Marcus and Fischer Anthropology as a Cultural Critique Notes
MARCUS AND FISCHER
Ethnography – concern with descriptions
Experimental moment – eccectical, free of authoritarian paradigm, interpretive, anti-establishment; Positivism vs. interpretive
SELF-CRITIQUE – discrupts common sens, remise en question of assumptions
1. First predicament : sensitivity to cultural difference
2. Second predicament : status of anthropology as a cultural critique (reflection of self through studying alien culture).
DUALITY-Palestinian and American, Said
50s linguistics, 70-80s literature and interpretation
CRISIS OF REPRESENTATION
‘New criticism’ - internal criticism of texts
Lyotard-crisis of metanarratives
White, Metahistory 1973 : emplotment, argument, ideal; translates problem of historical explanation into problem of representation.
-traces romance-tragedy-comedy- IRONY
-search for multiple, openenended alternatives—that is a sophisticated EPISTEMOLOGY
-focus not to study change in framework, but focus to study change itself
INTERPRETIVE ANTHROPOLOGY
Definition : doing and writing ethnography
Anthropology contribution : 1. Capturing cultural diversity
2. cultural critique of ourselves, ethnography as a written product of fieldwork -insist on self-consciousness, no fixed meanings
-metaphor of cultures as texts Geertz (how interpretation works) 3. holism-full picture, context vs.encylopedia
Parsons-Levi-Strauss-Shifted meaning to MENTAL and CULTURAL phenomena
CRITIQUES
1. shift to symbols, msgs, mentality
2. fieldwork
3. attempt at ahistorical and apolitical nature of ethnographic writing, ie : counter colonialist.
Legitimating an experiment by recovering the forgotten possibility (40)- what forgotten possibility?.
Reorientation, sharp break, periods of risk-taking and « innovation »-distinctive-self-styled-how difference represented-subjectivity.
THE PERSON, THE SELF EMOTIONS
Personhood-essential for how cultures differ from each other
Agency vs collective mentalities –
Ethnography – concern with descriptions
Experimental moment – eccectical, free of authoritarian paradigm, interpretive, anti-establishment; Positivism vs. interpretive
SELF-CRITIQUE – discrupts common sens, remise en question of assumptions
1. First predicament : sensitivity to cultural difference
2. Second predicament : status of anthropology as a cultural critique (reflection of self through studying alien culture).
DUALITY-Palestinian and American, Said
50s linguistics, 70-80s literature and interpretation
CRISIS OF REPRESENTATION
‘New criticism’ - internal criticism of texts
Lyotard-crisis of metanarratives
White, Metahistory 1973 : emplotment, argument, ideal; translates problem of historical explanation into problem of representation.
-traces romance-tragedy-comedy- IRONY
-search for multiple, openenended alternatives—that is a sophisticated EPISTEMOLOGY
-focus not to study change in framework, but focus to study change itself
INTERPRETIVE ANTHROPOLOGY
Definition : doing and writing ethnography
Anthropology contribution : 1. Capturing cultural diversity
2. cultural critique of ourselves, ethnography as a written product of fieldwork -insist on self-consciousness, no fixed meanings
-metaphor of cultures as texts Geertz (how interpretation works) 3. holism-full picture, context vs.encylopedia
Parsons-Levi-Strauss-Shifted meaning to MENTAL and CULTURAL phenomena
CRITIQUES
1. shift to symbols, msgs, mentality
2. fieldwork
3. attempt at ahistorical and apolitical nature of ethnographic writing, ie : counter colonialist.
Legitimating an experiment by recovering the forgotten possibility (40)- what forgotten possibility?.
Reorientation, sharp break, periods of risk-taking and « innovation »-distinctive-self-styled-how difference represented-subjectivity.
THE PERSON, THE SELF EMOTIONS
Personhood-essential for how cultures differ from each other
Agency vs collective mentalities –