remaining chapters move from the individ-
ual person perspective to present the historyof
leprosy in Mali and west Africa. In chapter 2,
Silla offers historic Arabic texts that use words,