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Issue 2: 2008/9 ISSN 1756-0896 (Print)/ISSN 1756-090X (Online)

Interpreting the world – and changing it www.radicalanthropologygroup.org

The scarcity
myth
What hunter-gatherers
can teach us
about sharing

Jerome Lewis on abundance

Interview with Noam Chomsky
Lionel Sims decodes Stonehenge
£3 Keith Hart: a philosophy for life
Marek Kohn: can we learn to trust?
 Guest editorial

Towards a new human universal:

rethinking anthropology for our times

We should take Kant as our inspiration and reclaim anthropology as a

practical guide for living, argues Keith Hart

M
agellan’s crew completed the Kant’s Anthropology in one part of the world is felt
first circumnavigation of the Immanuel Kant published Anthro- everywhere. The idea of a
planet some 30 years after pology from a pragmatic point of cosmopolitan right is not fantastic
Columbus crossed the Atlantic. At view in 1798. The book was based on and overstrained; it is a necessary
much the same time, Bartolomé de las lectures he had given at the university complement to the unwritten code of
Casas opposed the racial inequality of since 1772-3. Kant’s aim was to political and international right,
Spain’s American empire in the name of attract the general public to anthro- transforming it into a universal right
human unity. We are living through pology – and it was Kant more than of humanity.
another ‘Magellan moment’. In the anyone who gave ‘anthropology’ as
second half of the 20th century, an independent discipline its name. This confident sense of an emergent
humanity formed a world society – a Remarkably, histories of anthropology world order, written over 200 years
single interactive social network – for have rarely mentioned this work, ago, can now be seen as the high
the first time. This was symbolised by perhaps because the discipline has point of the liberal revolution, before
several moments, such as when the evolved so far away from Kant’s it was overwhelmed by its twin
space race in the 1960s allowed us to original premises. But it would offspring, industrial capitalism and
see the earth from the outside or when pay us to take his Anthropology the nation-state.
the internet went public in the 90s, seriously, if only for its resonance
announcing the convergence of with our own times. Earlier Kant wrote an essay, ‘Idea for a
telephones, television and computers in universal history with a cosmopolitan
a digital revolution of communications. Shortly before, Kant wrote Perpetual purpose’ which included the following
peace: a philosophical sketch. The last propositions:
Our world too is massively unequal quarter of the 18th century saw its
and the voices for human unity own share of ‘globalisation’ – the 1. In man (as the only rational creature
are often drowned. Emergent American and French revolutions, the on earth) those natural faculties which
world society is the new human rise of British industry and the aim at the use of reason shall be fully
universal – not an idea, but the fact of international movement to abolish developed in the species, not in the
our shared occupation of the planet slavery. Kant knew that coalitions of individual.
crying out for new principles of states were gearing up for war, yet he
association. In this editorial, I will responded to this sense of the world 2. The means that nature employs to
explore the possible contribution of coming closer together by proposing accomplish the development of all
anthropology to such a project. If the how humanity might form society as faculties is the antagonism of men in
academic discipline as presently world citizens beyond the boundaries society, since this antagonism becomes,
constituted would find it hard to of states. He held that ‘cosmopolitan in the end, the cause of a lawful order
address this task, perhaps we need to right’, the basic right of all world of this society.
look elsewhere for a suitable citizens, should rest on conditions of
intellectual strategy. universal hospitality, that is, on the 3. The latest problem for mankind, the
right of a stranger not to be treated solution of which nature forces us to
with hostility when he arrives on seek, is the achievement of a civil
someone else’s territory. In other society which is capable of
Keith Hart is honorary research words, we should be free to go administering law universally.
professor in the School of wherever we like in the world, since it
Development Studies, University belongs to all of us equally. He goes 4. This problem is both the most
of Kwazulu-Natal, and professor on to say: difficult and the last to be solved by
emeritus at Goldsmiths, mankind.
University of London. Email: The peoples of the earth have entered
johnkeithhart@gmail.com. See in varying degree into a universal 5. A philosophical attempt to write a
community, and it has developed to universal world history according to a
www.thememorybank.co.uk.
the point where a violation of rights plan of nature which aims at perfect

4 Radical Anthropology
civic association of mankind must be has two parts, the first and longer Enlightenment predecessors motivated
considered to be possible and even as being on empirical psychology and by a pressing democratic project to
capable of furthering nature’s purpose. divided into sections on cognition, make world society less unequal. Seen
aesthetics and ethics. Part 2 is in this light, the first work of modern
Our world is much more socially concerned with the character of human anthropology is not Kant’s, but Jean-
integrated than two centuries ago and beings at every level from the Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on the
its economy is palpably unequal. individual to the species, seen from Origins and Foundations of Inequality
Histories of the universe we inhabit do both the inside and the outside. among Men (1754).
seem to be indispensable to the Anthropology is the practical arm of
construction of institutions capable of moral philosophy. It does not explain Here Rousseau was concerned not
administering justice worldwide. The the metaphysics of morals which are with individual variations in natural
task of building a global civil society categorical and transcendent; but it is endowments which we can do little
for the 21st century, even a world indispensable to any interaction about, but with the artificial
state, is an urgent one and involving human agents. It is thus inequalities of wealth, honour and the
anthropological visions should play ‘pragmatic’ in a number of senses: it is capacity to command obedience
their part in that. ‘everything that pertains to the derived from social convention which
practical’, popular (as opposed to can be changed. In order to construct
This then was the context for the academic) and moral in that it is a model of human equality, he
publication of Kant’s Anthropology. concerned with what people should do, imagined a pre-social state of nature,
He elsewhere summarised ‘philosophy with their motives for action. a sort of hominid phase of human
in the cosmopolitan sense of the word’ evolution in which men were solitary,
as four questions: In his Preface, Kant acknowledges but healthy, happy and above all free.
that anthropological science has some This freedom was metaphysical,
What can I know? way to go methodologically. People anarchic and personal: original
What should I do? act self-consciously when they are human beings had free will, they were
What may I hope for? being observed and it is often hard to not subject to rules of any kind and
What is a human being? distinguish between self-conscious they had no superiors. At some point
action and habit. For this reason, he humanity made the transition to what
The first question is answered in recommends as aids ‘world history, Rousseau calls ‘nascent society’, a
metaphysics, the second in morals, biographies and even plays and prolonged period whose economic
the third in religion and the fourth in novels’. The latter, while being base can best be summarised as
anthropology. admittedly inventions, are often based hunter-gathering with huts. This
on close observation of real behaviour second phase represents his ideal of
But the first three questions ‘relate to and add to our knowledge of human life in society close to nature. The rot
anthropology’, he said, and might be beings. He thought that the main set in with the invention of agriculture
subsumed under it. Kant conceived of value of his book lay in its systematic or, as Rousseau puts it, of wheat and
anthropology as an empirical organisation, so that readers could iron. Cultivation of the land led to
discipline, but also as a means of moral incorporate their experience into it incipient property institutions whose
and cultural improvement. It was thus and develop new themes appropriate culmination awaited the development
both an investigation into human to their own lives. Historians and of political society.
nature and, more especially, into how philosophers are divided between
to modify it, as a way of providing his those who find the book marginal to The first man who, having enclosed a
students with practical guidance and Kant’s thought and those for whom it piece of land, thought of saying ‘This
knowledge of the world. He intended is just muddled and banal. And the is mine’ and found people simple
his lectures to be ‘popular’ and of value anthropologists have ignored it enough to believe him, was the true
in later life. Above all, the entirely. I hope to show that this was founder of civil society.
Anthropology was to contribute to the a mistake.
progressive political task of uniting The formation of a civil order (the
world citizens by identifying the source The anthropology of state) was preceded by a Hobbesian
of their ‘cosmopolitan bonds’. The unequal society condition, a war of all against all
book thus moves between mundane Following Locke’s example, the 18th- marked by the absence of law, which
illustrations and Kant’s most sublime century Enlightenment was animated Rousseau insisted was the result of
vision, using anecdotes close to home by a revolutionary desire to found social development, not an original
as a bridge to horizon thinking. democratic societies to replace the class state of nature. He believed that this
system typical of agrarian civilisation. new social contract was probably
If for Kant the two divisions of How could the arbitrary social arrived at by consensus, but it was a
anthropology were physiological and inequality of the Old Regime be fraudulent one in that the rich thereby
pragmatic, he preferred to concentrate abolished and a more equal society gained legal sanction for transmitting
on the latter – ‘what the human being founded on the basis of what all people unequal property rights in perpetuity.
as a free actor can and should make of have in common, their human nature? From this inauspicious beginning,
himself’. This is based primarily on The great Victorian synthesisers, such political society then usually moved,
observation, but it also involves the as Morgan, Engels, Tylor and Frazer, via a series of revolutions, through
construction of moral rules. The book were standing on the shoulders of three stages:

Radical Anthropology 5
 The establishment of law and the Origin of the Family, Private Property from the pre-industrial societies of
right of property was the first stage, and the State. Engels’s greater emphasis Europe and Asia; and latterly refuting
the institution of magistrates the on gender inequality made this strand the West’s claim to being exceptional,
second, and the transformation of of ‘the anthropology of unequal especially when compared with Asia.
legitimate into arbitrary power the society’ a fertile source for the feminist Goody found that kin groups in the
third and last stage. Thus the status movement in the 1960s and after. major societies of Eurasia frequently
of rich and poor was authorized by pass on property through both sexes, a
the first epoch, that of strong and The traditional home of inequality is process of ‘diverging devolution’ that is
weak by the second and by the third supposed to be India and Andre virtually unknown in Sub-Saharan
that of master and slave, which is the Beteille (eg, Inequality among men) has Africa, where inheritance follows the
last degree of inequality and the stage made the subject his special domain of line of one sex only. Particularly when
to which all the others finally lead, late, merging social anthropology with women’s property includes the means
until new revolutions dissolve the comparative sociology. In the United of production – land in agricultural
government altogether and bring it States, Leslie White at Michigan and societies – attempts will be made to
back to legitimacy. Julian Steward at Columbia led teams, control these heiresses, banning
including Wolf, Sahlins, Service, Harris premarital sex and making arranged
One-man-rule closes the circle. and Mintz, who took the evolution of marriages for them, often within the
the state and class society as their chief same group and with a strong
It is here that all individuals become focus. Probably the single most preference for monogamy. Direct
equal again because they are nothing, impressive work coming out of this inheritance by women is also
here where subjects have no longer American school was Eric Wolf’s associated with the isolation of the
any law but the will of the master… Europe and the People without nuclear family in kinship terminology,
History. But one man tried to redo where a distinction is drawn between
For Rousseau, the growth of inequality Morgan in a single book and that was one’s own parents and siblings and
was just one aspect of human Claude Lévi-Strauss in The Elementary other relatives of the same generation,
alienation in civil society. We need to Structures of Kinship. We should recall unlike in lineage systems. All of this
return from division of labour and that, in Tristes Tropiques, Lévi-Strauss reflects a class basis for society that
dependence on the opinion of others to acknowledged Rousseau as his master. was broadly absent in Africa.
subjective self-sufficiency, Kant’s The aim of Elementary Structures was
principal concern and mine. This to revisit Morgan’s three-stage theory The major Eurasian civilizations were
subversive parable ends with a ringing of social evolution, drawing on a new organized through large states run by
indictment of economic inequality and impressive canvas, ‘the Siberia- literate elites whose lifestyle embraced
which could well serve as a warning to Assam axis’ and all points southeast as both the city and the countryside. In
our world. far as the Australian desert. other words, what we have here is
Gordon Childe’s ‘urban revolution’ in
It is manifestly contrary to the law of Lévi-Strauss took as his motor of Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago, where
nature, however defined… that a development the forms of marriage
handful of people should gorge exchange and the logic of exogamy. …an elaborate bureaucracy, a
themselves with superfluities while The ‘restricted reciprocity’ of complex division of labour, a
the hungry multitude goes in want of egalitarian bands gave way to the stratified society based on
necessities. unstable hierarchies of ‘generalised ecclesiastical landlordism…[were]
reciprocity’ typical of the Highland made possible by intensive agriculture

L
ewis H. Morgan drew on Burma tribes. The stratified states of where title to landed property was of
Rousseau’s model for his own the region turned inwards to supreme importance.
fiercely democratic synthesis of endogamy, to the reproduction of class
human history, Ancient Society. If differences and the negation of social The analytical focus that lends unity
Rousseau laid out the first systematic reciprocity. Evidently, the author was to Goody’s compendious work is
anthropological theory and Kant then not encouraged to universalise the consistent with an intellectual
proposed anthropology as an academic model, since he subsequently genealogy linking him through Childe
discipline, what made Morgan’s work abandoned it, preferring to analyse the to Morgan-Engels and ultimately
the launch proper of modern structures of the human mind as Rousseau. The key to understanding
anthropology was his ability to enroll revealed in myths. social forms lies in production, which
contemporary ethnographic for us means machine production.
observations made among the Iroquois My teacher, Jack Goody has tried to Civilization or human culture is
into analysis of the historical structures lift our profession out of a myopic largely shaped by the means of
underlying western civilisation’s origins ethnography into a concern with the communication – once writing, now
in Greece and Rome. Marx and Engels movement of world history that went an array of mechanized forms. The
enthusiastically took up Morgan’s out of fashion with the passing of the site of social struggles is property,
work as confirmation of their own Victorian founders. Starting with now principally conflicts over
critique of the state and capitalism; and Production and Reproduction, he has intellectual property. And his central
the latter, drawing on Marx’s extensive produced a score of books over the last issue of reproduction has never been
annotations of Ancient Society, made three decades investigating why Sub- more salient than at a time when the
the argument more accessible as The Saharan Africa differs so strikingly aging citizens of rich countries depend

6 Radical Anthropology
on the proliferating mass of young for equality released by the Second obligation, self-interest and concern
people out there. Kinship needs to World War and the anti-colonial for others. Modern capitalism thus
be reinvented too. revolution that followed it. On the rests on an unsustainable attachment
other hand, growing awareness of the to one of these poles. The pure types
A new human universal: the consequences of our collective actions of selfish and generous economic
unity of self and society for life on this planet might be another action obscure the complex interplay
A lot hinges on where in the long stimulus to take world society between our individuality and
process of human evolution we imagine seriously. Society is caught precariously belonging in subtle ways to others. If
the world is today. The Victorians between national and global forms at learning to be two-sided is the means
believed that they stood at the pinnacle present; and that is why new ways of of becoming human, then the lesson is
of civilisation. I think of us as being like thinking are so vital. apparently hard to learn. Each of us
the first digging-stick operators, embarks on a journey outward into
primitives stumbling into the invention What this adds up to is the possible the world and inward into the self.
of agriculture. In the late 1990s, I asked formation of a new human universal. Society is mysterious to us because we
what it is about us that future gener- By this I mean making a world where have lived in it and it now dwells
ations will be interested in. I settled on all people can live together, not the inside us at a level that is not
the rapid advances then being made in imposition of principles that suit some ordinarily visible from the perspective
forming a single interactive network powerful interests at the expense of the of everyday life. All the places we have
linking all humanity. This has two rest. The next universal will be unlike lived in are sources of introspection
striking features: first, the network is a its predecessors, the Christian and concerning our relationship to society;
highly unequal market of buyers and bourgeois versions through which the and one method for understanding the
sellers fuelled by a money circuit that West has sought to dominate or world is to make an ongoing practice
has become progressively detached replace the cultural particulars that of trying to synthesise these varied
from production and politics; and organise people’s lives everywhere. The experiences. If a person would have an
second, it is driven by a digital main precedent for such an approach identity – would be one thing, one self
revolution in communications whose to discovering our common humanity – this requires trying to make out of
symbol is the internet, the network of is great literature which achieves fragmented social experience a more
networks. So my research over the last universality through going deeply into coherent whole, a world in other
decade has been concerned with how particular personalities, relations and words as singular as the self.
the forms of money and exchange are places. The new universal will not just
changing in the context of this tolerate cultural particulars, but will be Kant is the source for the notion that
communications revolution. founded on knowing that true human society may be as much an expression
community can only be realised of individual subjectivity as a collective
My case for global integration rests on through them. force out there. Copernicus solved the
three developments of the last two problem of the movement of the
decades: There are two prerequisites for being heavenly bodies by having the
human: we must each learn to be self- spectator revolve while they were at
1. The collapse of the Soviet Union, reliant to a high degree and to belong rest, instead of them revolve around
opening up the world to trans- to others, merging our identities in a the spectator. Kant extended this
national capitalism and neo-liberal bewildering variety of social achievement for physics into
economic policies. relationships. Much of modern metaphysics. In his Preface to The
ideology emphasises how problematic Critique of Pure Reason, he writes,
2. The entry of China’s and India’s two it is to be both self-interested and
billion people, a third of humanity, mutual, to be economic as well as Hitherto it has been assumed that all
into the world market as powers in social, we might say. When culture is our knowledge must conform to
their own right and the globalisation of set up to expect a conflict between the objects... but what if we suppose that
capital accumulation, for the first time two, it is hard to be both. Yet the two objects must conform to our
loosening the grip of America and sides are often inseparable in practice knowledge?
Europe on the global economy. and some societies, by encouraging
private and public interests to coincide, In order to understand the world, we
3. The shortening of time and distance have managed to integrate them more must begin not with the empirical
brought about by the communications effectively than ours. One premise of existence of objects, but with the
revolution, linked to a restlessly mobile the new human universal will thus be reasoning embedded in our experience
population. the unity of self and society. itself and in all the judgments we have
made. This is to say that the world is

M
The corollary of this revolution is a arcel Mauss held that the inside each of us as much as it is out
counter-revolution, the reassertion of attempt to create a free there. Our task is to unite the two
state power since 9/11 and the market for private contracts poles as subjective individuals who
imperialist war for oil in the Middle is utopian and just as unrealisable as share the object world with the rest of
East. As Kant said, conflict is the its antithesis, a collective based solely humanity. Knowledge of society must
catalyst for seeking a lawful basis of on altruism. Human institutions be personal and moral before it is
world society. Certainly humanity has everywhere are founded on the unity defined by the laws imposed on each of
regressed significantly from the hopes of individual and society, freedom and us from above.

Radical Anthropology 7
 Kant’s achievement was soon rest of humanity in an encompassing humanities editor for Harvard
overthrown by a counter-revolution whole. Between these extremes lie University Press, claims that the
that identified society with the state. proliferating associations of great current explosion of academic
This was launched by Hegel in The variety. He settled on the village as the publishing is a bubble as certain to
Philosophy of Right and it was only vehicle for Indians’ aspirations for self- burst as the dotcom boom. Publishing,
truly consummated after the First organisation; and this made him in he says, has become more concerned
World War. As a result, the personal many respects a typical 20th-century with quantity than quality and
was separated from the impersonal, the nationalist. But what is most relevant mechanization ‘has proved lethal’. He
subject from the object, humanism to us is his existentialist project. If the warns academics, in the face of the
from science. Twentieth-century society world of society and nature is devoid corporate takeover of the university,
was conceived of as an impersonal of meaning, each of us is left feeling ‘…to preserve and protect the
mechanism defined by international small, isolated and vulnerable. How do independence of their activities, before
division of labour, national we bridge the gap between a puny self the market becomes our prison. (…)
bureaucracy and scientific laws and a vast, unknowable world? The Many universities are, in significant
understood only by experts. Not answer is to scale down the world, to part, financial holding operations (…)
surprisingly, most people felt ignorant scale up the self or a combination of The commercialization of higher
and impotent in the face of such a both, so that a meaningful relationship education has caused innovation in the
society. Yet, we have never been more might be established between the two. humanities to come to a standstill.’
conscious of ourselves as unique Gandhi devoted a large part of his
personalities who make a difference. philosophy to building up the personal Because Waters blames the humanities’
That is why questions of identity are so resources of individuals. Our task is to decline on money and machines, his
central to politics today. bring this project up to date. call for resistance has no practical basis
in contemporary conditions. Anna

M
oney in capitalist societies Novels and movies allow us to span Grimshaw and I, in the pamphlet that
stands for alienation, actual and possible worlds. They bring launched our imprint, Prickly Pear
detachment, impersonal history down in scale to a familiar Press, once tried to locate anthro-
society, the outside; its origins lie frame (the paperback, the screen) and pology’s compromised relationship to
beyond our control (the market). audiences enter into that history subjec- academic bureaucracy in the crisis
Relations marked by the absence of tively on any terms their imagination facing modern intellectuals, as
money are the model of personal permits. The sources of our alienation identified by the Caribbean writer, CLR
integration and free association, of are commonplace. What interests me is James in American Civilization. We
what we take to be familiar, the inside resistance to alienation, whatever form held that intellectual practice should be
(home). This institutional dualism, it takes, religious or otherwise. How integrated more closely with social life,
forcing individuals to divide can we feel at home out there, in the given their increasing separation by
themselves, asks too much of us. restless turbulence of the modern academic bureaucracy. The need to
People want to integrate division, to world? The digital revolution is in part escape from the ivory tower to join the
make some meaningful connection a response to this need. We feel at people where they live was the
between themselves as subjects and home in intimate, face-to-face relations; inspiration for modern anthropology.
society as an object. It helps that but we must engage in remote, often But this had been negated by the
money, as well as being the means of impersonal exchanges at distance. expansion of the universities after 1945
separating public and domestic life, Improvements in telecommunications and by the political pressures exerted
was always the main bridge between cannot stop until we replicate at on academics since the 1980s.
the two. That is why money must be distance the experience of face-to-face
central to any attempt to humanise interaction. For the drive to overcome Edward Said, in Representations of the
society. Today it is both the principal alienation is even more powerful than Intellectual, without ever mentioning
source of our vulnerability in society alienation itself. Social evolution has anthropology, made claims for
and the main practical symbol reached the point of establishing near- intellectuals that could be taken as a
allowing each of us to make an universal communications; now we metaphor for the discipline. He
impersonal world meaningful. must make world society in the image emphasised the creative possibilities in
of our own humanity. migration and marginality, of being an
How else can we repair this rupture awkward outsider who crosses
between self and society? Mohandas K. Crisis of the intellectuals boundaries, questions certainties, a
Gandhi’s critique of the modern The universities have been around for figure at once involved and detached.
identification of society with the state a long time, but they came into their Narrow professionalism poses an
was devastating. He believed that it own in the last half-century, as the immense threat to academic life.
disabled citizens, subjecting mind and training grounds for bureaucracy that Specialisation, concern with
body to the control of professional Hegel envisaged. Most contemporary disciplinary boundaries and expert
experts when the purpose of a intellectuals have taken refuge in them knowledge lead to a suspension of
civilisation should be to enhance its by now and human personality has critical enquiry and ultimately a drift
members’ sense of their own self- been in retreat there for some time. In towards legitimating power. The exile
reliance. He proposed instead that Enemies of Promise: publishing, and the amateur might combine to
every human being is a unique perishing and the eclipse of inject new radicalism into a jaded
personality and participates with the scholarship, Lindsay Waters, professionalism. Said credited James

8 Radical Anthropology
with being an intellectual of this kind, binary ideas (right/wrong) lay at the and the European Association grows in
but James placed intellectuals within a core of society’s malaise. Leach called stature. The annual AAA (American
historical process that had aligned for an intellectual practice based on Anthropological Association) meetings
them with power and made them movement and engagement, have become a global gathering point
increasingly at odds with the people. connection and dialectic. In short he where anthropologists are more likely
Said did not identify how and why was calling for the reinsertion of ideas to meet national colleagues than at
intellectual life had been transformed into social life. home, rather like the African politicians
from free individual creativity into of the interwar period who got to meet

T
serving the needs of bureaucracy. he solution to anthropology’s each other in Paris or London. The
problems cannot be found in second largest annual meetings are in
For James there was a growing conflict increased specialisation, in the Brazil, where anthropologists have
between the concentration of power at discovery of new areas of social life to expanded from their Amazonian base
the top of society and the aspirations colonise with the aid of old to offer informed commentary on all
of people everywhere for democracy to professional paradigms or in a return aspects of national society and culture.
be extended into all areas of their lives. to literary scholarship disguised as a Scandinavian anthropologists draw on
This conflict was most advanced in new dialogical form. It requires new their social-democratic tradition to
America. The struggle was for patterns of social engagement exhibit a high level of public
civilisation or barbarism, for individual extending beyond the universities to engagement. Countries like Nigeria and
freedom within new and expanded the widest reaches of world society. We India sustain large numbers of
conceptions of social life (democracy) must acknowledge how people anthropologists in the study of ‘tribal’
or a fragmented and repressed everywhere are pushing back the areas. The discipline appears to be
subjectivity stifled by coercive boundaries of the old society and flourishing in the lands of new
bureaucracies (totalitarianism). The remain open to universality, which has settlement, such as Australia, Canada
intellectuals were caught between the been driven underground by national and South Africa. New varieties of
expansion of bureaucracy and the capitalism and would be buried forever national anthropology are springing up
growing power and presence of people if the present corporate privatisation of all over Eastern Europe. I could go on,
as a force in world society. Unable to intellectual life is allowed to succeed. but the point is made. ‘Anthropology’
recognise that people’s lives mattered has slipped its colonial bonds and is
more than their own ideas, they The expansion of academic bureau- now many things all over the world.
oscillated between an introspective cracy has accentuated the
individualism (psychoanalysis) and objectification of thought as a marker The same cannot be said of its
service to the ruling powers, whether of status and reward. Ideas have institutional setting. Like most other
of the right (fascism) or left (Stalinism). become commodities to be possessed, intellectual activities, the discipline has
As a result, the traditional role of the traded and stolen. An intensified focus become largely locked up in the
intellectual as an independent witness on the formal abstraction of universities. Anthropology’s modernist
and critic standing unequivocally for performance has led to the academic moment – the commitment to join the
truth had been seriously compromised. labour market being driven by the people where they live in order to find
Their absorption as wage slaves and empty measures of print production out what they do and think – became
pensioners of bureaucracy not only that Waters rightly denigrates. ossified as the professional mantra that
removed intellectuals’ independence, Subjective contributions, like the we do ‘fieldwork-based ethnography’.
but also separated their specialised qualities of a good teacher, inevitably The universities themselves, in most
activities from social life. carry less weight. And so the academic countries outside the US, are centrally
intellectuals, who might have offered a organised by the state; and the
One anthropologist who addressed critique of the corporate takeover of ethnographic model of society –
these questions of intellectuals and the the universities, find themselves indigenous, culturally homogeneous,
public, of ideas and life, knowledge instead drawn passively into a vicious bounded territorial units – uncom-
and power, was Edmund Leach in his variant of the privatisation of ideas. fortably mimics the nationalism that it
prescient BBC lectures, A Runaway Something must be done to reinstate was originally designed to promote
World? There he identified a world in human personality in our common and, worse, dissolves world society
movement, marked by the understanding of how the world into a plethora of local fragments, each
interconnectedness of people and works. But this should be through the aspiring to self-sufficiency. If cultural
things. This provoked the mood of medium of money and machines, not relativism was once a legitimate
optimism and fear that characterized despite them. Kant’s cosmopolitan reaction to racist imperialism, the
the 60s, when established structures moral politics offer one vision of the legacy of the ethnographic turn has
seemed to be breaking down. The course such a renewal might take. been to make it impossible for most
reality of change could not be academic anthropologists to respond
understood through conventional Anthropology now and to come effectively to our own ‘Magellan
cultural categories predicated on stable Anthropology can no longer be moment’. We generate fine-grained
order. Moral categories based on summarised as what a few luminaries accounts of human experience, but
habits of separation and division could in the centres of imperial power think without the aspiration to universality
only make the world’s movement seem and do. Americans dominate a much that still animated the discipline up
alien and frightening. An ethos of larger profession, for sure, while British until the 50s. We now address only
scientific detachment reinforced by and French anthropology are in decline ourselves and our students.

Radical Anthropology 9
 T
his is not to say that Disciplines thrive when their object, commonplace in future. No one, in my
anthropology sits well with the theory and method are coherent. In the view, better exemplifies the vision and
university. We retain the will to 18th century, anthropology’s object was methods needed for anthropology’s
range across disciplinary boundaries; human nature, its theory ‘reason’, its renewal than Sidney Mintz. Apart from
the humanism and democracy entailed method humanist philosophy. In the his record as a Caribbean ethnographer,
in our methods contradict bureaucratic 19th century, anthropology’s object was he has produced an outstanding
imperatives at every turn. to explain racial hierarchy, its theory biography in Worker in the Cane, and
Anthropology has always been an anti- was evolution, its method world in Sweetness and Power world history
discipline, a holding company for history. The object of British social of the first rank. The ‘literary turn’ in
idiosyncratic individuals to do what anthropology in the 20th century was anthropology, symbolised by the
they like and call it ‘anthropology’. primitive societies, its theory was publication of Writing Culture two
This is coming under pressure today. functionalism and the method decades ago, has also opened up
Increasingly, academic anthropologists fieldwork. We need a new synthesis of anthropology to fiction – novels, plays
turn inwards for defence against all- object, theory and method suitable to and movies. This is surely for the good.
comers and this often leaves them conditions now. The ethnographic
exposed and without allies in the paradigm has been moving for half a The rapid development of global
struggle for survival in the universities. century in response to the anti-colonial communications today contains within
We can’t assume that the identification revolution and other seismic changes in its movement a far-reaching
of anthropology with the academy in world history. But anthropologists have transformation of world society.
the previous century will continue in retained the method of face-to-face ‘Anthropology’ in some form is one of
the next. It is now harder for self- encounters while dumping the original the intellectual traditions best suited to
designated guilds to control access to object and theory. Paradoxically, while make sense of it. The academic
professional knowledge. People have the anthropologists have rejected seclusion of the discipline, its passive
other ways of finding out for them- philosophy, history and anything else acquiescence to bureaucracy, is the
selves, rather than submit to academic that could give meaning to the purpose chief obstacle preventing us from
hierarchy. And there are many agencies of their discipline, the idea of grasping this historical opportunity. We
out there competing to give them what ethnography has been adopted in cling to our revolutionary commitment
they want, whether through journalism, everything from geography to nursing to joining the people, but have
tourism or the self-learning possibilities studies. Of course the anthropologists forgotten what it was for or what else
afforded by the internet. Popular claim that the others don’t understand is needed, if we are to succeed in
resistance to the power of disembedded what ethnography is really about or helping to build a universal society. I
experts is essentially moral, in that how it is done. But they have forgotten grew up in an education system
people insist on restoring a personal what it is about ‘anthropology’ that designed to prepare graduates for the
dimension to human knowledge. makes their version of ‘ethnography’ Indian civil service, so I have had to
special. They no longer ask the basic retool late in life with the help of
So the issue of anthropology’s future questions that launched anthropology – younger and more skilled companions.
needs to be couched in broader terms what makes inequality intolerable or The internet is a wonderful chance to
than those defined by the profession how people can live together peaceably. open up the flow of knowledge and
itself. I have been building a case that So they can’t explain what is missing information. Rather than obsessing
‘anthropology’ is indispensable to the when others take up ‘ethnography’. over how we can control access to
making of world society in the coming what we write, which means cutting
century. It may be that some elements I have made much of Kant’s example off the mass of humanity almost
of the current academic discipline here because he attempted to address completely from our efforts, we need
could play a part in that; but the the emergence of world society directly. to figure out new interactive forms of
prospects are not good, given the He conceived of anthropology engagement that span the globe and to
narrow localism and anti-universalism primarily as a form of humanist make the results of our work available
that is prevalent there. Rather I have education; and this contrasts starkly to everyone. Ever since the internet
sought inspiration in Kant’s philosophy with the emphasis on scientific research went public, I have made online self-
and in the critique of unequal society outputs in today’s universities. We publishing the core of my
that originates with Rousseau. could also emulate his ‘pragmatic’ anthropological practice. It matters less
‘Anthropology’ would then mean anthropology, a personal programme of that an academic guild should retain its
whatever we need to know about lifetime learning with the aim of monopoly of access to knowledge than
humanity as a whole if we want to developing practical knowledge of the that ‘anthropology’ should be taken up
build a more equal world fit for world. He sought a method for by a broad intellectual coalition for
everyone. I hope that this usage could integrating individual subjectivity with whom the realisation of a new human
be embraced by students of history, the moral construction of world society. universal – a world society fit for
sociology, political economy, World history, as practised by the likes humanity as a whole – is a matter of
philosophy and literature, as well as by of Jack Goody and Eric Wolf, is urgent personal concern. !
members of my own profession. Many indispensable to any anthropology
disciplines might contribute without worthy of the name today. The method This is an edited version of a lecture given in
being exclusively devoted to it. The of biography is particularly well-suited the series ‘Disciplinary dialogs’, Center for
idea of ‘development’ has played a to the study of self and society and I 21st century studies, University of
similar role in the last half-century. would predict that its use will be more Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 7 September 2007.

10 Radical Anthropology
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702960
research-article2017
JCEXXX10.1177/0891241617702960Journal of Contemporary EthnographyCaliandro

Original Manuscript
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
1–28
Digital Methods © The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0891241617702960
https://doi.org/10.1177/0891241617702960
Analytical Concepts journals.sagepub.com/home/jce

for Ethnographers
Exploring Social Media
Environments

Alessandro Caliandro1

Abstract
The aim of this article is to introduce some analytical concepts suitable for
ethnographers dealing with social media environments. As a result of the growth
of social media, the Internet structure has become a very complex, fluid, and
fragmented space. Within this space, it is not always possible to consider the
“classical” online community as the privileged field site for the ethnographer,
in which s/he immerses him/herself. Differently, taking inspiration from some
methodological principles of the Digital Methods paradigm, I suggest that the
main task for the ethnographer moving across social media environments
should not be exclusively that of identifying an online community to delve into
but of mapping the practices through which Internet users and digital devices
structure social formations around a focal object (e.g., a brand). In order to
support the ethnographer in the mapping of social formations within social
media environments, I propose five analytical concepts: community, public,
crowd, self-presentation as a tool, and user as a device.

Keywords
multisited ethnography, virtual ethnography, digital methods, community,
public, crowd, social media

1Middlesex University, London, UK

Corresponding Author:
Alessandro Caliandro, Middlesex University, The Burroughs, London NW4 4BT, UK.
Email: A.Caliandro@mdx.ac.uk
2 Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 0(0)

Introduction
The term social media commonly refers to “online means of communication,
conveyance, collaboration, and cultivation among interconnected and inter-
dependent networks of people, communities, and organizations enhanced by
technological capabilities and mobility” (Tuten and Solomon 2014, 4). In
crossing the threshold of social media, users transform themselves into pro-
sumers (Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010), insofar as they can actually interact with
online content, by producing, commenting, reusing, remixing, and sharing
them in a many-to-many kind of logic. Thus, we can consider blogs, forums,
as well as social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
Pinterest, Google+, and LinkedIn as social media platforms. Social media
represent the backbone of the so-called Web 2.0, a term which refers to
“developments in online technology that enable interactive capabilities in an
environment characterized by user control, freedom, and dialogue” (O’Reilly
2005). Web 2.0 differs from its previous version, Web 1.0, which was mainly
based on the one-to-many logic of communication and did not permit users to
interact directly with contents online.
With the widespread diffusion of social media, the Internet has become
more and more incorporated into the everyday practices of people as well as
into those of social researchers (Garcia et al. 2009). This is particularly true
for ethnographers, for whom—as recently stated by Ronald Hallett and
Kristen Barber—“it is no longer imaginable to conduct ethnography without
considering online spaces” (2014, 307). Therefore, it is not by chance that in
the last few years various styles of online ethnography have been developed,
each identified by a different label: virtual ethnography (Hine 2000), Internet
ethnography (D. Miller and Slater 2001), cyber-ethnography (Escobar 1994),
digital ethnography (Murthy 2008), expanded ethnography (Beneito-
Montagut 2011), ethnography of the virtual worlds (Boellstorff et al. 2012),
to name but a few.
All these online ethnographic approaches convincingly demonstrate how
ethnography is a flexible method that on the one hand can be effectively
adapted to online environments, but on the other hand continuously needs to
be reshaped according to the features and mutations of online environments
(Pink et al. 2016; Robinson and Schulz 2009). With this paper, I contribute to
this methodological strand by proposing five analytical concepts, that is,
community, public, crowd, self-presentation as a tool, and user as a device. I
deem these concepts useful for mapping the structure of social media envi-
ronments and contextualizing the production of content, practices, and dis-
courses developing around them. In discussing and elaborating these
concepts, I will mainly draw on the Digital Methods paradigm (Rogers 2013).
Caliandro 3

Digital Methods invite researchers to follow the medium, that is, consider the
Internet not so much as an object of study, rather as a source of new methods
and languages for understanding contemporary society. Thus, I believe that
Digital Methods can effectively inspire and support ethnographic practice,
especially for exploring the complex landscape of contemporary Web 2.0,
mainly populated by social media platforms, which is a much more fluid and
dispersed sociocultural context than virtual communities (Rheingold 1994)
populating Web 1.0 and usually addressed as the main field of research by
online ethnographers (Postill and Pink 2012). In proposing a combination of
ethnographic practice with Digital Methods, I do not intend to introduce a
“fresh” style of online ethnography or establish a “new” methodological
apparatus for studying online environments ethnographically. In fact, my
main purpose is to propose some analytical concepts, which could be useful
for ethnographers who (in a given moment of his or her fieldwork) need
entering social media environments. (This could happen in the preliminary
phases of his or her fieldwork, for mapping the sociocultural context in which
participants are situated [Hine 2015], as well as in the most advance phases,
when s/he has to follow the participants’ everyday practices [Dirksen,
Huizing, and Smit 2010], which more and more frequently are taking place
online.) Actually, in developing these concepts, I followed the exhortation of
Christine Hine to elaborate methodological strategies for developing ethnog-
raphy for the Internet, rather than an ethnography of the Internet (Hine 2015).

The Ethnographic Response to the Challenges

of Studying Society in the Age of Digital
Communication
As argued by Garcia et al. (2009), especially with the growth of social media,
“technologically mediated communication is being incorporated into ever
more aspects of everyday life. The distinction between online and offline
worlds is therefore becoming less useful as activities in these realms become
increasingly merged in our society and the two spaces interact with and trans-
form each other” (2009, 53). Therefore, it seems it is not only particularly
interesting but also concretely viable to study the everyday practices of social
actors and the cultural forms naturally emerging from them, in and through-
out the Internet.
The ethnographic discipline addressed this challenge—long before the
advent of social media (Correll 1995; Kendall 1996; Slater 1998)—by devel-
oping a set of diverse strategies of adaptation of the classical ethnographic
method within online spaces (Robinson and Schulz 2009). In doing so, eth-
nography scholars undertook a refined process of “translation” of the classical
4 Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 0(0)

categories of anthropology (e.g., community, field, participant, and ethics) as

well as of the traditional qualitative techniques of analysis (e.g., interviews
and participant observation), within the online domain (Baym 1995; Markham
1998).
The necessity to adapt classical ethnographic concepts and techniques to
the online domain is also linked to two different modes through which eth-
nography generally deals with online environments. The first draws on the
idea that the online world, similarly to the offline one, is populated by com-
munities, which are not mere virtual entities, but instead real and complex
social formations that have a concrete influence on the life of their partici-
pants (S. Jones 1995; Kavanaugh and Patterson 2001; Komito 1998).
Therefore, within this paradigm, the main task of the ethnographer is to detect
and delve into these online communities, observing and participating in the
social practices of their participants in order to understand their shared cul-
ture. The second draws on the paradigm of multisited ethnography (Marcus
1995), which exhorts the ethnographer to follow participants throughout their
movements across space. In our contemporary network society (Castells
1996), this also entails following participants across online platforms, since
they are used to spending a significant part of their everyday life within them.

Virtual Ethnography
A significant example of the methodological endeavor toward the adaptation
of traditional ethnographic techniques and concepts within the digital domain
is represented by virtual ethnography as featured by Christine Hine (2000),
who gave a crucial contribution to the development and systematization of
ethnography as a method to bridge offline and online realms. The principal
aim of virtual ethnography is to understand whether and to what extent the
virtual, that is, the complex network of public discourses and digital plat-
forms comprising the Internet, is experienced “as radically different and sep-
arate from ‘the real’” (Hine 2000, 8). Hine convincingly demonstrates how
the Internet, far from being experienced as a cyberspace apart from everyday
experience, is strictly intertwined with the everyday life of participants, as it
is a technology constantly used for empowering their actual identities as well
as their social bonds and activities (Woolgar 2002).
Hine grounds her ethnographic approach for exploring the Internet in two
theoretical views: the Internet as culture and the Internet as a cultural arti-
fact. The former conceives the Internet as a space in which social actors pro-
duce and reproduce culture, related to both the Internet itself and their topics
of interest – (consider for example fandoms, Jenkins 2006). The main field of
research for observing the Internet as a culture is represented by online
Caliandro 5

communities (mainly located on Internet Relay Chats [IRCs], or newsgroups)

(Wellman and Gulia 1997). The latter conceives the Internet as an object that
is shaped by discourses, goals, and practical uses of social actors. The main
field of research for observing the Internet as an artifact is the offline world,
that is, the everyday settings in which social actors situate and deploy the
aforementioned discourses, goals, and practices. From this theoretical frame-
work is derived the methodological principle according to which online real-
ity can be studied as being offline and vice versa. Actually, several virtual
ethnographic inquiries imply the observation of the same community, both in
their offline and online setting, as well as the submission of face-to-face
interviews to online communities’ members in order to understand the mean-
ings and scopes they assign to them (Gatson and Zweerink 2004; Muñiz and
Schau 2005).
In establishing this framework, virtual ethnography places in the fore-
ground the methodological necessity to adapt the traditional ethnographic
techniques to the digital domain, therefore somewhat virtualizing them (vir-
tual surveys, interviews via chat, interviews by e-mail, etc.), skillfully mixing
digital techniques with analogical techniques (e.g., participant observation
online and offline).

Multisited Ethnography
Multisited ethnography is a fully fledged ethnography of contemporaneity,
dealing with global fluxes of mobility and communication, which George
Marcus defines as “a mode of ethnographic research self-consciously embed-
ded in the world system, . . . , moves out from the single sites and local situ-
ation of conventional ethnographic research design to examine the circulation
of cultural meanings, objects, and identities in diffuse time-space” (1995,
96). Therefore, for an ethnographer living in contemporary digital society
(Lupton 2015), to follow things from site to site is necessary to confront
online environments, which tend to be ubiquitous and places where social
actors spend a significant part of their everyday lives (Beneito-Montagut
2011; Hine 2007).
There exist several examples of multisited ethnography developed on the
Internet. Let us consider the empirical research of Molz (2006), in which she
tracked the movements of round-the-world travelers across websites and
physical places, or Hine’s study of website developers in which she followed
both their online and offline practices (Hine 2000). In this sense, virtual eth-
nography can be deemed as a natural extension of multisited ethnography. As
in virtual ethnography, the continuous shift between the offline and online
world that characterizes multisited ethnography, places in the foreground the
6 Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 0(0)

methodological necessity to adapt traditional ethnographic techniques to the

digital environments. In the same way, there also occurs a translation of tra-
ditional ethnographic concepts to the digital domain, such as participant or
community. In particular, online communities are considered to be the main
online social formations which participants move across and where the “mul-
tisited ethnographer” has to follow them (Baym 2000).
Following Marcus’s (1995) exhortation to follow the thing, Hine recently
proposed a new approach to online multisited ethnography—which she calls
mobile ethnography (Hine 2011). Starting from the case study of the Antiques
Roadshow TV show, Hine suggests that it could be very interesting for the
ethnographer to follow the circulation of a given object, for example, a brand
or a TV program, across different online platforms, in order to observe and
compare the different meanings that different online audiences attach to it.
Hine does not deem this approach to be proper ethnography, rather an ethno-
graphic technique, “yet compatible with an ethnographic urge to understand
the object of inquiry from multiple perspectives” (2015, 15) and strategic for
opening up new paths of in-depth investigation both online and offline as
well as for stimulating the ethnographer’s imagination. Introducing mobile
ethnography, Hine also puts forward an interesting methodological intuition,
suggesting taking advantage of the Internet’s native techniques (Rogers 2009;
Thelwall 2005), that is, the “variety of ready-to-hand tools such as the Internet
search engine to locate relevant connections and explore some of the mean-
ing-making practices that unfold in diverse settings” (Hine 2011, 8). In par-
ticular, Hine insists on the importance of triangulating the outputs of some
online digital devices (such as the TouchGraph SEO Browser) with the
insights emerging from traditional qualitative techniques (e.g., face-to-face
interviews and/or virtual interviews via mailing lists) in order to identify
which key participants to contact as well as topics to investigate (Hine 2015).
Here I would like to expand Hine’s intuitions and suggestions by under-
taking an epistemological reflection on the natively digital methods embed-
ded in the aforementioned online devices, as well as the ways in which the
researcher can take advantage of such methods for tracing and understanding
sociocultural processes. Furthermore, embracing Hine’s exhortation to fol-
lowing an object across different online platforms, I would like to empirically
reflect on the different social formations that the different affordances of
social media and users co-create around the same focal object.

Form Adaptation to Reconfiguration of Methods

The transformation of the Internet, triggered by the broad diffusion of social
media, poses two challenges to ethnography: theoretical and methodological.
Caliandro 7

On a theoretical level, the ethnographer has to deal with the fact that social
media tend to structure online interactions across very fluid, ephemeral and
dispersed social forms—a condition that pushes toward radically rethinking
the classical ethnographic categories such as field, community, identity, par-
ticipant, ethics, etc. (Postill 2008). On a methodological level, social media
configure themselves as environments that provide the ethnographer with an
array of preset tools that actually organize the space and flow of interaction
(think about Twitter’s retweets and hashtags) (Marres and Gerlitz 2015),
which in some ways channel and constrain the scope of action of the ethnog-
rapher and challenge the approach itself.
Given these premises, what seems to be both methodologically challeng-
ing and promising for contemporary ethnography is not the attempt to adapt
the classical qualitative techniques of analysis to online environments but
rather to understand what we can learn from online environments in terms
of new methods and new languages, in that these are useful to reinnovate
the discipline of ethnography (Pink et al. 2016; Ruppert, Law, and Savage
2013).
In the following section, I reflect upon the possibility of combining Digital
Methods with ethnography. Specifically, I show how Digital Methods could
inspire the ethnographer through the new methodological strategies and con-
ceptual frameworks that are useful for mapping the social structures and cul-
tural processes being deployed in social media environments.

Digital Methods
In his article “Internet Research: The Question of Method,” Richard Rogers
affirms that the aim of the Digital Methods Program is to “introduce a new
era in Internet-related research where we no longer need to go off-line or to
digitize methods, in order to study the online” (2010, 243). According to
Rogers, the contemporary Internet overcomes the classical dichotomy
between “real” and “virtual,” allowing research to go far beyond the study of
online culture. Today, Rogers argues, the crucial issue is no longer “how
much of society and culture is online, but rather how to diagnose cultural
change and societal conditions using the Internet” (Rogers 2009, 8). In order
to accomplish this objective, it is necessary for researchers to equip them-
selves with an ad hoc methodological array, which would be natively digital.
That is why Rogers urges researchers not just to consider the Internet as an
object of analysis, but rather as a source of methods. Given these premises,
Rogers coins the “epistemological motto” follow the medium, that is, embrac-
ing the natural logic the Internet applies to itself in gathering, ordering, and
analyzing data—as with tags, links, or hashtags.
8 Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 0(0)

Twitter provides a useful instance to understand the above phenomenon.

On the one hand, Twitter provides people with a new means of interaction
and materializes new forms of sociality (Ruppert, Law, and Savage 2013).
On the other hand, Twitter provides researchers with the very tools for mea-
suring those new forms of interaction and sociality (Hutchinson 2016). Let us
think about the Retweet function (RT). RT is a device that mediates interac-
tions among users, but, at the same time, it is a native metric for measuring,
for instance, the direction (i.e., who retweets whom) and/or the intensity
(how frequently A retweets B) of such interactions. Seemingly, recent publi-
cations in the field of online content analysis suggest using native social
media devices such as mentions (@), retweets (RT), or hashtags (#) as meth-
odological sources for filtering and sampling texts as well as for constructing
grounded categories through which the content of such texts can be analyzed
(Lewis, Zamith, and Hermida 2013; Poell and Borra 2012).
As suggested by the examples above, Digital Methods can be distin-
guished from Virtual Methods (Hine 2005), which consist of the adapta-
tion of methodological strategies developed offline, such as surveys and
interviews, to online environments. On the other hand, Digital Methods
take the nature and affordances of the digital environment seriously, as
their main purpose is to follow how digital devices such as search engines
and social media platforms, and functions such as Twitter’s hashtags and
retweets, structure the flows of communication and interaction on the
Internet.
Digital Methods, as developed by Richard Rogers, are inspired by Bruno
Latour and Michel Callon’s Actor-Network Theory (Callon 1986; Latour
1999). Actor-network theory is a sociological stream that investigates the
complex relationship between humans and machines in their everyday life as
well as their interaction in the coconstruction of social reality. According to
Actor-Network Theory, social formations are “patterned networks of hetero-
geneous materials” (Law 1992, 381), which “include human and nonhuman
actors (i.e., individuals, institutions, and resources)” (Thomas, Price, and
Schau 2013, 1011). Actor-network theory urges researchers to understand
social formations as being the results of actors’ activity rather than as the a
priori starting point for analysis. For this purpose, Latour (2005) coins the
motto follow the natives, which means following the practices through which
social actors construct the social order as well as the “emic” categories they
use for framing and justifying it (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006; Goodenough
2009). This follow the natives motto also entails considering nonhuman
actors (e.g., digital devices) as quasi-subjects, that is, hybrids endowed with
a specific agency and morals that cooperate with human actors in the con-
struction of social formations (Latour 1988).
Caliandro 9

Thus, combining the principles of follow the medium and follow the
natives, it is possible to derive two useful strategies for the ethnographer cop-
ing with social media environments, that is, (a) observing and describing the
processes of online communication structuring enacted by social media
affordances and digital devices (follow the medium) and (b) observing and
understanding the online social formations emerging from different practices
of the use of digital devices enacted by users as well as the meanings they
attribute to activities deploying such social formations (follow the natives).
Furthermore, within this framework, both digital devices (nonhuman actors)
and users (human actors) can be considered as social coresearchers, since
they provide the ethnographer with the natively digital methods for analyzing
the digital forms of life (e.g., RTs) and with the emic categories for interpret-
ing them.
Let us consider for example Twitter’s hashtags. Hashtags are digital devices
for categorizing and collating tweets “related to a specific topic” (Bruns and
Burgess 2011, 2) (e.g., #wine, #punk, and #climatechange). Hashtags are gen-
erally used by users for creating threads of conversation around a common
theme or interest (Zappavigna 2011). Therefore, by following hashtags, a
researcher can define specific online social formations. Nevertheless, in order
to properly frame and understand the meaning of the activities developing in
such formations, it is not sufficient to follow and analyze hashtags per se;
rather one has to investigate and understand the practical uses actors make of
those hashtags. In a recent article on the Gamergate1 (GG) controversy,
Burgess and Matamoros-Fernández (2016) point out that the hashtag #gamer-
gate is used in opposite ways by two different “social factions” pursuing dif-
ferent goals. On the one hand, pro-GG users use the hashtag #gamergate for
denouncing the lack of ethics in gaming journalism, while, on the other hand,
anti-GG users use #gamergate for denouncing the sexual harassments and
abuses brought about by pro-GGs against feminist activists and female gamers
by means of the very hashtag #gamergate. Seemingly, in a recent empirical
research on trending topic hashtags, Bruns et al. (2016) illustrate how different
social practices enacted by Twitter users around specific hashtags are able to
put into existence different social spaces. For instance, certain hashtags such
as #breaking, #tsunami, or #charliehebdo are conducive to the generation of
what Bruns et al. call acute events. Acute events are characterized by attract-
ing a high percentage of RTs and tweets containing URLs. In relation to acute
events, Bruns et al. account for the tendency of Twitter’s users to “engage in
gatewatching activities both within and beyond Twitter [by] posting new
information, linked through embedded URLs, into the hashtag (or keyword)
conversation, and [retweeting] the material already available within Twitter
itself” (2016, 27). Conversely, hashtags such as #eurovision, #masterchef, or
10 Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 0(0)

#electionday generate what the researchers call media events, which attract a
very low percentage of RTs and URLs. Here Bruns et al. note that audiences
“tend to use Twitter as a second-screen channel, enabling them to comment on
and respond to what they see on television” (2016, 29).
In this case, we can see how technical functions such as #s, RTs, and URLs
function both as devices for materializing social formations and methodolog-
ical sources for measuring them; simultaneously, we acknowledge how users’
practices help researchers to better frame and interpret the nature of such
social formations as well as the meaning of activities developing within them.

Reassembling Social Formations

The methodological strategies and empirical cases inspired by the principles
of follow the medium and follow the natives introduced in the previous sec-
tion make clear that within a fluid and dynamic context such as that of social
media, the definition of an online social formation cannot be considered an a
priori task but rather an a posteriori one (Postill 2016). Thus, we can say the
main task for the ethnographer moving across social media environments is
not so much to identify an online community to immerse in or follow, but to
map the practice through which users and devices construct social formations
around an object on the move (Büscher and Urry 2009). A useful practical
strategy for doing this consists of following the thing, the medium, and the
natives, that is, following the circulation of an empirical object within a given
online environment or across different online environments, and observing
the specific social formations emerging around it from the interactions of
digital devices and users. In order to support the ethnographer in these proce-
dures I propose five useful (hopefully) analytical concepts: community, pub-
lic, crowd, self-presentation as a tool, and user as a device.2 Obviously, I urge
ethnographers to consider the aforementioned categories as sensitizing con-
cepts (Blumer 1954) that have to be systematically and case-by-case tested
and confronted by the empirical reality.

Communities and Online Communities

Generically the term “community” denotes a dense network of interpersonal
interactions among individuals sharing the same territory as well as a set of
values (Muñiz and O’Guinn 2001). However, this ideal type does not fit with
the actual conditions of contemporary globalized societies, characterized by
high levels of mobility, and the wide diffusion of mass communication
means. Actually the means of transportation and the new communication
technologies are able to “unite geographically dispersed individuals with
Caliandro 11

commonality of purpose and identity” (Muñiz and O’Guinn 2001, 413). In

this way, the notion of community can be better understood as “a network of
social relations marked by mutuality and emotional bonds” (Bender 1978,
145). Given the nature of geographically unbounded networks of social rela-
tions, communities can easily thrive on the online world—they usually relo-
cate themselves on a particular website, such as an online forum or an IRC,
which serves as a platform for social interactions and discussions (Sproull
and Faraj 1995; Wellman and Gulia 1997). Quentin Jones (1997) provides an
effective as well as synthetic definition of online community, very useful
from an empirical point of view. He argues that the prerequisite for an online
community is the presence of a virtual settlement that meets four conditions:
(a) interactivity, (b) more than two communicators, (c) common-public-place
where members can meet and interact, and (d) sustained membership over
time (Gruzd, Wellman, and Takhteyev 2011, 1298). As for traditional com-
munities, an online community continues to exist until its members experi-
ence a shared sense of belonging and perceive it as a social space in which
they are giving and receiving support (Schau, Muñiz, and Arnould 2009).
Yet, as highlighted by Christine Hine “the model of community study
turned out, however, not to be so readily applicable to the whole spectrum of
online interactions” (2008, 267; see also Postill 2008; Postill and Pink 2012).
Actually, the more the Internet expands, becoming social, the more the social
interactions unfolding across it become ephemeral and disperse (Andrejevic
2013). Let us simply think about our everyday use of social media; this very
often consists of updating our Facebook status or linking some content posted
by a friend, retweeting interesting news, or looking in a particular forum in
order to seek technical advice regarding fixing our antivirus software, or
maybe posting a comment of gratitude, and then never going back (Arvidsson
2013). Although these kinds of interaction are neither exhaustive nor compre-
hensive of the whole Internet activity, the majority of current online interac-
tion does not really create dense and persistent social formations such as
communitarian ones. Thus, it seems urgent to identify new categories to con-
ceptualize these new social forms. In order to do so, I will introduce, in the
next sections, the notions of crowds and the public, intended as ephemeral
noncommunitarian social forms based on publicity and affect (Bennett,
Segerberg, and Walker 2014; Papacharissi 2015). Although these terms his-
torically belong to the sociological debate in sometimes juxtaposed nuances,
conceived by early twentieth-century French sociology as, respectively, the
rational and the irrational manifestation of mass society (Le Bon [1895]
2002; Tarde 1901 [cited in Clark 1969]), sociological research has recently
re-addressed the definition of these concepts from a more neutral stance,
looking at the public and crowds as two complementary entities, not easily
12 Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 0(0)

distinguishable from each other—especially in their online manifestations

(Olofsson 2010).

Crowds and Online Crowds

Following Richard Butsch, we can generically define crowds as “a gathering
of people physically together and sharing a common activity” (2008, 9).
Classical sociological thought has framed crowds as an inescapable threat to
social order, being the kind of social formation that is intrinsically irrational,
passionate, unruly, and unpredictable and usually associated with the move-
ments of social protest that happened in European cities at the beginning of
the twentieth century (Brighenti 2014). Shifting to the contemporary Internet
domain, we can define an online crowd as the “affective unification and rela-
tive synchronization of a public in relation to a specific online site” (Stage
2013, 211). The online sites favor the gathering and coordination of online
crowds and therefore the achievement of their common goals. In this sense,
an online crowd can be framed as a social formation of individuals who
“gather virtually, behave and act collectively and produce effects and phe-
nomena which would not be possible without the Internet” (Russ 2007, 65).
A more systematic definition of the online crowd is provided by Carsten
Stage, who adds to the aforementioned conceptualization a crucial dimen-
sion, the affective one; specifically Stage points out:

A shared online event or space is of course not sufficient. To become an online

crowd or “socio-material entity,” the public must be characterised by intense
affective unification. Following this, the online crowd is used here to describe
a certain type of online behaviour where the participants of a public
simultaneously (1) share affective processes and (2) come together on certain
online sites.” (2013, 216)

Thus, affect amounts to a crucial dimension for defining offline as well as

online crowds. Anyway, differently from the offline crowds where the affec-
tive discharge propagates from body to body (Brighenti 2010), within the
online crowds the affect propagation is simulated by Internet users.
Specifically, Stage identifies three main practices of affective simulation: (1)
explicit expression of body reactions within the text of an online content; (2)
formatting of the online content (e.g., if the discourse is distorted, ruptured,
or redundant); and (3) temporary and simultaneous gathering around specific
online contents in relation to certain dramatic events (Stage 2013, 219).
Those groups of users who are active on Kickstarter.com represent a clear
example of an online crowd. On the one hand, onto Kickstarter converges a
Caliandro 13

very disaggregated bunch of users (i.e., people that normally do not know
each other and are socially disconnected), who, thanks to the website, are
able to organize themselves in order to achieve the same goal: funding a proj-
ect they like; once the project is successfully funded, they usually disband.
On the other hand, the possibility that a project is successfully funded depends
on the ability of the project creator to manage the effectivity of the backers.
There exist various ways for doing this; an effective strategy consists of
launching an explicit naïve project, that is, a project suitable for stimulating
the imagination and triggering the emotions of the backers. There are some
popular case histories of this, such as the “Salad Potato” project created by
the user Zack Danger Brown (Huffington Post 2014), or “Exploding Kitten.”
The latter is a silly card game mixing “kittens and explosions and laser
beams” created by Elan Lee (The Guardian 2015), which raised $8,782,517
(a significant part of which was collected in the first hours after the launch)
and 80,556 comments, most of them consisting of messages of support or
phatic expressions such as “Amazing!” or “I’m so excited! Can’t wait.”3
Another interesting example that shows the affective dynamics character-
izing the crowd and its collectively distributed nature can be found if we look
at teenagers on Twitter, as described by Arvidsson et al. (2015), whose
favorite game is to create hashtag trading topics. The case study illustrated by
the authors is that of #HappyBirthdayDebbieFromItaly. The hashtag
#HappyBirthdayDebbieFromItaly was launched on May 14, 2013, by fans of
the girl band LittleMix, in order to celebrate the birthday of the mother of one
of the members. In order to celebrate this birthday properly, some LittleMix
fans tried to push the hashtag to the list of Twitter trending topics. In order to
accomplish this goal, teens used a technical strategy that is as simple as it is
effective: copy-and-paste and Retweet. Essentially, teens started to copy-
and-paste and/or Retweet many times onto their Twitter timelines the same,
following message: “#HappyBirthdayDebbieFromItaly.” This technical
strategy paired up with a discursive strategy that consisted of (1) the pathetic
invocation of the fan base (“A RT won’t cost you anything please I beg you on
my knees #HappyBirthdayDebbieFromItaly”) and (2) the depiction of a per-
sonal status of anxiety connected to the desire of finally seeing the hashtag on
top of the trending topic list (“#HappyBirthdayDebbieFromItaly IT WON’T
GO UP. I CAN FEEL IT. PLEASE #RT WON’T COST YOU ANYTHING”).
Finally, once the goal has been achieved, the crowd of teens disbands—actu-
ally, the hashtag remained in the trending topic list just for one day, May 14,
2013.
In these empirical cases, the notion of online crowd reveals a good analyti-
cal concept for framing the social phenomena sketched above, since we
observed a collective of users (1) converging on a certain digital device, (2)
14 Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 0(0)

coordinating through the same digital device in order to achieve a common

goal, and (3) sharing affective intensities.

The Public and Online Public

The historical definition of a public finds its roots in the work by the French
sociologist Gabriel Tarde, who conceived the public in opposition to the crowd
as a rational and reflexive collective entity. Tarde defines the public as “purely
spiritual collectively, a dispersion of individuals who are physically separated
and whose cohesion is entirely mental,” and whose bond lies in the simultane-
ous “awareness of sharing at a same time an idea or a wish with a great num-
ber of men” (Tarde 1901 [cited in Clark 1969, 53]). Anyway, how can a
dispersed set of individuals share at the same time the same idea and accrue an
awareness of such sharing? The answer is simple: via technological devices.
Actually, a public could not exist without means of communication, such as,
for instance, newspapers, which are able to keep together the members of a
public, catalyzing their attention, and fostering a “virtual” sense of belonging
among them (Anderson 1983). Tarde also claims that the newspaper by itself
did not create a public or public opinion. To constitute a public, “readers
[have] to converse with each other about what they read in newspapers; . . .
through conversation, information spread from person to person, producing
public opinion” (Butsch 2008, 13). The term conversation is not intended to
be a coherent process of collective deliberation (Habermas 1989), but rather a
contingent exchange of personal opinions among individuals interacting
around the same media content (e.g., people reading and commenting on the
headline of a newspaper in a café). These fragments of conversation generate
a macro-discourse that keeps together heterogeneous and, sometimes, oppo-
site points of view. In this sense, according to Adam Arvidsson (2013), the
public can be defined as a mediated association among strangers (for instance,
through a newspaper or radio station), who are united by a temporary emo-
tional intensity, or a better focus of attention, directed toward a common
object, be it an event, a political issue, or a brand (Bruns and Burgess 2011;
Papacharissi and de Fatima Oliveira 2012). Therefore, members of a public
are not kept together by direct interaction, but by a social imaginary (or a dis-
course) created and re-elaborated by the members themselves that is spread
and put into circulation within the same public (Warner 2002).
The Tardian notion of “public” proves to be useful for framing different as
well as common phenomena of social aggregation and interaction deploying
onto social media platforms. Let us consider, for example, Twitter’s hashtags
related to political issues, such as #US2012 (US Presidential Election), #pri-
maryelection, #Obama, #Romney, and so on. Usually these kinds of hashtags
Caliandro 15

attract a motley array of subjects that articulate different opinions around the
same political issue they are tweeting. This phenomenon is well documented
by Anders Larsson and Hallvard Moe (2011) in their article “Studying
Political Microblogging: Twitter Users in the 2010 Swedish Election
Campaign.” Through the mapping of 99,832 tweets containing the hashtag
#val2010 (Swedish for #election2010), Larsson and Moe observed (1)
#val2010 attracted a heterogeneous set of social actors composed of journal-
ists, politicians (both Liberal and Conservative), and common users; (2) each
actor (or group of actors) involved tended to use #val2010 for various pur-
poses, such as criticizing a political candidate, criticizing a television debate,
or promoting a civic initiative; (3) the actors using the hashtag #val2010 were
basically disconnected from each other and did not engage in any collective
debate, since only 7 percent of the tweets collected contained a mention (@),
whereas 60.2 percent of the data set was made by singletons, that is, tweets
without the @ or RT sign.
Another interesting example is represented by a recent article by Arvidsson
and Caliandro (2016), where the authors, through an empirical analysis of the
hashtag #LouisVuitton on Twitter, introduce the notion of brand public.
According to Arvidsson and Caliandro the notion of brand public differs
from brand community in three substantial ways:

First, brand publics are social formations that are not based on interaction but
on a continuous focus of interest and mediation [thanks to digital devices such
as hashtags]. Second, participation in brand publics is not structured by
discussion or deliberation but by individual or collective affect. Third, in brand
publics, consumers do not develop a collective identity around the focal brand;
rather the brand is valuable as a medium that can offer publicity to a multitude
of diverse situations of identity. (2016, 727)

Thus, in both the cases presented above, we can see that #val2010 and
#LouisVuitton generate specific discursive spaces that entail heterogeneous
sets of actors—articulating a heterogeneous set of opinions and identities (or
a common imaginary)—who are not kept together by a network of direct
interactions, but rather by the work of the mediation of some digital devices,
the hashtags #val2010 and #LouisVuitton, which catalyze the attention of all
the actors at stake.

Self-Presentation as a Tool
As already said, the concepts of public and crowd have become useful ana-
lytical concepts to cope with the extreme variety of communicational and
16 Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 0(0)

interactional processes developing on social media, that are not always as

persistent and dense as the communitarian ones (Postill 2008). Several
empirical researches, both quantitative and qualitative, have shown that peo-
ple generally have loose relationships on social networks (Bennett and
Segerberg 2012; Van Dijck 2012) and use them not so much to interact and
discuss with others in a strict sense but rather as a means to maintain and
manage their own social networks, both offline and online (V. Miller 2008;
Parks 2011), through self-presentation strategies (Marwick and boyd 2011a).
This conception of self-presentation is actually the one I would like to draw
on here, since from the perspective of an ethnographer who has to cope with
the complexity and fluidity of social media environments, it is fruitful to
regard digital identity as a dynamic instance that emerges contingently from
the various self-presentation strategies which users develop within a public
space (Donath and boyd 2004).
The study of self-presentation strategies represents a staple analytical goal
for any ethnographic inquiry. Nevertheless, following the Digital Methods
paradigm, I think it could be useful to conceive self-presentation more as a
tool of analysis than an object of analysis (Bonini, Caliandro, and Massarelli
2016). From this perspective, self-presentation strategies are not simply an
interesting means to know something about the personality of the person who
is articulating them, but rather tools to (1) measure the degree of involvement
of a user within a given social formation, thus helping the ethnographer to
“decipher” the nature and reconstruct the structure of the social formation she
or he is facing and (2) reconstruct the collectively built and shared cultural
structure—since, through self-presentation, users convey a public image of
themselves that is constructed on a repertoire of symbols that they deem to be
widely shared and valued (Carah and Shaul 2016).
Let us clarify this point with a few examples. Within an online community,
members tend to play fixed social roles. For instance, consider the typology
through which Kozinets (2010) clusters the members of consumption’s online
communities. Four ideal types comprise Kozinets’ typology: devotee, insider,
newbie, and mingler. These ideal types correspond to the kind of involvement
and expertise each member transfers to the community. Therefore, each time
an ethnographer observes users’ self-presentations, through which they rep-
resent the role and function they play within the social group to which they
belong, she or he can be confident to be in front of a community. This strategy
is very useful for confronting social formations against the online platforms
in which they are situated. Actually, the architecture of some websites can
lead the ethnographer to think of facing a community whereas in reality the
community is not actually there. This is the case of online forums, which are
often deemed to be thriving places for communities (Postill 2016).
Caliandro 17

Let us consider online forums for patients. Online forums for cancer patients
are usually virtual spaces that host warm communities made up of patients,
parents, and doctors. The existence of such a social formation can be easily
deduced by observing the social roles members assume, which usually consist
of two main roles: the donor and the recipient of emotional and practical sup-
port (Ogard 2005; Rodgers and Chen 2005). However, it is not the same for the
online forum hosting diabetes patients. As argued by Vardanega and Vardanega
(2014), these kinds of patients tend to transform the forums they frequent into
“2.0 waiting rooms,” since they use them as a place for receiving medical
advice from doctors, rather than having long conversations with other patients.
We can conclude that, in this case, the different social structures emerging from
the same kind of online platform depend on the kind of topic convened by the
users, rather than the architecture of the online platform per se.
Things are even more different for publics and crowds. Fashion bloggers
as well as Twitter micro-celebrities (e.g., marketing gurus, TV performers)
are often involved in developing strategies of self-branding onto the social
media they use (Marwick and boyd 2011b; McQuarrie, Miller, and Phillips
2013). These strategies of self-branding aim at presenting oneself as an
authentic person, in order to invite para-social identification (Tolson 2010).
These strategies of self-presentation are not so much aimed at communicat-
ing one’s personal status or engagement within a given community but rather
at enhancing personal reputation through practices of the management of
one’s personal social network (Gandini 2016). In turn, an invisible and indis-
tinct audience of followers, which form a sort of online public around the
celebrity, more than a classical online community of fans (Marwick 2015),
makes this a personal social network. On the contrary, a user that—along
with hundreds of others at the same time—converges on the Facebook page
of a political activist, and, in a moment of collective enthusiasm, overfills the
page with a deluge of likes, phatic comments, and messages of support and
cheering, is actually renouncing part of his or her individual identity in order
to become part of an online crowd (Gerbaudo 2016).
Therefore, all these self-presentation strategies, rather than telling us some-
thing about the personal identities of the actors who develop them, help us to
better understand the structure of the online social formation in which they are
situated, as well as the cultural values circulating within that ecosystem.

The User as a Device

This reflection about the user’s self-presentation strategies as a tool for recon-
structing collective social and cultural structures, allows us to introduce
another methodological notion that could prove useful for addressing online
18 Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 0(0)

Figure 1. Regular vs stereotypical hipsters.

Source: (A) Excerpt taken from Instagram; (B) excerpt taken from Google Image.

social formations: that is, the notion of the user as a device. Following the
Actor-Network Theory, which considers non-human actors as quasi-subjects
and human actors as quasi-objects (Latour 1988), it is possible to conceptual-
ize the Internet user as a device (or a sensor) producing meta-data, rather than
a “standard” social actor—thus, without attempting to reconstruct his or her
biography or demographic status. In this way, the user becomes an actor who,
in some sense, collaborates with the ethnographer in his or her project of
research (Marres 2012). Actually, the meta-data produced by users concretely
helps the researcher in better defining his or her spatial and semantic context
of investigation—let us think, for example, about hashtags (#), which are
basically markers through which users develop a specific thread of conversa-
tion or self-categorize their own contents.
Let us clarify this point through a concrete case study. In March 2014, my
colleagues at the Centre for Digital Ethnography of the State University of
Milano and I led an online investigation about hipsterism, on behalf of a digi-
tal marketing company. We started by downloading 1,000,000 photos marked
with the hashtag #hipster from Instagram, by means of an ad hoc piece of
software built by the software developers of the Centre. Through the analysis
of a significant sample of 2,829 pictures (i.e., all the pictures collecting at
least one hundred “likes”) we discovered that the large majority of the photos
that were present in our database were used to replicate the typology of pic-
ture A, not B (see Figure 1).
To put it differently, on Instagram we did not run into the hipster stereotype,
rather into personal portraits through which users signaled the “hipster nature”
Caliandro 19

of some features they might have—in the case of picture A, a thick black pair
of glasses. Therefore, in this case, we can maintain that Instagram is not a
virtual place on which a community of hipster convenes; rather Instagram
functions as a public space through which Internet users co-create a specific
social imaginary related to the concept of hipsterism, and in doing so helping
the research to better define this phenomenon. Actually, by continuing to fol-
low this collective “game of hipsterization of objects” we realized that users
tended to signal Tumblr as a social network for hipsters. It is not by chance
that moving to Tumblr, we actually discovered different users and contents
more akin to the ideal type of hipster (Arsel and Thompson 2011).
Along with all those cases in which users explicitly produce meta-data, for
instance, by creating a hashtag, there are also cases in which users produce
them implicitly, although with the same purposes: that is, to circumscribe a
discursive space and self-categorize their own contents. The following exam-
ple is taken from an online forum of discussion for moms (Cossetta and
Caliandro 2013).

I saw people dying to buy Alviero Martini (a brand that, among the other
things, I adore, but I can’t afford the luxury of purchasing). Well, if one is rich
then she can buy it, but I don’t understand those who have to buy branded
clothes for their kids at all costs, even if they can’t pay the bills at the end of the
month! Well, me too, I bought my baby Alviero Martini shoes, but in my case
it was a present from my grandparents and there were discounts.4 (May 25,
2010, forum.alfemminile.com)

As can easily be observed, this mother is not merely communicating the fact
that she bought a pair of branded shoes, but also (and above all) what she is
doing is trying to justify her act of consumption through a complex ritual of
self-narration. This mother is not only conveying a message to her audience,
but also the “right way” to frame and interpret the message itself. Specifically,
this mother is stating she loves a luxury brand, such as Alviero Martini, but in
a way that differentiates her from the mass of consumers—it seems as if she
would have marked her online message with an “invisible hashtag,” some-
thing like #IamNotaBrandJunkie or similar. For the ethnographer, it is crucial
to allow these “invisible hashtags” to materialize, since they do not give as
much information about a specific mother per se; rather they permit the
reconstruction of a maternal imaginary that is socially shared by the actors
participating in the context of study. Actually, through her public self-
presentation, the aforementioned mother conveys an image of herself as a
reflexive and rational consumer, which is not casual, but instead constructed
on a discursive topos that is widely shared and valued within online forums
20 Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 0(0)

devoted to maternity: that of the mother as a reflexive consumer (Song et al.

2012). Thus, also in this case the self-presentation strategy reveals a useful,
not per se, tool for reconstructing a shared cultural system.
Still, the social practice to justify one’s own demeanor in public is neither
something new, nor something that pertains exclusively to the online domain.
Nevertheless, the specific practice of self-categorizing one’s own messages is
strictly embedded in, and shaped by, the everyday interactions between users
and digital devices. Specifically, this practice derives from a form of hyper-
reflexivity driven by the affordances of social media, which continuously
make users aware of acting in front of an invisible audience (boyd 2011).
Furthermore, these practices of self-categorization (and evaluation) of user-
generated contents are also driven by the “behavior” of social media, which
not only self-organizes its own communicative fluxes, but also constantly
“invites” users to do the same through a complex array of likes, tags, hashtags,
favorites, etc. (Gerlitz and Lury 2014; Gershon 2011).

Conclusions
In this article, I have attempted to present some research strategies and ana-
lytical concepts useful for the ethnographer who has to cope (during his or
her fieldwork) with the complexity of social media environments. As argued,
social media platforms present themselves as very complex, fluid, and frag-
mented spaces. Within these spaces, it is not always possible to consider the
“classical” online community as the privileged field site for the ethnographer,
into which she or he delves. Taking inspiration from the paradigms of Digital
Methods, Actor-Network Theory, and Multisited Ethnography, I have sug-
gested that the main task for the ethnographer moving across social media
environments is no longer that of identifying an online community to immerse
into or follow but to map the practices through which users and devices con-
struct social formations around an object on the move. Thus, a challenging
research question for an ethnographer exploring contemporary online spaces
could not be so much “Which kind of online community should I study?”;
rather “Is the online social formation I am faced with actually a community?”
Specifically, I have stressed that a practical strategy for answering a question
of this kind could be that of following the thing, the medium, and the natives,
that is, following the circulation of an empirical object (such as a topic of
discussion, a political issue, or brand) within a given online environment or
across different online environments, and observing the specific social for-
mations emerging around it from the interactions of digital devices and users.
Only after this operation of mapping is concluded, the ethnographer can iden-
tify the specific social formation with which she or he is confronted, defining
Caliandro 21

it as a community or something else, such as a public or a crowd. In other

words, the definition of the online social formation the ethnographer has to
deal with is not necessarily the starting point of his or her inquiry, rather the
point of arrival.
In order to support the ethnographer in his or her research on social media
environments, I have proposed five specific analytical concepts: community,
public, crowd, self-presentation as a tool, and user as a device. I do not claim
these categories to be exhaustive or able to cover the whole range of possible
online social formations thriving on the Internet. More simply, they can be
conceived as analytical tools that help the ethnographer to go beyond merely
accounting for the spatial complexity and fluidity of social media environ-
ments, thus proving to be useful tools for coping with such complexity and
fluidity.
In building the aforementioned analytical concepts, I have tried to propose
some suitable methodological strategies for an ethnography for the Internet,
rather than establishing a new style of ethnography of the Internet (Hine
2015). Actually, using these concepts for mapping online environments is not
the same as conducting a proper ethnography—since no direct interaction
with participants is expected. Nevertheless, their application entails an ethno-
graphic attitude and utility, since it supports the ethnographer in delving into
social formations, systems of meaning, and strategies of self-presentation—
all key and basic topics for ethnographic inquiries.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publica-
tion of this article.

Notes
1. See Massanari (2015) and Burgess and Matamoros-Fernández (2016) for more
information about the Gamergate case.
2. It is worth stressing here that I diverge substantially from the Actor-Network
Theory paradigm, specifically as far as the methodological role of “natives
categories” is concerned, because my main methodological benchmark is the
Digital Methods paradigm. In fact, in proposing categories such as “public” or
“crowd,” I no longer account for the emic categories (Goodenough 2009) that
users use for framing the online social formations in which they are situated;
rather I am imposing ethic categories, i.e., prefabricated normative categories.
22 Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 0(0)

Nevertheless, my intention here is not to (1) develop a new style of ethnogra-

phy grounded on actor-network theory, but rather to take inspiration from some
of its principles (especially that of nonhuman actors’ agency) for supporting
ethnographers crossing social media environments; (2) simply account for the
sociocultural complexity pertaining to social media environments, rather than
to provide ethnographers with practical tools for coping with such complexity.
3. I AM SO EXCITED!! Can’t wait!!!, Emily Sheafe on January 20; amazing!,
Mitchell Hammond on January 20 (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elanlee/
exploding-kittens/posts/1112377#comments).
4. Post translated from Italian by the author.

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Author Biography
Alessandro Caliandro is lecturer in Branding and Digital Media in the Media
Department at Middlesex University London, UK, and research coordinator at the
Centre for Digital Ethnography at State University of Milano
Research Methods
in Anthropology
Qualitative and
Quantitative Approaches
FIFTH EDITION

H. RUSSELL BERNARD

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 12

Participant Observation

Participant observation fieldwork is the foundation of cultural anthropology. It involves

getting close to people and making them feel comfortable enough with your presence so
that you can observe and record information about their lives. If this sounds a bit crass,
I mean it to come out that way. Only by confronting the truth about participant observa-
tion—that it involves a deception and impression management—can we hope to conduct
ourselves ethically in fieldwork. Much more about this later.
Participant observation is both a humanistic method and a scientific one. It produces
the kind of experiential knowledge that lets you talk convincingly, from the gut, about
what it feels like to plant a garden in the high Andes or dance all night in a street rave in
Seattle.
It also produces effective, positivistic knowledge—the kind that can move the levers of
the world if it gets into the right hands. Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1992), for example,
developed a nomothetic theory, based on participant observation, that accounts for the
tragedy of very high infant mortality in northeast Brazil and the direct involvement of
mothers in their infants’ deaths. Anyone who hopes to develop a program to lower the
incidence of infant mortality in that part of the world will have to read Scheper-Hughes’s
analysis (box 12.1).

Romancing the Methods

It used to be that the skills for doing fieldwork were mysterious and unteachable,
something you just learned, out there in the field. In the 1930s, John Whiting and some
of his fellow anthropology students at Yale University asked their professor, Leslie Spier,
for a seminar on methods. ‘‘This was a subject to discuss casually at breakfast,’’ Whiting
recalls Spier telling him, not something worthy of a seminar (Whiting 1982:156). Tell this
story to seasoned anthropologists at a convention today, and it’s a good bet they’ll come
back with a story of their own just like it.
It’s fine for anthropologists to romanticize fieldwork—vulcanologists and oceanogra-
phers do it, too, by the way—particularly about fieldwork in places that take several days
to get to, where the local language has no literary tradition, and where the chances are
nontrivial of coming down with a serious illness. Research really is harder to do in some
places than in others. But anthropologists are more likely these days to study the impact
of television in culture in Brazil (Kottak 2009), the meaning of hair styles among African
American women (Dione Rosado 2007), the everyday culture of the English (Fox 2004),
the formation of Croatian identity in Croatia and in Toronto (Winland 2007), how basic
training in the U. S. Army transforms young people into soldiers (Bornmann 2009),
consumer behavior (Sherry 1995), gay culture (Boellstorff 2007), or life on the mean

256
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 257

BOX 12.1

PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION AND APPLIED

ANTHROPOLOGY

Participant observation has long been used in product applications research,

where the object is to solve a human problem. One area of applied anthropol-
ogy that’s getting a lot of attention is product development. Panasonic thought
it had a winning idea in 1995 for an electric razor that women could use in the
shower—but none of the women they observed using the shavers during home
visits took it into the shower. The women (who were in bathing suits) all said
that (1) they didn’t believe a razor could be waterproof and (2) they were afraid
of dropping the razor in the shower and cracking the porcelain. The shiny,
smooth material used in making the razor was interpreted in Japan as an indica-
tor of quality but was interpreted by American women as an indicator of fragil-
ity. And thus the Panasonic Lady Shaver was rebuilt for the American market
with a then-new kind of rubbery material that looked (and was) non-slip and
waterproof (Rosenthal and Capper 2006:228).

streets of big cities (Bourgois 1995; Fleisher 1998) than they are to study isolated tribal or
peasant peoples. It would take a real inventory to find out how much more likely, but in
Hume and Mulcock’s (2004) collection of 17 self-reflective studies of anthropologists
about their fieldwork, just three cases deal with work in isolated communities (Further
Reading: street ethnography).
And although participant observation in small, isolated communities has some special
characteristics, the techniques and skills that are required seem to me to be pretty much
the same everywhere.

WHAT IS PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION?

Participant observation usually involves fieldwork, but not all fieldwork is participant
observation. Gomes do Espirito Santo and Etheredge (2002) interviewed 1,083 male cli-
ents of female sex workers and collected saliva specimens (to test for HIV) during 38
nights of fieldwork in Dakar, Senegal. The data collection involved a team of six field-
workers, and the lead researcher was with the team throughout the 3.5 months that it
took to collect the data. This was serious fieldwork, but hardly participant observation.
So much for what participant observation isn’t. Here’s what it is: Participant observa-
tion is one of those strategic methods I talked about in chapter 1—like experiments,
surveys, or archival research. It puts you where the action is and lets you collect data . . .
any kind of data you want, narratives or numbers. It has been used for generations by
positivists and interpretivists alike.
A lot of the data collected by participant observers are qualitative: field notes taken
about things you see and hear in natural settings; photographs of the content of people’s
houses; audio recordings of people telling folk tales; video of people making canoes, get-
ting married, having an argument; transcriptions of taped, open-ended interviews, and
so on.
But lots of data collected by participant observers are quantitative and are based on
258 CHAPTER 12

methods like direct observation, questionnaires, and pile sorts. Whether you consider
yourself an interpretivist or a positivist, participant observation gets you in the door so
you can collect life histories, attend rituals, and talk to people about sensitive topics.
Participant observation involves going out and staying out, learning a new language
(or a new dialect of a language you already know), and experiencing the lives of the people
you are studying as much as you can. Participant observation is about stalking culture in
the wild—establishing rapport and learning to act so that people go about their business
as usual when you show up. If you are a successful participant observer, you will know
when to laugh at what people think is funny, and when people laugh at what you say, it
will be because you meant it to be a joke.
Participant observation involves immersing yourself in a culture and learning to
remove yourself every day from that immersion so you can intellectualize what you’ve
seen and heard, put it into perspective, and write about it convincingly. When it’s done
right, participant observation turns fieldworkers into instruments of data collection and
data analysis.
The implication is that better fieldworkers are better data collectors and better data
analyzers. And the implication of that is that participant observation is not an attitude or
an epistemological commitment or a way of life. It’s a craft. As with all crafts, becoming
a skilled artisan at participant observation takes practice.

SOME BACKGROUND AND HISTORY

Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942) didn’t invent participant observation, but he is widely
credited with developing it as a serious method of social research. A British social anthro-
pologist (born in Poland), Malinowski went out to study the people of the Trobriand
Islands, in the Indian Ocean, just before World War I. At the time, the Trobriand Islands
were a German possession, so when the war broke out, Malinowski was interned and
could not return to England for 3 years. He made the best of the situation, though. Here
is Malinowski describing his methods:

Soon after I had established myself in Omarkana, Trobriand Islands, I began to take
part, in a way, in the village life, to look forward to the important or festive events, to
take personal interest in the gossip and the developments of the village occurrences; to
wake up every morning to a new day, presenting itself to me more or less as it does to
the natives. . . . As I went on my morning walk through the village, I could see intimate
details of family life, of toilet, cooking, taking of meals; I could see the arrangements for
the day’s work, people starting on their errands, or groups of men and women busy at
some manufacturing tasks.
Quarrels, jokes, family scenes, events usually trivial, sometimes dramatic but always
significant, form the atmosphere of my daily life, as well as of theirs. It must be remem-
bered that the natives saw me constantly every day, they ceased to be interested or
alarmed, or made self-conscious by my presence, and I ceased to be a disturbing element
in the tribal life which I was to study, altering it by my very approach, as always happens
with a newcomer to every savage community. In fact, as they knew that I would thrust
my nose into everything, even where a well-mannered native would not dream of
intruding, they finished by regarding me as a part and parcel of their life, a necessary
evil or nuisance, mitigated by donations of tobacco. (1961 [1922]:7–8)

Ignore the patronizing rhetoric about the ‘‘savage community’’ and ‘‘donations of
tobacco.’’ (I’ve learned to live with this part of our history in anthropology. Knowing that
all of us, in every age, look quaint, politically incorrect, or just plain hopeless to those
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 259

who come later has made it easier.) Focus instead on the amazing, progressive (for that
time) method that Malinowski advocated: Spend lots and lots of time in studying a cul-
ture, learn the language, hang out, do all the everyday things that everyone else does,
become inconspicuous by sheer tenaciousness, and stay aware of what’s really going on.
Apart from the colonialist rhetoric, Malinowski’s discussion of participant observation is
as resonant today as it was almost a century ago (box 12.2).

BOX 12.2

NOTES AND QUERIES . . .

By the time Malinowski went to the Trobriands, Notes and Queries on Anthro-
pology—the fieldwork manual produced by the Royal Anthropological Institute
of Great Britain and Ireland—was in its fourth edition. The first edition came out
in 1874 and the last edition (the sixth) was reprinted five times until 1971.
Forty years later, that final edition of Notes and Queries is still must reading
for anyone interested in learning about anthropological field methods. Once
again, ignore the fragments of paternalistic colonialism—‘‘a sporting rifle and a
shotgun are . . . of great assistance in many districts where the natives may
welcome extra meat in the shape of game killed by their visitor’’ (Royal Anthro-
pological Institute 1951:29)—and Notes and Queries is full of useful, late-model
advice about how to conduct a census, how to take impressions of engraved
objects, and what questions to ask about sexual orientation, infanticide, food
production, warfare, art. . . . The book is just a treasure.

We make the most consistent use of participant observation in anthropology, but the
method has very, very deep roots in sociology. Beatrice Webb was doing participant obser-
vation—complete with note taking and informant interviewing—in the 1880s and she
wrote trenchantly about the method in her memoir (Webb 1926). Just about then, the
long tradition in sociology of urban ethnography—the ‘‘Chicago School’’—began at the
University of Chicago under the direction of Robert Park and Ernest Burgess (see Park et
al. 1925). One of Park’s students was his son-in-law, Robert Redfield, the anthropologist
who pioneered community studies in Mexico.
Just back from lengthy fieldwork with Aborigine peoples in Australia, another young
anthropologist, William Lloyd Warner, was also influenced by Park. Warner launched one
of the most famous American community-study projects of all time, the Yankee City
series (Warner 1963; Warner and Hunt 1941). (Yankee City was the pseudonym for New-
buryport, Massachusetts.) In 1929, sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd published the first
of many ethnographies about Middletown. (Middletown was the pseudonym for Muncie,
Indiana.)
Some of the classic ethnographies that came out of the early Chicago School include
Harvey Zorbaugh’s The Gold Coast and the Slum (1929) and Clifford Shaw’s The Jack
Roller (1930). In The Jack Roller, a 22-year-old named Stanley talks about what it was like
to grow up as a delinquent in early 20th-century Chicago. It still makes great reading.
Becker et al.’s Boys in White (1961)—about the student culture of medical school in
the 1950s—should be required reading, even today, for anyone trying to understand the
culture of medicine in the United States. The ethnography tradition in sociology contin-
260 CHAPTER 12

ues in the pages of the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, which began in 1972 under
the title Urban Life and Culture (Further Reading: Chicago School of ethnography).
Participant observation today is everywhere—in political science, management, educa-
tion, nursing, criminology, social psychology—and one of the terrific results of all this is
a growing body of literature about participant observation itself. There are highly focused
studies, full of practical advice, and there are poignant discussions of the overall experience
of fieldwork. For large doses of both, see Wolcott (1995), Agar (1996), and Handwerker
(2001). There’s still plenty of mystery and romance in participant observation, but you
don’t have to go out unprepared (Further Reading: participant observation fieldwork).

FIELDWORK ROLES
Fieldwork can involve three very different roles: (1) complete participant, (2) participant
observer, and (3) complete observer. The first role involves deception—becoming a
member of a group without letting on that you’re there to do research. The third role
involves following people around and recording their behavior with little if any interac-
tion. This is part of direct observation, which we’ll take up in chapter 14.
By far, most ethnographic research is based on the second role, that of the participant
observer. Participant observers can be insiders who observe and record some aspects of
life around them (in which case, they’re observing participants), or they can be outsiders
who participate in some aspects of life around them and record what they can (in which
case, they’re participating observers).
In 1965, I went to sea with a group of Greek sponge fishermen in the Mediterranean.
I lived in close quarters with them, ate the same awful food as they did, and generally
participated in their life—as an outsider. I didn’t dive for sponges, but I spent most of
my waking hours studying the behavior and the conversation of the men who did. The
divers were curious about what I was writing in my notebooks, but they went about their
business and just let me take notes, time their dives, and shoot movies (Bernard 1987). I
was a participating observer.
Similarly, when I went to sea in 1972 and 1973 with oceanographic research vessels, I
was part of the scientific crew, there to watch how oceanographic scientists, technicians,
and mariners interacted and how this interaction affected the process of gathering ocean-
ographic data. There, too, I was a participating observer (Bernard and Killworth 1973).
Circumstances can sometimes overtake the role of mere participating observer. In
1979, El Salvador was in civil war. Thousands fled to Honduras where they were sheltered
in refugee camps near the border. Phillipe Bourgois went to one of those camps to initiate
what he hoped would be his doctoral research in anthropology. Some refugees there
offered to show him their home villages and Bourgois crossed with them, illegally, into El
Salvador for what he thought would be a 48-hour visit. Instead, Bourgois was trapped,
along with about a thousand peasants, for 2 weeks, as the Salvadoran military bombed,
shelled, and strafed a 40-square-kilometer area in search of rebels (Bourgois 1990). Per-
force, Bourgois became an observing participant.
John Van Maanen played both of these roles, one after the other, in his dissertation
research on how rookie cops in a California city become street-wise. There was nothing
accidental about this, either. First, Van Maanen went through the 3-month training
course at the police academy. Everyone at the academy knew why he was there, but he
was a full participant in the training. He was an observing participant. Then, for 4 months,
Van Maanen rode 8 to 10 hours a day in the back of a patrol car as an participant observer
(Van Maanen 1973). His first role not only gave Van Maanen the credibility he needed
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 261

for his second role to be successful; it also gave him a deep appreciation of what he was
observing in his second role.
Researchers at the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons asked Mark Fleisher (1989) to do an
ethnographic study of job pressures on guards in a maximum-security federal penitentiary
in California. It costs a lot to train a guard—a correctional officer, or CO in the jargon of
the profession—and there was an unacceptably high rate of them leaving the job after a
year or two. Could Fleisher look into the problem?
Fleisher said he’d be glad to do the research and asked when he could start ‘‘walking
the mainline’’—that is, accompanying the COs on their rounds through the prison. He
was told that he’d be given an office at the prison and that the guards would come to his
office to be interviewed. Fleisher said he was sorry, but he was an anthropologist, he was
doing participant observation, and he’d have to have the run of the prison. Sorry, they
said back, only sworn correctional officers can walk the prison halls. So, swear me in, said
Fleisher, and off he went to training camp for 6 weeks to become a sworn federal correc-
tional officer. Then he began his year-long study of the United States Penitentiary at
Lompoc, California. In other words, he became an observing participant in the culture he
was studying. Like Van Maanen, Fleisher never hid what he was doing. When he went to
USP-Lompoc, Fleisher told everyone that he was an anthropologist doing a study of
prison life.
Barbara Marriott (1991) studied how the wives of U.S. Navy male officers contributed
to their husbands’ careers. Marriott was herself the wife of a retired captain. She was able
to bring the empathy of 30 years’ full participation to her study. She, too, took the role
of observing participant and, like Fleisher, she told her informants exactly what she was
doing.
Holly Williams (1995) spent 14 years as a nurse, ministering to the needs of children
who had cancer. When Williams did her doctoral dissertation, on how the parents of
those young patients coped with the trauma, she started as a credible insider, as someone
whom the parents could trust with their worst fears and their hopes against all hope.
Williams was a complete participant who became an observing participant by telling the
people whom she was studying exactly what she was up to and enlisting their help with
the research (box 12.3).

HOW MUCH TIME DOES IT TAKE?

Anthropological field research traditionally takes a year or more because it takes that long
to get a feel for the full round of people’s lives. It can take that long just to settle in, learn
a new language, gain rapport, and be in a position to ask good questions and get good
answers.
A lot of participant observation studies, however, are done in a matter of weeks or a
few months. Norman Conti (2009) was a participant observer during a 21-week course at
a police academy, documenting how recruits develop their occupational culture. Gretchen
Purser (2009) spent 5 months studying the hiring of illegal immigrant day laborers. She
divided her time each week between a street corner that had become a shape-up venue
and a not-for-profit agency about a mile away that brought day laborers and potential
employers together.
At the extreme low end, it is possible to do useful participant observation in just a few
days. Assuming that you’ve wasted as much time in Laundromats as I did when I was a
student, you could conduct a reasonable participant observation study of one such place
in a week. You’d begin by bringing in a load of wash and paying careful attention to
what’s going on around you.
262 CHAPTER 12

BOX 12.3

GOING NATIVE

Some fieldworkers start out as participating observers and find that they are
drawn completely into their informants’ lives. In 1975, Kenneth Good went to
study the Yanomami in the Venezuelan Amazon. He planned on living with the
Yanomami for 15 months, but he stayed on for nearly 13 years. ‘‘To my great
surprise,’’ says Good, ‘‘I had found among them a way of life that, while danger-
ous and harsh, was also filled with camaraderie, compassion, and a thousand
daily lessons in communal harmony’’ (Good 1991:ix). Good learned the lan-
guage and became a nomadic hunter and gatherer. He was adopted into a lin-
eage and given a wife. (Good and his wife, Yárima, tried living in the United
States, but after a few years, Yárima returned to the Yanomami.)
Marlene Dobkin de Rios did fieldwork in Peru and married the son of a Peru-
vian folk healer whose practice she studied (Dobkin de Rios 1981). And Jean
Gearing (1995) is another anthropologist who married her closest informant on
the island of St. Vincent.
Does going native mean loss of objectivity? Perhaps, but not necessarily. In
the industrialized countries of the West, we expect immigrants to go native. We
expect them to become fluent in the local language, to make sure that their
children become fully acculturated, to participate in the economy and politics
of the nation, and so on. If some of them become anthropologists, no one ques-
tions whether their immigrant background produces a lack of objectivity. Since
total objectivity is, by definition, a myth, I’d worry more about producing credi-
ble data and strong analysis and less about whether going native is good or
bad.

After two or three nights of observation, you’d be ready to tell other patrons that you
were conducting research and that you’d appreciate their letting you interview them. The
reason you could do this is because you already speak the native language and have
already picked up the nuances of etiquette from previous experience. Participant observa-
tion would help you intellectualize what you already know.
In general, though, participant observation is not for the impatient. Gerald Berreman
studied life in Sirkanda, a Pahari-speaking village in north India. Berreman’s interpreter-
assistant, Sharma, was a Hindu Brahmin who neither ate meat nor drank alcohol. As a
result, villagers did neither around Berreman or his assistant. Three months into the
research, Sharma fell ill and Berreman hired Mohammed, a young Muslim schoolteacher
to fill in.
When the villagers found out that Mohammed ate meat and drank alcohol, things
broke wide open and Berreman found out that there were frequent intercaste meat and
liquor parties. When villagers found out that the occasional drink of locally made liquor
was served at Berreman’s house, ‘‘access to information of many kinds increased propor-
tionately’’ (Berreman 1962:10). Even then, it still took Berreman 6 months in Sirkanda
before people felt comfortable performing animal sacrifices when he was around (Berre-
man 1962:20).
And don’t think that long term is only for foreign fieldwork. It took Daniel Wolf 3
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 263

years just to get into the Rebels, a brotherhood of outlaw bikers, and another couple of
years riding with them before he had the data for his doctoral dissertation (Wolf 1991).
The amount of time you spend in the field can make a big difference in what you
learn. Raoul Naroll (1962) found that anthropologists who stayed in the field for at least
a year were more likely to report on sensitive issues like witchcraft, sexuality, political
feuds, etc. Back in chapter 3, I mentioned David Price’s study of water theft among farm-
ers in Egypt’s Fayoum Oasis. You might have wondered then how in the world he was
able to do that study. Each farmer had a water allotment—a certain day each week and a
certain amount of time during which water could flow to his fields. Price lived with these
farmers for 8 months before they began telling him privately that they occasionally
diverted water to their own fields from those of others (1995:106). Ethnographers who
have done very long-term participant observation—that is, a series of studies over dec-
ades—find that they eventually get data about social change that is simply not possible to
get in any other way (Kemper and Royce 2002).
My wife Carole and I spent May 2000 on Kalymnos, the Greek island where I did my
doctoral fieldwork in 1964–65. We’d been visiting that island steadily for 40 years, but
something qualitatively different happened in 2000. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it,
but by the end of the month I realized that people were talking to me about grandchil-
dren. The ones who had grandchildren were chiding me—very good-naturedly, but chid-
ing nonetheless—for not having any grandchildren yet. The ones who didn’t have
grandchildren were in commiseration mode. They wanted someone with whom to share
their annoyance that ‘‘Kids these days are in no hurry to make families’’ and that ‘‘All
kids want today . . . especially girls . . . is to have careers.’’
This launched lengthy conversations about how ‘‘everything had changed’’ since we
had been our children’s ages and about how life in Greece was getting to be more and
more like Europe (which is what many Greeks call Germany, France, and the rest of the
fully industrialized nations of the European Union), and even like the United States. I
suppose there were other ways I could have gotten people into give-and-take conversa-
tions—about culture change, gender roles, globalization, modernization, and other big
topics—but the grandchildren deficit was a terrific opener in 2000. It wasn’t just age.
These conversations were the result of the rapport that comes with having common his-
tory with people.
Here’s history. In 1964, Carole and I brought our then 2-month-old daughter with us.
Some of the same people who joked with me in 2000 about not having grandchildren had
said to me in 1964: ‘‘Don’t worry, next time you’ll have a son.’’ I recall having been really,
really annoyed at the time, but writing it down as data. A couple of years later, I sent
friends on Kalymnos the announcement of our second child—another girl. I got back
kidding remarks like ‘‘Congratulations! Keep on trying. . . . Still plenty of time to have a
boy!’’ Those were data, too. And when I told people that Carole and I had decided to
stop at two, some of them offered mock condolences: ‘‘Oh, now you’re really in for it!
You’ll have to get dowries for two girls without any sons to help.’’ Now those are data!
Skip to 2004, when our daughter, son-in-law, and new granddaughter Zoë came to
Kalymnos for Zoë’s first birthday. There is a saying in Greek that ‘‘the child of your child
is twice your child.’’ You can imagine all the conversations, late into the night, about that.
More data. By 2009, the grandchildren deficit had been resolved for many of my cohort,
but not for all. By this time, people in their late 60s and early 70s were talking openly
about things that could not have been imagined 40 years earlier, like: Who will take care
of old people if there are no granddaughters?
Bottom line: You can do highly focused participant observation research in your own
264 CHAPTER 12

language, to answer specific questions about your own culture, in a short time. How do
middle-class, second-generation Mexican American women make decisions on which of
several brands of pinto beans to select when they go grocery shopping? If you are a
middle-class Mexican American woman, you can probably find the answer to that ques-
tion, using participant observation, in a few weeks, because you have a wealth of personal
experience to draw on.
But if you’re starting out fresh, and not as a member of the culture you’re studying,
count on taking 3 months or more, under the best conditions, to be accepted as a partici-
pant observer—that is, as someone who has learned enough to learn. And count on taking
a lifetime to learn some things.

Rapid Assessment
Applied researchers don’t always have the luxury of doing long-term participant obser-
vation fieldwork. In fact, applied work—like needs assessment in nutrition, education,
and agricultural development—often has to be done in a few weeks. This doesn’t leave
much time for building rapport, and applied anthropologists have developed rapid eth-
nographic assessment procedures, including participatory rapid assessment. These
methods are now used by anthropologists in long-term fieldwork.
In participatory mapping, for example, people draw maps of their villages and locate
key places on the maps. Robert Chambers, a pioneer in PRA, spent 2 full days in 1974
trying to map the wells in an Indian village. Fifteen years later, he tells us, in 1989, one of
his colleagues asked people in another Indian village to map their wells. The job was done
in 25 minutes and the villagers noted which wells had water and which were dry (Cham-
bers 2006). In participatory transects, a technique that Chambers borrowed from wildlife
biology, you walk through an area systematically, with key informants, observing and
asking for explanations of everything you see along the transect. Chambers also engages
people in group discussions of key events in a village’s history and asks them to identify
clusters of households according to wealth. In other words, as an applied anthropologist,
Chambers is called on to do rapid assessment of rural village needs, and he takes the
people fully into his confidence as research partners. This method is just as effective in
organizations as in small villages.
Applied medical anthropologists also use rapid assessment methods. The focused eth-
nographic study method, or FES, was developed by Sandy Gove (a physician) and Gretel
Pelto (an anthropologist) for the World Health Organization to study acute respiratory
illness (ARI) in children. The FES manual gives detailed instructions to fieldworkers for
running a rapid ethnographic study of ARI in a community (Gove and Pelto 1994; WHO
1993).
Many ARI episodes turn out to be what physicians call pneumonia, but that is not
necessarily what mothers call the illness. Researchers ask mothers to talk about recent ARI
events in their households. Mothers also free list the symptoms, causes, and cures for ARI
and do pile sorts of illnesses to reveal the folk taxonomy of illness and where ARI fits into
that taxonomy. There is also a matching exercise, in which mothers pair locally defined
symptoms (fever, sore throat, headache . . .) with locally defined causes (bad water, evil
eye, germs . . .), cures (give rice water, rub the belly, take child to the doctor . . .), and
illnesses.
The FES method also uses vignettes, or scenarios, much like those developed by Peter
Rossi for the factorial survey (see chapter 9). Mothers are presented with cases in which
variables are changed systematically (‘‘Your child wakes up with [mild] [strong] fever. He
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 265

complains that he has [a headache] [stomach ache],’’ and so on) and are asked to talk
about how they would handle the case.
All this evidence—the free narratives, the pile sorts, the vignettes, etc.—is used in
understanding the emic part of ARI, the local explanatory model for the illness.
Researchers also identify etic factors that make it easy or hard for mothers to get
medical care for children who have pneumonia. These are things like the distance to a
clinic, availability of transportation, number of young children at home, availability to
mothers of people with whom they can leave their children for a while, and so on.
The key to high-quality, quick ethnography, according to Handwerker (2001), is to go
into a study with a clear question and to limit your study to five focus variables. If the
research is exploratory, you just have to make a reasonable guess as to what variables
might be important and hope for the best. Most rapid assessment studies, however, are
applied research, which usually means that you can take advantage of earlier, long-term
studies to narrow your focus.
For example, Edwins Laban Moogi Gwako (1997) spent over a year testing the effects
of eight independent variables on Maragoli women’s agricultural productivity in western
Kenya. At the end of his doctoral research, he found that just two variables—women’s
land tenure security and the total value of their household wealth—accounted for 46% of
the variance in productivity of plots worked by women. None of the other variables—
household size, a woman’s age, whether a woman’s husband lived at home, and so on—
had any effect on the dependent variable.
If you were doing a rapid assessment of women’s agricultural productivity elsewhere
in east Africa, you would take advantage of Laban Moogi Gwako’s work and limit the
variables you tested to perhaps four or five—the two that he found were important and
perhaps two or three others. You can study this same problem for a lifetime, and the
more time you spend, the more you’ll understand the subtleties and complexities of the
problem. But the point here is that if you have a clear question and a few, clearly defined
variables, you can produce quality work in a lot less time than you might imagine (Fur-
ther Reading: rapid ethnographic assessment).

VALIDITY—AGAIN
There are at least five reasons for insisting on participant observation in the conduct of
scientific research about cultural groups.

1. Participant observation opens thing up and makes it possible to collect all kinds of
data. Participant observation fieldworkers have witnessed births, interviewed violent
men in maximum-security prisons, stood in fields noting the behavior of farmers,
trekked with hunters through the Amazon forest in search of game, and pored over
records of marriages, births, and deaths in village churches and mosques around the
world.

It is impossible to imagine a complete stranger walking into a birthing room and being
welcomed to watch and record the event or being allowed to examine any community’s
vital records at whim. It is impossible, in fact, to imagine a stranger doing any of the
things I just mentioned or the thousands of other intrusive acts of data collection that
fieldworkers engage in all the time. What makes it all possible is participant observation.

2. Participant observation reduces the problem of reactivity—of people changing their

behavior when they know that they are being studied. As you become less and less of
266 CHAPTER 12

a curiosity, people take less and less interest in your comings and goings. They go about
their business and let you do such bizarre things as conduct interviews, administer
questionnaires, and even walk around with a stopwatch, clipboard, and camera.

Phillipe Bourgois (1995) spent 4 years living in El Barrio (the local name for Spanish
Harlem) in New York City. It took him a while, but eventually he was able to keep his
tape recorder running for interviews about dealing crack cocaine and even when groups
of men bragged about their involvement in gang rapes.
Margaret Graham (2003) weighed every gram of every food prepared for 75 people
eating over 600 meals in 15 households in the Peruvian Andes. This was completely alien
to her informants, but after 5 months of intimate participant observation, those 15 fami-
lies allowed her to visit them several times, with an assistant and a food scale.
In other words: Presence builds trust. Trust lowers reactivity. Lower reactivity means
higher validity of data. Nothing is guaranteed in fieldwork, though. Graham’s informants
gave her permission to come weigh their food, but the act of doing so turned out to be
more alienating than either she or her informants had anticipated. By local rules of hospi-
tality, people had to invite Graham to eat with them during the three visits she made to
their homes—but Graham couldn’t accept any food, lest doing so bias her study of the
nutritional intake of her informants. Graham discussed the awkward situation openly
with her informants, and made spot checks of some families a few days after each weigh-
ing episode to make sure that people were eating the same kinds and portions of food as
Graham had witnessed (Graham 2003:154).
And when Margaret LeCompte told children at a school that she was writing a book
about them, they started acting out in ‘‘ways they felt would make good copy’’ by mimick-
ing characters on popular TV programs (LeCompte et al. 1993).

3. Participant observation helps you ask sensible questions, in the native language. Have
you ever gotten a questionnaire in the mail and said to yourself: ‘‘What a dumb set of
questions’’? If a social scientist who is a member of your own culture can make up
what you consider to be ‘‘dumb’’ questions, imagine the risk you take in making up a
questionnaire in a culture very different from your own! Remember, it’s just as impor-
tant to ask sensible questions in a face-to-face interview as it is on a survey instrument.
4. Participant observation gives you an intuitive understanding of what’s going on in a
culture and allows you to speak with confidence about the meaning of data. Participant
observation lets you make strong statements about cultural facts that you’ve collected.
It extends both the internal and the external validity of what you learn from interview-
ing and watching people. In short, participant observation helps you understand the
meaning of your observations (box 12.4).
5. Many research problems simply cannot be addressed adequately by anything except
participant observation. If you want to understand how a local court works, you can’t
very well disguise yourself and sit in the courtroom unnoticed. The judge would soon
spot you as a stranger, and after a few days you would have to explain yourself. It is
better to explain yourself at the beginning and get permission to act as a participant
observer. In this case, your participation consists of acting like any other local person
who might sit in on the court’s proceedings. After a few days, or weeks, you would
have a pretty good idea of how the court worked: what kinds of crimes are adjudicated,
what kinds of penalties are meted out, and so forth. You might develop some specific
hypotheses from your qualitative notes—hypotheses regarding covariations between
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 267

BOX 12.4

THE MEANING OF DATA

In 1957, N. K. Sarkar and S. J. Tambiah published a classic study, based on

questionnaire data, about economic and social disintegration in a Sri Lankan
village. They concluded that about two-thirds of the villagers were landless. The
British anthropologist, Edmund Leach, did not accept that finding (Leach 1967).
He had done participant observation fieldwork in the area and knew that the
villagers practiced patrilocal residence after marriage. By local custom, a young
man might receive use of some of his father’s land even though legal ownership
might not pass to the son until the father’s death.
In assessing land ownership, Sarkar and Tambiah asked whether a ‘‘house-
hold’’ had any land, and if so, how much. They defined an independent house-
hold as a unit that cooked rice in its own pot. Unfortunately, all married women
in the village had their own rice pots. So Sarkar and Tambiah wound up estimat-
ing the number of independent households as very high and the number of
those households that owned land as very low. Based on these data, they con-
cluded that there was gross inequality in land ownership and that this character-
ized a ‘‘disintegrating village’’ (the title of their book).
Don’t conclude from Leach’s critique that questionnaires are ‘‘bad,’’ while
participant observation is ‘‘good.’’ I can’t say often enough that participant
observation makes it possible to collect quantitative survey data or qualitative
interview data from some sample of a population. Qualitative and quantitative
data inform each other and produce insight and understanding in a way that
cannot be duplicated by either approach alone. Whatever data collection meth-
ods you choose, participant observation maximizes your chances for making
valid statements.

severity of punishment and independent variables other than severity of crime. Then
you could test those hypotheses on a sample of courts.

Think this is unrealistic? Try going down to your local traffic court and see whether
defendants’ dress or manner of speech predict variations in fines for the same infraction.
The point is, getting a general understanding of how any social institution or organization
works—the local justice system, a hospital, a ship, or an entire community—is best
achieved through participant observation.

ENTERING THE FIELD

Perhaps the most difficult part of actually doing participant observation fieldwork is mak-
ing an entry. There are five rules to follow.

1. There is no reason to select a site that is difficult to enter when equally good sites are
available that are easy to enter (see chapter 3). In many cases, you will have a choice—
among equally good villages in a region, or among school districts, hospitals, or cell
blocks. When you have a choice, take the field site that promises to provide easiest
access to data.
268 CHAPTER 12

2. Go into the field with plenty of written documentation about yourself and your proj-
ect. You’ll need formal letters of introduction—at a minimum, from your university,
or from your client if you are doing applied work on a contract. Letters from universi-
ties should spell out your affiliation, who is funding you, and how long you will be at
the field site.

Be sure that those letters are in the language spoken where you will be working, and
that they are signed by the highest academic authorities possible.
Letters of introduction should not go into detail about your research. Keep a separate
document handy in which you describe your proposed work and present it to gatekeepers
who ask for it, along with your letters of introduction.
Of course, if you study an outlaw biker gang, like Daniel Wolf did, forget about letters
of introduction (Wolf 1991). On the other hand, Johnny Moore was president of an
outlaw biker gang in Mississippi before he teamed up with sociologist Columbus Hopper
to study biker gangs (Hopper and Moore 1983). Moore had ‘‘courtesy cards’’ from biker
gangs across the country that served as letters of introduction (Hopper and Moore
1990:385).

3. Don’t try to wing it, unless you absolutely have to. There is nothing to be said for
‘‘getting in on your own.’’ Use personal contacts to help you make your entry into a
field site.

When I went to Kalymnos, Greece, in 1964, I carried with me a list of people to look
up. I collected the list from people in the Greek American community of Tarpon Springs,
Florida, who had relatives on Kalymnos. When I went to Washington, DC, to study how
decision-makers in the bureaucracy used (or didn’t use) scientific information, I had
letters of introduction from colleagues at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (where I
was working at the time).
If you are studying any hierarchically organized community (hospitals, police depart-
ments, universities, school systems, etc.), it is usually best to start at the top and work
down. Find out the names of the people who are the gatekeepers and see them first.
Assure them that you will maintain strict confidentiality and that no one in your study
will be personally identifiable.
In some cases, though, starting at the top can backfire. If there are warring factions in
a community or organization, and if you gain entry to the group at the top of one of
those factions, you will be asked to side with that faction.
Another danger is that top administrators of institutions may try to enlist you as a
kind of spy. They may offer to facilitate your work if you will report back to them on
what you find out about specific individuals. This is absolutely off limits in research. If
that’s the price of doing a study, you’re better off choosing another institution. In the 2
years I spent doing research on communication structures in federal prisons, no one ever
asked me to report on the activities of specific inmates. But other researchers have
reported experiencing this kind of pressure, so it’s worth keeping in mind (Further Read-
ing: gatekeepers).

4. Think through in advance what you will say when ordinary people (not just gatekeep-
ers) ask you: What are you doing here? Who sent you? Who’s funding you? What good
is your research and who will it benefit? Why do you want to learn about people here?
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 269

How long will you be here? How do I know you aren’t a spy for ?
(where the blank is filled in by whoever people are afraid of).

The rules for presentation of self are simple: Be honest, be brief, and be absolutely
consistent. In participant observation, if you try to play any role other than yourself,
you’ll just get worn out (D. J. Jones 1973).
But understand that not everyone will be thrilled about your role as a researcher. Terry
Williams studied cocaine use in after-hours clubs in New York. It was ‘‘gay night’’ in one
bar he went to. Williams started a conversation with a man whose sleeves were fully
rolled, exposing tattoos on both arms. The man offered to buy William a drink. Was this
Williams’s first time at the bar? Williams said he’d been there before, that he was a
researcher, and that he just wanted to talk. The man turned to his friends and exploded:
‘‘Hey, get a load of this one. He wants to do research on us. You scum bag! What do we
look like, pal? Fucking guinea pigs?’’ (T. Williams 1996:30).
After that experience, Williams became, as he said, ‘‘more selective’’ in whom he told
about his real purpose in those after-hours clubs.

5. Spend time getting to know the physical and social layout of your field site. It doesn’t
matter if you’re working in a rural village, an urban enclave, or a hospital. Walk it and
write notes about how it feels to you. Is it crowded? Do the buildings or furniture seem
old or poorly kept? Are there any distinctive odors?

You’d be surprised how much information comes from asking people about little
things like these. I can still smell the distinctive blend of diesel fuel and taco sauce that’s
characteristic of so many bus depots in rural Mexico. Asking people about those smells
opened up long conversations about what it’s like for poor people, who don’t own cars,
to travel in Mexico and all the family and business reasons they have for traveling. If
something in your environment makes a strong sensory impression, write it down.
A really good early activity in any participant observation project is to make maps and
charts—kinship charts of families, chain-of-command charts in organizations, maps of
offices or villages or whatever physical space you’re studying, charts of who sits where at
meetings, and so on.
For making maps, take a GPS (global positioning system) device to the field with you.
GPS devices that are accurate to within 3 meters or less are available for under $200 (see
appendix E for more). What a GPS does is track your path via satellite, so that if you can
walk the perimeter of an area, you can map it and mark its longitude and latitude accu-
rately. Eri Sugita (2006) studied the relation between the washing of hands by the mothers
of young children and the rate of diarrheal disease among those children in Bugobero,
Uganda. Sugita used a GPS device to map the position of every well and every spring in
Bugobero. Then she walked to each of the water sources from each of the 51 households
in her study and, wearing a pedometer, measured the travel distance to the nearest source
of clean water.
Another good thing to do is to take a census of the group you’re studying as soon as
you can. When she began her fieldwork on the demography and fertility in a Mexican
village, Julia Pauli (2000) did a complete census of 165 households. She recorded the
names of all the people who were considered to be members of the household, whether
they were living there or not (a lot of folks were away, working as migrant laborer). She
recorded their sex, age, religion, level of education, marital status, occupation, place of
birth, and where each person was living right then. Then, for each of the 225 women who
270 CHAPTER 12

had given birth at least once, she recorded the name, sex, birth date, education, current
occupation, marital status, and current residence of each child.
Pauli gave each person in a household their own, unique identification number and
she gave each child of each woman in a household an I.D. number—whether the child
was living at home, away working, or married and living in a separate household in the
village. In the course of her census, she would eventually run into those married children
living in other households. But because each person kept his or her unique I.D. number,
Pauli was able to link all those born in the village to their natal homes. In other words,
Pauli used the data from her straightforward demographic survey to build a kinship net-
work of the village.
A census of a village or a hospital gives you the opportunity to walk around a commu-
nity and to talk with most of its members at least once. It lets you be seen by others and
it gives you an opportunity to answer questions, as well as to ask them. It allows you to
get information that official censuses don’t retrieve. And it can be a way to gain rapport
in a community. But it can also backfire if people are afraid you might be a spy. Michael
Agar reports that he was branded as a Pakistani spy when he went to India, so his village
census was useless (1980b).

THE SKILLS OF A PARTICIPANT OBSERVER

To a certain extent, participant observation must be learned in the field. The strength of
participant observation is that you, as a researcher, become the instrument for data collec-
tion and analysis through your own experience. Consequently, you have to experience
participant observation to get good at it. Nevertheless, there are a number of skills that
you can develop before you go into the field.

Learning the Language

Unless you are a full participant in the culture you’re studying, being a participant
observer makes you a freak. Here’s how anthropologists looked to Vine Deloria (1969:78),
a Sioux writer:

Anthropologists can readily be identified on the reservations. Go into any crowd of

people. Pick out a tall gaunt white man wearing Bermuda shorts, a World War II Army
Air Force flying jacket, an Australian bush hat, tennis shoes, and packing a large knap-
sack incorrectly strapped on his back. He will invariably have a thin, sexy wife with
stringy hair, an I. Q. of 191, and a vocabulary in which even the prepositions have eleven
syllables. . . . This creature is an anthropologist.

Now, four decades later, it’s more likely to be the anthropologist’s husband who jab-
bers in 11-syllable words, but the point is still the same. The most important thing you
can do to stop being a freak is to speak the language of the people you’re studying—and
speak it well. Franz Boas was adamant about this. ‘‘Nobody,’’ he said, ‘‘would expect
authoritative accounts of the civilization of China or Japan from a man who does not
speak the languages readily, and who has not mastered their literatures’’ (1911:56). And
yet, ‘‘the best kept secret of anthropology,’’ says Robbins Burling, ‘‘is the linguistic incom-
petence of ethnological fieldworkers’’ (2000 [1984]:v).
That secret is actually not so much well kept as ignored. In 1933, Paul Radin, one of
Franz Boas’s students, complained that Margaret Mead’s work on Samoa was superficial
because she wasn’t fluent in Samoan (Radin 1966 [1933]:179). Sixty-six years later, Derek
Freeman (1999) showed that Mead was probably duped by at least some of her adolescent
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 271

informants about the extent of their sexual experience because she didn’t know the local
language.
In fact, Mead talked quite explicitly about her use of interpreters. It was not necessary,
said Mead, for fieldworkers to become what she called virtuosos in a native language. It
was enough simply to use a native language, as she put it, without actually speaking it
fluently:

If one knows how to exclaim ‘‘how beautiful!’’ of an offering, ‘‘how fat!’’ of a baby,
‘‘how big!’’ of a just shot pig; if one can say ‘‘my foot’s asleep’’ or ‘‘my back itches’’ as
one sits in a closely pack native group with whom one is as yet unable to hold a sustained
conversation; if one can ask the simple questions: ‘‘Is that your child?’’ ‘‘Is your father
living?’’ ‘‘Are the mosquitoes biting you?’’ or even utter culturally appropriate squeals
and monosyllables which accompany fright at a scorpion, or startle at a loud noise, it is
easy to establish rapport with people who depend upon affective contact for reassurance.
(Mead 1939:198)

Robert Lowie would have none of it. A people’s ethos, he said, is never directly
observed. ‘‘It can be inferred only from their self-revelations,’’ and this, indeed, requires
the dreaded virtuosity that Mead had dismissed (Lowie 1940:84–87). The ‘‘horse-and-
buggy ethnographers,’’ said Lowie, in a direct response to Mead in the American Anthro-
pologist, accepted virtuosity—that is, a thorough knowledge of the language in which one
does fieldwork—on principle. ‘‘The new, stream-lined ethnographers,’’ he taunted,
rejected this as superfluous (Lowie 1940:87). Lowie was careful to say that a thorough
knowledge of a field language did not mean native proficiency. And, of course, Mead
understood the benefits of being proficient in a field language. But she also understood
that a lot of ethnography gets done through interpreters or through contact languages,
like French, English, and pidgins . . . the not-so-well kept secret in anthropology (Further
Reading: using interpreters).
Still . . . according to Brislin et al. (1973:70), Samoa is one of those cultures where ‘‘it
is considered acceptable to deceive and to ‘put on’ outsiders. Interviewers are likely to
hear ridiculous answers, not given in a spirit of hostility but rather sport.’’ Brislin et al.
call this the sucker bias and warn fieldworkers to watch out for it. Presumably, knowing
the local language fluently is one way to become alert to and avoid this problem.
And remember Raoul Naroll’s finding that anthropologists who spent at least a year in
the field were more likely to report on witchcraft? He also found that anthropologists
who spoke the local language were more likely to report data about witchcraft than were
those who didn’t. Fluency in the local language doesn’t just improve your rapport, it
increases the probability that people will tell you about sensitive things, like witchcraft and
that even if people try to put one over on you, you’ll know about it (Naroll 1962:89–90).
When it comes to doing effective participant observation, learning a new jargon in
your own language is just as important as learning a foreign language. Peggy Sullivan and
Kirk Elifson studied the Free Holiness church, a rural group of Pentecostals whose rituals
include the handling of poisonous snakes (rattles, cottonmouths, copperheads, and water
moccasins). They had to learn an entirely new vocabulary:

Terms and expressions like ‘‘annointment,’’ ‘‘tongues,’’ ‘‘shouting,’’ and ‘‘carried away
in the Lord’’ began having meaning for us. We learned informally and often contextually
through conversation and by listening to sermons and testimonials. The development
of our understanding of the new language was gradual and probably was at its greatest
depth when we were most submerged in the church and its culture. . . . We simplified
272 CHAPTER 12

our language style and eliminated our use of profanity. We realized, for example, that
one badly placed ‘‘damn’’ could destroy trust that we had built up over months of hard
work. (Sullivan and Elifson 1996:36)

How to Learn a New Language

In my experience, the way to learn a new language is to learn a few words and to say
them brilliantly. Yes, study the grammar and vocabulary, but the key to learning a new
language—and to using it effectively in ethnography—is saying things right, even just a
handful of things. This means capturing not just the pronunciation of words, but also the
intonation, the use of your hands, and other nonverbal cues that show you are really,
really serious about the language and are trying to look and sound as much like a native
as possible. Michael Herzfeld (2009b) reports that when he did his first summer’s field-
work in Bangkok, he couldn’t get ordinary people in the street to respond to him in Thai.
People just stared at him. On his second trip, a Thai person asked him for directions on
the street. What had changed? Despite his white Western face, a street vendor told him,
he had Thai gestures and looked Thai (p. 141).
When you say the equivalent of ‘‘Hey, hiya doin’ ’’ instead of the equivalent of ‘‘Hello,
how are you today?’’ with just the right intonation in any language—Zulu or French or
Arabic—people will think you know more than you do. They’ll come right back at you
with a flurry of words, and you’ll be lost. Fine. Tell them to slow down—again, in that
great accent and body language you’re cultivating.
Consider the alternative: You announce to people, with the first, badly accented, stilted
words out of your mouth, that you know next to nothing about the language and that
they should therefore speak to you with that in mind. When you talk to someone who is
not a native speaker of your language, you make an automatic assessment of how large
their vocabulary is and how fluent they are. You adjust both the speed of your speech and
your vocabulary to ensure comprehension. That’s what Zulu and Arabic speakers will do
with you, too. The trick is to act in a way that gets people into pushing your limits of
fluency and into teaching you cultural insider words and phrases.
The real key to learning a language is to acquire vocabulary. People will usually figure
out what you want to say if you butcher the grammar a bit, but they need nouns and
verbs to even begin the effort. This requires studying lists of words every day and using
as many new words every day as you can engineer into a conversation. Try to stick at
least one conspicuously idiomatic word or phrase into your conversation every day That
will not only nail down some insider vocabulary, it will stimulate everyone around you
to give you more of the same.
A good fraction of any culture is in the idioms and especially in the metaphors (more
about metaphors in chapter 19). To understand how powerful this can be, imagine you
are hired to tutor a student from Nepal who wants to learn English. You point to some
clouds and say ‘‘clouds’’ and she responds by saying ‘‘clouds.’’ You say ‘‘very good’’ and
she says ‘‘no brainer.’’ You can certainly pick up the learning pace after that kind of
response.
As you articulate more and more insider phrases like a native, people will increase the
rate at which they teach you by raising the level of their discourse with you. They may
even compete to teach you the subtleties of their language and culture. When I was learn-
ing Greek in 1960 on a Greek merchant ship, the sailors took delight in seeing to it that
my vocabulary of obscenities was up to their standards and that my usage of that vocabu-
lary was suitably robust.
To prepare for my doctoral fieldwork in 1964–65, I studied Greek at the University of
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 273

Illinois. By the end of 1965, after a year on the island of Kalymnos, my accent, manner-
isms, and vocabulary were more Kalymnian than Athenian. When I went to teach at the
University of Athens in 1969, my colleagues there were delighted that I wanted to teach
in Greek, but they were conflicted about my accent. How to reconcile the fact that an
educated foreigner spoke reasonably fluent Greek with what they took to be a rural,
working-class accent? It didn’t compute, but they were very forgiving. After all, I was a
foreigner, and the fact that I was making an attempt to speak the local language counted
for a lot.
So, if you are going off to do fieldwork in a foreign language, try to find an intensive
summer course in the country where that language is spoken. Not only will you learn the
language (and the local dialect of that language), you’ll make personal contacts, find out
what the problems are in selecting a research site, and discover how to tie your study to
the interests of local scholars. You can study French in France, but you can also study it
in Montreal, Martinique, or Madagascar. You can study Spanish in Spain, but you can
also study it in Mexico, Bolivia, or Paraguay.
You’d be amazed at the range of language courses available at universities these days:
Ulithi, Aymara, Quechua, Nahuatl, Swahili, Turkish, Amharic, Basque, Eskimo, Navajo,
Zulu, Hausa, Amoy. . . . If the language you need is not offered in a formal course, try to
find an individual speaker of the language (the husband or wife of a foreign student) who
would be willing to tutor you in a self-paced course. There are self-paced courses in
hundreds of languages available today, with lots of auditory material on disks or online.
There are, of course, many languages for which there are no published materials,
except perhaps for a dictionary or part of the Judeo-Christian Bible. For those languages,
you need to learn how to reduce them to writing quickly so that you can get on with
learning them and with fieldwork. To learn how to reduce any language to writing, see
the tutorial by Oswald Werner (2000a, 2000b, 2001, 2002a, 2002b) (Further Reading:
language and fieldwork) (box 12.5).

BOX 12.5

WHEN NOT TO MIMIC

The key to understanding the culture of loggers, lawyers, bureaucrats, school-

teachers, or ethnic groups is to become intimately familiar with their vocabu-
lary. Words are where the cultural action is. My rule about mimicking
pronunciation changes, though, if you are studying an ethnic or occupational
subculture in your own society and the people in that subculture speak a differ-
ent dialect of your native language. In this situation, mimicking the local pro-
nunciation will just make you look silly. Even worse, people may think you’re
ridiculing them.

Building Explicit Awareness

Another important skill in participant observation is what Spradley (1980:55) called
explicit awareness of the little details in life. Try this experiment: The next time you see
someone look at their watch, go right up to them and ask them the time. Chances are
274 CHAPTER 12

they’ll look again because when they looked the first time they were not explicitly aware
of what they saw. Tell them that you are a student conducting a study and ask them to
chat with you for a few minutes about how they tell time.
Many people who wear analog watches look at the relative positions of the hands, and
not at the numbers on the dial. They subtract the current time (the position of the hands
now) from the time they have to be somewhere (the image of what the position of the
hands will look like at some time in the future), and calculate whether the difference is
anything to worry about. They never have to become explicitly aware of the fact that it is
3:10 .. People who wear digital watches may be handling the process somewhat differ-
ently. We could test that.
Kronenfeld et al. (1972) reported an experiment in which informants leaving several
different restaurants were asked what the waiters and waitresses (as they were called in
those gender-differentiated days) were wearing and what kind of music was playing.
Informants agreed much more about what the waiters were wearing than about what the
waitresses were wearing. The hitch: None of the restaurants had waiters, only waitresses.
Informants also provided more detail about the kind of music in restaurants that did
not have music than they provided for restaurants that did have music. Kronenfeld et al.
speculated that, in the absence of real memories about things they’d seen or heard, infor-
mants turned to cultural norms for what must have been there (i.e., ‘‘what goes with
what’’) (D’Andrade 1973).
You can test this yourself. Pick out a large lecture hall where a male professor is not
wearing a tie. Ask a group of students on their way out of a lecture hall what color tie
their professor was wearing. Or observe a busy store clerk for an hour and count the
number of sales she rings up. Then ask her to estimate the number of sales she handled
during that hour.
You can build your skills at becoming explicitly aware of ordinary things. Get a group
of colleagues together and write separate, detailed descriptions of the most mundane,
ordinary things you can think of: making a bed, doing laundry, building a sandwich,
shaving (face, legs, underarms), picking out produce at the supermarket, and the like.
Then discuss one another’s descriptions and see how many details others saw that you
didn’t and vice versa. If you work carefully at this exercise, you’ll develop a lot of respect
for how complex, and how important, the details of ordinary life are. If you want to see
the level of detail you’re shooting for here, read Anthony F. C. Wallace’s little classic
‘‘Driving to Work’’ (1965). Wallace had made the 17-mile drive from his home to the
University of Pennsylvania about 500 times when he drew a map of it, wrote out the
details, and extracted a set of rules for his behavior. He was driving a 1962 Volkswagen
Beetle in those days. It had 12 major mechanical controls (from the ignition switch to the
windshield wiper—yes, there was just one of them, and you had to pull a switch on the
instrument panel with your right hand to get it started), all of which had to be handled
correctly to get him from home to work safely every day.

Building Memory
Even when we are explicitly aware of things we see, there is no guarantee that we’ll
remember them long enough to write them down. Building your ability to remember
things you see and hear is crucial to successful participant observation research.
Try this exercise: Walk past a store window at a normal pace. When you get beyond it
and can’t see it any longer, write down all the things that were in the window. Go back
and check. Do it again with another window. You’ll notice an improvement in your ability
to remember little things almost immediately. You’ll start to create mnemonic devices for
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 275

remembering more of what you see. Keep up this exercise until you are satisfied that you
can’t get any better at it.
Here’s another one. Go to a church service other than one you’re used to. Take along
two colleagues. When you leave, write up what you each think you saw, in as much detail
as you can muster and compare what you’ve written. Go back to the church and keep
doing this exercise until all of you are satisfied that (1) you are all seeing and writing
down the same things and (2) you have reached the limits of your ability to recall complex
behavioral scenes.
Try this same exercise by going to a church service with which you are familiar and
take along several colleagues who are not. Again, compare your notes with theirs, and
keep going back and taking notes until you and they are seeing and noting the same
things. You can do this with any repeated scene that’s familiar to you: a bowling alley, a
fast-food restaurant, etc. Remember, training your ability to see things reliably does not
guarantee that you’ll see thing accurately. But reliability is a necessary but insufficient
condition for accuracy. Unless you become at least a reliable instrument of data gathering,
you don’t stand much of a chance of making valid observations.
Bogdan (1972:41) offers some practical suggestions for remembering details in partici-
pant observation. If, for some reason, you can’t take notes during an interview or at some
event, and you are trying to remember what was said, don’t talk to anyone before you get
your thoughts down on paper. Talking to people reinforces some things you heard and
saw at the expense of other things.
Also, when you sit down to write, try to remember things in historical sequence, as
they occurred throughout the day. As you write up your notes you will invariably remem-
ber some particularly important detail that just pops into memory out of sequence. When
that happens, jot it down on a separate piece of paper (or tuck it away in a separate little
note file on your word processor) and come back to it later, when your notes reach that
point in the sequence of the day.
Another useful device is to draw a map—even a rough sketch will do—of the physical
space where you spent time observing and talking to people that day. As you move around
the map, you will dredge up details of events and conversations. In essence, let yourself
walk through your experience. You can practice all these memory-building skills now and
be much better prepared if you decide to do long-term fieldwork later.

Maintaining Naı̈veté
Try also to develop your skill at being a novice—at being someone who genuinely
wants to learn a new culture. This may mean working hard at suspending judgment about
some things. David Fetterman made a trip across the Sinai Desert with a group of Bedou-
ins. One of the Bedouins, says Fetterman,

shared his jacket with me to protect me from the heat. I thanked him, of course, because
I appreciated the gesture and did not want to insult him. But I smelled like a camel for
the rest of the day in the dry desert heat. I thought I didn’t need the jacket. . . . I later
learned that without his jacket I would have suffered from sunstroke. . . . An inexperi-
enced traveler does not always notice when the temperature climbs above 130 degrees
Fahrenheit. By slowing down the evaporation rate, the jacket helped me retain water.
(1989:33)

Maintaining your naı̈veté will come naturally in a culture that’s unfamiliar to you, but
it’s a bit harder to do in your own culture. Most of what you do ‘‘naturally’’ is so auto-
matic that you don’t know how to intellectualize it.
276 CHAPTER 12

If you are like many middle-class Americans, your eating habits can be characterized
by the word ‘‘grazing’’—that is, eating small amounts of food at many, irregular times
during the course of a typical day, rather than sitting down for meals at fixed times.
Would you have used that kind of word to describe your own eating behavior? Other
members of your own culture are often better informants than you are about that culture,
and if you really let people teach you, they will.
If you look carefully, though, you’ll be surprised at how heterogeneous your culture is
and how many parts of it you really know nothing about. Find some part of your own
culture that you don’t control—an occupational culture, like long-haul trucking, or a
hobby culture, like amateur radio—and try to learn it. That’s what you did as a child.
This time, try to intellectualize the experience. Take notes on what you learn about how
to learn, on what it’s like being a novice, and how you think you can best take advantage
of the learner’s role. Your imagination will suggest a lot of other nooks and crannies of
our culture that you can explore as a thoroughly untutored novice.

When Not to Be Naive

The role of naive novice is not always the best one to play. Humility is inappropriate
when you are dealing with a culture whose members stand a lot to lose by your incompe-
tence. Michael Agar (1973, 1980a) did field research on the life of heroine addicts in New
York City. His informants made it plain that Agar’s ignorance of their lives wasn’t cute
or interesting to them.
Even with the best of intentions, Agar could have given his informants away to the
police by just by being stupid. Under such circumstances, you shouldn’t expect your
informants to take you under their wing and teach you how to appreciate their customs.
Agar had to learn a lot, and very quickly, to gain credibility with his informants.
There are situations where your expertise is just what’s required to build rapport with
people. Anthropologists have typed documents for illiterate people in the field and have
used other skills (from coaching basketball to dispensing antibiotics) to help people and
to gain their confidence and respect. If you are studying highly educated people, you may
have to prove that you know a fair amount about research methods before they will deal
with you. Agar (1980b:58) once studied an alternative lifestyle commune and was asked
by a biochemist who was living there: ‘‘Who are you going to use as a control group?’’ In
my study of ocean scientists (Bernard 1974), several informants asked me what computer
programs I was going to use to do a factor analysis of my data.

Building Writing Skills

The ability to write comfortably, clearly, and often is one of the most important skills
you can develop as a participant observer. Ethnographers who are not comfortable as
writers produce few field notes and little published work. If you have any doubts about
your ability to pound out thousands of words, day in and day out, then try to build that
skill now, before you go into the field for an extended period.
The way to build that skill is to team up with one or more colleagues who are also
trying to build their expository writing ability. Set concrete and regular writing tasks for
yourselves and criticize one another’s work on matters of clarity and style. There is noth-
ing trivial about this kind of exercise. If you think you need it, do it.
Good writing skills will carry you through participant observation fieldwork, writing
a dissertation and, finally, writing for publication. Don’t be afraid to write clearly and
compellingly. The worst that can happen is that someone will criticize you for ‘‘populariz-
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 277

ing’’ your material. I think ethnographers should be criticized if they take the exciting
material of real people’s lives and turn it into deadly dull reading.

Hanging Out, Gaining Rapport

It may sound silly, but just hanging out is a skill, and until you learn it you can’t do
your best work as a participant observer. Remember what I said at the beginning of this
chapter: Participant observation is a strategic method that lets you learn what you want
to learn and apply all the data collection methods that you may want to apply.
When you enter a new field situation, the temptation is to ask a lot of questions to
learn as much as possible as quickly as possible. There are many things that people can’t
or won’t tell you in answer to questions. If you ask people too quickly about the sources
of their wealth, you are likely to get incomplete data. If you ask too quickly about sexual
liaisons, you may get thoroughly unreliable responses.
Hanging out builds trust, or rapport, and trust results in ordinary conversation and
ordinary behavior in your presence. Once you know, from hanging out, exactly what you
want to know more about, and once people trust you not to betray their confidence,
you’ll be surprised at the direct questions you can ask.
In his study of Cornerville (Boston’s heavily Italian American neighborhood called
North End), William Foote Whyte wondered whether ‘‘just hanging on the street corner
was an active enough process to be dignified by the term ‘research.’ Perhaps I should ask
these men questions,’’ he thought. He soon realized that ‘‘one has to learn when to ques-
tion and when not to question as well as what questions to ask’’ (1989:78).
Philip Kilbride studied child abuse in Kenya. He did a survey and focused ethnographic
interviews, but ‘‘by far the most significant event in my research happened as a byproduct
of participatory ‘hanging out,’ being always in search of case material.’’ While visiting
informants one day, Kilbride and his wife saw a crowd gathering at a local secondary
school. It turned out that a young mother had thrown her baby into a pit latrine at the
school. The Kilbrides offered financial assistance to the young mother and her family in
exchange for ‘‘involving ourselves in their . . . misfortune.’’ The event that the Kilbrides
had witnessed became the focus for a lot of their research activities in the succeeding
months (Kilbride 1992:190).

The Ethical Dilemma of Rapport

Face it: ‘‘Gaining rapport’’ is a euphemism for impression management, one of the
‘‘darker arts’’ of fieldwork, in Harry Wolcott’s apt phrase (2005:chap. 6). E. E. Evans-
Pritchard, the great British anthropologist, made clear in 1937 how manipulative the craft
of ethnography really is. He was doing fieldwork with the Azande of Sudan and wanted
to study their rich tradition of witchcraft. Even with his long-term fieldwork and com-
mand of the Azande language, Evans-Pritchard couldn’t get people to open up about
witchcraft, so he decided to ‘‘win the good will of one or two practitioners and to persuade
them to divulge their secrets in strict confidence’’ (1958 [1937]:151). Strict confidence?
He was planning on writing a book about all this.
Progress was slow, and although he felt that he could have ‘‘eventually wormed out all
their secrets’’ he hit on another idea: His personal servant, Kamanga, was initiated into the
local group of practitioners and ‘‘became a practising witch-doctor’’ under the tutelage of
a man named Badobo (Evans-Pritchard 1958 [1937]:151). With Badobo’s full knowledge,
Kamanga reported every step of his training to his employer. In turn, Evans-Pritchard
used the information ‘‘to draw out of their shells rival practitioners by playing on their
jealousy and vanity.’’
278 CHAPTER 12

Badobo knew that anything he told Kamanga would be tested with rival witch doctors.
Badobo couldn’t lie to Kamanga, but he could certainly withhold the most secret material.
Evans-Pritchard analyzed the situation carefully and pressed on. Once an ethnographer is
‘‘armed with preliminary knowledge,’’ he said, ‘‘nothing can prevent him from driving
deeper and deeper the wedge if he is interested and persistent’’ (Evans-Pritchard 1958
[1937]:152).
Still, Kamanga’s training was so slow that Evans-Pritchard nearly abandoned his
inquiry into witchcraft. Providence intervened. A celebrated witch doctor, named Bög-
wözu, showed up from another district and Evans-Pritchard offered him a very high wage
if he’d take over Kamanga’s training. Evans-Pritchard explained to Bögwözu that he was
‘‘tired of Badobo’s wiliness and extortion,’’ and that he expected his generosity to result
in Kamanga learning all the tricks of the witch doctor’s trade (Evans-Pritchard 1958
[1937]:152).
But the really cunning part of Evans-Pritchard’s scheme was that he continued to pay
Badobo to tutor Kamanga. He knew that Badobo would be jealous of Bögwözu and would
strive harder to teach Kamanga more about witch-doctoring. Here is Evans-Pritchard
going on about his deceit and the benefits of this tactic for ethnographers:

The rivalry between these two practitioners grew into bitter and ill-concealed hostility.
Bögwözu gave me information about medicines and magical rites to prove that his rival
was ignorant of the one or incapable in the performance of the other. Badobo became
alert and showed himself no less eager to demonstrate his knowledge of magic to both
Kamanga and to myself. They vied with each other to gain ascendancy among the local
practitioners. Kamanga and I reaped a full harvest in this quarrel, not only from the
protagonists themselves but also from other witch-doctors in the neighborhood, and
even from interested laymen. (Evans-Pritchard 1958 [1937]:153)

Objectivity
Finally, objectivity is a skill, like language fluency, and you can build it if you work at
it. Some people build more of it, others less. More is better.
If an objective measurement is one made by a robot—that is, a machine that is not
prone to the kind of measurement error that comes from having opinions and memo-
ries—then no human being can ever be completely objective. We can’t rid ourselves of
our experiences, and I don’t know anyone who thinks it would be a good idea even to
try.
We can, however, become aware of our experiences, our opinions, our values. We can
hold our field observations up to a cold light and ask whether we’ve seen what we wanted
to see, or what is really out there. The goal is not for us, as humans, to become objective
machines; it is for us to achieve objective—that is, accurate—knowledge by transcending
our biases. No fair pointing out that this is impossible. It is impossible to do completely,
but it’s not impossible to do at all. Priests, social workers, clinical psychologists, and
counselors suspend their own biases all the time, more or less, in order to listen hard and
give sensible advice to their clients.
Colin Turnbull held objective knowledge as something to be pulled from the thicket
of subjective experience. Fieldwork, said Turnbull, involves a self-conscious review of
one’s own ideas and values—one’s self, for want of any more descriptive term. During
fieldwork you ‘‘reach inside,’’ he observed, and give up the ‘‘old, narrow, limited self,
discovering the new self that is right and proper in the new context.’’ We use the field
experience, he said, ‘‘to know ourselves more deeply by conscious subjectivity.’’ In this
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 279

way, he concluded, ‘‘the ultimate goal of objectivity is much more likely to be reached
and our understanding of other cultures that much more profound’’ (Turnbull 1986:27).
When he was studying the Ik of Uganda, he saw parents goad small children into touching
fire and then laughing at the result. It took everything he had, he once told me, to tran-
scend his biases, but he managed (see Turnbull 1972).
Many phenomenologists see objective knowledge as the goal of participant observa-
tion. Danny Jorgensen, for example, advocates complete immersion and becoming the
phenomenon you study. ‘‘Becoming the phenomenon,’’ Jorgensen says, ‘‘is a participant
observational strategy for penetrating to and gaining experience of a form of human life.
It is an objective approach insofar as it results in the accurate, detailed description of the
insiders’ experience of life’’ (Jorgensen 1989:63). In fact, many ethnographers have
become cab drivers, exotic dancers, jazz musicians, or members of satanic cults, to do
participant observation fieldwork.
If you use this strategy of full immersion, Jorgensen says, you must be able to switch
back and forth between the insiders’ view and that of an analyst. To do that—to maintain
your objective, analytic abilities—Jorgensen suggests finding a colleague with whom you
can talk things over regularly. That is, give yourself an outlet for discussing the theoretical,
methodological, and emotional issues that inevitably come up in full participation field
research. It’s good advice.

Objectivity and Neutrality

Objectivity does not mean (and has never meant) value neutrality. No one asks Cul-
tural Survival, Inc. to be neutral in documenting the violent obscenities against indige-
nous peoples of the world. No one asks Amnesty International to be neutral in its effort
to document state-sanctioned torture. We recognize that the power of the documentation
is in its objectivity, in its chilling irrefutability, not in its neutrality.
Claire Sterk, an ethnographer from the Netherlands, has studied prostitutes and intra-
venous drug users in mostly African American communities in New York City and New-
ark, New Jersey. Sterk was a trusted friend and counselor to many of the women with
whom she worked. In one 2-month period in the late 1980s, she attended the funeral of
seven women she knew who had died of AIDS. She felt that ‘‘every researcher is affected
by the work he or she does. One cannot remain neutral and uninvolved; even as an
outsider, the researcher is part of the community’’ (Sterk 1989:99, 1999).
Laurie Krieger, an American woman doing fieldwork in Cairo, studied physical pun-
ishment against women. She learned that wife beatings were less violent than she had
imagined and that the act still sickened her. Her reaction brought out a lot of information
from women who were recent recipients of their husbands’ wrath. ‘‘I found out,’’ she
says, ‘‘that the biased outlook of an American woman and a trained anthropologist was
not always disadvantageous, as long as I was aware of and able to control the expression
of my biases’’ (Krieger 1986:120).
At the end of his second year of research on street life in El Barrio, Phillipe Bourgois’s
friends and informants began telling him about their experiences as gang rapists. Bour-
gois’s informants were in their mid- to late 20s then, and the stories they told were of
things they’d done as very young adolescents, more than a decade earlier. Still, Bourgois
says, he felt betrayed by people whom he had come to like and respect. Their ‘‘childhood
stories of violently forced sex,’’ he says, ‘‘spun me into a personal depression and a
research crisis’’ (1995:205).
In any long-term field study, be prepared for some serious tests of your ability to
remain a dispassionate observer. Hortense Powdermaker (1966) was once confronted
280 CHAPTER 12

with the problem of knowing that a lynch mob was preparing to go after a particular
black man. She was powerless to stop the mob and fearful for her own safety.
I have never grown accustomed to seeing people ridicule the handicapped, though I
see it every time I’m in rural Mexico and Greece, and I recall with horror the death of a
young man on one of the sponge diving boats I sailed with in Greece. I knew the rules of
safe diving that could have prevented that death; so did all the divers and the captains of
the vessels. They ignored those rules at terrible cost. I wanted desperately to do something,
but there was nothing anyone could do. My lecturing them at sea about their unsafe
diving practices would not have changed their behavior. That behavior was driven, as I
explained in chapter 2, by structural forces and the technology—the boats, the diving
equipment—of their occupation. By suspending active judgment of their behavior, I was
able to record it. ‘‘Suspending active judgment’’ does not mean that I eliminated my bias
or that my feelings about their behavior changed. It meant only that I kept the bias to
myself while I was recording their dives (box 12.6).

BOX 12.6

OBJECTIVITY AND INDIGENOUS RESEARCH

Objectivity gets its biggest test in indigenous research—that is, when you study
your own culture. Barbara Meyerhoff worked in Mexico when she was a gradu-
ate student. Later, in the early 1970s, when she became interested in ethnicity
and aging, she decided to study elderly Chicanos. The people she approached
kept putting her off, asking her ‘‘Why work with us? Why don’t you study your
own kind?’’ Meyerhoff was Jewish. She had never thought about studying her
own kind, but she launched a study of poor, elderly Jews who were on public
assistance. She agonized about what she was doing and, as she tells it, never
resolved whether it was anthropology or a personal quest.
Many of the people she studied were survivors of the Holocaust. ‘‘How, then,
could anyone look at them dispassionately? How could I feel anything but awe
and appreciation for their mere presence? . . . Since neutrality was impossible
and idealization undesirable, I decided on striving for balance’’ (Meyerhoff
1989:90).
There is no final answer on whether it’s good or bad to study your own cul-
ture. Plenty of people have done it, and plenty of people have written about
what it’s like to do it. On the plus side, you’ll know the language and you’ll be
less likely to suffer from culture shock. On the minus side, it’s harder to recog-
nize cultural patterns that you live every day and you’re likely to take a lot of
things for granted that an outsider would pick up right away.
If you are going to study your own culture, start by reading the experiences
of others who have done it so you’ll know what you’re facing in the field (Fur-
ther Reading: studying your own culture).

GENDER, PARENTING, AND OTHER PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

By the 1930s, Margaret Mead had already made clear the importance of gender as a
variable in data collection (see Mead 1986). Gender has at least two consequences: (1) it
limits your access to certain information, and (2) it influences how you perceive others.
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 281

In all cultures, you can’t ask people certain questions because you’re a [woman] [man].
You can’t go into certain areas and situations because you’re a [woman] [man]. You can’t
watch this or report on that because you’re a [woman] [man]. Even the culture of social
scientists is affected: Your credibility is diminished or enhanced with your colleagues
when you talk about a certain subject because you’re a [woman] [man] (Altorki and El-
Solh 1988; Golde 1986; Scheper-Hughes 1983; Warren 1988; Whitehead and Conaway
1986).
Sara Quandt, Beverly Morris, and Kathleen DeWalt spent months investigating the
nutritional strategies of the elderly in two rural Kentucky counties (Quandt et al. 1997).
According to DeWalt, the three women researchers spent months, interviewing key infor-
mants, and never turned up a word about the use of alcohol. ‘‘One day,’’ says DeWalt:

the research team traveled to Central County with Jorge Uquillas, an Ecuadorian sociol-
ogist who had expressed an interest in visiting the Kentucky field sites. One of the
informants they visited was Mr. B, a natural storyteller who had spoken at length about
life of the poor during the past 60 years. Although he had been a great source of infor-
mation about use of wild foods and recipes for cooking game he had never spoken of
drinking or moonshine production.
Within a few minutes of entering his home on this day, he looked at Jorge Uquillas,
and said ‘‘Are you a drinking man?’’ (Beverly whipped out the tape recorder and
switched it on.) Over the next hour or so, Mr. B talked about community values con-
cerning alcohol use, the problems of drunks and how they were dealt with in the com-
munity, and provided a number of stories about moonshine in Central County. The
presence of another man gave Mr. B the opportunity to talk about issues he found
interesting, but felt would have been inappropriate to discuss with women. (DeWalt et
al. 1998:280)

On the other hand, feminist scholars have made it clear that gender is a negotiated
idea. What you can and can’t do if you are a man or a woman is more fixed in some
cultures than in others, and in all cultures there is lots of individual variation in gender
roles. Although men or women may be ‘‘expected’’ to be this way or that way in any given
place, the variation in male and female attitudes and behaviors within a culture can be
tremendous.
All participant observers confront their personal limitations and the limitations
imposed on them by the culture they study. When she worked at the Thule relocation
camp for Japanese Americans during World War II, Rosalie Wax did not join any of the
women’s groups or organizations. Looking back after more than 40 years, Wax concluded
that this was just poor judgment.

I was a university student and a researcher. I was not yet ready to accept myself as a
total person, and this limited my perspective and my understanding. Those of us who
instruct future field workers should encourage them to understand and value their full
range of being, because only then can they cope intelligently with the range of experience
they will encounter in the field. (Wax 1986:148)

Besides gender, we have learned that being a parent helps you talk to people about
certain areas of life and get more information than if you were not a parent. My wife and
I arrived on the island of Kalymnos, Greece, in 1964 with a 2-month-old baby. As Joan
Cassell says, children are a ‘‘guarantee of good intentions’’ (1987:260), and wherever we
went, the baby was the conversation opener. But be warned: Taking children into the field
282 CHAPTER 12

can place them at risk. (More on health risks below. And for more about the effects of
fieldwork on children who accompany researchers, see Butler and Turner 1987.)
Being divorced has its costs. Nancie González found that being a divorced mother of
two young sons in the Dominican Republic was just too much. ‘‘Had I to do it again,’’
she says, ‘‘I would invent widowhood with appropriate rings and photographs’’ (1986:92).
Even height may make a difference: Alan Jacobs once told me he thought he did better
fieldwork with the Maasai because he’s 6! 5$ than he would have if he’d been, say, an
average-sized 5!10$.
Personal characteristics make a difference in fieldwork. Being old or young lets you
into certain things and shuts you out of others. Being wealthy lets you talk to certain
people about certain subjects and makes others avoid you. Being gregarious makes some
people open up to you and makes others shy away. There is no way to eliminate the
‘‘personal equation’’ in participant observation fieldwork, or in any other scientific data-
gathering exercise for that matter, without sending robots out to do the work. Even then,
the robots would have their own problems. In all sciences, the personal equation (the
influence of the observer on the data) is a matter of serious concern and study (Romney
1989).

SEX AND FIELDWORK

It is unreasonable to assume that single, adult fieldworkers are all celibate, yet the litera-
ture on field methods was nearly silent on this topic for many years. When Evans-Pritch-
ard was a student, just about to head off for Central Africa, he asked his major professor
for advice. ‘‘Seligman told me to take ten grains of quinine every night and keep off
women’’ (Evans-Pritchard 1973:1). As far as I know, that’s the last we heard from Evans-
Pritchard on the subject.
Colin Turnbull (1986) tells us about his affair with a young Mbuti woman, and Dona
Davis (1986) discusses her relationship with an engineer who visited the Newfoundland
village where she was doing research on menopause. In Turnbull’s case, he had graduated
from being an asexual child in Mbuti culture to being a youth and was expected to have
sexual relations. In Davis’s case, she was expected not to have sexual relations, but she
also learned that she was not bound by the expectation. In fact, Davis says that ‘‘being
paired off’’ made women more comfortable with her because she was ‘‘simply breaking a
rule everyone else broke’’ (1986:254).
Proscriptions against sex in fieldwork are silly, because they don’t work. But under-
stand that this is one area that people everywhere take very seriously. The rule on sexual
behavior in the field is this: Do nothing that you can’t live with, both professionally and
personally. This means that you have to be even more conscious of any fallout, for you
and for your partner, than you would in your own community. Eventually, you will
be going home. How will that affect your partner’s status? (Further Reading: sex and
fieldwork).

SURVIVING FIELDWORK
The title of this section is the title of an important book by Nancy Howell (1990). Even
20 years on, anyone who does fieldwork in developing nations should read this book.
Howell surveyed 204 anthropologists about illnesses and accidents in the field, and the
results are sobering. The maxim that ‘‘anthropologists are otherwise sensible people who
don’t believe in the germ theory of disease’’ (Rappaport 1990) is apparently correct.
Through the 1980s, 100% of anthropologists who did fieldwork in south Asia reported
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 283

being exposed to malaria, and 41% reported contracting the disease. Eighty-seven percent
of anthropologists who worked in Africa reported exposure, and 31% reported having
had malaria. Seventy percent of anthropologists who work in south Asia reported having
had some liver disease.
Among all anthropologists, 13% reported having had hepatitis A. I was hospitalized
for 6 weeks for hepatitis A in 1968 and spent most of another year recovering. Glynn
Isaac died of hepatitis B at age 47 in 1985 after a long career of archeological fieldwork in
Africa. Typhoid fever is also common among anthropologists, as are amoebic dysentery,
giardia, ascariasis, hookworm, and other infectious diseases.
Accidents have injured or killed many fieldworkers. Fei Xiaotong, a student of Mali-
nowski’s, was caught in a tiger trap in China in 1935. The injury left him an invalid for 6
months. His wife died in her attempt to go for help. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo was killed
in a fall in the Philippines in 1981. Thomas Zwickler, a graduate student at the University
of Pennsylvania, was killed by a bus on a rural road in India in 1985. He was riding a
bicycle when he was struck. Kim Hill was accidentally hit by an arrow while out with an
Ache hunting party in Paraguay in 1982 (Howell 1990).
Five members of a Russian-American team of researchers on social change in the Arctic
died in 1995 when their umiak (a traditional, walrus-hided Eskimo boat) was overturned
by a whale (see Broadbent 1995). The researchers included three Americans (two anthro-
pologists—Steven McNabb and Richard Condon—and a psychiatrist—William Rich-
ards), two Russians (one anthropologist—Alexander Pika—and the chief Eskimo
ethnographic consultant to the project—Boris Mumikhpykak). Nine Eskimo villagers also
perished in that accident. I’ve had my own unpleasant brushes with fate and I know many
others who have had very, very close calls.
What can you do about the risks? Get every inoculation you need before you leave,
not just the ones that are required by the country you are entering. Check your county
health office for the latest information from the Centers for Disease Control about ill-
nesses prevalent in the area you’re going to. If you go into an area that is known to be
malarial, take a full supply of antimalarial drugs with you so you don’t run out while
you’re out in the field.
When people pass around a gourd full of chicha (beer made from corn) or pulque
(beer made from cactus sap) or palm wine, decline politely and explain yourself if you
have to. You’ll probably insult a few people, and your protests won’t always get you off
the hook, but even if you only lower the number of times you are exposed to disease, you
lower your risk of contracting disease.
After being very sick in the field in Mexico, I learned to carry a supply of bottled beer
with me when I was visiting a house where I was sure to be given a gourd full of local
brew. The gift of bottled beer was appreciated and it headed off the embarrassment of
having to turn down a drink I’d rather not have. It also made clear that I’m not a teeto-
taler. If you are a teetotaler, you’ve got a ready-made get-out.
If you do fieldwork in a remote area, consult with physicians at your university hospital
for information on the latest blood-substitute technology. If you are in an accident in a
remote area and need blood, a nonperishable blood substitute can buy you time until you
can get to a clean blood supply. Some fieldworkers carry a supply of sealed hypodermic
needles with them in case they need an injection. Don’t go anywhere without medical
insurance and don’t go to developing countries without evacuation insurance. It costs
$60,000 or more to evacuate a person by jet from central Africa to Paris or Frankfurt. It
costs about $60 a month for insurance to cover it.
Fieldwork in remote areas isn’t for everyone, but if you’re going to do it, you might as
284 CHAPTER 12

well do it as safely as possible. Candice Bradley is a Type-I diabetic who did long-term
fieldwork in western Kenya. She took her insulin, glucagon, blood-testing equipment, and
needles with her. She arranged her schedule around the predictable, daily fluctuations in
her blood-sugar level. She trained people on how to cook for her and she laid in large
stocks of diet drinks so that she could function in the relentless heat without raising her
blood sugars (Bradley 1997:4–7).
With all this, Bradley still had close calls—near blackouts from hypoglycemia—but her
close calls are no more frequent than those experienced by other field researchers who
work in similarly remote areas. The rewards of foreign fieldwork can be very great, but so
are the risks, even under the best conditions (Further Reading: dangerous fieldwork).

THE STAGES OF PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION

In what follows, I will draw on three sources of data: (1) a review of the literature on field
research; (2) conversations with colleagues during the last 40 years, specifically about their
experiences in the field; and (3) 5 years of work, with the late Michael Kenny, directing
National Science Foundation field schools in cultural anthropology and linguistics.
During our work with the field schools (1967–1971), Kenny and I developed an outline
of researcher response in participant observation fieldwork. Those field schools were 10
weeks long and were held each summer in central Mexico, except for one that we held in
the interior of the Pacific Northwest. In Mexico, students were assigned to Ñähñu-speak-
ing communities in the vicinity of Ixmiquilpan, Mexico. In the Northwest field school,
students were assigned to small logging and mining communities in the Idaho panhandle.
In Mexico, a few students did urban ethnography in the regional capital of Pachuca; in the
Northwest field school, a few students did urban ethnography in Spokane, Washington.
What Kenny and I found so striking was that the stages we identified in the 10-week
field experiences of our students were the same across all these places. Even more interest-
ing—to us, anyway—was that the experiences our students had during those 10-week
stints as participant observers apparently had exact analogs in our own experiences with
year-long fieldwork.

1. Initial Contact
During the initial contact period, many long-term fieldworkers report experiencing a
kind of euphoria as they begin to move about in a new culture. It shouldn’t come as any
surprise that people who are attracted to the idea of living in a new culture are delighted
when they begin to do so.
But not always. Here is Napoleon Chagnon’s recollection of his first encounter with
the Yanomami: ‘‘I looked up and gasped when I saw a dozen burly, naked, sweaty, hideous
men staring at us down the shafts of their drawn arrows! . . . had there been a diplomatic
way out, I would have ended my fieldwork then and there’’ (Chagnon 1983:10–11).
The desire to bolt and run is more common than we have admitted in the past. Charles
Wagley, who would become one of our discipline’s most accomplished ethnographers,
made his first field trip in 1937. A local political chief in Totonicapán, Guatemala, invited
Wagley to tea in a parlor overlooking the town square. The chief’s wife and two daughters
joined them. While they were having their tea, two of the chief’s aides came in and hustled
everyone off to another room. The chief explained the hurried move to Wagley:

He had forgotten that an execution by firing squad of two Indians, ‘‘nothing but
vagrants who had robbed in the market,’’ was to take place at five .. just below the
parlor. He knew that I would understand the feelings of ladies and the grave problem of
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 285

trying to keep order among brutes. I returned to my ugly pensión in shock and spent a
night without sleep. I would have liked to have returned as fast as possible to New York.
(Wagley 1983:6)

Finally, listen to Rosalie Wax describe her encounter with the Arizona Japanese intern-
ment camp that she studied during World War II. When she arrived in Phoenix it was
110%. Later that day, after a bus ride and a 20-mile ride in a GI truck, across a dusty
landscape that ‘‘looked like the skin of some cosmic reptile,’’ with a Japanese American
who wouldn’t talk to her, Wax arrived at the Gila camp. By then it was 120%. She was
driven to staff quarters, which was an army barracks divided into tiny cells, and aban-
doned to find her cell by a process of elimination.

It contained four dingy and dilapidated articles of furniture: an iron double bedstead, a
dirty mattress (which took up half the room), a chest of drawers, and a tiny writing
table—and it was hotter than the hinges of Hades. . . . I sat down on the hot mattress,
took a deep breath, and cried. . . . Like some lost two-year-old, I only knew that I was
miserable. After a while, I found the room at the end of the barrack that contained two
toilets and a couple of wash basins. I washed my face and told myself I would feel better
the next day. I was wrong. (Wax 1971:67)

2. Culture Shock
Even among fieldworkers who have a pleasant experience during their initial contact
period (and many do), almost all report experiencing some form of depression and shock
soon thereafter—usually within a few weeks. (The term ‘‘culture shock,’’ by the way, was
introduced in 1960 by an anthropologist, Kalervo Oberg.) One kind of shock comes as
the novelty of the field site wears off and there is this nasty feeling that research has to get
done. Some researchers (especially those on their first field trip) may also experience
feelings of anxiety about their ability to collect good data.
A good response at this stage is to do highly task-oriented work: making maps, taking
censuses, doing household inventories, collecting genealogies, and so on. Another useful
response is to make clinical, methodological field notes about your feelings and responses
in doing participant observation fieldwork.
Another kind of shock is to the culture itself. Culture shock is an uncomfortable stress
response and must be taken very seriously. In extreme cases of culture shock, nothing
seems right. You may find yourself very upset at a lack of clean toilet facilities, or people’s
eating habits, or their child-rearing practices. The prospect of having to put up with the
local food for a year or more may become frightening. You find yourself focusing on little
annoyances—something as simple as the fact that light switches go side to side rather
than up and down may upset you.
This last example is not fanciful, by the way. It happened to a colleague of mine. When
I first went to work with the Ñähñu in 1962, men would greet me by sticking out their
right hand. When I tried to grab their hand and shake it, they deftly slid their hand to my
right so that the back of their right hand touched the back of my right hand. I became
infuriated that men didn’t shake hands the way ‘‘they’re supposed to.’’ You may find
yourself blaming everyone in the culture, or the culture itself, for the fact that your infor-
mants don’t keep appointments for interviews or don’t keep them ‘‘on time.’’
Culture shock commonly involves a feeling that people really don’t want you around
(which may, in fact, be the case). You feel lonely and wish you could find someone with
whom to speak your native language. Even with a spouse in the field, the strain of using
286 CHAPTER 12

another language day after day and concentrating hard so that you can collect data in that
language can be emotionally wearing.
A common personal problem in field research is not being able to get any privacy.
Many people across the world find the Anglo-Saxon notion of privacy grotesque. When
we first went out to the island of Kalymnos in Greece in 1964, Carole and I rented quarters
with a family. The idea was that we’d be better able to learn about family dynamics that
way. Women of the household were annoyed and hurt when my wife asked for a little
time to be alone. When I came home at the end of each day’s work, I could never just go
to my family’s room, shut the door, and talk to Carole about my day, or hers, or our new
baby’s. If I didn’t share everything with the family we lived with during waking hours,
they felt rejected.
After about 2 months of this, we had to move out and find a house of our own. My
access to data about intimate family dynamics was curtailed. But it was worth it because
I felt that I’d have had to abort the whole trip if I had to continue living in what my wife
and I felt was a glass bowl all the time. As it turns out, there is no word for the concept
of privacy in Greek. The closest gloss translates as ‘‘being alone,’’ and connotes loneliness.
I suspect that this problem is common to all English-speaking researchers who work
in developing countries. Here’s what M. N. Srinivas, himself from India, wrote about his
work in the rural village of Ramapura, near Mysore:

I was never left alone. I had to fight hard even to get two or three hours absolutely to
myself in a week or two. My favorite recreation was walking to the nearby village of
Kere where I had some old friends, or to Hogur which had a weekly market. But my
friends in Ramapura wanted to accompany me on my walks. They were puzzled by my
liking for solitary walks. Why should one walk when one could catch a bus, or ride on
bicycles with friends. I had to plan and plot to give them the slip to go out by myself.
On my return, however, I was certain to be asked why I had not taken them with me.
They would have put off their work and joined me. (They meant it.) I suffered from
social claustrophobia as long as I was in the village and sometimes the feeling became
so intense that I just had to get out. (1979:23)

Culture shock subsides as researchers settle in to the business of gathering data on a

daily basis, but it doesn’t go away because the sources of annoyance don’t go away.
Unless you are one of the very rare people who truly go native in another culture, you
will cope with culture shock, not eliminate it. You will remain conscious of things annoy-
ing you, but you won’t feel like they are crippling your ability to work. Like Srinivas,
when things get too intense, you’ll have the good sense to leave the field site for a bit
rather than try to stick it out (Further Reading: culture shock).

3. Discovering the Obvious

In the next phase of participant observation, researchers settle into collecting data on
a more or less systematic basis (see Kirk and Miller 1986). This is sometimes accompanied
by an interesting personal response—a sense of discovery, where you feel as if informants
are finally letting you in on the ‘‘good stuff’’ about their culture. Much of this ‘‘good
stuff’’ will later turn out to be commonplace. You may ‘‘discover,’’ for example, that
women have more power in the community than meets the eye or that there are two
systems for dispute settlement—one embodied in formal law and one that works through
informal mechanisms.
Sometimes, a concomitant to this feeling of discovery is a feeling of being in control
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 287

of dangerous information and a sense of urgency about protecting informants’ identities.

You may find yourself going back over your field notes, looking for places that you might
have lapsed and identified an informant, and making appropriate changes. You may worry
about those copies of field notes you have already sent home and even become a little
worried about how well you can trust your major professor to maintain the privacy of
those notes.
This is the stage of fieldwork when you hear anthropologists start talking about ‘‘their’’
village, and how people are, at last, ‘‘letting them in’’ to the secrets of the culture. The
feeling has its counterpart among all long-term participant observers. It often spurs
researchers to collect more and more data; to accept every invitation, by every informant,
to every event; to fill the days with observation and to fill the nights with writing up field
notes. Days off become unthinkable, and the sense of discovery becomes more and more
intense.
This is the time to take a real break.

4. The Break
The mid-fieldwork break, which usually comes after 3 or 4 months, is a crucial part of
the overall participant observation experience for long-term researchers. It’s an opportu-
nity to get some distance, both physical and emotional, from the field site. It gives you a
chance to put things into perspective, think about what you’ve got so far, and what you
need to get in the time remaining. Use this time to collect data from regional or national
statistical services; to visit with colleagues at the local university and discuss your findings;
to visit other communities in other parts of the country. And be sure to leave some time
to just take a vacation, without thinking about research at all.
Your informants also need a break from you. ‘‘Anthropologists are uncomfortable
intruders no matter how close their rapport,’’ wrote Charles Wagley. ‘‘A short respite
is mutually beneficial. One returns with objectivity and human warmth restored. The
anthropologist returns as an old friend’’ who has gone away and returned, and has thereby
demonstrated his or her genuine interest in a community (Wagley 1983:13). Everyone
needs a break.

5. Focusing
After the break, you will have a better idea of exactly what kinds of data you are
lacking, and your sense of problem will also come more sharply into focus. The reason to
have a formally prepared design statement before you go to the field is to tell you what
you should be looking for. Nevertheless, even the most focused research design will have
to be modified in the field. In some cases, you may find yourself making radical changes
in your design, based on what you find when you get to the field and spend several
months actually collecting data.
There is nothing wrong or unusual about this, but new researchers sometimes experi-
ence anxiety over making any major changes. The important thing at this stage is to
focus the research and use your time effectively rather than agonizing over how to save
components of your original design, if that design turns out to be truly unworkable.

6. Exhaustion, the Second Break, and Frantic Activity

After 7 or 8 months, some participant observers start to think that they have exhausted
their informants, both literally and figuratively. That is, they may become embarrassed
about continuing to ask informants for more information. Or they may make the supreme
288 CHAPTER 12

mistake of believing that their informants have no more to tell them. The reason this is
such a mistake, of course, is that the store of cultural knowledge in any culturally compe-
tent person is enormous—far more than anyone could hope to extract in a year or two.
At this point, another break is usually a good idea. You’ll get another opportunity to
take stock, order your priorities for the time remaining, and see both how much you’ve
done and how little. The realization that, in fact, informants have a great deal more to
teach them, and that they have precious little time left in the field, sends many investiga-
tors into a frenetic burst of activity during this stage.

7. Leaving the Field

The last stage of participant observation is leaving the field. Don’t neglect this part of
the process. Let people know that you are leaving and tell them how much you appreciate
their help. The ritual of leaving a place in a culturally appropriate way will make it possible
for you to go back and even to send others.
Participant observation is an intensely intimate and personal experience. People who
began as your informants may become your friends as well. In the best of cases, you come
to trust that they will not deceive you about their culture, and they come to trust you not
to betray them—that is, not to use your intimate knowledge of their lives to hurt them.
(You can imagine the worst of cases.) There is often a legitimate expectation on both sides
that the relationship may be permanent, not just a 1-year fling.
For many long-term participant observation researchers, there is no final leaving of
‘‘the field.’’ I’ve been working with some people, on and off, for 45 years. Like many
anthropologists who work in Latin America, I’m godparent to a child of my closest
research collaborator. From time to time, people from Mexico or from Greece will call
my house on the phone, just to say ‘‘hi’’ and to keep the relationship going.
Or their children, who happen to be doing graduate work at a university in the United
States, will call and send their parents’ regards. They’ll remind you of some little event
they remember when they were 7 or 8 and you came to their parents’ house to do some
interviewing and you spilled your coffee all over yourself as you fumbled with your tape
recorder. People remember the darndest things. You’d better be ready when it happens.

THE FRONT-EDGE: COMBINING METHODS

More and more researchers these days, across the social sciences, have learned what a
powerful method powerful participant observation is at all stages of the research process.
The method stands on its own, but it is also increasingly part of a mixed-method strategy,
as researchers combine qualitative and quantitative data to answer questions of interest.
Laura Miller (1997) used a mix of ethnographic and survey methods to study gender
harassment in the U.S. Army. Keeping women out of jobs that have been traditionally
reserved for men is gender harassment; asking women for sex in return for a shot at one
of those jobs is sexual harassment. (Gender harassment need not involve sexual harass-
ment, or vice versa.)
Miller spent nearly 2 years collecting data at eight army posts and at two training
centers in the United States where war games are played out on simulated battlefields.
She lived in Somalia with U.S. Army personnel for 10 days, in Macedonia for a week, and
in Haiti for 6 days during active military operations in those countries. Within the context
of participant observation, she did unstructured interviewing, in-depth interviewing, and
group interviewing. Her group interviews were spontaneous: over dinner with a group of
high-ranking officers; sitting on her bunk at night, talking to her roommates; in vehicles,
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 289

bouncing between research sites, with the driver, guide, protocol officer, translator, and
guard (Miller, personal communication).
It turns out that ‘‘forms of gender harsassment’’ in the U.S. Army is one of those
cultural domains that people recognize and think about, but for which people have no
ready list in their heads. You can’t just ask people: ‘‘List the kinds of gender harassment.’’
From her ethnographic interviews, though, Miller was able to derive what she felt was
just such a list, including:

1. resistance to authority (hostile enlisted men ignore orders from women officers);
2. constant scrutiny (men pick up on every mistake that women make and use those
mistakes to criticize the abilities of women in general);
3. gossip and rumors (women who date many men are labeled ‘‘sluts,’’ women who don’t
date at all are labeled ‘‘dykes,’’ and any woman can easily be unjustly accused of ‘‘sleep-
ing her way to the top’’);
4. outright sabotage of women’s tools and equipment on work details; and
5. indirect threats against women’s safety (talking about how women would be vulnerable
to rape if they were to go into combat).

This list emerges from qualitative research—hanging out, talking to people and gaining
their trust, and generally letting people know that you’re in for the long haul with them.
If you are trying to develop programs to correct things that are wrong with a program,
then this list, derived entirely from participant observation, is enough. An education pro-
gram to counter gender harassment against women in the U.S. Army must include some-
thing about each of the problems that Miller identified.
Although ethnographic methods are enough to identify the problems and processes—
the what and the how of culture—ethnography can’t tell you how much each problem
and process counts. Yes, enlisted army men can and do sabotage army women’s tools and
equipment on occasion. How often? Ethnography can’t help with that one. Yes, men do
sometimes resist the authority of women officers. How often? Ethnography can’t help
there, either.
Fortunately, Miller also collected questionnaire data—from a quota sample of 4,100
men and women, Whites and Blacks, officers and enlisted personnel. In those data, 19%
of enlisted men and 18% of male noncommissioned officers (like sergeants) said that
women should be treated exactly like men and should serve in the combat units just like
men, but just 6% of enlisted women and 4% of female noncommissioned officers agreed
with this sentiment. You might conclude, Miller says, that men are more supportive than
women are of equality for women in combat roles. Some men with whom Miller spoke,
however, said that women should be given the right to serve in combat so that, once and
for all, everyone will see that women can’t cut it.
Are men really what Miller called ‘‘hostile proponents’’ of equality for women? Could
that be why the statistics show so many more men in favor of women serving in combat
units? Miller went back to her questionnaire data: About 20% of men in her survey said
that women should be assigned to combat units just like men were—but almost to a
man they also said that putting women into combat units would reduce the military’s
effectiveness.
In other words, the numerical analysis showed that Miller’s concept of ‘‘hostile propo-
nent of equality’’ was correct. This subtle concept advances our understanding consider-
ably of how gender harassment against women works in the U.S. Army.
Did you notice the constant feedback between ethnographic and survey data here?
290 CHAPTER 12

The ethnography produced ideas for policy recommendations and for the content for a
questionnaire. The questionnaire data illuminated and validated many of the things that
the ethnographer learned during participant observation. Those same survey data pro-
duced anomalies—things that didn’t quite fit with the ethnographer’s intuition. More
ethnography turned up an explanation for the anomalies. And so on. Ethnographic and
survey data combined produce more insight than either does alone.

FURTHER READING
Street ethnography: Agar (1973); Connolly and Ennew (1996); Fleisher (1995); Gigengack (2000);
Kane and Mason (2001); Lambert et al. (1995); Weppner (1977).
Chicago School of ethnography: Abbot (1997); Bulmer (1984); Lofland (1983).
Participant observation fieldwork: A. Anderson (2003); Atkinson et al. (2001); Behar (1996); Bogdan
(1972); Burawoy (1991); DeWalt and DeWalt (2002); Fenno (1990); Fine and Sandstrom (1988);
Gummerson (2000); Kirk and Miller (1986); Lofland (1976); Schatz (2009); C. D. Smith and
Kornblum (1996); Spradley (1980); Stocking (1983); Woods (1986).
Rapid ethnographic assessment: Baker (1996a, 1996b); Beebe (2001); Bentley et al. (1988); D’Antona
et al. (2008). For more on the focused ethnographic study method, see Hudelson (1994); G. H.
Pelto (1992); P. J. Pelto (1994); Scrimshaw and Gleason (1992); Scrimshaw and Hurtado (1987);
Trotter et al. (2001).
Gatekeepers: Harrington (2003); Kawulich (in press); Maginn (2007); Rashid (2007); Sanghera and
Thapar-Björkert (2008); Wanat (2008).
Using interpreters: Borchgrevink (2003); Hsieh (2008); Jentsch (1998).
Language and fieldwork: Herzfeld (1983, 2009a); Owusu (1978); Werner (1994); Winchatz (2006).
Studying your own culture; indigenous research: Altorki and El-Sohl (1988); Fahim (1982); Messer-
schmidt (1981); Stephenson and Greer (1981); Zaman (2008).
Sex and fieldwork: Kulick and Willson (1995); Lewin and Leap (1996); Markowitz and Ashkenazi
(1999).
Dangerous fieldwork: Belousov et al. (2007); Lee (1995); Lee-Treweek and Linkogle (2000); Nord-
strom and Robben (1995); Sampson and Thomas (2003).
Culture shock: Bochner (2000); Furnham and Bochner (1986); Mumford (1998).
This page was intentionally left blank
The Multiple Worlds of Ethnographic Fieldwork: A Personal Account
Author(s): William Sax
Source: Zeitschrift f r Ethnologie , 2014, Bd. 139, H. 1, Special Issue: Current Debates in
Anthropology (2014), pp. 7-21
Published by: Dietrich Reimer Verlag GmbH

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/24364939

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The M l i le W ld fE h g a hic Field k:
A Pe al Acc

Willia Sa
S h A ia I i e, De a e f A h l g , U i e i f Heidelbe g,
I Ne e hei e Feld 330, D-69120 Heidelbe g

Ab ac . I hi a bi g a hical e a , I e e be ch i g bec e a a h l gi beca e I

a ed e l e " he ld ". I di c ha he i f " he ld " ea a i di ci
li e , a d h I ca e he c cl i ha he be a e l e ch ld a h gh e h
g a hic field k. I add e e f he c i ici f field k, ec e e ie ce f " he
ld " hile c d c i g field k i I dia e e e al decade , a d c cl de i h a fe eflec i
ab h all f hi igh ela e c e di c i ab he " l gical " i a h l g .
/Field k, Pa ici a Ob e a i , I dia, Me h d i A h l g ]

L ki g f "O he W ld "

The h a e " he ld " i f e ed a he l el , a d j b a h l gi .

I i ck-i - ade f cie ce fic i a d fa a i i g, he e he ld i ace
a d i e a e i agi ed a d de c ibed, all i h e f da ge he
i e ble a ic li k he e aic ld f he "ea hli g ". I E gli h, e
a f a d ea a d ea il di ac ed ee age ( f e e h i e all di
bed) ha he he "li e i a he ld". U e i g e' f ie d a d
fa il af e e di g i e i h e le f a diffe e e h ic cla backg d,
f a he a f , e igh a ha he "li e i a he ld", a
e ha i e hei a ge e . The h a e ca be ed cki gl f h e h e li i
cal he belief e di ag ee i h, e e i l de e he " he ld "
f h e h li e i a fa a a lace, eak a f eig la g age, b h. I i f
c e hi la age ha e e ble he a h l gi ' idea f l i le c l al
ld .

Whe I a gh f ele e ea i a De a e f Phil h a d Religi S

die i Ch i ch ch, Ne Zeala d, I lea ed ha a ( e ha ) hil he
d ' ca e f he idea f " he ld ". N l d e i call i e i he
l gical c he e ce f he ld ha f he hi k i he l e he e i , i al
e e e a a i b he a h l gi f ha hil he e d ega d a
hei i e ca abili ce ch a e . A h l gi ' alk f

Zei ch if f E h l gie 139 (2014) 7-22 2014 Die ich Rei e Ve lag

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8 Zei ch if f E h l gie 139 (2014)

" he ld " i f e ega ded b hil he a gge i e e a h a be , l

hi ki g a ,a di g ae e e e he e e f he a al cie i , f
f h i i elf-e ide ha he e i l e ld, hich he a e i he
b i e f de c ibi g a d a al i g. If e le f ai c l e i e e hi
ld diffe e l , di ide i e e l , e e ie ce i a i l , ell, hi i i
l a a e fi e eai , e cla e, la g age, ch l g : he "i "
ha i bei g i e e ed, di ided, a ed a d e e ie ced i ill e a d he a e
ld.

B he I a a ee age , a d la e a de g ad a e, he idea f " he ld "

fi ed i agi a i .I ee ed e ha if I c ld h ha he ld e i ed, I
ld be iki g a bl f he f da e al e e a d i e f life, a d
agai i g i de e i ac . B if " he ld " a be e ha j a e
h a e, if ch ld l e i ed, he h e e he be di c e ed, de c ibed,
a d de d? E c ced i he i e i a he age f eigh ee , h gh
hi e i e e ci c c ibed b i ellec al e i e . I did hi k f
e l i ga dd c e i g ch ld b ea f eligi ac ice edi a i
e he ki d f e al ai i g. I ead, I h gh f he a i ic, hil hical,
a d hi ical di ci li e , each f hich ffe ed i e h d( ) f f la i g a d
i g he e i f " he " ld .
The " he " ld f he li e a a d a i ic di ci li e ee ed e l a
a e f i agi a i a d c ea i i . The ld c ea ed b i e , la igh , fil
ake , ac , ai e , c l e c. e ded be c e a ie he idia
ld, a d de hi headi g I i cl ded all f he U ia (a d d ia ) i i
ha c ded he b k hel e a d a galle ie . M e a el , ch a i ic ld e e
c ide ed e l i a ac i ,1 he fi e i he a f a i f
cie . B i b h ca e , he e e eall " he " ld ch a eac i
he e ld " ha e all ha e", i i f ha ld, a f ed. E e He de ,
ha celeb a ed he f adical al e i , a hi ki g f l gicall di i c
ld , b l f he iad a i hich he e ld a be de c ibed i l
i le la g age .
Ce ai hi ia c e cl e he idea f " he ld ", f e a le if he
b c ibe he idea ha " he a i a f eig c "." B e e he he ail cl e
he ki d f l gical l ali a d hich I a flaili g, hei e h d e
cl de he f di a chi g a h e a . Deali g i h he ice a d ac i f
h el g( e e l g) dead d e ffe ch i he a f eal acce
ch a ld, a d he ef e i a e e e a ac i e e: i ee ed a he like
eadi g ab k di i g, a he ha aki g he e bial lea ...

1 E. g. Richa d Schech e ' la Di i i 69.

E e h gh he h a e i a ib ed he B i i h e a d eli Le lie P le Ha le , a d
a hi ia .

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Willia Sa : The M l i le W ld fE h g a hic Field k: A Pe al Acc 9

A e di ec a gai ch e e ie ce ld ha e bee ge i l ed i h
e e ic eligi , a d i fac I ha e al a bee fa ci a ed b i che , gh a d he
c ee a d c a l hi g . S ch i ha e bec e ch e e ec able a d
ide ead ha he ce e e, ha ada i i c fi d he
c e i al f e le i l ed i he e e ic f f eligi .
B I a (a d e ai ) e elled b he i ellec al e f c l like Scie lg ,
he ch l gical eedi e f he Wicca a d hei fell a elle , a d he e - ha
a 'a ia i a d e l i a i f he e le ' c l al he i age. M e e ,
he e a e all i i eligi e e , i i ed a ch b a ejec i f he
d i a c l e ha defi e he , a b a l gi g f he ld . I a l ki g
f e hi g el e. I a l ki g f f f life ha did e e e a ejec i
f he cial e i e , b e e i ead a ch ed i i , i e i ed i h i . I a
eeki g " he " ld ha ee U ia e cla e b e d i g, c llec i e eali ie .
I e ec , i ee ha I al ead had a ea l i i i ( hich la e beca e a
e led c ic i ) ha if ch ld e i ed, if he e e " lid" a d ai able, he
he had be fi l ba ed i e e da life, i i i ali ed i e a , ha he
c ld be d ced a d e d ced d h gh he ge e a i .

O he W ld i I dia

I fi e I dia i 1977, a a de he "C llege Yea i I dia P g a " ad

i i e ed b he U i e i f Wi c i -Madi . We de e e e i ed
ch e a e ea ch ic a d I ch e " ilg i age", c ec l i i g ha hi ld
e able e a el i e a l i I dia. A d a el I did! The i e i a cl ed f
f he fi ea , a d a a e l I a ici a ed i ilg i age he h f he
Ga ge i he fa ea f he c , Ra e h a a a he he i , ibal
ilg i age dee i he i e i , a d a f he fa ilg i age lace i
he Hi ala a : M k i a h i Ne al, a d Bad i a h, Keda a h, a d Ga g i i I
dia. I e ec , I ca ee ha hi a he e i d d i g hich I l beca e a
field ke , e di g eek a d e e h i alie la g age e i e , e l
i g e ld f ea i g a d e e ie ce, a d al a (a lea i lici l ) ea chi g
f a a e e i : e e he ld f he e ilg i eall " he " ha
i e?

O e f he fi lace I i i ed a Bada Mahade , a ilg i age lace he

ac ed eak f Dh ga h, he highe ai i I dia h f he Hi ala a .
Dh ga h i l ca ed i he de e j gle f he Vi dh a a ge, ea he "hill a i "
f Pach adhi. Whe I fi i i ed i 1977, I a ld he f a h l a h
ed li e i a ca e a he f f he ai . E e da he ld cli b he
all fea , i ce he ai ha he f f a e a, i h hee cliff all ide
- a d ffe ilk he g ea g d Shi a "Mahade ", h i g fi all b ai a
ac ed i i f hi . O e da Shi a a ea ed hi i a d ea a d de a ded ha

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10 Zei ch if f E h l gie 139 (2014)

he h l a l ck hi e e a d ffe he . He did ,a d a g a ed a
ii f he g d. O he a al fe i al f Shi a a i ("Shi a' igh ") i la e i g,
e le f fa a d ide c e ged he i e, a f he e be f he G d
ibe, h c e ed a di a ce f h gh he j gle, i e a fe f he bea
i gl g ih l ide fa hi ed f i , hich he ca ied he f he
ai a d ffe ed Shi a.
I a a a he ai e field ke i h e da , a d failed be fficie l a a e f
he " he ld " i h hich I a c f ed e e he h l ai : he
ld f e i habi ed b he fa e h le i ai c a e
i he iddle f he igh , i g alia l b cce f ll hield hi i da gh
e f he bi e c ld i h hi b d ; he ld f algia i habi ed b he
elde l E gli h-b id h had a ied a I dia a d a ed af e a i i ,
a d h ade ea e ea i hc e ,i ah i he iddle f he j gle,
a he ilg i age ai . I ead, a e i a f c ed he e
e ic ld f Shi a' de ee , i gi f all di ec i . The ld
a a ca e ha la a he b f he cliff, hich a i habi ed b a Hi d a ce ic.
He a e a all fi e i i fa ece e , a d ki dl i i ed e j i hi , di ec
i g e i e e fa he back ha e e ce ld i e he ilg i .
O af e a he he ca e, hei face ill i a ed b he flicke i g ligh f he fi e.
F he , he h l a a Shi a hi elf, i ca a ed i he b d f hi a de i g
gi, a d hei e e e e f ll f de a he e e e l ga ed hi .
De e i ed be a g d Hi d elf, I cli bed ba ef he a h, cca i
all ha i g a iga e he hee a d da ge cliff f Dh ga h.11 a ea i g l
a ca l i cl h, i h ide icked i i f ld . I a le ha a f l ga d
eighed l a fe ce : ch le ha he ide f he ilg i , f e i fee
l g e e e, a d f e i e hea . Whe I eached he I a a ded b
he ce e: a e faci g each he , e f Shi a a d he he f he -bli d
de ee. A d all a d he , a e i able hicke fi ide , i fee l ga d
ee e l ge , lea i g agai each he f i lea - f a ki d. Be ea h
he , ibal ie e e i i g hei ha che , e f i g i al f he ead
ea f ilg i .A da he e e he fa h i , a d he fi e b i g be
ea h he ide bega bla e b igh e , a e le e i a ce a d da ced
ec a icall . T hi da , I e e be hei ilh e e agai he fla e .
I ca e back he e ea , hi i e i h a fell de i . O ce agai I
cli bed he f Dh ga h a d i e ed he ec a ic i al f he G d,a
he da ced a d a g all igh l g. A d he e i g, a he ai ed i fie
head e he ea i g j gle, a fla i f a ea b ci bega la a i g
aga, a d e e al d e ilg i a e l li ked ha d a d bega da ce i a

3A ick I e e ea ch h e ha i he ea l hi -fi e ea ha ha e a ed i ce he ,
e c c e e ai ha e bee b il .

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Willia Sa : The M l i le W ld fE h g a hic Field k: A Pe al Acc 11

l ci cle. I a e f he fe i e ha I e e ie ced e hi g like ec

?ii a , he feeli g f bei g e ih fell h a bei g i a c ed, egali
a ia c i , a de c ibed b he a h l gi Vic T e . Wa hi a
" he " ld? Ce ai l he ai had cha ged.
T e h gh ha c ia a a ic la l likel be ge e a ed b ilg i
age, a d i fac he l he i e I e e e e ie ced a g e e fc ia
a d i ga he ilg i age, d i g he a e ea i hich I fi i i ed Dh ga h.
I had ee a ad e i e e f a cha e ed ilg i age b , hich a g i g ii
e el e ilg i age lace i e e da , a d I ig ed f he i , eei g i a
a i i e ke Hi di. The i a l g a d, like b j e
e e he e, e i el c f able, b I e i ed, a d ca e k a f
fell ilg i a he ell. The c l i a i f he j e a he Ga ga Saga Ya a,
ha i , he ilg i age a a) he lace he e he Ri e Ga ge ga ga) ee he
ea aga ). T ge he e, e had lea e b ,a db a d e f a all
de aili g hi ha fe ied ilg i f he ai la d Saga I la d. Af e ha , e
j i ed a ee i gl e dle , aigh li e f ilg i alki g ac he a d a d he
cea i he fa di a ce. O ce e e e ea he h e, each ilg i cha ed
all a el f e al lea e , hich he lea ed ge he f a "V" de
hich he c ld lee . La e , I lea ed ha he e e e e ha h ee illi il
g i Saga I la d ha da , a d i e a he l -I dia face i igh . B
ha a l e a di a a h , he f ll i g i g, e e e ef
he e he had bee lee i g, alked l l he ea h e, a d e e ed he a e
ba he, a he e e he h i . Th ee illi ba he , all a he a e i e!
O ce agai , he a he e a ff ed i h a e e f c ia ha e i ed
f he e f he da , ha he e a a ic, lea a e ,b l a ge le
cal a g he ilg i a he ade hei a back he ai la d a d hei
e ec i e de i a i . We e he lea i g a " he " ld f c ia f he
idia ld f hei dail li e ?

N Field k i G ad a e Sch l

A he e d f ea I had falle i l e i h all hi g I dia : I dia' la g age , i

hi , i f d, i ic ... b f all, i e le. I k e ha I a ed fa h
i a ca ee ha ld kee e i c ac i h I dia e le f a ea c e.
I a ch he eli e i he i e i ie a d he big ci ie i h h I i hed
i e ac , b a he h e h ld, i Hi di, call he el e " all e le":
fa e , h kee e , lab e , a d he like. I decided ha acade ic a h l g
a he be a h f e, beca e i ld ide e i h a ea f f c i g
ch e le. I a al i e e ha if I e e g i g e d he i e a d e e g
e i ed ge a PhD, I h ld d a he be ible i e i , i de ha e
a ea able cha ce f ac all i g elf a a acade ic af e I a fi i hed.

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12 Zei ch if f E h l gie 139 (2014)

S I e he U i e i f Chicag , hich a ha i e a idel ega ded a

he be lace i he ld d l a h l g ,b al he he ic i
hich I a i e e ed: S h A ia S die a d he Hi f Religi .I a e
ed a ki d f i ellec al i e i ha I ha e e e e e ie ced bef e i ce,
a d I lea ed a g ea deal f cial he i ac a a i el h i e. M eache
i cl ded Ma hall Sahli , Michael Sil e ei , Pa l F ied ich, Te e ce T e , Ge ge
S cki g, McKi Ma i , R I de , A. K. Ra a ja , Na c M , Jea a d
J h C a ff, Be a d C h , Mil Si ge , Pa l Ric e , Mi cea Eliade, a d We
d D ige : a e i able Wh ' Wh f acade ic A h l g , S h A ia S die ,
a d he Hi f Religi . B ha dl a d a ke ab field k. I a
a if hi g had cha ged i ce he da f Alf ed K ebe , he fi -e e P fe f
A h l g a he U i e i f Calif ia, Be kele . Acc di g e( ibl
a c hal) ,ad c al de a gi e a all g a a he e d f he fi
ea , a d ld g a d d a I dia ibe. B e b he ed ell he he e
he ibe a, h ac all d he field k! Wi h e bli g hea a d ea
al , he e a d k cked he d f P fe K ebe . He a i ga a a
he i e, a d did ' l k f a i e . Whe he fi all did, he de
e lai ed he ble a d a ked f ad ice. "Well," aid K ebe , "I gge b
a e cil" a d he e ed hi i g.
Al h gh field k a ce ai l a bjec fc a eflec i a Chicag , e
e e e e a gh h d i . I ca ell e e be h h cked c lleag e e e
he , ea la e d i g i e a a Lec e i Ch i ch ch, Ne Zeala d, he
a ked e each a c e e h g a hic field ki he S ci l g De a e ,
a dI ld he I had idea ab h each ha ic. Nea l all he di ci
li e i he cial a d a al cie ce de e a g ea deal f e e g ecif i g (a d
all f ali i g) hei e h d, hich he he aga e i e i a , e b k,
a d . Wh i i ha a h l gi d hi ch le i h e ec hei
ce al e h d, e h g a hic field k? M a e i ha d i g field k i like
aki g l e: al h gh ha db k ha e bee i e de c ibi g h d i ,i i e
a a e fi i i ,g feeli g, a d hee h a i ha i i f f ll i ga e f
le . E h g a hic "field k" ea hi g le ha lea i g a l cal la g age ell,
a d e di g i e - l f i e! i h e le i a a ic la lace: li i g i a ical
d elli g, ea i g e e da cl hi g, ea i g l cal f d , e gagi g i al k (i
he field i ea a c l e, he fac fl f e h g a he fi d ial la
b , i " he i " f a e h g a h f ck adi g) al g i h he ac i i ie ch
a d e ic ch e , child- ea i g, i al a d fe i al , e c. U like he he di ci li e ,
h eek h gh hei e h d achie e a ce ai ki d f " bjec i i " e ali ,
he field ke i e e he - hi elf i a a ic la c l e a each a
i i i ea ell a a a al ical de a di g f i ; he field ke ' b d a d e e
a ea g hi he i a e ea ch l ; he ki d f de a di g ha i
gh i a ch a a e f e b di e a f i ellec al k ledge. I e i e
efe hi e h d a "dee ha gi g ", a d I' e if h I c ld each i ,

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Willia Sa : The M l i le W ld fE h g a hic Field k: A Pe al Acc 13

he ha i i (a I d i he fi lec e he fi da f I d c
c ei A h l g ) he h ee e e iie f cce f l field k: he la
g age, he la g age, a d he la g age.
E e h gh field k ha l g bee ega ded a he "hea a d l" f a h
l g , e e hele i he 1980 a d 1990 , j ab he i e I a c le i g
g ad a e ch l, he e a a a e f i i g ha l called i i e i ,b
e e di a aged i . A e ie f ie ,f b h i hi a d i h he di ci li e,
e e ed hei d b ab i al a d e i e l gical al e. A a Maa e
i i he l g e hi i fl e ial b k he ic, field k a c i ici ed

-b e fi e ec ed ac i i e le - f i elia ce e
i ed c l al c cei (" ", " hei "), f i a a ed clai f bjec
i i ,f i eache bjec i i , f i acial a d ge de ed ile ce a d a i
ali , f i fail e aba d he cie ific i ga cia ed i h de i
a d e e iali ,f i li k c l iali a d he e i e, a d, da i g,
f i i abili ( illi g e ) c i icall eflec i ac ice , ( a
Maa e 2011 [1988]:X)

Cl el ela ed ch c i ici a a di c i ha a ed b Ma c a d
Cliff d' b k W i i g C l e (1986), hich a e ha he idel a d c
e iall di c ed b k i a h l g d i g h e ea . I elici ed ch
a deba e a a di c i ab e h g a hic i i g a a ge e ab i e , ab
h e h g a hic a h i i he icall e abli hed, ab h a h l gi ac
k ledge ( fail ack ledge) he c llab a i e a i hich hei k ledge i
d ced, a d f h. Pe ha e d i gl , i ade e h g a he ec
ci f hei ii g ac ice , a d e abli hed " efle i e e h g a h " - ha
i , e h g a hic i i g ha ack ledge a d e e e he c cial e e ce f he
e h g a he hi elf a a e a da d.4 Thi c i i e a ed ei e e i g
a d i agi a i e e e i e i e h g a hic i i g. S e cceeded, failed,
b all ill aea e elf-c ci e ega di g he ce e f d ci f
a h l gical k ledge a d h he e ce e i i ge e h g a hic i i g.
I ega d hi a a e e a a affi ai f he e h g a hic c i e e i ical
e ea ch. The al e f efle i e e h g a h lie eci el i he fac ha i be e i
f he eade f he a h ' ej dice a d edi ii , a d f he a i
hich he da a e e ga he ed a d he e c c ed, h e abli g he ge cl e
ha e e eali i bei g de c ibed a d a al ed. Tha i h I i cl de de c i i
f e al e e ie ce a d feeli g i e h g a hic acc l
ake a e e e ai i g ( h gh f c eIh e d ha a ell) b al
each he eade e hi g ab h I c d c e h g a hic e ea ch. I de c ibe
he c llab a i e a e f hi e ea ch, l gi e c edi a cia e i I

4 The e f hi a d he e a ag a h i ake f he I d ci Sa 2009.

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14 Zei ch if f E h l gie 139 (2014)

dia (al h gh i i ce ai l i a d )b al i de ide eade

i h a clea e idea f h he e a d ced. Refle i i i e h g a hic ii gi
j a li e a ech i e. M e i a l , i i a efi e e f he e h g a hic
e h d ha i j ified e i ical g d , beca e i e acc a el e ee
he e ea ch ce .
Al h gh "field k" a a i a ic d i g g ad a e ch l ea ,
he a ec fa h l g e e, a d a Chicag I had he i de el
idea ab he di ci li e. Scie ific a h l g bega i h he a e
ecif ha a i e all h a behi d all he a a e diffe e ce i la g age,
eligi , a d h ical a ea a ce. I ha e e, i e b died a f dl g e i e
g a .A d e f he e f la e he e i ab h a i e
ali a "c l e," a e ha A e ica A h l g ade i . A Sa i
i ed , he e c e di ec l f Ge a R a ic hil h , he e i al
a e e e ed " he ela i e a fh a bjec i i f a al bjec
i e de e i ai " (2008:39). I he d, ha h a bei g i e all ha e
i he abili fa hi c l al ld f ea i g ha a e e diffe e i hei de
ail . The e a e a a f fi di g ab he e a ic la c l al ld , b
a h l gi e e all f c ed he e h d f field k. Thei g idi g a
i ca e be ha b li i g i h a a ic la g f e le, ad i g hei die
a dd e , eaki g hei la g age a d a ici a i g i hei a f life, e achie e a
ki d de a di g ha ca be e lica ed b c d c i g e , eadi g el ,
a chi g ie , ea i g la d h ldi g cal ie i ake c a ial i e, d i g
hi , a al i g la g age, c d c i g e e i e , a f he he eh d e
l ed b he h a cie ce . Ce ai l he e he eh d a e h hile, b
e h g a he a ec i ed he idea ha e h g a hic field k ha e
hi g ecial c ib e he de a di g f a ic la c l e , a d he eb f
h a bei g ge e all .

M e Field k

Af e e e al ea f di ci li a "f a i " a Chicag , I lef i 1983 i h ife

S l ia a d da gh e Lila, f ea l h ee ea f field k, hi i e f c ed
he g dde Na da De i, a d e eciall h he g a d i al eflec ed he li e
f l cal ea a e i he f e We e Hi ala a ki gd f Ga h al. The
g dde ' g e e l (b e cl i el ) g b e , a d a ed f
he da gh e ; he ef e ch f e ea ch c i ed i alki g l g di a ce
h gh he Hi ala a , ea chi g f e h e e illi g i g i a e
ec de f b e e a la i . The alki g i a e a le f ha I ea b
"e b died" field k: h ca e de a d he life f a Hi ala a ea a i h
ha i g e e ie ced he hee challe ge f i g i hi egi ? A d he i gi g i
a e a le f e b di e , : ha i g al ead died Hi di f e e al ea , a d

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Willia Sa : The M l i le W ld fE h g a hic Field k: A Pe al Acc 15

e he be e a f ea i I dia he e I ke he la g age eg la l , I a
able lea a f he g b hea , a d abili i g al g i h he e
(a d la e a blic e e a d fe i al ) hel ed e ch i h e ea ch. Whe
l cal e le hea d e i gi g, he ed e, j dgi g ha I be e c i ed
he ic, a d c ec l i i g ha I had feeli g f eal de i a d hi
l cal g dde , h a ei e h gh f a a fie ce a d e gef l " he ", e
i e a a ad a d l el da gh e , a d ei e a al i g i e .I ill e e be
alki g al g ide Na da De i' ala i he g ea e ilg i age, hich a ha
e i g af e a ga f i e ee ea , a d feeli g e hel ed b feeli g f f a e al
l e. Like he e f he e ha ac ed j e , I h gh f elf a he g d
de ' b he , e c i g he back he ai h e f he h ba d, L d Shi
a. I had e e ed ha " he ld", b c i g e l gical g lf, b b
ea f a l g e ie f e . M i i i e, a ic, a d al i e e had
bee e laced; a he , he had bee e a ded b alki g h gh he Hi ala a ,
i gi g he g f he g dde , a d acc a i g he he j e ; a d he
c i ed e a da I a , igh af e igh h gh he c ld i e , ai
aki gl a c ibi g a d a la i g he g i h he hel f a i a , Daba
Si gh Ra a f T li Village. Daba Si gh had bee a h e ade , a all h kee e ,
a d a fa e , a d had e e e a f eig e bef e, b e beca e e cl e e he
ea , a d a cia i e ha ced hi al a d c g i i e i e e, .M
feeli g f he egi a di e le c i ed dee e , a I a ched hi f chil
d e g , ge a ied, a d ha e fa ilie f hei .
Ma f e able e e ie ce f field k a e a he aic: f e a
le, he i e he I a aged " a " a e f he h a a eddi g. Like
eddi g i N h I dia, h e i Ga h al ake lace a he h e f he b ide. The
g a d hi f ie d a i e a d a e h e ed i h h i ali : h a e e ca ef l
ake e ha he ake i ake , le he c ei f c i ici b he g '
e le. O e e e i g I had bee d i ki g i h e f f ie d i he illage he
he g ' a a i ed. I a d e ed i illage cl hi g, a d i ligh l i eb
ia ed ae a i i ed ee if I c ld eall g de ec ed. Sligh l ead , I ca
ied a la e ih e -d e c f ea he ca he e he g a d hi
e age e e h ldi g f h like i ce . I e ed all f he , eaki g be l cal
dialec , a d hi ki g elf ha I a a idi , beca e if I bled a d fell, i a
he b ide a d he fa il - i deed, he e i e illage! - h e e ai ld fle ,
j e. B hi g e g, I e ai ed de ec ed, a d hi a e f he
g ea e field k i h ha I e e had.
F he jec led addi i al e i d f i e e field k. F e ea I
died a l cal adi i f i al hea e, i hich he f I dia' g ea e ic Mahab
ha a a i g, da ced, a d e ac ed i illage h gh Ga h al, all igh l g d
i g he c lde eek f i e . L cal Raj ( e f he k ha i a a i cla )
belie e ha he a e he di ec de ce da f he Pa da a , ag i f he e ic,
a d he e d a a ic e f a ce a e ega ded a i al f a ce hi . Whe a

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16 Zei ch if f E h l gie 139 (2014)

ai f da ce g a he ac ed a ,b ha e e ed b he i i f he Pa da
a,a d ceed da ce a c le e ie f e ha e ee he ig ifica
ac i i hei li e . Af e e ea f a chi g, I fel ha I, , c ld da ce,
b I a ffe ed l fle ched ba b ick , i h he i a head ha a
f ed he i l ac ed ea ,a d I decli ed. B he e e e i g, a h
fa e a ached e a d a ked, "Will da ce i h e?" I aid "Ye ," he d
bega la , a d I da ced i he a e a d g a ed he ac ed ea . S dde l ,
If d elf l ki g i he ic Hi ala a k , a chi g he b illia a i
fa e a d fa e a d a ce al i ,i he i fi i f ace di ec l ab e e-b
he he e h e e ee a e hi g diffe e . The a e, ilh e ed
agai he a i g fi e, da ci g he c le e f he da ce. I ee ha f he
fi (b he la ) i e, I had e e ie ced ha i e i e called " e i ". I
had e e ed a he ld.

M e jec f c ed he eligi ac ice f l cal Dali , he -called

"U chable " "Ha ija ". B hi i , I had d e field k i a lace ,
b f e e ed e a ic la illage. I k e a l -ca e e le he e, b
had e e ea e i h he , e e a ed i hei h e . Al h gh I had a l -ca e
c k back i M ie, he e i he illage I a ca ef l di e i h e le f
he l e ca e , f fea ha high-ca e f ie d ld h e. The e I g
i l ed i hi field k, he e c le al i e e beca e. F he fi
i e, i e f ca e e e ha i g a di ec effec e, a d ec ic diffe e ce ,
al a e e i I dia, beca e e alie beca e he l -ca e e le i h h
I a ki g e e f e de e a el . He e i a e ce f field k
dia :

I e [ he Dali ' illage] al e, a d he I g he e I a h ified ice

el c a ce ea i h he e l -ca e e le beca e I fea ed bei g
ll ed b he , b beca e all highe -ca e f ie d igh fi d , a d he
igh aci e e. I a a g a d di g ed i h elf f aki g hi e
i l - h ld I be ec ce ed ab he b ce i f ca e ha ab
e a i a g he high-ca e e le?
Ne da , i he ba aa a [ he B ah a illage], I hea d e le hi e i g ab
e. O e f he aid, "If he a lea ab he he he ha li e i h
he . I ' OK" - a d hi i e l c ag eed. O e he e fe da , hi beca e
he ge e al a i de a d e ac i i ie . I hei a , he B ah a e e
bei g i e le a ega di g hi i e, a d I a lea ed. Fi all , Daba Si gh
a d I ca e a de a di g: he ld le a e ea i g i h he Dali , b
he did ' eall a e i hi ki che a e.

La e i he a e dia I ed h he ca e ble c i ed: he I e he

ai ba aa i hal -ca e f ie d, I delibe a el a ided high-ca e ac ai
a ce , ied ha he igh ha e hea d ab e f ie d . A d c ci

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Willia Sa : The M l i le W ld fE h g a hic Field k: A Pe al Acc 17

e f he fi a cial i e c i ed, . M Dali f ie d' fa il a i l ed i a

c ca e f hich he eeded e , hi he a ick ih e ia a d
eeded edici e. I a f aef he ha I had c e al g, a d c ld hel
a f ch hi g . B did I c ld I e e " hei ld-'? I hi k . Wi h
i ileged backg d, ch g ea e fi a cial e ce , a d lack f e e ie ce
f he e ible ej dice a d di c i i a i ffe ed b l -ca e e le, hei ld
e ai ed a he cl ed e, e e h gh I a able be ei f cl e, a d
f a l g i e.
Mea hile, Daba Si gh added a ec d hi h e ("Wi h he e
aid e all h e ea ", he ld e, "i ' h e, !"), a d hi child e g e
a dg a ied. I de k e e ea ch jec i he a f he Hi ala a ,
a d beca e f ie d a d c llab a ih he e , ghl age: Jagdi h Sa i
he B ah a e ci f a illage ea Daba Si gh; Bh li Da he l -ca e d
e f a di a illage he b de f Hi achal P ade h; Raj ha Si gh Ra
gad he l cal a i c a, h e gi l e i ded e ch f da gh e .
B Raj ha ' elde c i ed icide af e hi a iage, a d a c le f
ea af e ha Daba Si gh died, a d he Bh li Da died (e e h gh I had e
ch i e a d e aki g hi d c a dh i al i Deh a D ), a d he
Jagdi h died. Wi hi a fe h ea , h ee f he f e h e e cl e e,
a d h ek ledge a d a ie ce I elied i de c le e all h e b k
a d a icle , e e g e. K i g he e e e iched life a d e a ded ld,
a d I h e ha hi i eflec ed a lea a i bi i e h g a hic i i g.
I la e e 2012, I a ekki g i he We e Hi ala a f f . I did
i e d d a e ea ch, b l e a high ai alle I had i i ed
e e al ea bef e. B he I eached he la illage he a h ( he "la illage
he a h" i al a i e e i g, i ce i i e ef he ld), I di c e ed
ha he l cal dei , ega ded a a ki d f "di i e ki g", a i e ide ce. He had c e
hi al ala i , acc a ied b hi ei e f f ll e , i cl di g hi ie
a d acle. Whe he f he , ie a d acle, hea d ha I a i he illage,
he ca e ee e fc i i .A di a i ed ha I had k a d i e
ab b h f hei fa he , h e e dead, a d ha I c ld e e e e be hei
a e , hei a e f eaki g, e c. The ie a d he acle e e deligh ed, a d
he all ed - , he e c aged - e ake h g a h f he g d' i age,
e hi g ha ch la had bee i g d f ea , b ih cce , beca e
ide had e e ea ed he l cal e le' . U il .
I he ea i e I had ed f Ne Zeala d Heidelbe g. Thi ei
l ed ig ifica e a i f i ellec al h i , a d al e i ie
f field k. I de el ed jec i Ba glade h, S i La ka, a d Paki a , a d i
2014 f he fi i e I bega c d c e ea ch he S h A ia Dia a; e
cificall B i i h A ia f Paki a i a d Ba glade hi de ce , li i g i he UK. M
e ea ch f c ed i al heali g, a d a ic la l e i a d afflic i b
Ji ,a di a a if a c ai had bee e ed: behi d he a a e l cce f l i

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18 Zei ch if f E h l gie 139 (2014)

eg a i f hi c i i he e e da life f he UK a a ld f ll f black
agic, ce a d ji afflic i , ch like he al F e ch illage de c ibed b
Fa e -Saada (1980), he A e ica cha i a ic c i ie de c ibed b C e
(2001).

C cl i

The e d i g e i ab " he ld " ha i i ed e f a ea i a

l gical e i : ab he a e f he i e e, ab he he i i i gle
l i le, ab he he " he ld " e i . Si ila e i ha e bee ed b
a he a icia f a decade , a f h ee hi k ha he a e
i a e di g " e " (e.g. S li 2013).
M e ece l acade ic a h l g , i i ed b he k f a h like De c
la, Vi ei de Ca , a d La , ha ake ha a ha e called a " l gical
". H e e , i ee e ha a f he a h c ib i g hi -called
" " a e l e ea i g he a h l gical i ha diffe e c l e ha e diffe
e a f de c ibi g he ld, a d ha a a h l gi i e e ed i de c ibi g
h e " he " c l al a f de c ibi g he " a e" ld h ld i e hi
he a i he . I he d , a he G f Deba e i A h
l gical The a he U i e i f Ma che e i i he i abled i 2008,
"O l g i J A he W d f C l e."
I ie , ch e igi al a d i e e i g i i he ic f c l e
a d l g ha e ece l bee f a d b hil he , i h h e k I
beca e ac ai ed af e c i g Heidelbe g: Ia Hacki g a d A e a ie M l.
Hacki g f e f c e edical a d ch l gical ic i de b a ia e
hi hil hical a g e . Hi i f hi ical l g i l e he d f " b
jec hei effec hich d e i i a ec g i able f il he a e bjec

5 A a h l -deba ed ic i hi c e a a h l gical ci cle , i i i i g ha a

f he i a ce he " l gical " a e be f d i he i e e , e. g. he e cel
le a icle b Pede a h ://a c e .c /a icle /c _ e e, J di h Fa ha ' e
celle eadi g g ide a h :// a he e. e /2014/01/a- eade -g ide- - he- l g - - a
l.h l, al g i h h ee i e e i g a icle he ic i he e e h g a hic j al HAU, i :
(a) T f f he ide: Ca a eda, Bla ch , l g (Ca e B Je e )
h :// .ha j al. g/i de . h /ha /a icle/ ie /122
(b) A h l g a c i i e f eali : A Ja a e e (Ca e B Je e , A M i a)
h :// .ha j al. g/i de . h /ha /a icle/ ie /204
(c) Re e: A c e " he l gical " i Ja a e e a h l g (Ma il S a he )
h :// .ha j al. g/i de . h /ha /a dcle/ ie /202
A he ef l i e e ce i : Sli e : field e E i ical O l g .S cial S die f Scie ce
bli hed li e 13 Se e be 2012 b J h La a d Ma ia e Lie .
6 The deba e a b e e l bli hed i C i i e f A h l g 30 (J e, 2010).

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Willia Sa : The M l i le W ld fE h g a hic Field k: A Pe al Acc 19

f cie ific d " (Hacki g 2002:11). Hi a adig a ic e a le a e a a a d

child de el e ,b e c ld al i cl de ch bjec a "de e i " a d
" e ". Hi a ach e e e a iddle a h be ee he hi ical i e ali f
he ai e ii i a d he all ed ela i i f he ai e cial c ci i .
While de i g he alidi a de i ical ade ac f a a l g , de el e
al ch l g , ch l gical die f de e i , hi ical l g d e i i
ha he e e h d , a d he l gical ca eg ie ha he d ce, ha e a hi ,
a d e e ha a a a f hi hi , "a ki d f e ca e i bei g a he
a e i e a he ki d i elf a bei g i e ed" (ibid: 106). The e a e ha he call
e "h a ki d ." F Hacki g I ake he idea ha h a ac ice ca c ea e
e l gical bjec , a d e a f bei g h a . We igh he a e
h gh i diffe e d,b a i g ha c l e eall ca fa hi e ld .
Like Hacki g, A e a ie M l i a hil he h ha bee ch c ce ed
i h heal h a d edici e. B like Hacki g he i a dedica ed field ke , h e
e h g a hic da a b l e he hil hical a g e . She ca be l ca ed i hi a
di i g i hed adi i i Scie ce a d Tech l g S die , hich bega i h L d ig
Fleck a ca ied f a d b Th a K h a d hi i i a , acc di g hich
cie ific fac a e di c e ed, b a he d ced. I he b k The B d M l i le,
hich i ba ed he e h g a hic field k i a a he cle i cli ic i Belgi ,
M la g e ha he di ea e i be h gh fa e hi g ha i d e, e hi g ha
i e f ed, a he ha a a a ic la bjec he e i he ld. I he cli ic,
a he cle i i d ced b he e al e c e be ee d c a d a ie i
he c e f a diag ic i e ie : a ki g e i a d gi i g a e , chi g,
i g de a d bjec i e ffe i g, i ab e ce. B i he a h l g lab,
a he cle i i d ced b l ki g a ic c icall hi lice fh a i e
de a ic c e, a d ea i g hei h ical cha ac e i ic . M l a g e ha he e
eh d d ce diffe e di ea e , diffe e ki d fh a b die , a d
l i a el ha he b die d ced a e " e ha eb le ha a " he
b d l i le f he b k' i le.
"M e ha eb le ha a " hi a a e ade M l' b k, a d i
ide a cl e a h a a, a he cle i , a d cie ce a d ech l g die
hel ed ea e e i ab he " he ld " e ealed b a h l gical
field k. I hi k hi ical l gie , Hacki g a h h h a
( l cie ific) ac ice d ce e cla ifica i fh a bei g , a d l i
a el h he d ce e h a ki d , a d e f f bjec i i . I hi
he i e ch i he li e f F ca l , h he cceeded a he C llege de F a ce.
B he e e h a ki d a e d ced l l , e -b - e , i a ce f(
li g i ic) i e a i a d e-i e a i ha Hacki g (1996) call "l i g effec ". The
d e i i a " he " ace a d i e, i a " he " c l ef .
Ra he , he a e e e ge ele e c ea ed b ac ice . F M l, he " li
le b die " d ced b cli ic a d diag i g h icia (a d, e igh add, b
fi e ce e , bea a l ,a d de ake ) d cc " he " ld ; a he ,

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20 Zei ch if f E h l gie 139 (2014)

hei l i lici i b h ela ed ,a d d ced b , he c e f ac ice i hich

he a e d ced.
Si ila l , a h l gical field k all de a dh a ic la ac
ice d ce l i le ld : h c llec i e i al he i f Shi a' ai
he h e f he Ba f Be gal d ced a e hel i g c i a ha a
a ce e i al, i i al, c eal a d a he ic; h da ci g a d d
i gi he e f a ce f a illage d a a-c -a ce al i al d ced a ce i
he e da ci g he a , a f i g hei e e da b die i a ce al b die .
B c llec i e ac ice fe l i a i a d di c i i a i i S h A ia al d ce
he ld f he e cl ded a d he a gi al, a d he a h l gical field ke
igh be able e e h e ld . I, a lea , a able f ll c ehe d
he ld f he a e le I e e he ea i I dia, e e he Dali
a g h I e a ea , a d i h h I de el ed a f ie d hi ,
i he c e f e ea ch. Ha i g e e e e ie ced e e e e di c i i a
i ,I a able f ll e e hei ld , e e h gh I feel ha I ca e de
a d he i e ell.
B i he c e , he field ke ca a ici a e i he c c i a d ai
e a ce f ch ld , a he I fel elf be he "b he " f he g dde Na da
De i (a feeli g ha a a l a ed b fell ilg i ), he I a "
e ed" b he i i f he a ce , he I a aged ffe h i ali he
eddi g g e i h bei g " ed" a a a h l gi . I i i a e
ha hi ki d f a ici a i a d cca i al c ib i i e el c g i i e. I
i h ical a d a ic a ell; i e i e la g age kill a d b dil a ici a i ac
c di g he c le le a d c de , b h i e a d i e , ha g e
cial i e ac i . A d ha i eci el ha ake a h l gical field k ecial,
a d ha di i g i he i f he e h d f he he cial cie ce .
J a Hacki g' " e h a ki d " d e e ge e igh b a e he e l f
al g ce fl i g, a d M l' " l i le b die " d cc diffe e h i
cal ace , he " l i le ld " f a h l gical field ka e l ca ed i
e he ace a d i e. The e i i he he e a d , a d he ca be eached
h gh a e ie f c c e e e , begi i g i h la g age ac i i i , i g
h gh ha ed e ide ce, f d, a d k, a d e ha c l i a i g i h e
f ha ed a ce de ce. The a e" e ha eb le ha a ."
I he e d I acc li hed ha I e d ,a de e ed (a lea e i e ) he
" he ld " f he We e Hi ala a e le a g h I ked f a
ea . Thi e l ed i e al g h, a d al i he e ha ce e a de e i
( h gh he e lace e ) f al a d c g i i e ld . I like hi k
ha f ie d ' ld e e al e e ded beca e f ela i hi . A d if I ha e
d e j ba a a h l gi c ec l , he I ha e al a aged c e e
hi g f he e l i le ld de , h gh eachi g a d i i g. B
e f hi ld ha e bee ible i deed, i ld ha dl ha e bee hi kable -
i h a h gh i e i i e h g a hic field k.

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Willia Sa : The M l i le W ld fE h g a hic Field k: A Pe al Acc 21

Refe e ce

Cliff d, Ja e ; Ma c , Ge ge (ed .) 1986: W i i g C l e: The P e ic a d P li ic fE h g a h .

Be kle &L d :U i e i f Calif ia P e .
C e , Michael 2011: A e ica E ci :E elli g De i he La d f Ple . Ne Y k: D ble
da .
Fa e -Saada, Jea e 1980: Deadl W d : Wi chc af i he B cage. Ca b idge: Ca b idge U i e i
P e .

Hacki g, Ia 2002: Hi ical O l g . Ca b idge, MA a d L d : Ha a d.

Hacki g, Ia 1996: The L i g Effec f H a Ki d . I : S e be , Da a d Da id P e ack a d
A Ja e P e ack (ed .), Ca al C g i i : A M l idi ci li a Deba e. O f d: Cla e d
P e , . 351-394.
Maa e , J h Va 2011 [1988]: Tale f he Field: O W i i g E h g a h , Sec d Edi i . Chicag :
The U i e i f Chicag P e .
M l, A e a ie 2003: The B d M l i le: O l g i Medical P ac ice. D ha , NC: D ke U i e
i P e .
Sa i, A d e 2008: Be gal i Gl bal C ce Hi :C l ali i he Age f Ca i al. Chicag
a dL d : The U i e i f Chicag P e .
Sa , Willia 2009: G d f J ice: Ri al Heali g i he Ce al Hi ala a. Ne Y k: O f dU i
e i P e .
S li , Lee 2013: Ti e Reb :F he C i i i Ph ic he F e f he U i e e. L d : Alle
La e.

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This page was intentionally left blank
EPISTEMOLOGY, FIELDWORK, AND ANTHROPOLOGY
Copyright © Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan 2015
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-48849-7
All rights reserved.
First published in 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United
States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New
York, NY 10010.

Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe, and the rest of
the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan
Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies

and has companies and representatives throughout the world.

Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,

the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN 978-1-349-69593-5 ISBN 978-1-137-47788-0 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/9781137477880
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre.
Epistemology, fieldwork, and anthropology / Jean-Pierre Olivier de
Sardan ; translated by Antoinette Tidjani Alou.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Anthropology—Methodology. 2. Anthropology—Fieldwork.
3. Anthropology—Philosophy. 4. Social epistemology. I. Title.
GN33.O48 2015
301.072'3—dc23
2014044626

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.

Design by Amnet.

First edition: May 2015

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Chapter 3

4
E m i c a n d t h e Ac t o r s ’ P o i n t o f Vi e w

Emic, in linguistics and anthropology, is a term that covers popular

representations and discourses, also described as “local,” “autoch-
thonous,” or “native.” It evokes the meanings that social facts have
for the actors concerned. It is opposed to the term etic, which, at
times, designates more external or “objective” data, and, at others,
the researcher’s interpretative analysis.
Empirical research on what I will call emicity is at the heart of
anthropology. Indeed, the production of firsthand information on
local knowledges, on the specific sense systems of the target groups of
field inquiry, or on popular semiology, has been part of the anthropo-
logical agenda since the beginning of the twentieth century.
This approach to societies or social groups through “internal”
meanings, nebulous as it often is, has never really been disputed. But,
for its part, the emic/etic opposition, which had its heyday and is
still used in anthropology, has come up against acute criticism. We
need to ask ourselves whether, used with care and moderation, this
opposition does not have more advantages than disadvantages. In any
case, as far as epistemologically grounded fieldwork is concerned, a
research strategy that makes a distinction between data derived from
the discourse of the actors themselves and data resulting from the
researcher’s observations and inventories seems more productive than
a strategy that conflates the two. This also applies to the distinction
that should be made between popular (or “local”) discourse and
scholarly discourse, which is more productive than their conflation.
Such, then, are the two principal pairs of meanings covered by the
terms emic and etic. But this balance is liable to be reversed. This hap-
pens as soon as we apply emic or etic, or both, to just about anything,
66 E p i s t e m o l o g y, F i e l d w o r k , a n d A n t h r o p o l o g y

as soon as we begin to “play” with their opposition and their incom-

patibility rather than with their complementarity and their intermin-
gling. This is exactly what happened almost fifty years ago in the field
of American anthropology, where a misdirected controversy raged for
a while surrounding the emic/etic pair.
Reference to this old debate will allow me to subsequently pro-
pose a few conceptual and methodological clarifications regarding the
various levels imputed to emicity, and to the comprehensive approach
promoted by Max Weber but practiced strangely by himself and oth-
ers after him. This will then lead us to the question of the empirical
validity of “indigenous” discourses and representations, and to that
of the necessary distinction between interpretation “in” the emic and
interpretation “on” the emic.

Kenneth Pike
At the beginning of the 1950s, a linguist, Kenneth Pike, proposed
transposing to the analysis of cultural facts, in the form “emic versus
etic,” the then classic opposition between phonemic and phonetic in lin-
guistics. Linguists had long been in the habit of making a clear distinc-
tion between the system of contrasts and significant sound differences
from the point of view of the speaker (or the phonemic system) and
the system of “physical” sounds, i.e., the acoustic waves produced by
the articulatory phenomena (or the phonetic system). Pike begins by
developing, on a strictly linguistic level, this opposition between the
emic and the etic, while insisting on the fact that it is produced by two
extremely different approaches. The emic approach considers the oppo-
sitions perceived as relevant for the speaking subjects and thus addresses
culturally defined aspects of the language. The etic approach focuses on
the acoustic processes without reference to what speaking subjects per-
ceive, independently of any cultural background; it takes into account
the results recorded by “objective” apparatuses of observation and
measurement, namely sonograms. But these are obviously two sides of
the same reality. The “research program” Pike proposes begins with the
etic approach, seen as an initial external point of entry into the world of
the language, but one that is meant to lead to the emic, which, to him,
is the sole predictive approach. The emic approach therefore uses the
conscious or unconscious control of the language that subjects possess
as grounds on which the linguist attempts to deduce, in a very classic
manner, the structural rules, or codes, on which this language is based.1
But Pike does not stop there; he ventures beyond traditional lin-
guistics and tries to generalize the emic/etic opposition, in order to
 Emic and the Actors’ Point of View 67

apply it to social and cultural facts as a whole. Pike is interested, above

all, in the emic aspect of things, in his bid to unearth “basic units of
behaviors” corresponding to the relevant phonological units of lin-
guistics. The behavioreme thus becomes the equivalent of the phoneme.
In fact, to Pike’s mind, what these meaningful cultural units cover are
elementary social groups, of a more or less corporate nature: fam-
ily, association, and lineage. He has no qualms about systematically
broadening the analogy, on the emic level, between cultural analysis
and linguistic analysis, by equating social rules and grammatical rules,
practical activities and sentences.2
These developments currently seem totally out of date, and it is
hard to argue that Pike thereby made a major contribution to the
social sciences. His name is still quoted in anthropology but only as
the “inventor” of the emic/etic opposition, which took the form of
a fundamental distinction between culturally anchored (culturally spe-
cific) analyses and transcultural (cross-culturally valid) analyses.
“Two units are different etically when instrumental measurements
can show them to be so. Units are different emically only when they
elicit different responses from people acting within the system” (Pike,
1967: 38; quoted in Harris, 1976: 335).
“An etic analytical standpoint might be called ‘external’ or ‘alien’
since for etic purposes the analyst stands ‘far enough away’ from
or ‘outside’ of a particular culture to see its separate events . . . as
compared to events in other cultures” (Pelto and Pelto, 1978: 10).
“In contrast to the etic approach, an emic one is in essence valid
for only one language (or one culture) at a time” (Pelto and Pelto,
1978: 8).
The emic is thus centered on the collection of autochthonous cul-
tural meanings dependent on the actors’ point of view, whereas the
etic reposes on external observations independent of the meanings
actors carry; it is a quasi-ethological observation of human behaviors.
In reality, Pike was not particularly interested in the etic approach;
what he valued above all was the emic/etic contrast. Within this con-
trast, Pike focused primarily on the emic approach.
However, a particularly violent debate internal to American anthro-
pology was kindled over the modalities and the degree of relevance of
the emic/etic opposition in anthropology.

Marvin Harris
A very controversial personality on the North American anthropo-
logical scene, Marvin Harris both widely popularized the emic/etic
68 E p i s t e m o l o g y, F i e l d w o r k , a n d A n t h r o p o l o g y

approach and contributed to clouding the issue. He took it on himself

to be the advocate for this opposition while radicalizing it excessively
and infusing it with variable and, in some respects, extremely debat-
able contents.
Harris was already known as a virulent critic of the “idealism” he
considered to be prevalent in cultural anthropology. He countered by
developing his own research program under the ambitious name of
“cultural materialism,” centered on the prioritized analysis and obser-
vation of human behaviors (a program that, in some respects, operated
on the same grounds as sociobiology, but which was extremely hostile
to the ideology of the latter). He wrote an unusual history of anthro-
pology, which he inserted in a more general history of the sciences,
but which was based on a rather personal vision allowing a particular
valorization of his own “cultural materialism” (see his two successive
works, Harris, 1968 and Harris, 1980). In his work, the emic/etic
opposition occupies a central position. It was first mentioned in his
1968 book. In 1976, Harris devoted a specific paper to this subject,
published in the Annual Review of Anthropology.3 This text was repro-
duced with various modifications and ultimately became Chapter 2 of
his 1980 book.
To return to 1968, Harris based his arguments on Pike’s general
distinction, along with its traces of structural linguistics (the search for
systems of differences), to which it offers a wide diffusion.
But for him, it is only the etic approach that is reliable, falsifiable,
and predictive (a reversal of Pike’s preferences). In his opinion, the
emic approach, for its part, is neither reliable, falsifiable, nor predic-
tive. The discourses and mental representations of social actors cannot
be used as the basis for a rigorous analysis of societies and cultures.
We cannot take anyone’s words and, even less, anyone’s thoughts
for granted. Indeed, the emic is, basically, what runs through “the
mind” of subjects, generally at the implied or subconscious level.
Conversely, the behavior stream is, for its part, observable and mea-
surable. Whereas words say nothing about practices, practices are able
to contradict words.
In his 1976 article, Harris attenuates this position somewhat. He
concedes to the emic a kind of cognitive equality. Nonetheless, his
preference for the etic remains obvious. But of particular importance,
and this is what I find revealing, is the fact that the meanings he attri-
butes to both terms of the opposition become increasingly varied.
The emic/etic opposition therefore appears particularly polyse-
mous. A summary of the principal variations are shown in the table
below.4
 Emic and the Actors’ Point of View 69

Table 3.1 The emic/etic oppositions

emic etic

ideas behaviors
search for structures related to ideas search for structures related to behaviors
verbal nonverbal
interviews observations
actors’ cognition and taxonomies researchers’ cognition and taxonomies
specific cultural knowledges scientific measurements
indigenous explanations scientific explanations
statements expressing a cultural statements considered appropriate by a
validity scientific community
categories and rules necessary to act theories on sociocultural similarities and
like a native differences
nonfalsifiable, nonpredictive, falsifiable, predictive, measurable
nonmeasurable
interactive contexts where the contexts where interaction with the
anthropologist and his informants anthropologist is of no importance and
dialogue “with meaning” where “meanings” of the discussions do not
matter

In a revised version of his work published in 1980, Harris in fact

reverts to all of these various acceptations, while inserting two innova-
tions. On the one hand, he finally grants a complete symmetry to the
two terms and explicitly abandons value judgments. Consequently,
“objectivity” ceases to be a property (whether explicit or implicit) of
the etic, but simply a question of the conventions specific to a given
scientific circle.
In addition, he proposes a double entry table with, on the one side,
two fields of investigation (the mental and the behavioral) and, on the
other, two procedures of investigation (emic = indigenous knowledge;
etic = researchers’ observations).5
The blocks I and III correspond to what natives say to the anthro-
pologist about their ideas (I) and practices (III); IV corresponds to
what the anthropologist observes (measures) regarding the practices
of the natives. As for II, it is a black box, because we cannot observe
what goes on in people’s minds, and we are limited to inferences.

Table 3.2 Harris final classification

emic etic

mental I II
behavioral III IV
70 E p i s t e m o l o g y, F i e l d w o r k , a n d A n t h r o p o l o g y

Against Harris
Context
At a time when “deconstructionist” epistemology was becoming
increasingly popular in the United States, with the discovery of Der-
rida and Foucault, Harris’s countercurrent theses and positivist decla-
rations affirming the primacy of the etic obviously unleashed attacks.6
Moreover, what we could call the “emicist”7 tradition was very
strong in the United States. Its forerunner was undoubtedly Boas:
“If it is our serious purpose to understand the thoughts of a people,
the whole analysis of experience must be based on their concepts, not
ours” (cited in Pelto and Pelto, 1978: 55). It is a known fact that Boas
derived important methodological conclusions from his emicist per-
spective, since he is undoubtedly the first to have insisted on the exact
and integral transcription of the discourses and words of informants
(verbatim text).
A series of new “research programs,” moreover, developed in
American anthropology during the 1960s and 1970s, all inscribed
within this emicist tradition, which they sought to deepen and renew
(ethnoscience, ethnosemantics, componential analysis) and which
sometimes led to cognitive anthropology. Goodenough may be seen
as the emblematic figure of these tendencies, all of which accorded
importance to the discourses, representations, and knowledge of
“natives,” be they at close quarters or far away.8 Didn’t he define his
approach as “the method of finding where something makes a differ-
ence for one’s informants”?9
It is true that the latent base of many programs of the emicist type
remained deeply culturalist. From this point of view, culture is con-
sidered, implicitly or explicitly, to have an existence of its own, in
much the same way as language. Indigenous discourses supposedly
belonged to a common culture in the same way that words belong
to a language. The substantivist or traditional definitions, generally
proposed as contents of the concept of “culture,” presumed a cogni-
tive homogeneity of subjects and minimized internal variations.10 In
this respect, some of the criticisms pronounced by Harris against the
culturalist mainstream were not unfounded, and he was not always
wrong in taking to task the widespread idea that “it’s all about dis-
course” or “it’s all about narration,” coupled with the hypostasis of
“values” or “worldviews.”
Harris, however, is not alone in his camp. Transcultural analyses
have always fueled various anthropological research programs of the
“eticist” type, especially in fields such as material cultures, artisanal
 Emic and the Actors’ Point of View 71

techniques, rituals, or body language (in neighboring disciplines such

as social psychology, the etic perspective has, moreover, invariably
produced numerous works).

Criticisms
Stripped of their polemical aspects of quarrels among schools of
thought and persons, the main criticisms leveled against the emic/
etic opposition, in the form advocated by Harris, can be summarized
as follows:

1. Scientific knowledge is just one type of knowledge, and it therefore

belongs to the order of the emic, like any other type of knowledge;
there is no distinction in nature between (supposedly emic) popu-
lar knowledge and (supposedly etic) scholarly knowledge: both are
emic.11
2. Conversely, the behavior of an actor cannot be analyzed indepen-
dently of the meaning it has for this actor: the emic is a necessary
and internal dimension of the etic.
3. The etic is no more “objective” and “reliable” than the emic;
behaviors are just as “staged” as discourses.
4. Whereas practices may “falsify” the actors’ discourses in their
regard, these discourses, “lie” as they might, nonetheless express
something relevant and significant.
5. The etic category is in fact a vast catchall. Far from revealing only
experimental observations or measurements of behaviors, it also
incorporates aggregates and abstractions of a dubious status. Harris
includes therein, for example, institutions or modes of production.
6. While the emic/etic contrast might be meaningful, Harris takes
this opposition much too far; they are two sides of the same coin,
or two complementary approaches.

These criticisms are all valid.

Getting Out of the Debate

The polemic undoubtedly died, by and large, from its own excesses.12
Harris, as we have seen, was far from subtle. He tended to bring just
about everyone into disrepute as a “cultural idealist” and was given
in return the label of “ethnocentrist scholar.” Simply citing Harris
in a bibliography was enough to land you in the camp of inveterate
positivism.
72 E p i s t e m o l o g y, F i e l d w o r k , a n d A n t h r o p o l o g y

Harris, by diffusing the emic/etic opposition via the prism of his

own epistemology, ultimately disqualified the very use of this opposi-
tion for an entire branch of American anthropology. In fact, underly-
ing this refusal are two rather different positions. Among the “ultras”
of so-called critical, postmodern, phenomenological, or narrative
anthropology, there is a more or less systematic negation of all meth-
odological distinctions. These are viewed as reactionary or dependent
on a scientistic epistemology. The methodological distinctions that
“ultras” refuse range from the distinction between indigenous rep-
resentations and scholarly representations, to the difference between
discursive practices and nondiscursive practices, or to the difference
between situations in which the observer causes significant behavioral
change and the situations in which he fails to affect actor behavior to
any significant degree.
Among less ideologically involved or more moderate anthropolo-
gists, absence of the use of the emic/etic distinction merely resulted
in the use of other vocabulary to produce more or less equivalent dis-
tinctions, but in a softer register, expressed, especially, in other words
(indigenous discourses/scholarly discourse, language/practices, rep-
resentations/behaviors, etc.).
However, the emic/etic distinction is still widely used. But this
usage is also “soft” and no longer resonates with Harris’s positions.
Emic, in particular, has become synonymous with “actors’ point
of view,” “popular representations,” “local cultural significance,”
whereas etic tends instead to refer to the external point of view, to
the interpretation of the anthropologist, and to scholarly discourse.
I would readily say that these are notions, aimed at arriving at conve-
nient distinctions, rather than concepts, aimed at producing theoretical
distinctions.13 The use of the terms emic and etic in this mode does
not entail opposing them radically, much less establishing a scale of
hierarchy between them, but it is simply a matter of specifying who is
speaking or of whom one is speaking.

Personal Variations Surrounding Emic/Etic

Leaving the convenient refuge of other scholars’ comments and
debates, I would like to put forward a few proposals on “appropriate
uses” of the emic/etic opposition, or, more precisely, about emicity,
and to advance a few theories concerning the relationship between
actors’ discourses and representations, on the one hand, and the
empirical nature of anthropological interpretation, on the other.
 Emic and the Actors’ Point of View 73

Emicity: Four Levels, but Only Two . . .

In fact, the notion of emic in anthropology implies or includes
between one and four superimposed (or rather overlapping) levels,
which are alternately or simultaneously mobilized depending on the
contexts or authors involved.

1. Emic may be used concerning the discourses of subjects, of

“informants.” It is then a matter of discursive data produced via the
interactions between the researcher and the social actors he studies,
data that he collects in the form of a corpus; this is the register of what
is expressed.
2. Emic may evoke the subjects’ social representations, in the
anthropological sense, which is close to the one used in social psychol-
ogy. It is then a question of widespread notions, concepts, and concep-
tions within a social group or a subgroup, in other words, pervasively
shared sets, configurations, or schemata of knowledge and interpreta-
tions. This places us in the register of the expressible. Of course, express-
ible representations constantly produce expressed discursive data. Or,
to be more precise, the convergences and repetitions of expressed
convergent discourses make it possible to speak in terms of “shared
representations” (under conditions of methodological vigilance—tri-
angulation, saturation—and of the anthropologist’s semiologic com-
petence; see Chapters 2 and 7).
3. Emic can also refer to the codes that are thought to underlie
discourses and representations. These codes are often viewed as con-
stituting a kind of cultural grammar generating discourses and repre-
sentations. It then becomes a matter of the unconscious mastery of a
culture, which enables one to act or to think “like a native” (whether
one is a native or not). One may also regard these codes as sets of
practical norms of different statuses and origins.14 This puts us in
the register of the latent. Latent codes frame (inter alia) expressible
representations.
4. Emic can be a referent for symbolic structures as the sources gov-
erning ways of thinking and acting. This is a structuralist acceptation,
placing us in the register of the postulate.

It will be noted, first of all, that going from level 1 to level 4 moves
us further and further away from data and moves more and more in the
direction of the implicit and the virtual (the level of “it is as if . . .”).
There is an observable decrease in empirical groundedness and a con-
current increase in abstract interpretation.
74 E p i s t e m o l o g y, F i e l d w o r k , a n d A n t h r o p o l o g y

Admittedly, each level claims an empirical base. Even the most

“intellectualist” position (see the structuralist preconceptions of level
4) claims to be merely unearthing a “hidden reality” that is culturally
valid and therefore supposedly emic. However, this “hidden reality,”
in particular in the work of Lévi-Strauss himself, is often opposed to the
indigenous discourses, despite the fact that these are at the very heart of
the emic approach.15 There are therefore grounds on which to refuse
the emic character of level 4.
As for level 3, the matter is iffy: on the one hand, the vision of
culture as something “lodging in the heads and hearts” of subjects
is defended by Goodenough and typical of a part of ethno-science
or cognitive anthropology.16 But it is possible, on the other hand, to
argue that norms and codes are not “realities” inherent in the prac-
tices and discourses observed, and to consider them, with good rea-
son, as useful artifacts built by the researcher.
In fact, only the first two levels seem to possess a coefficient of
plausibility sufficient to allow, with an apparently undeniable empiri-
cal legitimacy, the attribution of the term emic to what they entail.
Emicity, as an empirical characteristic of “the actor’s point of view,”
should be restrained to these first two levels. My attempt at provid-
ing a rigorous definition of emicity aims in reality at preventing, as
much as possible, projecting preconceptions, intuitions, or research-
ers’ analyses onto the social actors and then “selling” this to the reader
as “the indigenous point of view.” Harris was well aware of this dan-
ger: “Social science literature is, in fact, filled with statements that
purport to represent a participant’s thoughts, intentions, values, cri-
teria of appropriateness, categories and mental and emotional states
that are based essentially on etic rather than emic operations” (Harris,
1990: 52).
Level 1, that of expressed discursive data, results in “fixing” or
“freezing” in the form of a corpus the direct and “tangible” prod-
ucts of empirical fieldwork. Although these data were produced
through and thanks to interpretations (contained in the questions of
the researcher and the answers of the subjects, for example, and inter
alia), they take on a life of their own as “objectified” traces and thus
become partially independent of their conditions of production and of
the subsequent, ex post, interpretations of the researcher. Obviously,
these discursive data do not say “what actors have in their head,”
nor do they express the truth about the events to which they refer.
They are interpretations, certainly, but they are the interpretations
of local actors, uttered by themselves, not the interpretations of the
researcher. They are remarks that local actors actually made—within
 Emic and the Actors’ Point of View 75

the framework of particular discursive contexts and specific discursive

strategies—and they constitute as such, for the researcher, invaluable
traces and important indexes.
Level 2, the level of common social representations, is definitely
constructed by the researcher. But it mobilizes, to this end, deliber-
ately minimal interpretative schemata, while remaining the closest to
level 1. It compiles and connects discourses actually recorded at level
1, seeking out their convergences and divergences, which are then
ordered and classified in “packages,” “families,” “logics,” “concepts,”
and “opinions.” The popular semiology that it thereby proposes is
hence directly recognizable by the local actors. Let us take the exam-
ple of a notional dictionary containing local definitions of diseases or
local terminology related to livestock rearing: this type of presentation
of specific social representations would have been constructed based
on statements actually made, and any local actor would be in a posi-
tion to validate such definitions.
Levels 1 and 2 (discourse and representations) jointly define the
register of local interpretations, whether expressed or expressible. If
one thinks in terms of Giddens’s17 “double hermeneutics,” this regis-
ter of local interpretations remains basically that of actors’ hermeneu-
tics and is relatively distinct from that of researchers’ hermeneutics.
This is precisely the specificity of the emic. These are local interpreta-
tions (albeit produced and recorded in narrative form by researchers).
Conversely, with levels 3 (codes) and 4 (structures), the research-
er’s hermeneutics gradually prevail. These are scholarly interpretations
(though based on local discourses and representations).
Consequently, I will consider levels 1 and 2 as the hard core of
emicity, while level 3 and certainly level 4 are mostly scholarly analysis.
Meticulous attention to the discourses and, more generally, to the rep-
resentations of actors is at the center of any emic methodology, aimed
at “accounting for the actor’s point of view.” Obviously, excluding the
codes (level 3) or structures (level 4) from the emic register does not
imply minimizing their importance. Any social science analysis has the
legitimate objective of proposing analyses at level 3 or level 4, even
at both (which, nonetheless, does not imply adhesion to a “cognitiv-
ist” or “structuralist” research program), and consequently cannot be
limited to the production, organization, or paraphrasing of the emic.
It is always crucial, at the same time, to remember that the emic
register is never unified, that it changes continuously, and that it
should never be construed as necessarily coterminous with a society
or a culture. Its characteristics as well as its boundaries vary in keeping
with social actors and contexts, and the task of empirical fieldwork
76 E p i s t e m o l o g y, F i e l d w o r k , a n d A n t h r o p o l o g y

is precisely that of identifying one and the other. In particular, emic

does not refer only to the local common sense, which we may consider
as largely shared; it also includes diversified, alternative, and often
competing social representations shared by subgroups or particular-
istic networks. And, finally, it is equally related to local specialized
meanings. Popular expert semiologies run parallel to or are encased
in a general popular semiology. Technical discourses, professional lan-
guages, unspoken meanings of initiated persons are also part of the
emic. Consequently, the anthropologist working with particular pro-
fessions must acquire mastery of the explicit and implicit references
forming the emic fabric of the professions concerned. One cannot,
for example, produce medical anthropology without understanding
medical language and paying close attention to the representations
of the sanitary personnel. This implies paying minute attention to the
emotional, social, technical, or moral meanings they associate with
their own practices.

Emicity and Meaning

Max Weber has often been regarded as the conceptual founder of
the emic approach: “The typical attitude underlying emic analysis is
Weberian: emics should complement etics, the idea being that anthro-
pology seeks to unify emic perspectives into a systematic comparative
theory of culture based largely on etic theoretical notions” (Feleppa,
1986: 243). The focus on the emic, understood as “the actor’s point
of view,” seems to be a modernization of the classic Weberian “under-
standing” or, more precisely, of the “sense adequacy,” or “adequacy in
terms of meaning.”18 It is known that Weber insisted particularly on
the combination of “causal adequacy,” related to regularities or sta-
tistical probabilities, and “sense adequacy.” Associating the two is the
only means of accessing sociological intelligibility. “Sense adequacy”
seems to enjoy great affinity with the emic register.
But there is misunderstanding concerning the empirical contents
that Weber attributes, or rather fails to attribute, to the meaning in
question. In fact, for Weber, the meaning of the actions of the actors
is mainly reconstructed or deduced by the researcher. It is a matter
of the researcher’s getting as close as possible to “the obviousness
proper to comprehension,” through either an intellectual or a rational
process, or by means of emotional empathy (Weber, 1971: 4–5). The
examples he gives of the comprehension of an act are always taken
from the observer’s point of view (what meaning can I to give to X’s
outburst of anger or to the fact that Y cuts down a tree; id.: 7–8). The
 Emic and the Actors’ Point of View 77

“sense adequacy” is not produced by questions posed to the social

actors (it is true that both the nature of the historical materials used
by Weber and the wide scale he adopted are hardly conducive to such
an approach), all the more so as these actors seldom appear to be
conscious of this meaning. Sense adequacy is produced by the mental
processes of the researcher, based on common sense or intuition.
Hence, a sense adequate behavior is “a behavior which develops
with such coherence that the relation between its elements is recog-
nized by us as comprising a typical significant whole based on our
average habits of thinking and feeling” (id.: 10, my emphasis). “To
understand it is to seize by interpretation the meaning of the signifi-
cant unit concerned” (id.: 8). “In the majority of the cases the real
activity proceeds in an obscure semi-consciousness or in the non con-
sciousness of the ‘meaning concerned’ . . . But this should not prevent
sociology from elaborating its concepts by a classification of the pos-
sible ‘meaning concerned,’ i.e., as if the activity were indeed occurring
in consciousness of its sense orientation” (id.: 19).
Weber is therefore flayed by Becker’s retroactive critique: “We are
likely to yield to facileness by attributing to people what we think
that we would feel if we were ourselves in their situation” (Becker,
2002: 42).
Weber may, in principle, be classified among the firm advocates
of the necessary—but not sufficient—use of an emic approach. But
he actually remains quite distant from an emic methodology, based
on the constitution of discursive corpuses, such as those currently
employed in anthropology or qualitative sociology.
Regardless of the research topic, the collection of popular semiol-
ogy has indeed become an inevitable point of entry of any inquiry.
The expressions, vocabulary, and concepts employed by the actors
concerned, the definitions that they themselves provide, the distinc-
tions they make, the classifications they elaborate, the evaluations and
judgments they produce, the norms they employ to this end: all of
this is entailed in the richness, diversity, and complexity of the emic
level. Scholarly interpretations concerned with empirical adequacy are
necessarily grounded on emicity.19

Etic
The contours of the two main meanings subsumed under the term
etic have already been outlined above. On the one hand, etic refers to
scientific categories, the researcher’s analyses, and scholarly discourses.
The emic/etic opposition, which in this case I will call opposition
78 E p i s t e m o l o g y, F i e l d w o r k , a n d A n t h r o p o l o g y

A, thus corresponds among anthropologists to the classic distinction

sociologists make between common sense and scholarly meaning.
A = [emic]: [etic]:: [common sense]: [scholarly meaning].
Opposition A may be interpreted as a distinction between two levels
of language, the natural local language or indigenous language and
the cosmopolitan scientific metalanguage, or as a distinction between
two cognitive universes.
In the second case, or opposition B, etic applies to the data pro-
duced by mechanisms of observation and inventory. Opposition B
then assumes a more methodological significance related to different
modes of data production. In this case,
B = [emic]: [etic]:: [discursive data and social representations]: [obser-
vational data and inventories].
But this system of two possible oppositions is asymmetrical. In fact,
the two acceptations of emic overlap, for the most part. They are similar
in A and in B. Common sense is expressed via discursive data. But, to the
contrary, the two meanings of etic are different in A and in B. Scholarly
meaning can hardly be compared to observational data considered alone.
From this observation arise two consequences. The first brings us
back to the debate mentioned above. If Harris obfuscated the situa-
tion, and even made it inextricable, it is precisely because he incorrectly
aggregated the two meanings of etic, by confounding scientific charac-
ter (etic as scholarly meaning) with observability (etic as nondiscursive
data). He thus confused A and B. In other words, we cannot superim-
pose these two oppositions. It is necessary to choose one or the other.

etic

A ! scholarly
emic discourse
B
! local
discourse
etic

! nondiscursive
data

Figure 3.1 One emic for two etics

 Emic and the Actors’ Point of View 79

The second consequence is that we can also abandon the term etic
and its double meaning, thereby abandoning both A and B, and keep
only the term emic and its semantic stability. In this case, emic could
advantageously replace “indigenous,” “local,” “popular,” “vernacu-
lar,” “common” (representation or discourse), and even “cultural.”
Each one of these terms in fact conveys parasitic connotations, related
to the habitual use to which it is put, owing to pejorative or outdated
meanings (“native”), or to inappropriate meanings (“local”), or to
noncontrollable meanings (“culture”). This undoubtedly explains why
in scholarly literature these terms are so frequently placed between
quotation marks. Emic and emicity thus offer obvious advantages of
“neutrality.”
But what about the interpretation of emic data?

About Interpretation of Emic Data

The “question of interpretation” will be tackled here from two
angles only: the semiological and cultural status of emic interpreta-
tions and the “presence” of anthropological interpretations in emic
interpretations.
To get back to the question of double hermeneutics, we need
to inquire whether emic interpretations are different in status from
scholarly interpretations. The answer seems relatively simple today.
They have a different semiologic and cultural status, but an identical
“moral” and “cognitive” status. In other words, they belong to differ-
ent sense-worlds (and are embedded in different social universes), but
(a) they are to be treated on equal footing, and they are respectively
neither “lower” nor “higher”: to regard indigenous interpretations as
lower than scholarly representations is to adopt an ethnocentrist or
scientist point of view; to regard them as higher is to adopt a populist
point of view (see Chapter 6); (b) they arise from cognitive mecha-
nisms of comparable nature, even if their procedures, arguments, and
rhetoric are somewhat different. If Harris’s thinking is faulty on this
subject as well, it is because he posed a difference in “value” between
scholarly discourse and indigenous discourse, and further declared (at
least initially) the first superior to the second. Any rigorous epistemo-
logical posture inevitably challenges such a hierarchy as unacceptable
while admitting that the difference is both inevitable and normal. On
the one hand, there is indeed no common “moral” criteria connecting
or overarching the two universes enabling us to establish superiority.
The discourse of the informant and that of the researcher are thus
equally valuable. But, on the other hand, the objectives, resources,
80 E p i s t e m o l o g y, F i e l d w o r k , a n d A n t h r o p o l o g y

and constraints of the two positions are inevitably different, and the
discourse of the informant is not the same as that of the researcher.
These are clearly different cultural universes (the scholarly culture is
not the same as the local culture). On the one hand, we must admit
that there are no fundamentally distinct cognitive mechanisms sepa-
rating social science knowledge from popular knowledge. Hence,
from this point of view, ethnomethodology rightly postulates the
existence of common cognitive properties, which allow us to speak
about “natural knowledge” in the same way as we do about a natu-
ral language. But, on the other hand, the posture adopted regarding
knowledge is clearly different depending on whether the knowledge
is situated in the scientific register or in the register of common sense:
the objectives are not the same and the rules of the game differ, as
do the argumentative, semiologic, and empirical resources mobilized.
Now that we have dispelled any possible misunderstanding on this
point, there remains the question of the (inevitable) “presence” of the
researcher’s interpretations, which become embedded in emic repre-
sentations.20 In fact, collecting discourse or emic representations is
not simply “collection”; it obviously implies, moreover, the incorpo-
ration of the researcher’s interpretations into the process of searching
for and requesting information, if only in the form of the questions
the researcher asks himself (hypotheses, subjects of interest, not to
mention preconceptions) and therefore poses to informants. Any
strategy of fieldwork integrates a minimal degree of interpretation.21
But all interpretations are not the same.22 The interpretations
incorporated into the process by which the anthropologist produces
empirical data are (or should be) different from those he mobilizes
in the treatment of these data.23 This allows us to make a distinction
between anthropological interpretations in the emic, and anthropo-
logical interpretations on the emic.
Anthropological interpretations in the emic are exploratory inter-
pretations, subjected to certain requirements of emic data production.
The production of emic data is indeed, during the fieldwork phase, at
the center of the research strategy (alongside the production of obser-
vational data). Of course, these emic data draw their relevance from
the researcher’s specific problematic and necessarily retain a “trace”
of the exploratory interpretations that solicited them. But these traces
are variable in “size” and, at all events, do not prevent the emic data
from having an autonomous thickness, a life of its own, a specific logic,
distinct from that of research interpretations. The heuristic value of
exploratory interpretations, from such a point of view, is related to
their empirical productivity and flexibility.
 Emic and the Actors’ Point of View 81

(a) Their productivity is their capacity to produce new data, con-

firming or canceling interpretative tracks, exploring new fields, raising
new questions, requesting new intelligibilities; it is also their power of
exemplification and counterexemplification.
(b) Their flexibility is their capacity for change, amendment, and
recomposition throughout the process of data production, in other
words, their ability to take account of emic feedback, as opposed to
fixed conceptual systems, however elegant.

Empirical productivity and flexibility are properties of exploratory

interpretations. They are independent of the shape of the interpreta-
tions themselves. Possible forms include “hypotheses” (in the weak
sense of the term). This involves collecting emic—or other—data
that confirm, nullify, or modify hypothetical interpretations. Interpre-
tations may also take the more open-ended form of “tracks.” This
implies collecting emic—or other—data that define new tracks where
none previously existed, somewhat in the manner of casting a net or
clearing a field in order to produce new exploratory interpretations.24
By contrast with interpretations in the emic, which happen during
fieldwork and should maximize emicity, interpretations on the emic
are ex post interpretations and come under the classic heading of ana-
lytic interpretations founded on corpuses—a domain on which there
is an abundance of commentaries and glosses. Empirical productivity
and flexibility are no longer expected qualities and have been replaced
by academic virtuosity and rhetorical coherence. Most social science
debates concern these ex post interpretations, incorporated into the
scholarly argumentation of a publication. This will not detain us here.
Nevertheless, it is crucial to pinpoint an additional difficulty,
namely, the frequent presence of a translation process, when the
researcher addresses a public that is unfamiliar with his object of study.
This translation process may be semiologic and/or linguistic. The emic
data produced, when organized in a corpus of discourses proffered
in a foreign language, are not only different from the researcher’s
original sense-world (it is up to him to have a foot in each camp)
but are, moreover, even further from the sense-world of readers. As
a result, readers often find these data somewhat “strange” or even
exotic. Hence, the statements actors make—at least those that are to
be used as illustrations or examples—must “be translated.” Like the
sociologist, the economist, or the historian, the anthropologist pro-
duces models of intelligibility based on his data. Scholarly interpreta-
tions and theoretical statements are part of all social science research,
but the anthropologist must also do translation.25 Translation is, of
82 E p i s t e m o l o g y, F i e l d w o r k , a n d A n t h r o p o l o g y

course, always a process of interpretation. It is specifically, in part, a

process of ex post interpretation; an interpretation on the emic, done
on previously produced and established discursive data.
But translation is a particularly constrained procedure of interpre-
tation. Although related to a preexistent emic, it must, as it were,
“respect” this emic “from the inside,” remain as “faithful” to it as
possible, “serve” its density and its autonomy, while recomposing it in
and for another semantic universe.26
Thus, the translation of emic is simultaneously an interpretation in
the emic and on the emic.
Plantations and the Rise of a World Food Economy: Some Preliminary Ideas
Author(s): Sidney W. Mint
Source: Review (Fernand Braudel Center) , 2011, Vol. 34, No. 1/2, RETHINKING THE
PLANTATION: HISTORIES, ANTHROPOLOGIES, AND ARCHAEOLOGIES (2011), pp. 3-14
Published by: Research Foundation of State University of New York for and on behalf
of the Fernand Braudel Center

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gene al kn ledge f h hi neglec ed ag -ind ial fea e f
he m de n ld came in being and changed e ime.
I an f c he e n he cha ac e f he lan a i n' ni e
le in he e abli hmen f a gl bal f d ec n m . In he Ca ibbe
an egi n, he lan a i n em a ed h gh e e al cce i e
age in diffe en cie ie . E en h gh he age did n eme ge
a he ame ime in diffe en lace , I hink ha imila ca e e e
a k, d cing imila e l in b e en age , h gh he
e ence nf lded in diffe en cie ie and a diffe en ime .
The e age , hen, e e n nch n l , b a he adiall
alike (Childe 1946a).
I d n mean ign e he fa e f he Ca ibbean cie ie
ha e ee ed he effec f lan a i n e a ing nea b ,
ha e e he ea f a fe f nc i ning lan a i n , b ha

* Thi a icle a ea lie e en ed a he c nfe ence "Re en and a lan a i n:

Pai agen ma e iai , ciai e imb lica "; M e Naci nal, Ri de Janei , Ma 4-5,
2009. I a h n ed b he in i a i n f he Na i nal M e m ake a in ha I
hink f a an ng ing gl bal dial g e, ne aimed a e laining ha he lan a i n ha
mean he ld, a jec ha I hink c n i e a ef l a k f hi ian and
cial cien i in e e ed in h he ld ha aken n i a ic la ha e e ime.

REVIEW, XXXIV, 1/2, 2011, 3-14

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 4 Sidne W. Min

e e en gh diffe e
i n em.

A. THE PLANTATION AS AN INSTITUTION

Ea l in he e en een h cen , in Angl h ne Ame ica, h

e m " lan a i n" became linked he fi Engli h e lemen
in N h Ame ica, ch a he Pl m h C l n in Ne Englan
he Jame n c l n in ha ld bec me Vi ginia. Th
g e n f he Pilg im e lemen f Pl m h C l n , William
B adf d, ld de c ibe i a "Pl m h Plan a i n" in hi i
ing. He e he d mean a lan ing, a e lemen , he he f f d
lan , d me ic animal , e le. In N h Ame ica, i m e f
milia meaning a a he n ag ic l al e a e, ked b la e
nl eme ged a a la e ime.
In he manif ld di c i n f he lan a i n in he li e a e, i
i c mm nl efe ed a a E ean in i i n; ha i a hi
call c ec ie . La ge ag ic l al e a e , ked i h f ced
b nd lab , e e ancien in he Middle Ea . S me fea e f
he Medi e anean ga lan a i n e e ac all c ied d ing
he e lemen f he Ne W ld. Ye he Ne W ld lan a i n
a a di inc i e in i i n, aking ha e a i did n an n ec
eden ed cale, and n a ne c n inen .
The N h Ame ican ci l gi Edga Th m n, i ing in
1932, a he fi efe he lan a i n a an in i i n f he
f n ie (2010). B he e m "f n ie " ha m e han ne mean
ing. F ede ick Jack n T ne , he fam N h Ame ican ch la
f he f n ie , c ncei ed f i i h a ic la efe ence he Uni
ed S a e . Each ad ance e a d, he a g ed, e i ed he N h
Ame ican a ane in me a . I a n ha ci ili a i n
ad anced, m ch a ha he i nee , bliged li e like he
na i e e le , c ld nl l l begin e abli h ci ili ed life
nce m e, b an alm e l i na ce . P ai ing he I alian
ec n mi , Achille L ia ( h e k he had c ibbed hamele l ),
T ne i e : "The Uni ed S a e lie like a h ge age in he hi
f cie . Line b line a e ead f m e ea e find he
ec d f cial e l i n" (T ne 1921: 24).
Ye I hink ha T ne ' ie , en m l infl en ial am ng
hi c n em a ie , a in fac ddl nhi ical in na e. Sla

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PLANTATIONS AND THE RISE OF A WORLD FOOD ECONOMY 5

e a e en and g ing in eng h in

e eciall in he S h, l ng bef e Re
ell in he ec nd half f he nine een h ce
de eigh f la e in he Uni ed S a e
e a d na i nal g h, e en af e he e ible
E en i h he in i i n f la e i elf,
f legi la i e ene g a e ended, a he S
f gh e ain he ame c e ci e cial
imagine ha he legac f la e ha ani hed
cen .
T a d he end f he cen , he legi la i e g am called
Rec n c i n, c ea ed e end f eed e le he igh f
hei fell Whi e ci i en , g a an eed b amendmen he C n
i i n, a de ed, e b e . And T ne ld i e: "B
hen Ame ican hi c me be igh l ie ed, i ill be een
ha he la e e i n i an inciden " (1921: 24, i alic added).
Gi en he h ge ignificance f he in i i n f la e e
ime, i hide l bl d ending, and ha ha ha ened in
Ame ican cie ince, i i ha d n c ncl de ha T ne '
mi nde anding had an l e i m i e.
In c n a , ci l gi Edga Th m n aimed define he
lan a i n ci l gicall , a a e cla f ag ic l al en e
i e. He aimed libe a e he d f m he idel -held ie
ha lan a i n a e a cia ed nl i h ical egi n , a ie
ha c ncei ed f lan a i n ge g a hicall , m l a ical f
he U.S. S h. S ch a ie neglec ed hei hemi he ic ignifi
cance, and he le f la e in hei leng h and a iega ed hi
. Th m n h he eade ag ic l al em in Middle
E e and el e he e ha e e ified b he main fea e f
he lan a i n, incl ding c e ced lab and d c i n f ma ke ,
b ha e e nei he Ame ican, n ical.
Th m n al added al abl he de c i i n b a g ing
ha he lan a i n a al a li ical in i i n. In he Ame i
ca , Th m n h , he ea l lan a i n k ha e in a ea
he e ab iginal e le e e fe in n mbe , and c ld be ea il
killed ff, en la ed, enned ; he e land a fe ile, and ea
il ei ed; he e a e and d e e eadil a ailable; and f m
hich d c c ld be ea il hi ed E ean ma ke .
Th m n' de c i i n c nf m ha e kn f he e
abli hmen f lan a i n in he Ca ibbean i land and nea b ,

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 6 Sidne W. Min

and I belie e ha hi
i n i j ified. B
de e e an he c mmen .

If he lan a i n i a f n ie in i i n, hi im lie ha g
e nmen ill be eak ab en he e he lan a i n i e abli hed.
And if li ical de i eak ab en , hen alm b defini i n,
he lan a i n ill bec me a li ical in i i n. In m f he
Ca ibbean egi n, he la e-manned lan a i n had an end ing
effec n h man e lemen in he nding a ea . Being en
e i e ha c ld i e nl b he e and h ea f i lence,
hei ne and manage e ec ed di de , and a he e f
i lence a hei d , kee and e e de . In he An ille
(b le , I belie e, han in B a il and he U.S. S h), lan a
i n ifled l cal ec n mic and li ical g h. In m i a
i n , f ee lab c ld n c m e e i h la e, n c ld mall
fa m c m e e i h lan a i n . T a ing deg ee , lan a i n
limi ed he ec n mic ni , he g h f ade, acce
land, and he g h f c mm ni ie f f ee e le. F ee lab e
in imi la e all had diffic l finding k. The la e
lan a i n dam ened ni ie b i in e nal gani a i n:
he e c ndi i n f life n lan a i n ld inhibi he abili
f f ee lab c e i i h la e lab in he ame cie .
I i b i ha he lan a i n' ela i n hi la e a in
ima e and im an . Tha c nnec i n a died b he D ch
ci l gi H. J. Nieb e . In hi k, he a k h hi a ic la
f m f ag ic l al gani a i n h ld ha e been ied cl el
c e ced lab nl . T an e hi e i n, Nieb e c n a
ha he call " en e ce " and "cl ed e ce ." O en e
ce a e defined b ea acce land, a e , and he na al
iche , f he f nd in egi n ha a e hinl la ed. In
c n a , cl ed e ce a e ma ked b diffic l acce land,
a e , and d, and he cc in egi n ha a e hea il e led
(Nieb e 1900). I i a dece i el im le c n a ; me c i ic ch
a D ma (1970) c n ide i im leminded be ide . I d n . B
eak f en and cl ed e ce and f n hing el e i n
en gh. I ha e ema ked el e he e (Min 1977: 257) ha Ca ib
bean la e made en e a a l i n, fi , beca e i a n
ible cl e ff he e f n ie i land i nee e lemen b f ee
e le; ec ndl , beca e he e a n en gh lice e
he man e a ailable f he legal and mili a c n ainmen

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PLANTATIONS AND THE RISE OF A WORLD FOOD ECONOMY 7

f a f ee la i n n h e i land ; and hi d
lab ha c ld be en la ed a b ainable a
ke ice, and n legal and c l al e m ha
l call acce able. I ec Imman el Walle
hi l lab a c ming f m ide h
ha he en la ed c n i ed addi i n he lab f ce f ld
ca i ali m. In he hi f Ne W ld lan a i n la e hich
a called "ind ial la e " b Nieb e hen he e he c ndi
i n a e added, he c n a be een en and cl ed i d ama ic.
S n af e c n e , he Ca ibbean i land became a egi n f
en e ce .
Plan a i n e e e abli hed in lace he e e e fac ha
Th m n men i n c ld be f nd, b he e he e a a ch nic
h age f lab . Af e all, ha f ee man ld k f a ga
lan e in a egi n ha had len f land and he e ce
a ailable a he l e ible ice , f en a a f ee g d he e
f ee men had fe c m e i , and e ce ch a land and
d e e in m lace f ee f he aking?
Unde h e c ndi i n , f ee men c ld be c n ed n
k f hem el e . Hence, la e became he be " l i n"
lab h age n he i land . The ne lan e cla c ld imagine
n he . Onl if e e e e ha he lan e e e ead
d he h ical lab hem el e migh e d b ha la e a
he nl an e he kne a ch nic lack f ade a e lab . I
f ll ha if ne da he lan e e e bliged d he j b i h
la e , hen he ld eek im b an mean ible
an ne g llible e ed en gh c me e le h e e a
defen ele a he la e had been. A Nieb e a , in a egi n f
en e ce , ne em l e cha e fe ke ; in a egi n
f cl ed e ce , man ke cha e ne em l e . Thi
nde d, he idea f la e a a " l i n" bec me m e c m
ehen ible.
B e can g f he in delinea ing he ni ene f Ne
W ld lan a i n , and a ic la l ga lan a i n , in de c ib
ing m e e ac l ha h e lan a i n did. In he Ame ica , he
lan a i n a an gani a i nal inn a i n. I a n he lan a
i n ha ne l -c n e ed land, ge he i h ca i e lab len
f m Af ica d ing he c e ff cen ie , and he echnical
kill f Old W ld en e ene , e e j ined ge he , hank

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 8 Sidne W. Min

gl bal ca i ali m,
e d c i n.
B le al nde and ha hi a n . The f cible e

ac i n f ag ic l al eal h, he kimming f edible delicacie ,

he hef f he f d and d ink f he c n e ed e e all ac ice
ha had fig ed in ld hi f millennia (Childe 1946b). In
deed, im e ial cie ie , n abl he R man Em i e, lea ned
im an i ie f ba ic f d, ch a hea , acif and c n
l hei h mble ci i en : hi a a f he anem e ci cen e
e lea n ab in ch l. B ha hi gh n be c nf ed
i h he ma im a i n f ha had nce been a e l ie ,
be ld f c n m i n, l ima el b he E ean king
cla e . Thi g ing c n m i n b ban and al le a
ian f f eign delicacie ch a ga and ea and c ffee a a
maj e in E e' nf lding eali a i n f he en iali ie f
lan a i n d c i n, f m 1625 n il m de n ime .

B. ORIGINS OF WORLD FOOD ECONOMY

Kee in mind ha i h he di c e f he Ame ica , h

ld' fi lane a em i e came in being. The ga lan
i n f Madei a, he Cana I land , and S T m e e im
an link he Ne W ld de el men . B like he Medi e
anean lan a i n , he e e n i ed b he ich and
fe ile Ne W ld e lemen . The Ne W ld lan a i n , hen
became E e' fi ignifican ce f f d f m el e he e.
I ill gge ha hi a n he fi a in hich he Ne
W ld c n ib ed im an l he ld f d ec n m . B
i a he fi age in f d gl bali a i n. Tha lan a i n ag
mean ha f d a d ced b he ca i e and en la ed lab
ha a needed make lan a i n f nc i n in hei ne e in
in he Ame ica . G nding he lan a i n n c e ci n ma
i diffe en f m he c l nial en e . B in alling a em
f ced lab hich all f hem ed, he e lan a i n en e i
f ndl affec ed he g nd k f he e abli hmen f
em f l cal g e nance. Plan a i n ld n ha e a a
ha ing e en he a ha im e ial le ld f nc i n l call .
The d c f h e Ne W ld lan a i n began i h ga
and i b d c , m and m la e . The e e e a em

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PLANTATIONS AND THF. RISE OF A WORLD FOOD ECONOMY 9

d ce he d e ma e ial, indig , n a la ge c
e en al fail e b ad ance in chemi
f he ame ld ne da cc hen n he
and ea ing e k hem , and al d m
enda .) O he d ce ld e e imen
and bacc ; and Ca ne (2001) ha h n
la e n S h Ca lina lan a i n in he U
ld ma ke d c . Of all f he e, nl
a e na i e he Ne W ld; and in he i la
n e all c m e i . B c ffee can be
an d ce nde ce ain c ndi i n ; e
ld ake b h ea an and lan a i n f m
c ndi i n .

C n ide he a am n lan a i n f d d c n he
banana , inea le , and c c n f da , b ha ld ha e
been ld b he lan a i n i nee en e ene f he e en
een h and eigh een h cen ie : ga , m, m la e and, in a ,
c ffee and ch c la e. Fif ea ag ch la , incl ding an h
l gi Cha le Wagle , called hem "de e c ." B hi i a
mi leading cha ac e i a i n, beca e i mi an im an fea e
f he e f d . While ga i n a f d g, c ffee, ch c la e,
and ea all a e. The e h ee be e age ce became he caffeine
bea ing d g ha ld ain he ld' eme ging ind ial
le a ia , a ld C ca C la and imila adema ked be e
age , la e n (Min 2002). S ga , he bel ed c m ani n f all
he e he and e en f bacc , ha n im lan e ie , b
ca ie a l ad f ee cal ie .

In he d , he Ne W ld lan a i n e e ea l g een
h e f he e en al caffeine addic i n f E ean e le ,
and la e n, f m f he ld ide a ell. Thi a , in m
eading, an ea l age in he gl bali a i n f f d, m l ig
ge ed b e en i hin E ean ec n mie , and eceded b he
manif ld c n e ence f he di c e f he Ne W ld, and
he gl be' nea c m le e ci c mna iga i n n he eaf e . In an
ea lie a e i led "F d, C l e, and Ene g ," I gge ha he
Ne W ld ga lan a i n b gh in being he fi gl bal di
i i n f lab , and began a ba ic i i ning f he Whi e ld
b e le h e e nea l all n n hi e (Min 2008).
In ha ame a e , I gge e e al b e en e i de in
ld f d gl bali a i n, ne being ha f he la a e f

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 10 Sidne W. Min

he nine een h cen

ch la , F iedmann and McMichael, labeled he " e le -c l
nial" egime: en m e ea e an i n f he d c i n f
hea and, a le e e en , b al im an l , f mea (1989).
Thi ime d c i n k lace in he em e a e ne in ha
C b called he "ne -E e ": A gen ina, Ne Zealand, A a
lia, Canada, and he Uni ed S a e (1972). In each, he ne egime
c nfi ca ed l cal land , imbe , a e , and he e ce ( all
labeled "idle e ce " in he nine een h cen ) bel nging
na i e e le , im ed i elf n c lla ing indigen ec n
mie , and de ed indigen life a . B b he end f he
nine een h cen , he ec n mic f m f in e e he e, he lan a
i n, had aken n a h ll diffe en le in he ld ec n m ,
c ndi i ned a l b he de el men f a c mme ciall iable
ga e ac ed f m bee fa med in em e a e clime , and b
he echn l gical and chemical achie emen . M la ge in
he e i ge n he c n e ali a i n f f m like he
lan a i n, i hin la ge cial f ame k .
I ha e ken f he lan a i n a emblema ic f he fi age
in he gl bali a i n f a ld f d em. B I d n an
mi an immen el im an ce ha a nf lding a he
ame ime a he c ea i n f S ain' Ca ibbean c l nie . Th gh
ali a i el diffe en , i a a diff i n, a ic la l f f d , ha
cann be mi ed f m an e i c n ide a i n f he fac
ha e l ed in ea l gl bali a i n. I e la ed i h, and a ime
ched n, he g h f he Ca ibbean lan a i n c l nie .
Thi de el men ha ened i h ega d he lan a i n
age f hich I a eaking. I a n a age; i a a he , a
leng h , ng ing ce . I efe he a ni hing e change f
f d , lan , animal , and di ea e be een he Ne W ld and
he Old, and ill ee ha h gh hi ha ed n hing i h he
age f lan a i n hi , i a linked lan a i n de el
men .

I in d ce hi ic in de ake n e f a ecial c n a
be een ha en f m he Ne W ld he Old, and ha came
f m he Old W ld he Ne . Th gh ecificall ela ed h
lan a i n' b he in d c i n f ga cane and he Ol
W ld f d lan , hi e change began bef e, and ceede
a allel , he f he lan a i n.

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PLANTATIONS AND THE RISE OF A WORLD FOOD ECONOMY 11

Alf ed C b , in hi b illian b k, The C l

ee he nde f ha e change (1972).
he Old he e fl ed a c n c ia, e eci
a l en iched c i ine a nd he ld. S
e ill e e be a e; he ce e b hich
g ad all in d ced in he f d habi
a e ill n f ll nde d d c men e
kn n e am le f ha an a lan ic diff i n
T f d ha e e in d ced f m he Ne W ld he
Old, mai e and he a , a eled in ghl a allel a h f m
he A lan ic h e ea a d a fa a Xinjiang. The did n dif
f e in he ame manne Af ica; b mai e, a lea , did ell
he e, , a ell a me he an lan , ch a mani c. A
kn , e en en h bic N h Ame ican call mme f i e
(dee f ied j lienne a e ) "F ench f ie "; and he len a f
I al and he mamaligen f R mania a e ib e he ag ic l al
geni f he na i e e le f he Ne W ld, a ell a he
c k f he b ing c n ie . P a e and mai e a e b
am ng e e al d en ch in d c i n . Senegale e ean ,
Sich ane e and H nane e c i ine , he h c ie f India, all
fi f m he Ne W ld ca ic m . Indeed, ac E af a ia,
e le fell in l e i h " e e ," b h h and ee .
B ha a all m emen ea a d. The e a f c e im
men e m emen e a d, , and i incl ded man lan and
animal ha e e aken b he Ame ican . B E e en
m ch el e ha a n elc me. While he E ean, A ian, and
Af ican fa ming e le cceeded b illian l in in eg a ing man
Ne W ld f d in hei ee i ing die , he e le f he
Ne W ld e e bjec he ill f E ean c n e ben
n f cing Ne W ld e ce in hei n lan .

C. DEVELOPMENT OF THE PLANTATION ECONOMY

I i h end m ema k i h me b e a i n ab he
ne en de el men f he lan a i n, i h a ic la a en i n
he Ca ibbean egi n, he e I did m f m n k. Tha
ne enne a he c me f man diffe en fac , incl din
he na al end men f diffe en l cale , he licie f diffe
en na i n- a e , and he ld ic e a he ime ha indi id

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 12 Sidne W. Min

lace e e la nched
did n affec he f n
in he e en een h an
nea ne ma ke ,
ce able ma ke ice
The Hi anic Ca ibbe
edece h
W ld, e e d ce
la e , and hi ed b
men f ga i flim
hich R d ig e M
E e f m he Ne
in C ba, P e Ric ,
B be een 1510 and
fac acc n ed f
he inci al ea n
able h f al
he g h f a C e
he e e i n , he
b hen failed.
I i i al n ice ha , a fa a he i land e e c nce ned,
he nl E ean im e ial e e e en ed e i iall in he
An ille f m 1492 n il 1625 a S ain. The Ca ibbean Sea a
a S ani h lake f m e han 125 ea . I a , hen, nl af e he
ini ial e i d ha S ain' i al began g ab land, a fi m de
l , and la e , in e la ge ei e . F m 1625 n a d, a d ama i
call diffe en ha e f he Ca ibbean ga ind nf lded. In
hi ec nd ha e, 1625-1762, la e-lab -ba ed lan a i n g h
a in he hand f e e na i n e ce S ain. In e na i nal ade
in ga , c ffee, ch c la e, and he ch d c g e a a
nding a e . Shamma h , f e am le, ha he lace f
ga , c ffee, and he lan a i n d c a a ha e f B i ain'
im g e f m le han 20% in 1700 m e han a hi d f
he al e f e e hing ha B i ain a im ing, b 1772 (B e e
and P e 1993: 179). Simila g h cc ed am ng he he
maj lan a i n e .
In ha ec nd ha e, ne land a c l i a i n, ked
alm e cl i el b la e , d ce ga and i b d c
a el , me he ical g d. Th gh he da e f each c l n
a f m ab 1650 nea he end f he eigh een h cen ,

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PLANTATIONS AND THE RISE OF A WORLD FOOD ECONOMY 13

in each ca e he ba ic c ndi i n e e he am
f f n ie and he le f he lan a i n a a
make en e, e and e again, f he B i
he F ench. Th gh he da e e e diffe en ,
each lan a i n cie and ec n m fi ed an
Thi a e began a m lec e a he c nfe
i a deli e ed he e af e eci da f
hich I emain f ndl ha e mi e
i en f m, I h ed gge me f he
hi ag cial gani a i nal f m, a f m al
f . I an ed emind e le h c ncen
hi ical anal i in de make eci e in
meaning f he e ange " ga fa m c m fa
he hing , manage ne f h man be
he E ean land ca e. The e e e ind i
le h e e nei he ea an n me chan n
he land, b n lea ning li e i h land
animal , i e b n m e han he kill a
ac i ing and ca ing in hei hand and b ai
A E e' le , li ician , and en e
c med i h n ff he eal h e ac ed f
chained Af ican , h e e d ing n Ne W
Na i e Ame ican , he ke f E e e
, landle and e le , in fac illage
(am ng he hing ) he ga and ea and
came hem, m e i l , f m ac he
ainf ll bec ming ne, n li icall , b be
gl bal f d em a ing e le ge he
hem kne h m he fed; h fed hem;
I h e ha me a allel , e ha big diffe
e en me ne a ene a e anal icall
fice f ca i al, machine , c n me , and lab
ge ed hem el e .

REFERENCES

Ca ne , J di h. 2001. Black Rice. Camb idge, MA: Ha a d Uni e i P e .

Childe, V. G d n. 1946a. "A chae l g and An h l g ." S h e e n J nal
An h l g 2 (3): 243-51.
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C b , Alf ed. 1972. Th

D ma , E e . 1970. "Th
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Shamma , Ca le. 1993. "Change in Engli h and Angl -Ame ican C n m i n
f m 1550 1800." J hn B e e and R P e , ed . C n m i n and he W ld
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Th m n, Edga T. 2010. The Plan a i n. C l mbia: Uni e i f S h Ca lina
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T ne , F ede ick Jack n. 1921. The F n ie in Ame ican Hi . Ne Y k: Hen

H l .

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Why does juan garcía have a

drinking problem? The perspective
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Merrill Singer , Freddie Valentín , Hans Baer & Zhongke
a
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Hispanic Health Council, 98 Cedar Street, Hartford, CT,
06106
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Why Does Juan García Have a Drinking

Problem? The Perspective of Critical
Medical Anthropology
Merrill Singer, Freddie Valentín, Hans Baer, and Zhongke Jia
Key words: Puerto Ricans, alcohol abuse, medical anthropology, social science
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 04:28 07 September 2012

. . . anthropology, in spite of its limitations, may play a part in documenting what the West
has done to other sodeties.
Sidney Mintz (1989:794)
We will try to be objective but in no way will we be impartial.
Manuel Maldonado-Denis (1980:26)
Critical medical anthropology as a named theoretical perspective is about a decade
old (Baer and Singer 1982), although its main roots within the subdiscipline, as
expressed in the work of researchers like Soheir Morsy, Alan Young, Anthony
Thomas, and Ronald Frankenberg, are somewhat older. Because of its links to the
social analyses of Marx and Engels, and because it began as a challenge to medical
anthropology, critical medical anthropology has been a somewhat controversial
approach. Those who do not embrace it have issued a number of potentially
damaging critiques, including the argument that critical medical anthropology: 1)
is not suited to the applied and practical agenda of medical anthropology; 2) does
not foster scientific research; 3) tends to be concentrated on macro-level systems
and hence overlooks the lived experience of illness sufferers; 4) does not effectively
demonstrate the links between micro-processes and macro-forces; and 5) is a
passing trend whose popularity rests primarily on anthropology's fickle tendency
to follow fashion. It is our belief that those who advocate a particular perspective
have a responsibility to confront its critics head on, rather than ignore them and
hope, like most politicians, that the voters do not pay attention to the news or have
short memories. Consequently, this paper, which is concerned with articulating the
perspective of critical medical anthropology: targets an applied issue; is based on
empirical research; incorporates the individual level; is concerned with showing
the direct causal links between on-the-ground sociocultural/behavioral patterns
and the macro-level; and situates its approach within the broader perspective of
the political economy of health, which is at least as old as anthropology itself.1

MERRILL SINGER and his colleagues at the Hispanic Health Council, 98 Cedar Street, Hartford, CT 06106 have
carried out a number of studies on alcohol and drug use in the Hispanic community.

77
 78 M. Singer et al.

In this paper we examine the health issue of problem drinking among Puerto
Rican men. Over the years, medical anthropologists have exhibited an enduring
interest in substance use and abuse, although attention has been especially
concentrated since the early 1970s (Agar 1973; Bennett 1988; Douglas 1987; Heath
1976, 1978, 1980, 1987a, 1987b; Partridge 1978), producing both the Alcohol and
Drug Study Group of the Society for Medical Anthropology in 1979, and a rapid
expansion of the anthropological substance literature in recent years. Anthropolo-
gists bring a range of perspectives to the study of drinking in particular, and they
have made a number of significant contributions to this field. However, from the
viewpoint of critical medical anthropology, we have argued that
the anthropological examination of drinking has failed to systematically consider the world-
transforming effects of a global market and the global labor processes associated with the
evolution of the capitalist mode of production. Anthropological concentration on the
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intricacies of individual cases, while a necessary and useful method for appreciating the rich
detail of cultural variation and insider understandings, has somewhat blinded researchers to
the uniform processes underlying global social change, including changes in drinking
patterns. While the literature notes some of the effects of incorporation into the capitalist
world-system, rarely does it attempt to comprehend alcoholism in terms of the specific
dynamics of this system. Rather, the central thrust has been to locate problem drinking
within the context of normative drinking and normative drinking within the context of
prevailing local cultural patterns. [Singer 1986a:115]
Although anthropological contribution to the U.S. Latino drinking literature has
been somewhat limited, a number of studies are available (Ames and Mora 1988;
Gordon 1978,1981,1985a; Gilbert 1985,1987,1988; Gilbert and Cervantes 1987; Page
et al. 1985; Singer and Borrero 1984; Singer, Davison and Yalin 1987; Trotter 1982,
1985; Trotter and Chavira 1978). To date, most studies have been concerned with
Mexican Americans. Drinking among Puerto Rican men has been a relatively
neglected topic, although it has been suggested that this population is particularly
at risk for alcohol-related problems (Abad and Suares 1974).
The goal of this paper is to deepen our understanding of problem drinking
among Puerto Rican men by bringing to bear the perspective of critical medical
anthropology. We begin with a review of the origin and perspective of critical
medical anthropology after which we present the case of Juan Garcia (pseudo-
nym), a Puerto Rican man who in 1971 died with a bottle in his hand and booze in
his belly. Following a location of this case in its historic and political-economic
contexts, we present findings from two community studies2 of drinking behavior
and drinking-related health and social consequences among Puerto Rican men and
adolescents to demonstrate the representativeness of the case material. In this
paper, it is argued that the holistic model of critical medical anthropology advances
our understanding beyond narrow psychologistic or other approaches commonly
employed in social scientific alcohol research. More broadly, we assert this perspec-
tive is useful in examining a wide range of topics of concern to the subdiscipline.

CRITICAL MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AS A THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE

Critical medical anthropology understands health issues within the context of

encompassing political and economic forces that pattern human relationships,
 Critical Medical Anthropology 79

shape social behaviors, condition collective experiences, re-order local ecologies,

and situate cultural meanings, including forces of institutional, national and global
scale. The emergence of critical medical anthropology reflects both the turn toward
political-economic approaches in anthropology in general, as well as an effort to
engage and extend the political economy of health approach (Baer, Singer, Johnsen
1986; Morgan 1988; Singer 1989a, 1989b; Morsy 1990).
The notion of bourgeois medicine serves as an appropriate starting point for
examining the perspective of critical medical anthropology. In attempting to
differentiate the Western medical system that became globally dominant during
this century from alternative systems, social scientists have employed a variety of
descriptive labels, including regular medicine, allopathic medicine, modern medi-
cine, scientific medicine, cosmopolitan medicine, and biomedicine. As Brown
(1979) observes, this medical system achieved its dominant position in the West
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and beyond with the emergence of industrial capitalism and with abundant
assistance from the industrial bourgeoisie whose interests it commonly serves.
In this same sense, bourgeois medicine refers to that medical system that pro-
motes the hegemony of bourgeois society in general and the bourgeois class
specifically, not only in the United States but elsewhere in the advanced capitalist
and dependent capitalist worlds (Baer 1989). Indeed, although the Soviet Union
emerged as the first nation-wide counter-hegemonic movement against the capital-
ist world system, the ideological hegemony of bourgeois medicine is so strong that
Navarro (1977) has applied this label to the "mechanistic," "Flexnerian," and "cura-
tive" orientation of the Soviet medical paradigm. While certain other profession-
alized medical systems, such as homeopathy, Ayurveda, Unai, and Chinese
medicine, function in many parts of the world, bourgeois medicine constitutes the
world medical system par excellence. Bourgeois medicine became the preeminent
medical system in the world not simply because of its curative efficacy, but as a result
of the expansion of the "capitalist world economy" (Wallerstein 1979; Elling 1981).
Critical medical anthropology seeks to understand who ultimately controls
bourgeois medicine and what the implications are of such control. An analysis of
the power relations affecting bourgeois medicine addresses questions like: 1) Who
has power over the agencies of bourgeois medicine? 2) How and in what forms is
this power delegated? 3) How is this power expressed in the social relations of the
various groups and actors that comprise the health care system? 4) What are the
economic, sociopolitical, and ideological ends and consequences of the configur-
ing power relations of bourgeois medicine? and 5) What are the principal contradic-
tions of bourgeois medicine and associated arenas of struggle and resistance that
affect the character and functioning of the medical system and people's experience
of it? In terms of the issues explored in this paper, for example, a critical perspective
directs attention to the bourgeois construction of alcoholism as a health problem.
From this vantage, critical medical anthropology seeks to explore such issues as: 1)
the social utility of defining alcoholism as an intra-psychic or micro-social prob-
lem; 2) the ideological natureand social control functions of messages communi-
cated to alcohol patients in treatment; 3) the political and economic character of the
burgeoning alcoholism treatment industry; and 4) the economic motivation for
narrowly directing national attention to the health and social costs of illicit drug
use and away from the many times more costly use of legal drugs like alcohol and
tobacco.
 80 M. Singer et al.

Any discussion of the impact of power relations in the delivery of health services
needs to recognize the existence of several levels in the health care systems of
developed capitalist, underdeveloped capitalist, and socialist-oriented societies.
Elsewhere, we presented a framework that illustrates how power is diffused from
the macro-level of the capitalist world system and its associated corporate and state
sectors and plural medical systems to the intermediate level of health institutions,
to the micro-level of the physician-patient relationships, to the individual level of
patient experience, interpretation, and action (Baer, Singer, Johnsen 1986). In our
original formulation, we viewed critical medical anthropology as providing a
perspective and set of concepts for analyzing macro-intermediate-micro connec-
tions (Singer 1989a, 1990a).
By the 1987 American Anthropological Association Meeting, a shared sense had
emerged that critical medical anthropology had come of age as a perspective
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within medical anthropology. For a while, as happens with new approaches, a

band-wagon effect occurred in which presenters at anthropological meetings
utilizing ethnomedical or phenomenological approaches applied the label of
critical medical anthropology to their analyses. At a more serious theoretical level,
however, some came to see critical medical anthropology as having split into two
contending camps, the so-called political economy/world system theorists and the
Foucaultian post-structuralists (Morgan 1987). Scheper-Hughes and Lock (1986:
137), principal proponents of the latter "camp," while granting that the political
economy of health perspective served a useful corrective to conventional medical
anthropological studies, asserted that it has "tended to depersonalize the subject
matter and the content of medical anthropology by focusing on the analysis of
social systems and things, and by neglecting the particular, the existential, the sub-
jective content of illness, suffering, and healing as lived events and experiences."
More recently, Scheper-Hughes argued for the creation of what she termed a

third path between the individualizing, meaning-centered discourse of the symbolic,

hermeneutic, phénoménologie medical anthropologists, on the one hand, and the collec-
tivized, depersonalized, mechanistic abstractions of the medical Marxists, on the other. . . .
To date much of what is called critical medical anthropology refers to . . . the applications
of marxist political economy to the social relations of sickness and health care delivery
(emphasis in original). [Scheper-Hughes 1990:189]

Ironically, in the same issue of Medical Anthropology Quarterly that Scheper-

Hughes and Lock launched their critique of critical medical anthropology, Singer
(1986b:128), who is generally associated with the so-called political-economic camp,
argued that "it has been the tendency of world systems and dependency theorists
to focus their attention on the macrolevel" while giving insufficient attention to local
context factors, "including the particular configuration of class, gender, and ethnic
relationships, the availability of resources and technology, demographic and eco-
logical factors, and historic and cultural patterns, that contribute to the short- and
long-term effects of capitalist penetration of health care, as well as to any micro-
population's ability to resist the agents, agencies, and agenda of biomedicine."
Elsewhere, Singer (1990b:184) argued that the examination of sufferer experience,
situated in relation to "socially constituted categories of meaning and the political-
economic forces that shape the contexts of daily life," is central to the project of
 Critical Medical Anthropology 81

critical medical anthropology. In short, as the present essay is intended to reflect, it

is our view that critical medical anthropology itself is the third path of which
Scheper-Hughes wrote.
In the view of critical medical anthropology, the micro-level is embedded in the
macro-level, while the macro-level is the embodiment of the micro-level but is
never reducible to it. Empirically, of course, social life does not exist on different
levels. Rather, we use this language as a heuristic device in the effort to compre-
hend the vital relationship between unique configuration and general process. The
special contribution of anthropology, as we see it, lies not only in its ability to
explore first-hand the immediate experiences, interpretive systems, motivations for
action, behavioral repertoires, and ecological and social relations of local actors, but
also in situating all of these in relation both to each other and to the broader and
crosscutting set of political-economic relations, the exploration of which dates to
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the earliest work of Marx.

Specific concern within the political-economic perspective with issues of
health—including, it bears noting, the special topic of problem drinking—can be
traced on the one hand to Frederick Engels' study of the working class of
Manchester and on the other to Rudolf Virchow's examination of a typhus epi-
demic in East Prussia. Both of these seminal studies, which possibly constitute the
earliest examples of medical anthropology field work, occurred in the 1840s. Each
of these researchers undertook an intensive examination of local conditions, using
ethnographic observation and informal interviewing, and attempted to describe
and interpret research findings in light of broader political and economic forces.
The current study, in fact, can be read as an extension and elaboration of the
approach developed by Engels and Virchow in their respective work. Specifically,
our analysis of problem drinking among Puerto Rican men, as well as studies of
mood-altering substance use by other critical medical anthropologists (e.g., Steb-
bins 1987, 1990), is directly influenced by Engel's examination of drinking and
opiate use in his Manchester study.
Beyond theory, critical medical anthropology is committed inherently to the
development of appropriate practical expression. Indeed, the data for this essay
were drawn from research that Singer and Valentin have conducted over the last
seven years through the Hispanic Health Council, a community action agency
dedicated to creating short- and long-term health improvements in the Latino
community of Hartford, CT and beyond (e.g., Singer, Irizzary, and Schensul 1990;
Singer et al. 1991). Critical medical anthropology rejects a simple dichotomy
between "anthropology of medicine" and "anthropology in medicine" that sepa-
rates theoretical from applied objectives. Rather, critical medical anthropologists
seek to place their expertise at the disposal of labor unions, peace organizations,
environmental groups, ethnic community agencies, women's health collectives,
health consumer associations, self-help and self-care movements, alternative
health efforts, national liberation struggles, and other bodies or initiatives that aim
to liberate people from oppressive health and social conditions. In sum, through
their theoretical and applied work, critical medical anthropologists strive to con-
tribute to the larger effort to create a new health system that will "serve the
people," including the area of alcoholism, which has proven to be an especially
intractable problem under particular social conditions.3
 82 M. Singer et al.

THE MEDICALIZATÍON OF PROBLEM DRINKING

The medicalizatíon of problem drinking, however thoroughly institutionalized at

this point, involved a process that began in 1785 with Benjamin Rush (Rush
1785/1943) but was only completed relatively recently. As the National Council on
Alcoholism stated in an educational pamphlet a number of years ago: "The main
task of those working to combat alcoholism . . . is to remove the stigma from this
disease and make it as 'respectable' as other major diseases such as cancer and
tuberculosis" (quoted in Davies 1979:449). A significant step in this process was a
1944 statement of the American Hospital Association proposing that "the primary
attack on alcoholism should be through the general hospital" (quoted in Chafetz
and Yoerg 1977:599). Four years later, the World Health Organization included
alcoholism in its International Classification of Diseases. But it was not until 1956
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that the American Medical Association declared alcoholism to be an officially

recognized disease in U.S. biomedicine. Four years later, E. M. Jellinek published
his seminal book, The Disease Concept of Alcoholism. Finally, in 1971 the National
Institute on Alcohol,Abuse and Alcoholism was established "premised on the
belief that alcoholism is a disease and an important health problem" (Conrad and
Schneider 1980:108).
Since then, the disease concept has become "everyone's official dogma, with
medical organizations, alcoholics themselves, and well-meaning people speaking
on their behalf urging governments and employers to accept and act on its
implications" (Kendell 1979:367). And with notable success! As Schaefer (1982:302)
points out, 'Alcoholism is a growth industry. Empty hospital beds are turned into
alcoholism 'slots'. The disease concept has become . . . integrated into the political
and economic consciousness." While ambiguity remains about how much blame to
lay at the feet of the drinker for causing his/her own problems, research indicates
that the majority of people in the U.S. accept alcoholism as a bonafide if confusing
disease (Mulford and Miller 1964; Chrisman 1985).
But what is this disease called "alcoholism?"4 Morris Chafetz, a psychiatrist and
one of the leading figures in the alcohol field, writes:
We define alcoholism as a chronic behavioral disorder which is manifested by undue
preoccupation with alcohol to the detriment of physical and mental health, by a loss of
control when drinking has begun . . . , and by a self-destructive attitude in dealing with
personal relationships and life situations. Alcoholism, we believe, is the result of distur-
bance and deprivation in early infantile experience and the related alterations in basic
physio-chemical responsiveness; the identification by the alcoholic with significant figures
who deal with life problems through the excessive use of alcohol; and a socio-cultural milieu
which causes ambivalence, conflict, and guilt in the use of alcohol. [Chafetz and Demone
1962:4]

Even more absolute is De Ropp, who asserts:

The cause of alcoholism lies not in the whiskey bottle but in the psyche of those unfortunates
who swallow its contents too freely. The alcoholic is sick, mentally and emotionally. He
belongs . . . to that group of disturbed individuals who are labeled 'impulsive neurotics.'
He is an insecure, emotionally immature individual who sees in alcohol a crutch to support
him in his journey through life. [De Ropp 1976:133-134]
 Critical Medical Anthropology 83

While others would add or subtract particular definitional elements, the basic
message is the same: like all diseases, alcoholism is a malfunction of the individual,
be it at the chemical, genetic, biological or psychological level. Even those who go
so far as to view alcoholism as a defect at the microsocial level—a disease of the
family system—still tend to speak in psychomedicalistic terms.
From the perspective of critical medical anthropology, the conventional disease
model of alcoholism must be understood as an ideological construct comprehen-
sible only in terms of the historic and political-economic contexts of its origin (see
Conrad and Schneider 1980; Mishler 1981). The disease concept achieved several
things, including: 1) offering "a plausible solution to the apparent irrationality of
. . . [problem drinking] behavior" (Conrad and Schneider 1980:87); 2) guarantee-
ing social status as well as a livelihood to a wide array of individuals, institutions,
and organizations, within and outside of biomedicine (Trice and Roman 1972); and
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3) limiting the growing burden on the criminal justice system produced by public
drunkenness, the most common arrest made by police nationally (Park 1983). In the
perspective of critical medical anthropology, however, it hinders exploration of
alternative, politically more challenging understandings of destructive drinking (Singer
1986a). This point is argued below by presenting the case of Juan Garcia in terms of
contrasting conventional psychologistic and critical medical anthropological inter-
pretations.

THE CASE OF JUAN GARCÍA

Juan was born in Puerto Rico in 1909. The offspring of an adulterous relationship,
he deeply resented his father. At age eight, Juan's mother died and he went to live
with an aunt, and later, after his father died, was raised by his father's wife. As
expression of his undying hatred of his father, Juan took his mother's surname,
Garcia.
As a young man, he became romantically involved with a cousin named Zoraida,
who had been deserted with a small daughter by her husband. They lived together
for a number of years in a tiny wooden shack, eking out a meager living farm-
ing a small plot of land. Then one day, Zoraida's ex-husband came and took his
daughter away. Because of his wealth and social standing, there was little Juan
and Zoraida could do. In resigning themselves to the loss, they began a new family
of their own.
Over the years, Zoraida bore 19 children with Juan, although most did not
survive infancy. According to Juan's daughter, who was the source of our informa-
tion about Juan:
My mother went to a spiritual healer in Puerto Rico and they told her witchcraft had been
done on her, and that all her children born in Puerto Rico would die; her children would only
survive if she crossed water.
Given their intensely spiritual perspective, the couple decided to leave Puerto Rico
and migrate "across water" to the US. It was to New York, to the burgeoning Puerto
Rican community in Brooklyn, that Juan and Zoraida moved in 1946.
New to U.S. society and to urban life, Juan had great difficulty finding employ-
 84 M. Singer et al.

ment. Unskilled and uneducated, and monolingual in Spanish, he was only able to
find manual labor at low wages. Eventually, he began working as a janitor in an
appliance factory. Here, a fellow worker taught him to draft blueprints, enabling
him to move up to the position of draftsman.
Juan's daughter remembers her parents as strict disciplinarians with a strong
bent for privacy. Still, family life was stable and reasonably comfortable until Juan
lost his job when the appliance factory where he worked moved out of state. At
the time, he was in his mid-fifties and despite his efforts was never again able to
locate steady employment. At first he received unemployment benefits, but when
these ran out, the Garcia family was forced to go on welfare. This greatly
embarrassed Juan. Always a heavy drinker, he now began to drink and act
abusively. According to his daughter:
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A big cloud came over us and everything kept getting worse and worse in the house. This
was 1964,1965,1966. . . . The pressure would work on him and he used to drink and then
beat my mother. But my mother wouldn't hit him back. . . . I went a year and a half without
speaking to my father. He would say that I wasn't his daughter. We respected our father,
but he lost our respect cause of the way he used to treat us. He would beat me and I would
curse at him. . . . When my mother couldn't take the pressure any more, she would drink
too. . . . My parents would get into fights and we had to get in between. Once they had a
fight and my father moved out.

By the time Juan died of alcohol-related causes in 1971, he was a broken man,
impoverished, friendless, and isolated from his family.
If we think of problem drinking as an individual problem, then it makes sense to
say that Juan suffered from a behavioral disorder characterized by a preoccupation
with alcohol to the detriment of physical and mental health, by a loss of control
over drinking, and by a self-destructive attitude in dealing with personal relation-
ships and life situations. Moreover, there is evidence that he was an insecure,
emotionally immature individual who used alcohol as a crutch to support himself
in the face of adversity. Finally, without probing too deeply, we even can find, in
Juan's troubled relationship with his father, a basis in infantile experience for the
development of these destructive patterns. In short, in professional alcohol treat-
ment circles, among many recovered alcoholics, and in society generally, Juan
could be diagnosed as having suffered from the disease of alcoholism.
In so labeling him however, do we hide more than we reveal? By remaining at
the level of the individual actor, that is, by locating Juan's problem within Juan, do
we not pretend that the events of his Ufe and the nature of his drinking make sense
separate from their wider historic and political-economic contexts? As Wolf (1982)
reminds us, approaches that disassemble interconnected social processes and fail
to reassemble them falsify reality. Only by placing the subjects of our investigation
"back into the field from which they were abstracted," he argues, "can we hope to
avoid misleading inferences and increase our share of understanding" (Wolf
1982:3). To really make sense of Juan's drinking, to move beyond individualized
and privatized formulations, to avoid artificial and unsatisfying psychologistic
labeling, the critical perspective moves to the wider field, to an historic and
political-economic appraisal of Puerto Ricans and alcohol.
 Critical Medical Anthropology 85

HISTORIC AND POLITICAL ECONOMIC CONTEXT

When Columbus first set foot on Puerto Rico on November 19, 1493, he found a
horticultural tribal society possessed of alcohol but devoid of alcoholism. While
there is limited information on this period, based on the wider ethnographic record
it is almost certain that the consumption of fermented beverages by the indigenous
Taino (Arawak) and Carib peoples of Puerto Rico was socially sanctioned and
controlled, and produced little in the way of health or social problems. As Davila
(1987:10) writes, the available literature suggests that "the Taino made beer from a
fermentable root crop called manioc, and . . . they might also have been ferment-
ing some of the fruits they grew. However, the existing evidence suggests that
alcohol was used more in a ritual context than in a social one." Heath notes that
among many indigenous peoples of what was to become Latin America, periodic
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fiestas in which most of the adults drank until intoxicated was a common pattern.
However, "both drinking and drunkenness were socially approved in the context of
veneration of major deities, as an integral part of significant agricultural ceremo-
nies, or in celebration of important events in the lives of local leaders" (Heath
1984:9). At times other than these special occasions, alcohol consumption was
limited and nondisruptive, controlled by rather than a threat to the social group.
These and other features of Arawak life greatly impressed Columbus. He also
was quick to notice the limited military capacity of the Indians, given their lack of
metal weapons. Setting the tone for what was to follow, in one of his first log entries
describing the Arawak, Columbus noted: "With fifty men we could subjugate them
all and make them do whatever we want" (recorded in Zinn 1980:1). In effect, this
was soon to happen, prompted by the discovery of gold on the Island. Under the
Spanish encomienda system, ostensibly set up to 'protect' the Indians and assimilate
them to Spanish culture, indigenous men, women and children were forced to
work long hours in Spanish mines. Within 100 years of the arrival of the Columbus,
most of the indigenous people were gone, victims of the first phase of 'primitive
accumulation' by the emergent capitalist economy of Europe.
Once the gold mines were exhausted, the island of Puerto Rico, like its neigh-
bors, became a center of sugar production for export to the European market
(History Task Force 1979). Almost unknown in Europe before the thirteenth
century, 300 years later sugar was a staple of the European diet. Along with its
derivatives, molasses and rum, it became one of the substances Mintz (1971) has
termed the "proletarian hunger-killers" during the take-off phase of the Industrial
Revolution. In time, rum became an essential part of the diet for the rural laboring
classes of Puerto Rico.
This process was facilitated by two factors. First, alcohol consumption among
Spanish settlers was a normal part of everyday activity. Prior to colonial contact, in
fact, the Spanish had little access to mood-altering substances other than alcohol.
As Heath (1984:14) indicates, among the Spanish, alcoholic beverages were con-
sumed "to relieve thirst, with meals, and as a regular refreshment, in all of the ways
that coffee, tea, water, or soft drinks are now used. . . ." Alcohol "thus permeated
every aspect of . . . life" among the settlers (Davila 1987:11). Second, there was a
daily distribution of rum to day workers and slaves on the sugar plantations (Mintz
 86 M. Singer et al.

1971). Not until 1609 did King Felipe III of Spain forbid the use of alcohol as a
medium for the payment of Indian laborers (Heath 1984). Rum distilleries, in fact,
were one of the few industrial enterprises launched by the Spanish during their
several hundred year reign in Puerto Rico. Commercial production was supple-
mented by a home brew called ron cañita (little cane rum) made with a locally
crafted still called an alambique and widely consumed among poor and working
people (Carrion 1983).
While the exact ethnohistorical pathway has yet to be reconstructed, it is evident
that by the end of Spanish colonial rule, heavy alcohol consumption had become
part and parcel of Puerto Rican cultural tradition and national identity. In his
comprehensive history of Puerto Rico, published in 1788, for example, Fray Iñugo
Abbad y Lasierra, notes that the favorite recreational activity of rural-dwelling
criollos (native-born Puerto Ricans) was dancing. Dances lasting as long as a week
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were held on various occasions, including the celebration of Easter and Ash
Wednesday, weddings, and the birth or death of a child. At these events, he notes,
the hosts "serve bowls of breadstuffs with milk and honey, bottles of aguardiente
[cane alcohol], and cigars" (quoted in Wagenheim 1973:46). So popular was
drinking that in 1826 the Spanish governor, Miguel de la Torre, instituted restric-
tions on alcohol consumption by slaves (Coll y Toste 1969).
The U.S. acquisition of Puerto Rico in 1898 as war booty from the Spanish-
American War—an event marking the beginning of "a major political realignment
of world capitalism" (Bonilla 1985:152)—ushered in a new phase in Puerto Rican
history and Puerto Rican drinking. At the moment of the U.S. invasion of Puerto
Rico, 91% of the land under cultivation was owned by its occupants and an
equal percentage of the existing farms were possessed by locally resident farmers
(Diffie and Diffie 1931). Intervention, as Mintz (1974) has shown, produced a radical
increase in the concentration of agricultural lands, the extension of areas devoted to
commercial cultivation for export, and the mechanization of agricultural produc-
tion processes. Indeed, it was through gaining control over sugar and related
production "that the United States consolidated its economic hegemony over the
Island" (History Task Force 1979:95). Shortly after assuming office, Guy V. Henry,
the U.S. appointed Military Governor of Puerto Rico, issued three rulings that
facilitated this process: a freeze on credit, a devaluation of the peso, and a fix on
land prices. Devaluation and the credit freeze made it impossible for farmers to
meet their business expenses. As a result, they were forced to sell their property to
pay their debts and thousands of small proprietors went out of business. The fix on
land prices ensured that farm lands would be available at artificially low prices for
interested buyers. At the time, the principal buyers in the market were either North
American corporations or Puerto Rican companies directly linked to U.S. com-
merce. As a result, within "the short span of four years, four North American
corporations . . . dedicated to sugar production came to control directly [275,030
square meters] of agricultural land" (Herrero, Sánchez, and Gutierrez 1975:56). As
contrasted with the rural situation prior to U.S. intervention, by 1926 four out of five
Puerto Ricans were landless (Clark 1930). The inevitable sequel to the consolidation
of coastal flat lands for sugar cane plantations was a large migration out of the
mountains to the coast, and the formation of "a vast rural proletariat, whose
existence was determined by seasonal employment" (Maldonado-Denis 1976:44).
 Critical Medical Anthropology 87

In the newly expanded labor force of sugar cane workers, a group that formed a
large percentage of the Puerto Rican population until well into the twentieth
century, drinking was a regular social activity. Mintz, who spent several years
studying this population, notes the importance of drinking in men's social inter-
action. During the harvest season, the day followed a regular cycle. Work began
early, with the men getting to the fields at sunrise and working until three or four
in the afternoon, while women stayed at home caring for children, cleaning, doing
the laundry, and preparing the hot lunches they would bring to their husbands in
the fields.
It is in the late afternoon that the social life of the day begins. . . . After dinner the street
becomes the setting for conversation and flirting. Loafing groups gather in front of the small
stores or in the yards of older men, where they squat and gossip; marriageable boys and girls
promenade along the highway. Small groups form and dissolve into the bars. The women
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remain home. . . . The bachelors stand at the bar drinking their rum neat—each drink
downed in a swallow from a tiny paper cup. The more affluent buy half pints of rum . . .
and finish them sitting at the tables. [Mintz 1960:16-17]
In the off season, known as el tiempo muerto (the dead time), life was harder and
money scarcer, but drinking still provided an important outlet. Short on cash, the
"drinkers of bottled rum turn[ed] back to cañita," the traditional home brewed
drink of the Puerto Rican jibaro (rural dweller) (Mintz 1960:21).
During this period, a deeply rooted belief, reflecting the alienated character of
work under capitalism, began to be established. This is the culturally constituted
idea that alcohol is a man's reward for labor: "I worked hard, so I deserve a drink"
(Davila 1987:11). Gilbert (1985:265-266), who notes a similar belief based on her
research among Mexican-American men, describes the widespread practice of
'respite drinking,' "that is to say, drinking as a respite from labor or after a hard
day's work." As Marx asserts, under capitalism
labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his essential being;... in his work,
therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself. . . . The worker therefore only feels
himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He is at home when he is not
working, and when he is working he is not at home. His labor is not voluntary, but coerced; it
is forced labor. It is therefore not satisfying a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs
external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or
other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. [Marx 1964:110-111]
Because labor for cane workers was not intrinsically rewarding, its performance
required external motivation, a role which alcohol in part—probably because of its
ability in many contexts to produce euphoria, reduce anxiety and tension, and
enhance self-confidence, as well as having a low cost and ready availability—filled.
Serving as a valued recompense for the difficult and self-mortifying work under-
taken by men, alcohol consumption became culturally entrenched as an emo-
tionally charged symbol of manhood itself. Vital to the power of this symbolism
was the emergent reconceptualization of what it meant to be a man in terms of sole
responsibility for the economic well being of one's family. Although there existed a
sexual division of labor prior to the U.S. domination of Puerto Rico, in rural
agricultural Ufe work was a domestic affair that required family interdependence
and close proximity. Proletarianization produced a devaluation of female labor as
 88 M. Singer et al.

homemaking, while relegating it to an unpaid status. Additionally, it "led to Puerto

Rican masculinity being defined in terms of being paid laborers and buenos
proveedores (good providers)" (De La Cancela 1988:42-43). In this context, drinking
came to be seen as a privilege "earned by masculine self-sufficiency and assump-
tion of the provider role" (Gilbert 1985:266; also see Rodriguez-Andrew et al.
1988). In the words of one of Gilbert's informants: " 'Yo soy el hombre de la casa, si
quiero tomar, tomo cuando me de la gana' (I am the man of the house, and if I want
to drink, I drink when I feel like it)."
The 1930s marked a significant turning point in the lives of the sugar cane
workers as well as most other Puerto Ricans. Prior to the Depression, sugar cane
provided one-sixth of Puerto Rico's total income, one-fourth of its jobs, and two-
thirds of the dollars it earned from the export of goods. One out of every three
factories on the Island was a sugar mill, a sugar refinery, a rum distillery, or
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molasses plant. The Depression nearly destroyed this economic base. Sugar prices
fell drastically, while two hurricanes (1928 and 1932) all but demolished what
remained of the damaged economy.
In response, control of Puerto Rico was transferred from the U.S. War Depart-
ment to the Department of the Interior, and federal taxes on Puerto Rican rum
sold in the U.S. were remitted to the Puerto Rican treasury, thus providing the
island's Commonwealth government with $160 million in working capital. This
money was used to build a number of government-owned manufacturing plants.
However, concern in the U.S. Congress with "the crazy socialistic experiment going
on down in Puerto Rico" (quoted in Wagenheim 1975:108) led to the sale of these
factories to local capitalists. The Commonwealth government also launched Opera-
tion Bootstrap at this time "to promote industry, tourism and rum" (Wagenheim
1975:108). Operation Bootstrap was an ambitious initiative designed to reduce the
high unemployment rate caused by the stagnation of a,rural economy that had
been heavily dependent on the production of a small number of cash crops for
export. The program offered foreign investors, 90 percent of whom came from the
United States, tax holidays of over ten years, the installation of infrastructural
features such as plants, roads, running water and electricity, and most importantly,
an abundant supply of cheap labor.
Significantly, however, as Maldonado-Denis (1980:31-32) points out, "What is
altered in the change from the sugar economy based on the plantation to the new
industrialization is merely the form of dependency, not its substance." In line with
the unplanned nature of capitalist economy—at the world level, displaced agri-
cultural workers quickly came to be defined as both an undesired "surplus
population" and a cause of Puerto Rico's economic underdevelopment. As Day
(1967:441) indicates, in a capitalist economy "if there is some cost to maintain [a]
. . . surplus, it is likely to be 'pushed out'." This is precisely what occurred.
Between 1952 and 1971, the total number of agricultural workers in Puerto Rico
declined from 120,000 to 75,000 (Dugal 1973). So extensive was the exodus from
rural areas that it threatened "to convert many towns in the interior of the Island
into ghost-towns" (Maldonado-Denis 1980:33). Male workers, in particular, were
affected by industrialization, because over half of the new jobs created by Opera-
tion Bootstrap went to women (Safa 1986).
Although Juan and Zoraida understood their decision to leave Puerto Rico as
 Critical Medical Anthropology 89

part of an effort to protect their children from witchcraft, the folk healer's mes-
sage and its interpretation by Juan and Zoraida must be located in this broader
political-economic context. As Maldonado-Denis (1980:33) cogently observes, the
"dislocation of Puerto Rican agriculture—and the ensuing uprooting of its rural
population—is the result of profound changes in the structure of the Puerto Rican
economy and not the result of mere individual decisions arrived at because of
fortuitous events." However, "migrants do not usually see the larger structural
forces that create [their] personal situation" and channel their personal decisions
(Rodriguez 1989:13).
The first significant labor migration of Puerto Ricans to the U.S. began in the
1920s, with the biggest push coming after World War II. The focus for most
migrants until the 1970s was New York City. As noted, it was to New York that
Juan and Zoraida, along with 70,000 other Puerto Ricans, migrated in 1946. As
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many as 60% of these migrants came from the rural zones of the Island. They
arrived during a post-war boom in the New York economy that created an urgent
demand for new labor (Maldonado-Denis 1972). Employment was the primary
motivation for migration and many found blue collar jobs, although often at wages
lower than those of Euro-American and even African American workers perform-
ing similar toil (Maldonado 1976; Rodriguez 1980).
By the time of the post-war migrations, heavy alcohol consumption among men
was woven deeply into the cultural fabric of Puerto Rico. However, as Coombs and
Globetti (1986:77) conclude in their review of the literature on drinking in Latin
America generally, "Until recently, most studies, conducted mainly in small com-
munities or rural areas, found relatively few visible ill effects. Little guilt or moral
significance was attached to alcohol use or even drunkenness." This description
appears to hold true for Puerto Ricans as well. According to Marilyn Aguirre-
Molina
If we look at the Puerto Rican experience, we can clearly see how alcohol use and the alcohol
industry are entrenched within the population . . . [DJistilled spirit is very available (at low
cost), and part of the national pride for production of the world's finest rum. . . . Alcohol
consumption has an important role in social settings—consumption is an integral part of
many or most Hispanic functions. . . . At parties, or similar gatherings, a child observes
that there's a great deal of tolerance for drinking, and it is encouraged by and for the men. A
non-drinking male is considered anti-social. . . . Tolerance for drinking is further evidenced
in the attitude that there is no disgrace or dishonor for a man to be drunk. . . . [I]t becomes
evident that alcohol use is part of the socio-cultural system of the Hispanic, used within the
contexts of recreation, hospitality [and] festivity. [Aguirre-Molina 1979:3-6]
Adds Davila (1987:17), "In our culture, weakness in drinking ability is always
humiliating to a man because a true man drinks frequently and in quantity.
Therefore, for a Puerto Rican man not to maintain dignity when drinking would be
an absolute proof of his weakness, as would be his refusal to accept a drink."
Refusal to drink among Puerto Rican men, in fact, can be interpreted as an
expression of homosexuality because drinking is defined as a diacritical male
activity (Singer, Davison, and Yalin 1987). In Puerto Rico, these attitudes are
supported by an extensive advertising effort by the rum industry, few restrictions
on sales, ready availability of distilled spirits at food stores, and low cost for
alcoholic beverages (Canino et al. 1987).
 90 M. Singer et al.

Most aspects of Puerto Rican life were transformed by the migration, drinking
patterns included. According to Gordon
Puerto Ricans have . . . adopted U.S. drinking customs and added them to their traditional
drinking customs. . . . They follow the pattern of weekday drinking typical of the American
workingman. . . . Weekday drinking among Puerto Ricans does not affect the importance of
their traditional weekend fiesta drinking more commonly seen in a rural society (emphasis
added). [Gordon 1985a:308]
Our ethnographic study of drinking in Hartford reveals that working class bars are
quite common in the Puerto Rican community. Beyond being a place to drink,
many bars sponsor baseball teams that play against each other in local park
leagues. These games often culminate in the consumption of beer by the players.
Bars, as well as social clubs, also are significant centers for domino playing, a
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widely enjoyed game in Puerto Rican culture. In short, barrooms tend to be centers
of social and recreation life for Puerto Rican men, and drinking is a pivotal
component of social interaction. But drinking is by no means limited to bar-related
activities. In fact, outdoor consumption by small groups of men while talking,
working on cars, or escaping from the heat in the shade of a tree, is a common
pattern in the barrio. Public consumption of alcohol reflects community acceptance
of drinking as a normal and appropriate activity. Lacking is the middle class
American ambiguity concerning the propriety of drinking in many settings or in
mixed aged groups.
While it is evident from Mintz's (1960) account of sugar cane workers that many
Puerto Rican men had adopted working class drinking patterns even prior to
migration, these behaviors were generalized and amplified following movement to
the U.S. As a consequence of cultural pressure to maintain traditional drinking
patterns as well as adopt U.S. working class norms, many Puerto Rican men have
adopted a heavy drinking pattern. The development of this pattern was facilitated
by the high density of businesses in poor, inner city neighborhoods that dispense
alcohol, especially beer, for on- and off-premise consumption; multiple encourage-
ments to drink in the media, including advertisements, films, and television
programs (Maxwell and Jacobson 1989); and structural factors that have contrib-
uted first to a redefinition and ultimately to the marginalization of the Puerto Rican
man. This last factor was especially important in transforming heavy drinking into
problem drinking in this population.
As suggested above, the transition from yeoman farmer to rural proletariat
began a process of reconceptualizing the meaning of masculinity among Puerto
Ricans. This transition was completed with the migration. Work-related defini-
tions of manliness and provider-based evaluations of self-worth became dominant.
To be un hombre hecho y derecho (a complete man) now meant demonstrating an
ability to be successful as an income earner in the public sphere. This is "the great
American dream of dignity through upward mobility" analyzed so effectively by
Sennett and Cobb (1973:169), a dream that threatens always to turn into a night-
mare for the working man. And the name of this nightmare, as every worker
knows so well, is unemployment. The fear of unemployment is not solely an
economic worry, it is equally a dread of being blamed and of blaming oneself for
inadequacy, for letting down one's family, for failing while others succeed. The
 Critical Medical Anthropology 91

"plea . . . to be relieved of having to prove oneself this way, to gain a hold instead
on the innate meaningfulness of actions" is a central theme in the lives of working
people (Sennett and Cobb 1973:246).
Juan's hard work, enabling his movement from janitor to draftsman, achieved
without formal education or training, is the embodiment of the dream and the
fear of the working man. During the period that Juan was successful at realizing the
dream, his daughter remembers her family life as stable and happy. These golden
years provided a stark contrast with what was to follow. Throughout this period
Juan drank heavily, and yet he had no drinking problem. Alcohol was his culturally
validated reward for living up to the stringent requirements of the male role in
capitalist society. The swift turn around in Juan's life following the loss of his job
suggests that Puerto Rican male drinking problems should be considered in
relationship to the problem of unemployment.
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Several studies, in fact, indicate a direct association between unemployment and

problem drinking. In his study of alcohol-related problems in Toronto, for exam-
ple, Smart (1979) reports that 21% of unemployed respondents suffer from three or
more alcohol-related problems compared to only 6% of employed workers. While
an increase in consumption levels following unemployment has not been found in
all studies of small groups of workers in particular settings (e.g., Iversen and
Klausen 1986), a national study by McCornac and Filante (1984) of distilled spirit
consumption and employment in the U.S. at the time of Juan's death supports
this linkage. Their study concludes,
The unemployment rate had a positive and significant impact on the consumption of
distilled spirits in both the cross-sectional and pooled analyses. During a recessionary
period, rising unemployment stimulates consumption while decreasing real per capita
income decreases consumption. However, the two effects are not equal. From 1972-1973 to
1974-1975, the rate of unemployment rose by 37% . . . while real per capita income declined
by less than 1%. Thus, the net effect of simultaneous changes in these two variables was to
increase consumptions by approximately 8%. The important implication of this finding is
that the negative consequences of higher rates of unemployment can be extended to include
the increased social and economic costs of an increase in the use of distilled spirits.
[McCornac and Filante 1984:177-178]
Similarly, analysis of national data on long and short term trends in alcohol
consumption and mortality by Brenner (1975) shows an increase in alcohol con-
sumption and alcohol-related health and social problems during periods of eco-
nomic recession and rising unemployment. His study, covering the years during
Juan's period of heaviest drinking and subsequent death, finds that "National
recessions in personal income and employment are consistently followed, within 2
to 3 years, by increases in cirrhosis mortality rates" (Brenner 1975:1282). Economic
disruptions, he argues, create conditions of social stress, which in turn stimulate
increased anxiety-avoidance drinking and consequent health problems. Research
by Pearlin and Radabaugh (1976:661) indicates that anxiety is "especially likely to
result in the use of alcohol as a tranquilizer if a sense of control is lacking and self-
esteem is low." The key variable in this equation, as Seeman and Anderson (1983)
stress, is powerlessness. Based on their study of drinking among men in Los
Angeles, they argue, "The conclusion is inescapable that the sense of powerless-
ness is related to the experience of drinking problems quite apart from the sheer
 92 M. Singer et al.

quantity of alcohol consumed" (Seeman and Anderson 1983:71). Increased alcohol

consumption and alcohol-related problems and mortality have been found to be
associated in several studies (Makela et al. 1981; Wilson 1984).
The major economic factor of concern here, of course, was the flight of the ap-
pliance factory where Juan was employed to a cheap labor market outside of the
industrial Northeast. Juan was not alone in losing his job to the corporate transfer
of production. About the same time, thousands of U.S. workers were being laid off
by the "runaway shop;" 900,000 U.S. production jobs were lost, for example,
between 1967 and 1971 alone (Barnet and Müller 1974). In New York City, during
this period, 25% of the largest companies relocated, reflecting a shift away from a
production-centered economy. This transition has intensified the problem of
Puerto Rican unemployment (Maldonado-Denis 1980; Rodriguez 1980). Mills and
his co-workers, in their study of Puerto Rican migrants in New York, found that
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lacking specialized job skills Puerto Rican workers are at the mercy of economic
forces. During periods of economic upturn they are welcomed, but when the
business cycle "is on the way down, or in the middle of one of its periodic
breakdowns, there is a savage struggle for even the low wage jobs. . ." (Mills et al.
1967:82).
Consequently, at the time that Juan died in 1971, Puerto Ricans had one of the
highest unemployment rates of all ethnic groups in the country. While 6% of all
men in the U.S. were jobless, for Puerto Rican men the rate of unemployment was
8.8%. Significantly, the actual rate of unemployment for Puerto Rican men was
even higher than these figures suggest because, as measured by the Department of
Labor, the unemployment rate does not include numerous individuals who have
given up on the possibility of ever locating employment. If discouraged workers
were included, the "unemployment among Puerto Rican men would be more
accurately depicted—not at the 'official' rate of 8.8 percent—but at the 'adjusted'
(and more realistic) level of 18.7 percent" (Maldonado-Denis 1980:79-80).
For many older workers like Juan, whose age made them dispensable, and many
younger Puerto Rican workers as well, whose ethnicity and lack of recognized
skills made them equally discardable, the changing economic scene in New York
meant permanent unemployment. Increased drinking and rising rates of problem
drinking were products of the consequent sense of worthlessness and failure in
men geared to defining masculinity in terms of being un buen proveedor (Canino
and Canino 1980:537-538). As De La Cancela (1989:146) asserts, "living with
limited options, uncertainty, and violence breeds fertile ground for ego-exalting
substance use among Latinos." Pappas identifies the general reasons in this
ethnography of the effects of factory closing on rubber workers in Barberton, Ohio.
Beyond a salary, a job provides workers with a feeling of purpose and means of
participation in the surrounding social world. In addition to contributing to the
experience of uselessness, loss of work fragments social networks and produces
increased isolation, placing increased strain on domestic relations. Restriction of
the quantity of outside social interaction "narrows the psychic space in which
the unemployed maneuver" (Pappas 1989:86).
Importantly, Pappas (1989:89) reports that "Drinking and divorce were com-
monly mentioned by the people in Barberton as problems they saw among the
 Critical Medical Anthropology 93

unemployed they knew." Problem drinking in this context, in part, expresses the
refusal of the individual to conform to the reigning mechanistic ideology of
capitalist society, namely the "view of people as machines and . . . society as a
gigantic machine" (Osherson and AmaraSingham 1981:228). In accord with this
machine model of humanity, the same model that conditions thinking in bio-
medicine, workers are treated like mechanical parts, used, relocated, and dis-
carded as dictated by the changing needs of profitable production. The deepest
concern of capitalism, in the words of one of its advocates, lies not in meeting
human needs or realizing human dreams, but "in increasing the efficiency of the
human machine" (E. A. Deeds, quoted in Noble 1979:179). Osherson and Amara-
Singham (1981:238-239) identify three dimensions of this machine metaphor: 1) a
mind-body split predicated on the assumption that thought is "a separate faculty
independent of the machine-like body;" 2) an exclusion of emotion because "[ma-
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chines, as merely the expression of the interaction of observable physical forces, do

not feel;" and 3) inattention to value in that "[efficiency... i s . . . emphasized over
considerations of meaning and purpose. . . ." Problem drinking in the working
class, whatever its tragic effect on the health and social life of drinkers, expresses
the rejection of all of these severings. It affirms the drinker as a flesh and blood
creature with ideas, emotions, and purpose. Drinking spirits, somewhat like
praying to them, is "at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest
against real distress" (Marx and Engels 1967:42).
Within the context of Puerto Rican culture, these general processes take on a
particular slant. Drinking among Latino males is commonly linked both in the
alcohol literature and in popular thinking with the concept of machismo, or the
notable Latino emphasis on appearing manly at all times, particularly in public.
Some have gone so far as to lay blame for the high rates of drinking found among
Latino males on machismo. It is certainly the case that drinking is culturally defined
as a male thing to do, as a culturally approved means of expressing prowess as a
male. But this does not lead directly to alcoholism. Rather, it is the combination of a
cultural emphasis on drinking as proper, appropriate, and manly, with political
and economic subordination in a system in which most alternative expressions of
manliness are barred to Puerto Rican access that is of real significance (Singer
1987b). This interpretation underscores De La Cancela's (1986:292) argument that
"just as capitalism obscures the necessity of institutionalized unemployment by
defining the unemployed as somehow lacking in the required skills to succeed,
machismo obscures the alienation effects of capitalism on individuals by embody-
ing the alienation in male-female sex-role terms. . . . "
Unemployment blocked Juan, as it has so many other Puerto Rican men, from
the major socially sanctioned route to success as a man. It did not, however,
exterminate the ever present and powerful need to achieve the cultural values of
machismo (mastery), dignidad (honor and dignity of the family), and respeto (respect
of one's peers). In a sense, however counterproductive, drinking was all that was
left for Juan that was manly in his understanding. Hard drinking replaced hard
work, and alcohol, as a medium of cultural expression, was transformed from
compensation for the sacrifices of achieving success into salve for the tortures of
failure.
 94 M. Singer et al.

JUAN IS NOT ALONE

The "personal problems" of the unemployed workers of Barberton, like the prob-
lems experienced by Juan Garcia, constitute part of the human fallout of so-called
economic development. Although often portrayed as natural and inevitable,
changes in the nature and location of production exact enormous human costs,
costs that tend to be borne disproportionately by the poor and working classes.
The extent of the agony for Puerto Rican men is captured by Davila
I have a father who is an alcoholic and a brother who died of cirrhosis of the liver a year ago at
the age of 42.1 have a young son who is having alcohol problems of his own. I have cousins
and uncles who have died of alcoholism. I have friends who likewise have died of alcoholism
or are currently alcoholic. And I am a recovering alcoholic. . . . All the persons I have listed
are Puerto Rican and . . . they are all men. [Davila 1987:17-18]
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A study comparing mortality differentials among various Latino subgroups resid-

ing in the U. S. during the years 1979-1981 found that Puerto Rican population hada
distinct pattern of mortality from chronic liver disease and cirrhosis. The age-
adjusted death rate among Puerto Ricans from liver-related problems, which are
common among heavy drinkers, is about twice that among Mexicans and almost
three times the rate among Cubans. Further, the rate among Puerto Ricans is over
two times the African American rate and triple the Euro-American rate (Rosen-
waike 1987). In fact, New York Board of Health data for 1979-81 indicate that
cirrhosis was the second leading cause of death among Island-born Puerto Ricans
age 15-45 (cited in Gordon 1985b).
These data suggest that Juan's case, while having special features peculiar to his
individual life course, is not, on the whole, unique. His life and his death, in fact,
are emblematic of the broad experience of working class Puerto Rican men in the
U.S., a conclusion supported by findings from our studies of drinking patterns and
experiences among Puerto Rican men and adolescents in Hartford, CT. For both
studies, the sampling frame consisted of all Puerto Rican households in high-
density Puerto Rican neighborhoods as defined by census reports (25% Latino
surnames). In the first of these studies, interviews were conducted with a ran-
domly selected sample of Puerto Rican adolescents age 14-17 years. The sampling
unit consisted of 210 adolescents (one adolescent subject per participating house-
hold), of which 88 were boys.
A series of national household surveys (Abelson and Atkinson 1975; Abelson
and Fishburne 1976; Abelson et al. 1977) of drinking among adolescents indicates
that over half of the adolescents in the U.S. report using alcohol during the past
year, compared to 31% of the Puerto Rican adolescents in our sample. In the
national samples, about one-third of participants report drinking within the month
prior to the survey, compared to 14% in our sample. Similarly, Rachal et al. (1976),
in a national sample of over 13,000 adolescents in grades 7-12, found that 55%
reported usually drink at least once a month, compared to 10% in our sample.
Regarding the quantity of alcohol consumed per drinking episode, these re-
searchers found that 55% of their sample reported more than one drink per
drinking occasion, compared to only 19% in our sample. In short, as have other
researchers (Weite and Barnes 1987), we found a lower drinking prevalence among
 Critical Medical Anthropology 95

Puerto Rican adolescents than tends to be found for the general U.S. adolescent
population.
We also found lower levels of problem drinking in our adolescent sample. In
their studies of middle class Anglo high school students (aged 16-18 years) in
Colorado, Jessor and co-workers (Jessor 1984) classified problem drinkers as adoles-
cents that had been drunk six or more times in the past year, or had experienced
at least two different negative consequences due to drinking two or more times in
the past year. They found that one out of four of the boys and one out of six of the
girls in their sample qualified as problem drinkers, and that the drunkenness
component of the joint criterion was most significant in contributing to the problem
drinking rates. The mean frequency for drunkenness in their sample for a one year
period was 23.9, or about twice a month for the male problem drinkers and 17.8 for
the female problem drinkers. Using similar criteria, Rachal et al. (1975) found a
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problem drinking rate of 27.8% in a national study of adolescents in grades 7

through 12. Although we did not collect full year data for many of the variables
used to construct the problem drinking definition used in the studies cited above,
we did collect one month data that allows some comparison with the conclusions of
these studies. During the month prior to being interviewed, eight individuals in
our sample reported getting drunk (five on a single occasion, two on two different
occasions, and one on more than six occasions). Using this as an indicator of
problem drinking, we have a problem drinking rate in our sample of about 4%.
With an even more liberal definition of problem drinking—two or more drinking
occasions during the last month—the problem drinking rate in our sample would
be 6%. This rate is significantly lower than for (somewhat older) Anglo samples,
but fits the trend for generally lower rates of drinking among Latino adolescents.
The existing literature suggests that family controls are a major factor limiting
alcohol consumption among Latino youth to levels below those of their white
counterparts. This was found to be a primary reason given for not drinking by the
adolescents in our study. Based on his research among Mexican-Americans in
Texas, Trotter (1985:286) states: "Unmarried children who smoke or drink in front of
parents are often thought to be extremely disrespectful, and to shame their family."
This explanation fits with the cultural understanding that drinking is an earned
reward for assuming the responsibilities of employment and family support, roles
not open to dependent children.
Our second study examined drinking patterns in 398 Puerto Rican men, 18-48
years of age, recruited to a research sample structured by type of residence (private
home, rented apartment, housing project). These primary sampling units were
chosen because of expected differences in socio-economic status and the sense
from prior research that residents in rented apartments in low income neighbor-
hoods often are under greater economic pressure than households in rent con-
trolled housing projects or owners of private homes or condominiums. The housing
project included in this study is located at some distance from the central city area
and tends to be in better repair than other Hartford housing projects. Respondents
living in targeted neighborhoods (selected because of census data indicating a high
density Spanish surname population) were randomly recruited and interviewed in
their place of residence.
Among the men in the sample, 84% were born in Puerto Rico and half had been
 96 M. Singer et al.

living in the U.S. for under ten years. Most of the other men were born in the U.S.,
37% in Hartford. Fifty-four percent were married or living with a partner, and 83%
had a high school education or less. Data on these respondents indicate the
economic difficulties faced by Puerto Rican men generally. Thirty-three percent
reported that they were unemployed and looking for work and another 17% worked
only part-time at the time of the interview. More than half of the men (55%)
reported annual household incomes of under $8,000; 85% reported incomes under
$15,000. Rates of unemployment for men across the three residential subgroups
was as follows: private home: 3%; rented apartment: 44.3%; housing project:
68.5%. Additionally, rates of part-time employment across these three residence
types was 12%, 19.8%, and 10.8% respectively. These data are consistent with other
research in Hartford indicating "that whites . . . on average have a higher socio-
economic level than the Black and Hispanic samples, and the Hispanic group is
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consistently ranked lowest . . . in socioeconomic indicators in Hartford" (AIDS

Community Research Group 1988:9; emphasis in original).
About 80% of the men in our study reported that they have consumed alcohol.
Of these, 31% indicated that they drink at least once a week. Regarding quantities
normally consumed when drinking, we found that 53% of the drinkers reported
having at least 3 drinks per drinking occasion. Ten percent indicated that they
normally drink until "high" or drunk, although drinking for these effects was
reported as a motivation for consumption by 41%. The frequency of heavy drinking
among these men is reflected in the Total Sample column of Table I. Almost 20% of
the men reported having eight drinks per drinking occasion at least 1-3 times per
month during the last year. Another 7.5% reported this level of drinking 3-11 times
during the last year. The majority of the men, however, reported lower levels of
drinking.
As seen in the Total Sample column of Table II, approximately 10% of the men in
the study reported they felt that their drinking was not completely under control
during the last year. If a longer time period is included (since a man's first drink),
approximately 20% reported having felt out of control.
Additionally, 34% of the men stated that drinking as a means of forgetting about
problems was a very to somewhat important motivation for them to drink, while
almost a quarter reported they drink because they have nothing else to do.
Data reported in Table III show that between 7-28% of the men reported at least

TABLE I. Frequency of heavy drinking by residence type (%) during the last 12 months.
Total Rented Housing Private
Drinking frequency sample apartment project home P<
At least 1-3 times/month 19.4 20.9 19.0 10.0 .026
drank 8 drinks at a time
3-11 times/year drank 8 drinks 7.5 7.4 10.3 0 .026
at a time
1-2 times/year drank 8 drinks 14.1 18.2 6.9 0 .026
at a time
Never drank 8 drinks during 59.0 53.4 63.8 90.0 .026
last year
 Critical Medical Anthropology 97

TABLE II. Distribution of lack of control over drinking

across residence types (%) during the last 12 months.
Total Rented Housing Private
Reported lack of control sample apartment project home P<
Sometimes keep on drinking 12.1 68.8 31.3 0 .01
after wanting to stop
Difficult to stop drinking 6.5 69.2 30.8 0 .04
before becoming intoxicated
Tried but was unable to quit or 10.3 73.2 26.8 0 .04
cut down on drinking

one drinking-related problem. Notably, 28.4% of the men indicated that drinking
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has had a harmful effect on their homelife or marriage.

Table IV compares negative drinking consequences among Puerto Rican men (21
years-of-age and older) with findings among men from a national probability
sample of the general population aged 21 or older (Cahalan 1982). The problem
drinking scales displayed on this table were constructed by combining responses
from several related questions following Cahalan (1982). In most cases, quite
similar questions (pertinent to these scales) appear on both the national and
Hartford instruments. Symptomatic drinking refers to signs of physical depen-

TABLE III. Distribution of problem drinking experiences across residence types (%).
Total Rented Housing Private
Problem drinking experience sample apartment project home P<
Skipped a number of regular 14.6 75.9 22.4 1.7 .61
meals while drinking
because of hang over
Taken a strong drink in the 11.8 66.0 25.5 8.5 .25
morning
Awakened not able to 14.6 67.2 27.6 5.2 .12
remember some things done
while drinking
Drinking has interfered with 7.3 69.0 31.0 0 .16
spare time activities
Sometimes awakened sweating 13.3 67.9 22.6 9.4 .61
after drinking
Gotten into a heated argument 8.5 70.6 29.4 0 .05
while drinking
Gotten into a fight while 7.5 66.7 33.3 0 .01
drinking
Drinking has had a harmful 9.0 72.2 27.8 0 .04
effect on health
Drinking has had harmful 28.4 74.3 16.8 8.8 .001
effect on marriage/home life
Spouse or loved one threaten 7.0 75.0 25.0 0 .05
to leave because of
respondent's drinking
 98 M. Singer et al.

TABLE IV. Prevalence of drinking-related problems among men

(21 years and older) over last 12 months.
Total national Total Hartford Hartford
probability Puerto Rican Puerto Rican
sample sample drinkers
Drinking related problems N = 751 N = 352* N = 180*
Health problems associated with drinking 4.0 9.4 31.7
Acting belligerently under the influence 8.0 9.1 48.5
Friends complain about drinking 3.0 30.7 35.9
Symptomatic drinking 20.0 19.9 36.5
Job-related drinking problems 7.0 6.8 19.7
Problems with law, police, accidents 2.0 4.8 38.6
Engaging in binge drinking 1.0 4.5 50.0
Spouse complains about drinking 2.0 7.7 13.0
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•Excludes participants under 21 years of age

dence and loss of control suggestive of Jellinek's gamma alcoholism (e.g., drinking
to relieve a hangover, blackouts, having difficulty stopping drinking). Three
variables used to construct this scale (tossing down drinks quickly, sneaking
drinks, drinking before a party to ensure having enough alcohol) were not
included in our survey, possibly resulting in a lower score for Puerto Rican men.
Half of the variables used to construct an additional scale on psychological
dependence for the national study were not included in our instrument and
consequently this item is not included in the table.
In the national sample, 25% of the respondents were abstainers compared to
20% in our study. Additionally, it is evident from Table IV that the prevalence of
drinking-related problems is higher for the Hartford sample on most of the scales,
supporting the epidemiological data suggesting higher problem drinking rates
among Puerto Rican men. These differences are especially notable on the two
scales (complaints about drinking by friends or spouses) that involve the impact of
drinking on personal relationships. The final column on this table reports problem
frequencies just for drinkers in the Hartford study (i.e., abstainers are not in-
cluded). Positive responses on two of the scales, belligerence (getting into heated
arguments while drinking) and binge drinking (being intoxicated for several days
at a time), were reported by approximately half of the Puerto Rican drinkers.
Importantly, Tables I—III also reveal that drinking and drinking-related problems
are unevenly distributed by residential category. As seen in Table I, men who live
in rented apartments or in housing projects are much more likely to engage in
frequent heavy drinking (i.e., at least one to three times a month, having at least
eight drinks at a time). Men who own their own home or condominium are the least
likely to ever consume this many drinks per drinking occasion. While 46% and
36% of rental apartment and housing project dwellers reported having consumed
eight or more drinks at least once during the last year, this is true for only 10% of the
men who live in private homes. Additionally, of the men who reported drinking on
ten or more days during the previous month, 64% live in rented apartments, 29%
live in a housing project, and 7% live in a privately owned dwelling. This same
pattern also appears in respondent answers concerning control over drinking, as
 Critical Medical Anthropology 99

seen in Table II men who live in rented apartments were significantly more likely to
have reported that they have difficulties stopping drinking when they want to,
stopping drinking before they are intoxicated, and giving up or cutting down on
drinking. Men who own their own home were the least likely to report loss of
control over drinking. Finally, Table III shows that problem drinking experiences
are consistently and significantly more likely among men who live in rented
apartments and least likely in men who own private homes. Statistically significant
levels of association were reached for almost all of the variables recorded in these
tables.
Overall, we found high rates of heavy and problem drinking in our study of
Puerto Rican men, with the heaviest and most problematic drinking occurring
among men who lived in rented apartments in high density, low income, inner city
neighborhoods. The correlation coefficients between employment and the problem
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drinking scales reported in Table IV are displayed in Table V. As this table indicates,
there is a negative correlation between being employed and all eight problem
drinking scales. Unemployment, in sum, is a clear correlate of problem drinking in
Puerto Rican men.
Our research suggests that the onset of drinking problems among Puerto Rican
males is associated with a post-adolescent transition into the world of adult respon-
sibilities and sociocultural expectations. Specifically, findings from our second
study indicate this transition occurs in the mid-20s. After that point, rates of
problem drinking continue to rise until Puerto Rican men are well into their forties
(cf. Caetano 1983). Confronted repeatedly with setbacks in attaining regular and
rewarding employment, and unable to support their families, many Puerto Rican
men in Hartford drink to forget their problems and their boredom, while seeking
through heavy and often problem drinking what they cannot achieve otherwise in
society: respect, dignity, and validation of their masculine identity. While 38.5% of
the men in our sample who reported two or more drinking related health or social
problems indicated that they drink to forget about their personal worries, the figure
was 7.1% for problem-free drinkers. Similarly, 30.8% of problem drinkers reported
drinking to release tension compared to 6.5% of problem-free drinkers. As our
data show, not all Puerto Rican men become involved in problem drinking (or the
use of other mind-altering drugs). Indeed, the majority do not. That so many do
however reveals the folly of remaining at the micro-level in developing an explana-
tion of this phenomenon.

TABLE V. Zero-order correlation coefficients between employment

and drinking-related problems among Puerto Rican men.
Drinking related problems Correlation coefficient (r)
Health problems associated with drinking -.1805
Acting belligerently under the influence -.0634
Friends complain about drinking -.0069
Symptomatic drinking -.1165
Job-related drinking problems -.0573
Problems with law, police, accidents -.2171
Engaging in binge drinking -.3371
Spouse complains about drinking -.1530
 200 M. Singer et al.

CONCLUSION

In this examination of the broader context of Juan's drinking, we see the intersec-
tion of biography and history, that critical link uniting "the innermost acts of the
individual with the widest kinds of social-historical phenomena," (Gerth and Mills
1964:xvi). In reviewing the social environment of "Juan's disease," we have not, we
believe, "depersonalize[d] the subject matter and the content of medical anthropol-
ogy" (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1986:137). The goal of critical medical anthropol-
ogy is not to obliterate the individual nor the poignant and personal expressions
produced by the loss and struggle to regain well-being. Nor does this perspective
seek to eliminate psychology, culture, the environment, or biology from a holistic
medical anthropology. Instead, by taking "cognizance of processes that transcend
separable cases" (Wolf 1982:17), we attempt to unmask the ways in which suffering,
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as well as curing, illness behavior, provider-patient interactions, etc., have levels of

meaning and cause beyond the narrow confines of immediate experience. As Mintz
(1989:791) suggests, "When we can accurately specify the effects of policies readily
imposed by external authority, the relationships between outside and inside, and
between the living of life events and the weight of the world system, are clear."
Situated in relationship to relevant history and political economy, Juan's drinking
loses the bewildering quality commonly attached to destructive behavior. This is
achieved by an exploration of the macro-micro nexus which includes and requires
an examination of symbolic, environmental, and psychological factors, but does
not reduce analysis to any of these factors.
On the one hand, by "refocussing upstream," to use John McKinlay's (1986) apt
phrase, we recognize the degree to which alcoholism is not merely "Juan's disease"
but a disease of the world economic system, and at the same time, an expression of
human suffering and coping, as well as resistance to the forces and pressures of
that system. Writing of his key informant among the Puerto Rican sugarcane
workers, Taso Zayas, Mintz confirms
Many of the events that Taso describes were the specific consequences of external interven-
tions in local life. These interventions affected ecology, housing, diet, labor, and the whole
tempo of daily experience, powerfully and directly. It might not be too much to say that the
condition of Taso's teeth, for example, can be fairly viewed as the direct consequence of
external influences upon local life. Much of what Taso did, and what he recounts, was in
reaction to the effects of such external intervention. [Mintz 1989:791]
In this, we see the distortion inherent in separating problem drinking, decaying
teeth, or any other health condition from its wider political-economic environment,
as is routine in the medicalization of health problems. Moreover, in the analysis of
Puerto Rican drinking practices and understandings we find validation of Keesing's
(1987:166) insight that not only behavior but cultural symbols and beliefs as well
"must be situated historically, [and] viewed in a theoretical framework that crit-
ically examines their embeddedness in social, economic, and political structures."
On the other hand, as Juan's case reveals, however misdirected and self-
destructive, problem drinking is a dramatic and nagging reminder that medical
anthropology must be more than the study of health systems and political-
economic structures, it must be sensitive also to the symbolically expressed
 Critical Medical Anthropology 101

experiential and meaning frames of struggling human beings reacting to and

attempting to shape their world, although never "under circumstances chosen by
themselves" (Marx 1963:15). In its disruptiveness, problem drinking, in any type of
society or social system (Singer 1986a), brings to light the dynamic tensions
between structure and agency, society and the individual, general processes and
particular human responses. Addressing these issues is the special contribution of
critical medical anthropology to the wider arena of the political economy of health.
Thus, we argue for the adoption of a broad theoretical framework designed to
explore and explain macro-micro linkages and to channel praxis accordingly. The
success of critical medical anthropology in providing such a framework will
determine its utility and endurance.
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NOTES

1. Other critiques of critical medical anthropology have been addressed in Singer, Baer, and Lazarus
(1989) and Singer (1989c). A recent critique, noteworthy for its distortions of the perspective, was
penned by McElroy (1990). She alleges that critical medical anthropology is antiscience because it
does not take Western biological categories at face value, asserting instead that political-economic
factors shape even scientific thinking. The failures of medical ecology notwithstanding (Singer 1989a;
Baer 1990b; Trostle 1990), at issue is not the reality of biology or a questioning of biological factors in
disease etiology. As a materialist approach, critical medical anthropology hardly rejects the natural
science paradigm. Instead, we call for a better science of humanity, one that recognizes the social
origins and functions of science. Moreover, as demonstrated by Scheder (1988), critical medical
anthropology is as much concerned with the political economy of disease as it is with the political
economy of illness, treatment or related domains. The point is that critical medical anthropology
views disease as both naturally and socially produced, but views "nature" as both naturally and
socially produced as well.
2. These studies were supported by National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism grants R23
AA06057 and ROI AA07161. Preparation of this paper was supported by the latter grant. Merrill
Singer served as Principal Investigator for both grants, while Freddie Valentin was Project Director
and Zhongke Jia was Data Manager on the second study.
3. Despite the focus of this paper, it should be emphasized that these conditions are not found only in
capitalist society, nor are alcohol-related problems found exclusively in oppressed social classes and
ethnic minority communities. These points are elaborated in Singer (1986a).
4. Most recently, a growing number of alcohol researchers have abandoned the notion of alcoholism in
favor of alcohol dependency, because, it is believed, this labels an demonstrably organic condition.
However, the barometers (e.g., DSM-III R and ICD 10) used to measure this organic condition still
include behavioral and experiential factors which anthropological researchers have long argued are
open to sociocultural influence (e.g., 'a narrowing of the personal repertoire of patterns of alcohol
use,' 'a great deal of time spent drinking or recovering from the effects of drinking'). In this paper, we
employ the term problem drinking to refer to drinking patterns associated with negative health and
social consequences for the drinker and his social network.

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Supply Chains and the Human

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Anna Tsing
Published online: 08 Apr 2009.

To cite this article: Anna Tsing (2009) Supply Chains and the Human Condition,
Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society, 21:2, 148-176, DOI:
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 RETHINKING MARXISM VOLUME 21 NUMBER 2 (APRIL 2009)

Supply Chains and the Human Condition

Anna Tsing

This article theorizes supply chain capitalism as a model for understanding both the
continent-crossing scale and the constitutive diversity of contemporary global
capitalism. In contrast with theories of growing capitalist homogeneity, the analysis
points to the structural role of difference in the mobilization of capital, labor, and
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resources. Here labor mobilization in supply chains is the focus, as it depends on the
performance of gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and citizenship status. The
article uses the concept of figuration to show how difference is mobilized within
supply chains, and to point to the importance of tropes of management, consump-
tion, and entrepreneurship in workers’ understandings of supply chain labor. These
tropes make supply chains possible by bringing together self-exploitation and
superexploitation. Diversity is thus structurally central to global capitalism, and
not decoration on a common core.

Key Words: Supply Chains, Cultural Diversity, Global Capitalism, Figuration of Labor,
Exploitation

Nike products are manufactured in factories owned and operated by other

companies. Out-sourcing, as it is commonly called, is pervasive in our
industry. Nike’s supply chain includes more than 660,000 contract manu-
facturing workers in more than 900 factories in more than 50 countries,
including the United States. The workers are predominantly women, ages
19!/25. The geographic dispersion is driven by many factors including pricing,
quality, factory capacity, and quota allocation. . . . With such cultural,
societal and economic diversity, our supply chain is not only large, but
complex and ever-changing, making compliance standards and assurance, as
suggested by our Code of Conduct, and precise progress measurement
extremely difficult.
*/Nike Web site
This essay argues that an analysis of supply chain capitalism is necessary to
understand the dilemmas of the human condition today. Supply chain capitalism
here refers to commodity chains based on subcontracting, outsourcing, and allied
arrangements in which the autonomy of component enterprises is legally established
even as the enterprises are disciplined within the chain as a whole. Such supply chains
link ostensibly independent entrepreneurs, making it possible for commodity

ISSN 0893-5696 print/1475-8059 online/09/020148-29

– 2009 Association for Economic and Social Analysis
DOI: 10.1080/08935690902743088
 SUPPLY CHAIN CAPITALISM 149

processes to span the globe. Labor, nature, and capital are mobilized in fragmented
but linked economic niches; thus, supply chain capitalism focuses our attention on
questions of diversity within structures of power. Supply chains require us to think
beyond the problems of economic, political, and ecological standardization, which
have dominated the critical social science literature. Questions raised by supply
chains are the key to deliberations on wealth and justice in these times.
Supply chain capitalism has been touted as key to new regimes of profitability. As
one consultancy firm explains, ‘‘‘If’ is no longer the question. Today the undisputed
answer*/the path to enhanced efficiency, reduced costs, more robust feature
sets*/is outsourcing. Shifting work to third parties, often on different continents,
is now a given for most organizations’’ (The Outsourcing Institute 2007). As big
corporations shrug off their less profitable sectors, supply chain capitalism has
become pervasive. Supply chains offer some of the most vivid images of our times:
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telephone operators assisting customers from across the globe; ‘‘traditional’’

indigenous farmers growing specialty crops for wealthy metropolitan consumers;
Chinese millionaires reaping the profits of Wal-Mart contracts; sweatshop workers
toiling in locked rooms while brand-name buyers disavow responsibility. Sectors once
known for their histories of union militancy*/U.S. garment manufacturing, coal
mining in West Virginia*/have come to depend on subcontracted labor (see West
Virginia Mine Power n.d.). The great corporations once known for their all-inclusive
production (for example, General Motors) now outsource most of their parts.
Governments have scrambled to follow suit, subcontracting everything from social
benefits to war*/and even torture.
Supply chains are not new; they extend back in various forms as far as trade itself.
What is new is the hype and sense of possibility that supply chains offer to the current
generation of entrepreneurs. This excitement creates its own effects, including the
cascading rush toward outsourcing that has characterized the last two decades. This
rush toward outsourcing, in turn, relies on new technologies that make it simple to
communicate at a distance and send commodities with reliable speed. It depends on
new financial arrangements that make it easy to move money around and on new
regimes of property that guarantee global profits. It is pressured by stockholder
expectations for short-term corporate returns. It uses the enhanced mobility of labor
and the economic and political vulnerabilities created by recent forms of imperialism
and histories of global war. It sponsors new forms of ‘‘creative’’ accounting and the
auditing of ‘‘immaterial’’ value. I call the subcontracting possibilities that elicit this
new phenomenon of excitement ‘‘supply chain capitalism’’ while reserving other
terms, such as ‘‘commodity chains,’’ for the longer history of manufacture and
trade.1

1. A robust scholarly literature in sociology and geography has brought questions about supply
chains to life. One line of scholarship, ‘‘global commodity chain analysis,’’ derives originally
from world systems theory; the seminal text is Gereffi and Koreniewicz (1994). Questions of
chain governance are usefully examined here. More recently, Gereffi and his collaborators have
entered into dialogue with international business scholars in an examination of ‘‘value chains’’
(see Gereffi et al. 2001; for an insightful review of this literature, see Bair 2005). Geographers
 150 TSING

Supply chains are not the only contemporary form of global capitalism. Giant
corporations expand across the globe. Franchises continue to multiply. Finance calls
attention to itself. Thinking through supply chain capitalism, however, is particularly
useful in addressing two important sets of questions. First, how can we imagine the
‘‘bigness’’ of global capitalism (that is, both its generality and its scale) without
abandoning attention to its heterogeneity? Supply chains offer a model for thinking
simultaneously about global integration, on the one hand, and the formation of
diverse niches, on the other. Supply chains stimulate both global standardization and
growing gaps between rich and poor, across lines of color and culture, and between
North and South. Supply chains refocus critical analysis of diversity in relation to local
and global capitalist developments. Second, how do the new organizational styles and
subjectivities crafted for capitalist elites travel to more humble workplaces? Most
every commentator who describes new forms of global integration speaks of styles
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and subjectivities, whether ‘‘flexible,’’ ‘‘knowing,’’ ‘‘networked,’’ ‘‘immaterial,’’

‘‘biosocial,’’ ‘‘postindustrial,’’ ‘‘postmodern,’’ or ‘‘neoliberal.’’2 Yet such descrip-
tions disappear in discussions of global economic diversity, where talk turns to
exploitation and expropriation. An analysis of supply chain capitalism, I will show,
brings together these two kinds of issues. They are intertwined in new figurations of
labor power that emerge from supply chain niches and links. Supply chains don’t
merely use preexisting diversity; they also revitalize and create niche segregation
through advising economic performance. Understanding supply chain diversity,
I argue, requires attention to niche-segregating performances; such attention, in
turn, should advise our analysis of the global in global capitalism.
Supply chains are not necessarily more diverse than other capitalist forms.
However, because they link up dissimilar firms, supply chain capitalists worry about
diversity, and their self-consciousness is what makes it easy to show that diversity
forms a part of the structure of capitalism rather than an inessential appendage. This
essay examines two of the ways in which diversity structures supply chain capitalism.
First, diversity forms a necessary part of its scale-making practices; the linking of
diverse firms makes supply chains big. Second, diversity conditions the responses of
both capital and labor to the problems of cutting labor costs and disciplining the
workforce. Here, I am not just concerned with supply chain governance, which is the
subject of most scholarly and activist analysis. Although incredibly important, chain
governance is not enough to grasp the role of diversity. Top-of-the-chain firms work
hard to regulate the forms of diversity of their suppliers, but supply chains are harder
to control than corporations or state bureaucracies; in a time of neoliberal
globalization, they are often formed in legal gray zones and within the constant
flux of boom-and-bust opportunities. Supply chain diversity needs to be understood in

have been more attentive to the role of culture in commodity chains, particularly as it shapes
marketing and consumption (see Hughes and Reimer 2004). Bernstein and Campling (2006a,b)
usefully review both these literatures from a political economy perspective. Supply chains have
also attracted attention from activists and pundits. Perhaps the most prominent supply chain
booster is Friedman (2005). An introduction to activist commentary can be found in Oxfam
(2004).
2. One useful introduction to new styles and rhetorics of capitalism is Thrift (2005).
 SUPPLY CHAIN CAPITALISM 151

relation to contingency, experimentation, negotiation, and unstable commitments.3

Furthermore, the exclusions and hierarchies that discipline the workforce emerge as
much from outside the chain as from internal governance standards.4 No firm has to
personally invent patriarchy, colonialism, war, racism, or imprisonment, yet each of
these is privileged in supply chain labor mobilization. Despite the latest techniques in
supply chain management, the diversity of supply chains cannot be fully disciplined
from inside the chain. This makes supply chains unpredictable*/and intriguing as
frames for understanding capitalism.
The first part of this essay takes up the problem of ‘‘bigness.’’ Too many theories
require homogeneity to appreciate the bigness of capitalism. As a result, theorists
continue nineteenth-century habits in which abstractions about class formation erase
the importance of colonialism, patriarchy, and social and cultural diversity. Supply
chains, I argue, can give us a different image of bigness. In order to make this
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argument, I turn attention to the figuration of labor and capital, as this draws us into
particular historical situations for understanding both generality and scale.
Figuration is also central to the second part of my argument, which turns to the
mobilization of labor. Supply chains thrive because capitalists want to avoid high
labor costs. Two strategies have allowed firms to distance themselves from workers’
victories of the past: first, outsourcing labor; and second, corporate cultures in which
work is resignified outside earlier labor struggles. In the mixing and mating of these
two strategies, nonwork tropes*/particularly tropes of management, consumption,
and entrepreneurship*/become key features in defining supply chain labor. Here, the
new styles attributed to capitalism become entangled with the experiences of
workers. Chain drivers control some but not all of this subjectification. I argue that
workers learn to perform within these tropes, and particularly to express markers of
their difference to show their agility and efficiency as contractors. Such perfor-
mances entrench the niche structure of the economy, reaffirming the profitability of
supply chain capitalism. Yet perhaps, too, other possibilities can be glimpsed through
these performances.

Thinking Big

Why have the most powerful theories of capitalism ignored gender, race, national
status, and other forms of diversity? Diversity is considered particularistic, and ‘‘big’’
theory strives for generalization. The challenge, then, is to show the bigness of
diversity.
One way of considering this problem is to contrast what one might call masculinist
and feminist representations of capitalism today. Most of the best-known radical male
critics of post!/cold war capitalism work to find a singular structure that might form

3. My approach to studying supply chains draws from my previous work on the ‘‘friction’’ of
global process (Tsing 2004).
4. I owe this insight to Susanne Freidberg’s insightful study (2004). Freidberg explains the
differences between two supply chains in relation to national and colonial histories, which, in
turn, condition chain governance.
 152 TSING

the basis of resistance or revolution, despite the lack of inspiring socialist

alternatives. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2000, 2004) are perhaps the most
articulate and Utopian advocates for a ‘‘common’’ cause, and thus a singular set of
structural principles, through which to confront what they call Empire: that is, the
nexus connecting capitalism and governmentality. In contrast, feminist critics have
argued that the most important feature of contemporary capitalism is its ‘‘inter-
sectionality’’: that is, the diversity through which women and men of varied class
niches and racial, ethnic, national, sexual, and religious positions negotiate power
and inequality. For J. K. Gibson-Graham (1996, 2006), this is a matter of articulations
between capitalist and noncapitalist sectors; like Hardt and Negri, Gibson-Graham
look for the emergence of Utopian postcapitalist possibilities, but for them the call
for the common, the singularity of capitalism, is the problem, not the solution.
Alternatively, as for many feminist ethnographers, intersectionality creates diversity
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within capitalism, as labor-capital relations are contingently configured by colonial

and postcolonial histories.5 Capitalism here incorporates contingencies without
forming a single, homogenous structure; indeed, that is the genius of its spread.
It is possible to argue for the political appeal of each approach, and it is important
to appreciate their common difference from less critical cultural approaches in which
the multiplicity of ‘‘capitalisms’’ offers readers a safe home in at least one of many
potential formulations.6 Both masculinist and feminist critical analyses are concerned
with the global expansion of structures of property and the linked creation of poverty
and wealth that capitalism entails. Yet the standoff between them has been
frustrating for most readers, particularly since the dialogue has been mainly one-
sided. Male radicals imagine the self-evident advantages of a singular portrayal of
capitalism; feminist critics feel slighted that the men find feminist work so
‘‘particularistic’’ that they don’t bother to read it. The challenge for those who
take feminist critique seriously is to present the case for an analysis of intersections
in a way that seems ‘‘big enough’’ to nonfeminist readers. But how should we think
about bigness? What features other than homogeneity allow us to think of something
as ‘‘big’’?
Narratives of capitalism gain their purchase through convincing protagonists*/that
is, exemplary figures through which we come to understand capital and labor. This is
not just true for radical theorists. Businessmen, policy makers, voters, trade unions,
and activists also use concrete figurations to imagine which projects might succeed.
Supply chain capitalism is useful for critical analysis because it offers a figuration of
both size and generality in which economic and cultural diversity plays a constitutive
role. But critical analysis makes sense of this figuration because of its power for a

5. See, for example, Lisa Rofel’s analysis (1999) of how labor in the Chinese silk industry formed
around the shifting political challenges of the twentieth century. Similarly, Aihwa Ong (1987)
shows how labor-capital relations in Malaysia were formed through the categories of British
colonial history, including the ‘‘Malay peasant women’’ who became cheap transnational labor in
the late twentieth century.
6. In some versions, cultural values shape diverse capitalisms rather than, as argued here,
capitalism using and shaping diversity. See, for example, Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars
(1993). (I owe this insight and citation to Nils Bubandt.)
 SUPPLY CHAIN CAPITALISM 153

much more general audience. The bigness of capitalism is an imaginative project for
all its participants, and figures are the elements that bring the field to life.7
Who are the protagonists in historical narratives about capitalism? Nineteenth-
century Manchester industrialization formed the context for one potent figuration in
the collaboration of Marx and Engels. Not every oppressed person at that time was a
wage laborer*/and, of those who were, few were involved in the technologically
advanced and well-organized factories of English industry. Manchester industrial
workers, however, proved good to think with. English factories showed Marx and
Engels the potential of a future in which human ingenuity controlled nature through
technology, unleashing vast forces of production. Moreover, the self-conscious pride
of the English working class made the combination of huge new sources of wealth and
appalling exploitation seem untenable. The daily struggles of the Manchester
industrial worker allowed critics to glimpse a future of radical change: the proletarian
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revolution. He*/and it was a he*/guided Marx’s and Engels’ thinking in charting the
constraints and possibilities of capitalism. He facilitated the formation of a political
Left focused on the problems and revolutionary potential of the working class.
In hindsight, we can see how the gendered, racial, and national character of the
Manchester industrial workforce helped Marx and Engels imagine labor as a universal,
progressive category*/thus supporting a science of capitalist transformation.8 It was
the privilege of the English working class to expect the assets of New World slavery,
embedded in cheap commodities such as sugar, to advance their prospects.9 As
working men, too, they could be represented as the driving force of progress, sharing
dreams of betterment with their employers.10 The race, gender, and national
privileges they shared with their employers made their struggles over wages and
working conditions appear unmarked by these principles of difference and exclusion.
Thinking through them, class relations could be imagined as abstract, transcendent of
the person-making characteristics of particular times and places, and thus,
substantially gender-, race-, and nationally neutral. These white male industrial
workers became figurative protagonists of a social movement that, through the
progressive generalities they seemed to embody, moved far beyond Manchester. At
the same time, however, the characteristic blind spots of Left struggle have drawn

7. I owe my understanding of figuration to conversations with Donna Haraway. See her discussion
in Haraway (2007).
8. Roderick Ferguson articulates the issue nicely in arguing that the challenge for queer of color
analysis is to account ‘‘for the ways in which Marx’s critique of capitalist property relations is
haunted by silences that make racial, gender, and sexual ideologies and discourses . . . suitable
for universal ideals’’ (2004, 5). Ferguson argues that, for Marx, the figure of the prostitute
represented the antithesis of the worker as protagonist; heteronormativity was thus built into
Marx’s understanding of class formation.
9. Sidney Mintz argues that the English working class came into a sense of its rights through
consolidating its access to slave-produced sugar as a working-class food. Although Mintz (1986)
suggests this point, he made it much clearer in a presentation at the University of California,
Santa Cruz, in 1994.
10. Joan Scott (1991, 773!/97) argues that our understandings of English class formation would
be quite different if women were part of the story. Her reading of E. P. Thompson’s classic The
Making of the English Working Class (1966) shows his reliance on male protagonists of the class
story, which, she argues, has also shaped class-based narratives more generally.
 154 TSING

from this conflation, accomplished through an exemplary figure, of labor as

abstraction and the race, gender, and national specificity of labor.
The decline of white male unions in the late twentieth century was a final blow to
the continuing effectiveness of this exemplary figure. It is clear that other figurations
of labor are needed to tell effective stories about contemporary capitalism. What
kinds of figures emerge from supply chain capitalism? While it is possible to find
recognizably generic figures of oppression and struggle, supply chains also team with
politically ambiguous, liminal figures, caught within the contradictions between
varied forms of hierarchy and exclusion. I suggest that we pay attention to these
figures, rather than rejecting them as flawed protagonists. They can help us imagine
forms of globally interconnected diversity: a capitalism that is big yet unpredictably
heterogeneous. To show how they aid the critical imagination, I turn first to
historically shifting forms of ‘‘bigness’’ in which labor figures participate, the better
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to appreciate the specificity of supply chain bigness.

Figurations of the capital-labor relationship often use imagery from successful
firms. Few analysts of capitalism would describe the global structure of capital with
the characteristics of an individual firm, but successful firms do influence the
organization of capital by shaping what counts as ‘‘big.’’ Successful firms become
models for capitalists, stimulating corporate trends, business literatures, state
policies, and transnational regulatory environments. They guide our ability to imagine
the size, spread, and generality of capitalism. Because successful firms are
ephemeral, such figures can also guide us to appreciate historical changes in
imagining bigness. A history of firms that have inspired enthusiasm in understanding
generality and scale is not, however, an evolutionary scale. Figures inspire but do not
determine practice. Indeed, one advantage of thinking through figures is that their
lack of descriptive fit can allow us to consider the limitations of our own critical
analyses.
The retail giant Wal-Mart was the world’s biggest company in 2002 and is possibly
the highest-profile supply chain driver today. Wal-Mart’s ‘‘low-price, low-wage
ascent’’ has been seen as a ‘‘triumph of post-industrial economy’’ (Belsie 2002).
Sociologist Nelson Lichtenstein (2006) argues that Wal-Mart shows us ‘‘the face of
21st century capitalism.’’ I follow Lichtenstein, but add my own interpretations in
proposing three corporate images that have shaped the making of the global scale by
inspiring boosters, participants, and critics to imagine the bigness of capitalism.
One: General Motors inspired big thinking about capitalism in the middle of the
twentieth century. Bigness was American manufacturers taking on the world. Bigness
was Fordism on the factory floor and the efficiencies of economies of scale. Bigness
was unions and management working together for emergent universal standards of
capital and labor. Big thinking of this sort inspired political as well as economic
visions. The so-called rationalizations of development and modernization in the Third
World were all about learning to think big in just this way, to move from the small-
scale petty commerce of imagined ‘‘tradition’’ to the large-scale manufacturing
behemoths of U.S.!/inspired ‘‘modernity.’’ The bigness of production facilities was
itself a sign of progress.
This notion of bigness was not limited to capitalist promoters. Much of the critical
study of capitalism in the 1970s and early 1980s used the GM model of bigness to think
 SUPPLY CHAIN CAPITALISM 155

through corporate globalization. The relations between corporations and society

were understood in relation to expansion in the sense of a particular political
economy growing bigger and bigger. The dream of the Left was ‘‘one big union.’’ This
allowed the Left to revitalize forms of Marxism in which the figure of the Manchester
industrial worker inspired abstract and universal thinking.
One feature of the mid-twentieth-century dream of standardized production was
the institutional and ideological separation of the ‘‘economy’’ from forms of
communal identity and difference*/‘‘culture.’’ The economy would be transcendent
and forward-looking; culture would refer to particularistic communal forms imagined
as having less and less relevance in the modern world. Culture would look backward to
‘‘noneconomic’’ forms; the economy could look forward to increasing uniformity and
abstraction. This segregation made sense only within the possibilities for bigness
offered by firms like General Motors, which promised to institutionalize corporate
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structure, management, labor, and consumption at a global scale.

Two: By the 1990s, commentators were more likely to consider McDonald’s their
model of the bigness of global capitalism. McDonald’s aims to replace local eateries
everywhere with its own distinctive menu; the BigMac would be the transnational
standard of consumption.11 Franchise arrangements were imagined as the structural
frame for a global homogenization of economic concepts, rules, and procedures. This
is rule by rule itself: governmentality. Franchises allow local enactments of globaliza-
tion, uniting the world in singular but multiply practiced objectives. Socialist models of
class solidarity were not to survive in this model of global bigness. But certain kinds of
consumer diversity might be protected even within global consolidation.12 This global-
but-multiple McDonald’s proved good to think with in imagining world dilemmas.
The ‘‘franchise’’ model of expressive diversity within global accord became
influential in many kinds of politics at the turn of the century, from human rights
universals to free-market negotiations. It informed social theory, producing exemp-
lary protagonists such as Aihwa Ong’s ‘‘flexible citizens’’ (1999) and Hardt and Negri’s
‘‘immaterial labor’’ (2000, 2004). Despite the focus on networks and deterritorializa-
tion, we still know capital and labor through their singular logics. Yet the franchise
model draws our attention to the diversity of consumers, who have differentiated
identities and demands. While focused on state legacies more than capitalism, the
literature on neoliberal subjectivities began here, with analysis of the regulation of
identity practices (for example, see Barry, Osborne, and Rose 1996). This approach
continues to be useful in the analysis of supply chains, but it must be stretched away
from the franchise model, in which the most important question continues to be the
standardization of governmentality. Diversity here can only be a franchise, an
exception that proves the rule. Supply chains, in contrast, reopen the question of
contingent articulations.13

11. The Big Mac Index was devised by The Economist to measure purchasing power
transnationally. See The Economist (n.d.).
12. For a discussion of this issue, see Watson (1997).
13. This approach has a long legacy and many scholarly debts, which I have not dwelled upon
here. If I can’t place this literature in a historical scheme about ‘‘bigness,’’ however, perhaps it
is because it is rarely accepted as ‘‘big.’’
 156 TSING

Three: In just the last few years, Wal-Mart has become a model for thinking about
the bigness of global capitalism. Wal-Mart is a food and general merchandise retail
chain that has prospered through two basic strategies: first, cutting labor costs; and,
second, dictating conditions to the suppliers of its products. Together these have
allowed the low prices and high volumes that are the signatures of Wal-Mart sales.
Retail giants around the world have hurried to think big through the Wal-Mart model
before they lose their market shares.
Critics have turned, too, to the nightmares of the Wal-Mart model, producing an
ever increasing stock of Wal-Mart!/based imagery for understanding the reach of
capital.14 This imagery, which stresses the overwhelming power of Wal-Mart, is both
good and bad for my analytic purposes. It usefully reminds us that supply chains do
not produce autonomous national capitalisms or economic cultures; Wal-Mart
sponsors an often cruel hierarchy. Not all supply chains are as hierarchical as Wal-
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Mart’s, and it would be a mistake to imagine the whole world controlled by Wal-Mart-
like arrangements. But even in this most hierarchical situation, there are clear
demarcations between what Wal-Mart wants to control (e.g., prices, marketing,
logistics) and what Wal-Mart does not want to control (e.g., labor arrangements,
environmental practices, subcontractors’ investment strategies). Furthermore, this
segregation is kept in place by Wal-Mart’s commitment to distinctive corporate
cultures; as a ‘‘community,’’ Wal-Mart is responsible only for its own people and
resources. It is these two elements*/the segregation of what to control and what not
to control, and its justification by a logic of corporate cultures*/that I find useful in
understanding the uses of diversity in global capitalism.
Wal-Mart is proud of the fact that it bullies its suppliers into submission. It demands
full control of certain features of the supply chain, especially those involving prices
and marketing arrangements. Misha Petrovic’s and Gary Hamilton’s account of how
Wal-Mart instituted Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Standards (VICS) is a telling
description of Wal-Mart’s style in exacting compliance in these areas.

Despite its name, VICS demanded somewhat less than voluntary compliance
with its suggested standards, the first of which was the general adoption of
the UPC throughout the supply chain. The first marketing message that
retailers sent to their supplies about the UPC requirement was, in the words
of the chief information officer of Wal-Mart Bob Martin, ‘‘pretty positive.’’ It
had the familiar picture of a bar code, accompanied by a message: ‘‘The
fastest route between the two points is the straight line.’’ The fine print
read: ‘‘Universal Product Codes are required for all items BEFORE ORDERS
WILL BE WRITTEN.’’ ‘‘When companies did not comply,’’ Martin continued,
‘‘a little bit stronger message, more than a marketing campaign but still
polite, was needed.’’ Using the same picture and the fine-print statement,
the main message now simply asserted: ‘‘If you don’t draw the line, we do.’’
(Petrovic and Hamilton 2006, 117!/8)

Compliance is both voluntary and required. Such practices remind us that supply
chains weave complex corporate dependencies into the fabric of their commitments

14. Lichtenstein’s (2006) edited collection is a useful introduction to this burgeoning literature.
 SUPPLY CHAIN CAPITALISM 157

to the independence of firms. Wal-Mart goes beyond exploiting market inequalities; it

reshapes the possibilities of trade. ‘‘Wal-Mart often requires suppliers to open their
books and submit to a rigorous cost analysis,’’ Misha Petrovic and Gary Hamilton write
(132). ‘‘Wal-Mart’s ability to make markets*/to define the shopping environment, the
assortment of merchandise, and the ‘everyday low price’ for its customers, and to
specify the rules of conduct and standards of performance for thousands of its global
suppliers*/is the most profound of all Wal-Mart effects’’ (108).
Wal-Mart hierarchies depend on a standardization of contractual commitments,
commodity labeling practices, and auditing procedures. However, they do not require
a standardization of corporate labor practices.15 Wal-Mart executives have crafted a
self-consciously particularistic niche of corporate labor practices, which, they claim,
accounts for Wal-Mart’s success. Suppliers lie outside this corporate culture and are
responsible for their own corporate labor practices. From the inside of the Wal-Mart
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‘‘family,’’ the supply chain appears a set of linked but varied cultural niches, with
Wal-Mart’s dominance guaranteed, in part, by the value of its cultural difference.
We might follow Wal-Mart’s own understanding of bigness to consider how the
diversity of firms within a supply chain is both a participant in building global
hierarchies and an unstable and potentially threatening source of diversity within
those hierarchies. One way to explore this terrain is through figural performances of
labor, in which diversity is embraced to create a position in the supply chain. Some of
these performances are mandated by management, and I turn first to one of these;
others, however, enter the supply chain obliquely, used but not created by capital.
Many fall somewhere in between. In the following section, I sample some of each.
Wal-Mart can lead us because it self-consciously turns away from notions of labor
that might be claimed by labor organizers. In what follows, I argue that this is an
important feature of supply chain capitalism: Firms try hard to disavow the legacy of
struggle for better wages and working conditions. It should be obvious that one reason
for this is to increase the rate of exploitation. However, where firms succeed, it is
often not by coercion alone. Supply chains tap and vitalize performances of so-called
noneconomic features of identity. Labor is both recruited and motivated by these
performances. On the one hand, workers become complicit with their own
exploitation. On the other hand, they express hopes and desires that exceed the
disciplinary apparatus of the firms they serve. In the next section, I will show how this
politically ambiguous situation is at the heart of dilemmas of diversity within supply
chain capitalism.
There is both social anger and hope in this trajectory of analysis: diversity is both
the source of low wages, and, potentially, the source of creative alternatives. The
situation of labor is further complicated by the fact that performances of identity are
by their nature particularistic, drawing oppositions and lines of exclusion with others
who might otherwise have similar class interests. Someone’s solution may be another
person’s problem. It would be consoling to go back to an easier-to-think-with model
of universal solidarity. But, as I have been trying to argue, it’s no use going back to

15. The limitations of this essay do not allow me to develop the question of the environmental
irresponsibility of supply chains. However, I take this up elsewhere (Tsing forthcoming a).
 158 TSING

that abstract worker; hardly anyone will be moved. Politically, we cannot avoid the
pitfalls of diversity, and we might as well listen to what it has to tell us.

New Figures of Labor

It is difficult to discuss the diversity within supply chain capitalism without returning
to the exclusion of ‘‘culture’’ from the ‘‘economy,’’ mentioned above. In the meaning
I prefer for the term ‘‘culture,’’ all economic forms are produced with the diverse
materials of culture. Furthermore, all class formation depends on ‘‘noneconomic’’
arrangements of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexuality, age, and
citizenship status (see Roediger 1999; Ong 1987; Rofel 1999). All investment
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strategies deploy cultural dreams (Yanagisako 2002; Ho forthcoming). Yet the

institutionalization of ideas about ‘‘the economy’’ in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries worked hard to disavow these elements, considered part of culture. Ideas
about abstraction required that particularistic ‘‘culture’’ could only be an add-on to
economic generalizations to which cultural differences were irrelevant. This
institutional apparatus for imagining the economy is still very much in place.
However, thinking through supply chains offers an opening to reconsider the
relationship between culture and economy. Supply chains depend on those very
factors banished from the economic; this is what makes them profitable. Supply
chains draw upon and vitalize class niches and investment strategies formed through
the vicissitudes of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexuality, age, and
citizenship status. We cannot ignore these so-called ‘‘cultural’’ factors in considering
the mobilization of labor.16
Discussions of culture and capitalism are easily confused by the multiple meanings
of culture, and there is no reason for me to go very far down that path here. Instead,
consider exploitation. For the purposes of my argument, let me define ‘‘super-
exploitation’’ as exploitation that depends on so-called noneconomic factors such as
gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexuality, age, and citizenship status.
Superexploitation is exploitation greater than might be expected from general
economic principles; the use of these so-called noneconomic factors to determine the
rate of exploitation would be one conceivable use of the term. My use of this term
does not require worker abjection, but it points to the inability of workers to
negotiate the wage in the manner imagined in much of both Marxist and neo-classical
economics: that is, as abstract ‘‘labor,’’ without the obstacles of these ‘‘cultural’’
factors. In the definition I use here, all exploitation is probably superexploitation.
This does not render the term meaningless: it continues to focus our attention on
these so-called noneconomic factors in class formation. Supply chain capitalism,
I argue, encourages conflations between superexploitation, in this sense, and self-
exploitation. Workers establish their economic performance through performances of
the very factors that establish their superexploitation: gender, race, ethnicity, and so
forth. At first this formula sounds strange, but it is a familiar feature of independent

16. This is also true for the mobilization of capital, but that is not my topic here.
 SUPPLY CHAIN CAPITALISM 159

contracting. A day laborer must perform brawn and availability; a prostitute must
perform sexual charm. These performances bring them contracts and make it difficult
for them to negotiate the wage outside niches for gender, sexuality, and race. Supply
chain capitalism brings this mechanism into its basic structure through chains of
independent contracting. Diversity, with all its promise and perils, enters the
structure of supply chain capitalism through this mechanism.
In what follows, I show how new figures of labor contribute to the blurring between
superexploitation and self-exploitation at the heart of supply chain capitalism. I begin
with Wal-Mart’s ‘‘servant leader,’’ a creation of management in two senses: corporate
officials promoted the figure, and the figure depicts workers as managers. This is the
kind of figure that erases the legacy of labor struggles and encourages both self- and
superexploitation. I then leave Wal-Mart to explore figures outside the management
discourse of powerful chain-makers and at the other end of the chain hierarchy. In the
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apparel industry, I trace the discouraging demise of earlier labor victories in the rise
of subcontracted sweatshops. The challenges of labor organizing here have every-
thing to do with the gender, ethnic, and national niches encouraged by apparel supply
chains. Furthermore, in a political climate without much union success, many
sweatshop workers, and their families, see themselves most hopefully not as labor
but as oppositional consumers or potentially rich entrepreneurs. My last two figures
are shoppers and neoliberal investors*/but as worker identities. These are figures full
of contradiction. In their conflations of self- and superexploitation, they make supply
chain capitalism possible. At the same time, they bring so much excess baggage into
conventional class categories that . . . well, another world is possible. The figures
I present are not a systematic or exhaustive list of categories; they show the
disturbing and promising possibilities of thinking with supply chain capitalism.

When Is an Employee Not a Worker?

I follow Wal-Mart here mainly because historian Bethany Moreton has done an
extensive study of its innovative figure of labor, the ‘‘servant leader.’’ Moreton
explains that Wal-Mart came to this figure from several distinct sources. First, the
company grew up in the Ozarks, where campaigns against chain stores in the 1920s
and 1930s had made the effeminate ‘‘clerk’’ the negative icon of labor. Wal-Mart
learned to endorse local cultural rhetorics in which employee status would never be
enough. Second, although Wal-Mart was not originally a self-consciously Christian
business, it came to claim the Christian orientations of many of its workers. The
example of Christ as a ‘‘servant leader’’ modeled the figure of the store manager,
allowing men to take on service jobs without becoming ‘‘clerks.’’ The manager, in
turn, adopted the largely female ‘‘associates’’*/that is, retail workers*/as ‘‘family’’
members, enrolling their Christian family values in the cause of corporate sales. Wal-
Mart workers thus became ‘‘producers of a new sort, service providers whose
professional goal was not their self-realization but that of their customers and
clients’’ (Moreton 2006, 98). The in-house newsletter quotes an employee who
explains the system as follows:
 160 TSING

Besides needing money, I have other reasons I love working for you. You see,
I come from a factory background, which meant work came first, before
family, church or anything else. Also you were treated as a person hired just
to do a job. They did not care about you as a person at all. That is the reason
I like Wal-Mart. I can keep God first in my life because Wal-Mart lets me work
around church services. If there is a special function that my children are
involved in I can work my schedule around that also. (113)

Christian service informed Wal-Mart’s design of workplaces where women work on

short and irregular hours for less than subsistence wages. If work need not ‘‘come
first,’’ neither should wages and working conditions. Christian service also formed the
model for Wal-Mart’s preferred image of globalization. In 1985, Wal-Mart began
sponsoring a group of Central American students to study business at Christian
colleges in the U.S. South, training them to return home with what Moreton describes
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as ‘‘the specific business culture of the Christian service sector’’ (387). In 1991, the
company began negotiations to open a store in Mexico, imagining it as an extension of
their U.S. Christian family. (Moreton argues that U.S. congressional debates about the
North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA] in 1993 were significantly shaped by
imagery of Wal-Mart in Mexico, which overtook imagery of worker oppression by
showing a nation of familiar family shoppers.) In contrast, Moreton explains, Asian
suppliers never entered in-house discussions of corporate culture: ‘‘For hourly
employees in Bentonville, indeed, [direct importing from Asia beginning in the
1970s] amounted to little more than a sharp spike in the mail they addressed to
Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines’’ (412!/3). Suppliers were outside the
corporate family.17
Wal-Mart’s self-representations as building a cultural niche that contrasted with
secular, Northern, and industrial hegemonies made it simple to imagine other niches,
elsewhere, that might constitute the supply chain without replicating Wal-Mart
culture. Wal-Mart does not represent its corporate culture as universally general-
izable; it is proud of the regional and religious roots of its specificity. Wal-Mart’s
supply chain is not expected to share this corporate culture, but only to adhere to
Wal-Mart’s exacting specifications. Indeed, because Wal-Mart claims to represent
consumer interests, it can cast its pressure on suppliers as a feature of its cultural
orientation to consumers, with whom, Wal-Mart claims, it shares priorities. The
suppliers, with their own cultural priorities, might not understand. Driving down
prices can be portrayed as a moral commitment within a world of alternative
corporate cultures.

17. Some suppliers have worked hard to emulate Wal-Mart culture. Bianco tells the story of the
revitalization of the Rubbermaid Company after its humbling by Wal-Mart in the 1990s. After
Rubbermaid was acquired by Newell Co., ‘‘The design of Newell Rubbermaid’s office in
Bentonville was guided by the principle that imitation is not just the highest form of flattery but
also of customer service . . . The first floor contains what the company bills as ‘an exact replica
of a Wal-Mart store’ . . . On a wall upstairs hangs a photograph of Sam Walton, alongside his
‘Rules for Building a Business.’ Said Steven Scheyer, who runs Newell’s Wal-Mart Division: ‘We
live and breathe with these guys’’’ (2006, 185). Bianco explains that Wal-Mart’s biggest suppliers
all open offices in northwest Arkansas to be close to Wal-Mart. These eager suppliers contest
Wal-Mart’s family boundaries.
 SUPPLY CHAIN CAPITALISM 161

This formulation depends on Wal-Mart’s favored figure of labor power, the servant
leader. The servant leader is not a conventional ‘‘economic’’ figure; it brings the
contours of gender, race, region, nation, and religion into labor subjectification. The
servant leader is a self-conscious commentary on gender, putting patriarchal family
values to work for the corporation. Sociologist Ellen Rosen (2006) shows how
employees are coached and shamed into accepting these narratives or, alternatively,
told to move on. For women employees working for less than the cost of basic self-
maintenance, the work would be untenable without coaching and shaming.18 The
importance of self-consciously parochial gender discrimination in Wal-Mart’s labor
subjectification policies should make it possible for critics to consider how such
particularistic niches play a role in all supply chains. Gender discrimination is not just
an add-on to universal problems of labor; gender discrimination makes labor possible
in the Wal-Mart model.
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Moreton’s analysis offers striking testimony to the importance of new non- and even
antilabor figures in corporate trajectories. But this raises new questions about labor
from the other side of the negotiation table: What happened to union stories
of exemplary labor heroes? Rather than stay with the mainly nonunionized Wal-Mart,
I turn to the apparel industry, a key site of twentieth-century union victories. The
literature on labor conditions in the apparel industry tells a striking story about the
refiguration of labor away from union drives toward gender-, ethnic-, and nation-
based subcontracting performances. Two developments engage me here: first, the
return of sweated labor as a normative feature of supply chains; and, second, the
triumph of shopping as a frame for identity even among the oppositionally self-
conscious poor.

What Happened to Union Standards?

In his book Slaves to Fashion, sociologist Robert J. S. Ross (2001) argues that
something rather dramatic has happened to the garment industry in the past twenty-
five years.19 The bad news is particularly disheartening, he argues, because the
victories of early-twentieth-century labor struggles in this sector were so important in
raising labor standards more generally. In the United States, an alliance of reformers,
immigrants, and labor was inspired by garment worker struggles; with the New Deal,
their ideas about working conditions, hours, and unions gained ascendancy. These
became a powerful model of modernity and decency around the world. ‘‘By the end of
World War II,’’ he writes, ‘‘sweatshop abuse in the [U.S.] apparel industry was
becoming a memory of the past’’ (Ross 2001, 85). Since the 1980s, however,
sweatshops have come back with a vengeance.

18. Barbara Ehrenreich’s (2001) account of her time working for Wal-Mart is eloquent testimony
to the inadequacy of the wage.
19. Critical scholarship on the apparel industry is very rich; I follow Ross here because he tells
the story in relation to the change from union victories to sweated labor. Other sources I found
particularly useful include Rosen (2001), who explains the changing regulatory environment for
apparel, and Collins (2003), who compares two apparel commodity chains.
 162 TSING

Ross’s definition of sweatshops focuses on their multiple violations of labor laws, so

he is referring here to enterprises willing to work at the borders of legality. These
sweatshops are made possible by manufacturers’ contracts with small entrepreneurs
willing to cut corners and sacrifice labor. He quotes one contractor: ‘‘Now you tell
me, how can I pay someone ‘union scale’ or even the minimum wage, when I’m only
getting $4 per blouse? With overhead and everything else, I may be able to pay the
ladies $1.20 per blouse, but that’s tops. There’s nothing on paper. I get it in cash’’
(134).
Ross notes that many of these small entrepreneurs are immigrants with not much in
the way of capital. They may recruit other immigrants*/often, but not always, from
their own immigrant stream. Some employees are undocumented immigrants or
women without permission to work outside the home; they accept low wages because
they have few alternatives. Ross shows that immigrants are not ‘‘responsible’’ for
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sweatshops but merely responding to their limited opportunities. Few other U.S.
entrepreneurs or employees are willing to accept the risks and poor conditions.
Immigrant entrepreneurs bring performances of ethnic niche specificity into the
chain. Ross does not elaborate on the interplay between manufacturers’ expectations
and subcontractor performances, but this issue is taken up in relation to global
outsourcing in Jane Collins’s Threads.20 Collins interviewed U.S. corporate managers
who told her they brought their assembly plants abroad to match the superior sewing
skills of women in the global South. These skills, the managers told her, are learned at
home, not on the job. ‘‘This paradoxical framing of skill makes women’s ‘disadvan-
tages’ in the labor market at least a temporary advantage,’’ she explains (2003, 176).
Management’s orientation requires workers to perform the conditions of their
superexploitation: new workers are expected to already know their jobs because
they are women. Furthermore, Collins explains, the rate of exploitation can be
increased through this same logic. ‘‘In the cruelest of ironies, gender ideologies
permit managers to use the insufficiency of the maquiladora wage against women
workers. Factory owners have pointed to the fact that household members pool their
incomes to argue that women’s earnings in the maquiladora are only ‘supplemental’’’
(170).21
Subcontracting helps garment manufacturers cut costs; it also relieves top-of-the-
chain manufacturers of all responsibility for labor. Ross cites excerpts from
California’s ‘‘Adam’s contract,’’ the standard form of agreement between manufac-
turer and contractor. The law offers a vivid model for many subcontracting-type
practices, including extraordinary rendition, proxy wars, and other world-making
practices of our times.22 For example,

20. Collins also explores these issues in the United States, where the apparel industry is the
largest employer of women and minority workers (2003, 8).
21. Collins (2003, 116) documents further ironies of superexploitation in the practice of multiple
layers of subcontracting*/for example, when urban Chinese factories subcontract to village
women. Here the rhetoric and performance of women’s ‘‘supplemental income’’ are even more
important to cost-cutting.
22. Collins (2003, 162) explains how a 1999 California law, intended to make manufacturers pay
wages if their contractors did not, was gutted by legislative redefinitions of responsibility.
 SUPPLY CHAIN CAPITALISM 163

!5. Contractor acknowledges that it is an independent contractor and not

an employee of MANUFACTURER . . .

!9. In the event that contractor is found in violation of any City, County,
State, or Federal law, contractor agrees to indemnify, hold harmless and
defend MANUFACTURER from any liability that may be imposed on
MANUFACTURER as a result of such violation . . .

!14. Contactor agrees to indemnify, hold harmless and defend

MANUFACTURER from any liability that may be imposed on MANUFACTURER
arising out of any claim made by an employee of contractor against the
MANUFACTURER. (Ross 2001, 129)

This fiction of contractor independence is important in forming both domestic and

international supply chains. Even the most ‘‘socially conscious’’ firms are able to
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claim that, despite their best efforts, they are unable to force compliance with their
own high ethical standards. It is worth returning to reread the statement by the
athletic shoe giant, Nike, with which I opened this essay, which offers a vivid image of
supply chain capitalism.
Nike never produced athletic shoes. Company founders began as distributors of
Japanese-made shoes. The additions that made for success were the invention of the
‘‘swoosh’’ logo, advertising endorsements from well-known African American
athletes, and a transfer to cheaper Asian locations for contracting production. Nike’s
vice president for Asia-Pacific once explained, ‘‘We don’t know the first thing about
manufacturing. We are marketers and designers’’ (Korzeniewicz 1994, 252). Nike thus
models another influential model for supply chain rents: selling the brand.
In 1996, protests targeted Nike for allowing children to produce its products. In
response, Nike took up the cause of corporate social responsibility.23 Nike formulated
a corporate code of conduct; it also joined an effort to start an independent
monitoring organization, the Fair Labor Association. The process originally included
citizen and labor groups as well as corporate representatives. Ross (2001, 160!/8)
describes the breakdown of communication as corporate drafts insisted on the
independence of their contractors, bound by their own national laws and cultural
standards, while labor demanded attention to universal human rights. The resulting
organization joins other ‘‘voluntary’’ efforts to set corporate ethical standards. Such
efforts add to the play of the visible and the hidden, building new parameters for
niche-making. Successful niches in the supply chain will work with or around monitors
to subjectify superexploited labor. Journalist Isabel Hilton spoke with monitors in
China, where visits are prearranged with management and workers are coached on
proper replies.24 She describes a document known as a ‘‘cheat-sheet,’’ which found
its way from a Chinese Wal-Mart supplier to an NGO in 2004.

23. Stade (forthcoming) offers a useful analysis of these events; see also Locke (2002).
24. Hilton’s article describes the history of worker discipline in China in the past forty years,
examining the continuities and shifts in political culture that have allowed subcontracting to be
so profitable*/and so deadly. She writes, ‘‘There is no sign of the rush to China slowing. China
continues to grow, but at a human and environmental cost that is probably unsustainable’’ (2005,
53).
 164 TSING

It showed that workers would be paid fifty yuan each if they memorized the
answers to questions that the inspectors were likely to ask them. The correct
answer, for instance, to the question ‘‘How long is the working week?’’ was
‘‘Five days.’’ The correct number of days worked in a month was twenty-
two; overtime was not forced and was paid at the correct rate . . . There
were fire drills, and they were not made to pay for their own ID cards or
uniforms. If all this were true, what need would there have been for the
workers to memorize the answers? (Hilton 2005, 47)
Without a court system that respects workers’ rights, Hilton argues, workers who
protest their conditions have little chance to effect reforms.
It is up to manufacturers, too, to orient their consumers away from antisweatshop
campaigns. This is made simpler by histories in which social justice itself can be
commodified.
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Shopping for Justice?

Antisweatshop campaigns have had considerable success in using images of super-

exploited labor heroines, particularly in mobilizing consumers. If this essay gives
short shrift to such efforts, it is only because others have documented them at length
(for example, see Klein 2000). Few, however, have noted the ironic effects of these
campaigns’ assertion that consumers can be the leading force of oppositional politics
in these times: the poor as well as the rich can get behind this sentiment. Workers and
their families and neighbors may find themselves identifying as consumers in their
struggles for dignity. This effect owes a great deal to the success of the advertising
industry in commodifying dissent (see Frank and Weiland 1997).
By the end of the twentieth century, the advertising industry had gained such
influence that it became impossible to think of any feature of society, including
politics, without advertising. An advertising-mediated politics has blurred the lines
between corporations and their customers as consumers enroll corporate identities in
their struggles, and, conversely, corporations enroll consumers in spreading their
interests and images. The ability of corporations to survive and thrive in the midst of
antisweatshop campaigns rests largely on their skill in keeping consumers on their
side. It is not enough for them to protest that supply chain contractors are
independent; top-of-the-chain corporations also promote their products as in
themselves producing justice.
The commodification of African American dissent has been a key element in
corporate strategies to enroll even the poorest and most disadvantaged consumers in
their image games. Anthropologist Paulla Ebron’s (2008) research offers key clues to
this history. U.S. cultural politics inspired African American reformers in the
mid!/twentieth century to focus on issues of representation, including in advertising.
They demanded that advertising show more black people*/and they won. By the end
of the century, images of African Americans were pervasive in U.S. advertising, and
they arguably represented the single greatest asset to U.S. advertising abroad. This
extraordinary success drew from the rich performance and image culture developed
in black struggle*/as well as the respect with which black struggle was regarded in
 SUPPLY CHAIN CAPITALISM 165

many other parts of the world. Drawing tropes and themes from anticolonial
campaigns around the world, African Americans added a distinctive performance
style that made even everyday resistance seem cool. This rebellious ‘‘attitude’’ made
good advertising. Clothing, accessories, alcohol, music, and whole ways of life could
be sold through it. Young people around the world have been attracted to its appeal
to oppositional consciousness as well as its openings to other moments of rebellion or
cultural pride. The ‘‘bad’’ Black young man has been particularly charismatic. Ebron
points out that transatlantic ‘‘bad’’ captures divergent genealogies as it spreads;
African hip-hop artists draw from their own political agendas even as they imitate
American style. Yet even in going their own way, they learn that style itself is a
political agenda. Black American style has been a contagious medium to configure
politics.
Anthropologist Mark Anderson (2005) brings this story to the problem of sweat-
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shops.25 Why is it, Anderson asks, that U.S. rapper Puff Daddy poses with a black
power salute on his Web site, but refuses to apologize for his Sean Jean line of
Honduran jeans made under sweatshop conditions? He asks the subjects of his
ethnographic fieldwork, Honduran Garifuna, who identify as black. Although some of
his young male informants have relatives who work in sweatshops, they focus on the
problem of shopping. It’s hard to buy those high-fashion jeans in Honduras; they are
forced to ask for them from relatives in New York, they complain. The struggle for
these young men, Anderson realizes, is for respect within Honduras’s racial hierarchy;
here, what they call the ‘‘black American’’*/a cluster of consumer goods and
mediated styles*/is their biggest ally. To dress ‘‘black American’’ is to simultaneously
show off the oppositional disposition of black rebellion and the power of the United
States. They are proud that they dress better than their mestizo compatriots even as
they fight for other forms of respect.
Anderson asks one of his Garifuna friends why he likes to watch ‘‘ghetto action
films’’ from the United States. His friend explains, ‘‘There, the most important thing
is that the people that want to extend racism against us, the [mestizos], aren’t worth
anything there. Because there, eh, a lot of guys go around real quiet, they don’t mess
around because they know that there the blacks have a lot of power’’ (2005, 10).
Wearing ‘‘black American’’ style offers the same promise of respect.
Nike products came to Garifuna attention in the 1980s with commercials that linked
Nike shoes and African American sports stars as well as masculine prowess and ‘‘inner
city authenticity’’ more generally. Anderson writes, ‘‘Among Garifuna in Honduras,
the Nike swoosh circulated as a polyphonic icon of youth resistance, racial blackness,
economic status and corporate power’’ (17). He continues:

Most interestingly, the swoosh became detached from the particular

commodities it labels and appeared all over the place; painted on the sides
of taxis, on the rocks by the river, on the side of houses, on the backboard of
a basketball hoop. A few Garifuna inscribed it on their very bodies, tattooing
the swoosh on their arms or shaving it on the back of their heads. When

25. A version of the paper forms a chapter in Anderson’s forthcoming book, Blackness and
indigeneity: Garifuna and the politics of race and culture in Honduras.
 166 TSING

I asked individuals why they mark their bodies with the Nike symbol they
either gave vague responses such as ‘‘se llega la marca’’ (the brand is hot) or
laughed and never answered the question. Their friends occasionally chided
them for lacking the ‘‘real’’ product or becoming a ‘‘live advertisement.’’
Nevertheless, the sign acquired an obvious, if opaque, importance, perhaps
because it distilled in such a compact manner the complex relations
between blackness and ‘‘America,’’ between transnational corporations
and consumer practices. (16)

These young Garifuna men are not wealthy consumers. They see their adherence to
black American consumption as a strategy to get themselves out of poverty. They
know the women who work at maquiladoras, but they do not organize boycotts on
these women’s behalf. Their struggles for respect as black men take precedence.
Garifuna men are the kind of figures of contradiction that may be necessary to
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understand the global economy. They show us how varied struggles for justice may
displace each other. Supply chains are only possible because of the conflicts of
interest and identity that segregate race, gender, and national status niches. Rather
than sweeping these differences under the rug, we need to begin our negotiations for
justice here.

Nonwork Livelihoods

Nike style is an ingredient in gender and race performances that give young Garifuna
men their sense of a competitive edge. If they reproduce niche economies, it is by
imagining themselves first and foremost as black men in struggle*/that is, as
privileged consumers. Their identity as black consumers brings my discussion to the
more general question of how performances of gender and race shape the supplier
end of supply chain capitalism. Such performances take place inside as well as
outside the workplace*/in part through the importance of tropes of consumption for
workers.
Uma Kothari (2007) studied apparel industry workers in Mauritius at a moment when
the industry began to leave the island in search of cheaper labor. Laid-off apparel
workers quickly migrated to the market, where their history of assembly work was
transformed into an expertise in fashion in the many stalls that sold clothes and
accessories to both local residents and tourists. They became particular experts in
the knockoffs of name-brand products through which Mauritius locals could
participate in metropolitan fashion trends. What is surprising in this story for those
of us more used to sweatshop images is the local interpretation of apparel assembly
work as a guide to fashion consciousness. Workers already imagined themselves in
tropes of consumption and entrepreneurship, and this facilitated their move to local
fashion markets.26 Lisa Rofel (personal communication) tells similar stories of women

26. Kothari (2007) presented this material in a keynote presentation at the Conference on
Poverty and Capitalism in Manchester. See also Kothari and Laurie (2005) and Edinsor and Kothari
(2006).
 SUPPLY CHAIN CAPITALISM 167

garment workers in China, who sustain their factory work by imagining that it will
make it possible for them to open fashion boutiques in the future.27 Dreams of
entrepreneurship and consumption shape worker subjectivities*/and the meaning of
‘‘work.’’
Here I return to my argument that the conditions of contracting through supply
chains stimulate performances of niche difference that affirm supplier qualifications
for the necessary superexploitation of the niche. Such performances take place
particularly where work is coded as entrepreneurship. Suppliers learn to imagine
themselves as risk takers rather than laborers. Their cultural characteristics*/such as
gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, citizenship status, and religion*/make it possible
for them to succeed in mobilizing themselves or others like them as labor. Recall, for
example, the ethnic entrepreneurs mentioned above as essential to apparel supply
chains in the United States. They both recruit labor and motivate labor through
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appeals to ethnicity. They reconfirm the importance of ethnicity by linking ethnic

performance to economic performance in the supply chain. In the process, they also
blur the lines between self-exploitation and superexploitation. They push themselves
to succeed through the very characteristics that define their usefulness to the supply
chain. In this process, niche differences are confirmed and invigorated in new
forms.28
One striking place to examine this process is in the making of white male
‘‘independent contractors’’ in the United States. U.S. white men grow up dreaming
of starting their own businesses as a key to the autonomy at the heart of their sense of
race, gender, and national status. Supply chain capitalism has made use of this dream
to tap the extraordinary efforts these men are willing to use to hold on to
‘‘independence.’’ Here is geographer Michael Watts’s description of chicken produc-
tion in the United States.

Broilers are overwhelmingly produced by family farmers (‘‘growers’’) but

this turns out to be a deceptive description. They are in fact raised from day-
old chicks to 45-day (4.8 lbs live weight) broilers by farmers under contract
to multi-billion dollar transnational integrators who own the chickens and
feed. Non-unionized growers must borrow heavily in order to build the
infrastructure necessary to meet rigid contractual requirements intended to
insure ‘‘quality.’’ Conventional contract terms are such that integrators
provide growers with chick or poult hatchlings and feed from integrator-
owned hatcheries and feed mills, and veterinary services, medication, litter
and field supervisors. Conversely, contract growers provide housing, equip-
ment, labour, water and fuel. (2004, 46)

27. Lisa Rofel and Sylvia Yanagisako are studying ties between the Chinese and Italian silk
industries.
28. Lyn Jeffrey’s (2001) study of multilevel marketing in China in the 1990s is illuminating in
thinking about this issue. Multilevel marketing took off like wildfire in China at a moment when
workers were learning to rethink their life trajectories with capitalist tropes. Participants were
coached to imagine themselves as entrepreneurs. Performing entrepreneurship pushed them
both to work harder and to recruit others. Those ‘‘others’’ were often family members; thus,
entrepreneurial performances walked a fuzzy line between self- and superexploitation.
 168 TSING

Watts describes the chicken farmer: ‘‘The average grower is a 48 year old white
male who owns 103 acres of land, 3 poultry houses and raises 240,000 live birds under
contract through six flocks per year; he owes over half of the value of the farm to the
bank and works more than 2,631 hours per year’’ (46). We can imagine a relatively
privileged citizen, a landowner and proud of it, perhaps protecting his farm from
foreclosure. Yet, Watts reports, the growers’ average annual poultry income in 1999
was only $15,000; furthermore, the required hours and investments for the contract
are clearly exacting. Watts concludes: ‘‘Contract growers thus are not independent
farmers at all. They are little more than ‘propertied labourers’: employees of
corporate producers who also dominate the [chicken] processing industry’’ (47). Yet
this ‘‘little more than’’ makes a big difference. It is hard not to imagine the cultural
commitment of the grower to independent landholding and ‘‘a business of his own.’’
Contract farming flourishes in the imagined difference between being an employee
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and an entrepreneur. The contract farmer works for $5.70/hour ($15,000/2,631) even
though he is a white man because he owns his own business. Self-exploitation is
essential to the cost-cutting power of the supply chain.
The dream of becoming an independent businessman draws white male citizens*/
like Watts’s growers*/into supply chain capitalism. One could call this a performance
of gender, race, and national identity. In the process, self-exploitation becomes one
variety of superexploitation: that is, labor dependent upon race, gender, and national
characteristics. The equation of work and entrepreneurship holds this equation
together. This equation is spelled out even more clearly in a New York Times report on
the 2006 attempt of drivers for the shipping company FedEx to unionize. FedEx has
avoided giving its drivers union privileges, as well as health insurance, sick days,
retirement, and other employee benefits, by making all its drivers ‘‘independent
businessmen.’’

But Bob Williams, who led the unionization drive, says the model does not
work for the drivers. Like many, he was lured to FedEx by advertisements
that said ‘‘Be Your Own Boss’’ and talked of earning $55,000 to $70,000 a
year.
After he began, Mr. Williams said, he felt like anything but his own boss.
‘‘They have complete control over my day,’’ Mr. Williams said. ‘‘I have to
wear their uniform, buy their truck and use their logo. I have to buy
insurance from them. I have to do the route they tell me to do and make the
stops they tell me.’’
Mr. Williams was also disappointed by the pay, the lack of health benefits
and assignments to unfamiliar routes. He said he grossed a maximum of
$62,000 a year but netted only $30,000, despite 60-hour weeks. Out of his
gross, he had to pay for his truck, insurance and gas, and a company-supplied
package scanner . . .
Last December, Mr. Williams hurt his back lifting a package. Eight days
later, FedEx fired him, saying he had breached his contract by failing to find
a replacement to handle his route while he was injured. (Greenhouse 2006)

The report on FedEx notes that this union struggle is particularly important in a
climate in which ‘‘[o]ther prominent companies, including Microsoft, Verizon, and
 SUPPLY CHAIN CAPITALISM 169

Hewlitt-Packard, have been entangled in major disputes over whether workers are
contractors or employees.’’ Supply chains in each of these businesses require those
who are willing to work long hours in order to hold on to their status as self-employed.
Self-exploitation is driven by gender, race, and national performance standards.
The blurring between self- and superexploitation through performances of gender,
race, ethnicity, and nationality is important at the bottom as well as at the top of U.S.
status hierarchies. My own recent research illustrates this through the study of a wild
mushroom supply chain.29 The North American matsutake is picked in forests in
Canada and the northwestern United States for export to Japan. Japanese importers
buy it mainly from Canadian exporters, who contract with, among others, bulkers in
the United States, who buy from independent buyers, who in turn buy from
independent pickers. There are many relationships of dependence along this chain,
such as the fact that buyers generally have no money to buy except for that provided
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to them every night by their bulkers. But it is important to almost everyone along the
chain that they be considered independent contractors rather than employees. As one
bulker stressed to me, when he gives $5,000 to a buyer, he has no legal protection on
that money since the buyer is not an employee. Only the trust between independent
businessmen holds them.
In this context, no one imagines him- or herself as working for anyone else. Indeed,
I realized that at least in central Oregon, where I am conducting research, I never
hear anyone call mushroom-related activities ‘‘work.’’ Sympathetic observers refer to
the work of mushroom picking. The woman who owns a mushroom picker campground
explains quite properly that ‘‘these people work so hard’’: They are out in the woods
from the first light of dawn, working despite snow and rain and low mushroom prices.
Work is a good thing, not an insult. But it’s not the usual description of mushroom
picking or buying, which instead portrays it as entrepreneurial ‘‘freedom.’’
Matsutake are picked by a number of very different cultural communities. First,
there are middle-aged white men cast loose: veterans of the Indochinese wars, ex-
loggers thrown out by downsizing, and ‘‘traditionalists’’ hard-set against liberal
hegemonies. For these pickers, mushroom picking is making it on one’s own*/without
the props of a corrupt and irritating society. The nineteenth-century California gold
rush comes up repeatedly as metaphor: the mushrooms are ‘‘white gold.’’ The pickers
are there to find a fortune on their own initiative. With care not to take this too
literally, one might describe their niche as ‘‘nonwork’’ because most of them have
rejected earlier histories of wage labor*/because they hate the system, the
government, taxes, regulations, and routine.
Most of the other pickers*/by far the largest group today*/are Southeast Asian
refugees from Laos and Cambodia who arrived in the United States in the 1980s, often
after several years of living in makeshift refugee camps in Thailand. With similar care,
one might call this niche ‘‘nonwork’’ in the sense that many Southeast Asian pickers
have lacked the cultural capital (language, education, employment histories, etc.) to

29. My research forms part of the Matsutake Worlds Research Group, in which Shiho Satsuka,
Lieba Faier, Michael Hathaway, Tim Choy, and Miyako Inoue participate. Hjorleifur Jonsson, Lue
Vang, and David Pheng have made important contributions to my fieldwork in Oregon.
 170 TSING

find decent wage-labor jobs in the United States. Mushroom picking allows pickers to
draw on Southeast Asian community-building skills; many pickers compare the
mushroom camps to Laotian villages or, more ominously, Thai refugee camps. In
describing mushroom picking, Southeast Asian pickers mention networks of socia-
bility, political mobilization, leadership, hustling, and healing. Both white and
Southeast Asian pickers speak of intertwined political and market-oriented ‘‘free-
dom’’ in foraging (Tsing forthcoming a).30 Meanwhile, the pickers see this income as
compatible with disability, unemployment, or other government compensation (for
lack of ‘‘work’’). Buyers joke that the pickers disappear at the first of the month to
collect their checks.
Mushroom harvesting is labor in any conceivable definition of the term, but
mushroom workers do not place themselves within histories of ‘‘work.’’ The nonwork
status of mushroom picking is a reminder of the specificities of the cultural history
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that allowed the twentieth-century labor movement to take ‘‘work’’ for granted as
the locus of negotiation between labor and capital. Nineteenth- and twentieth-
century labor struggles created the dignity of work as a sacrifice of time and effort in
exchange for a wage. In the twenty-first century, an increasing number of laborers do
not imagine their activities primarily through this history’s categories. Most
commentators on this problem argue that less people are doing hard, physical labor;
today, they say, the economy is run almost entirely by service and information. I see
no evidence of the withering away of tiring, repetitive, or physical chores, although
perhaps some have been moved farther away from privileged commentators. The
issue is not that these chores have gone away. Instead, the challenge is that people
doing these chores may not see themselves within familiar frameworks of labor.31
Consider the coastal town in Fujian Province described by Julie Chu (forthcoming).
The most prestigious activity for young men is going abroad. Traveling is facilitated by
a contract with the gods, who help young men overcome innumerable obstacles of
money, visas, and so on. In places like New York, these young men slave at low-paid
restaurant and warehouse jobs. However, from their perspective this is the
fulfillment of a manly destiny and not just a matter of chores. Meanwhile, back
home, their families wait for remittances. They say there is no work at home for men,
and so everyone sits around and plays mahjong. Local life would fall apart except that
they have hired peasant migrants from poorer interior villages to come take care of
everything. These peasants, in turn, are on a quest to find their fortune as their
relatives, too, wait at home for remittances. It seems that no one is working, but in

30. Elsewhere I discuss the importance of ‘‘freedom,’’ a concept that combines anticommunism
and entrepreneurship, for both white and Southeast Asian pickers (Tsing forthcoming b).
31. After explaining the ‘‘nonwork’’ status of mushroom picking, it is awkward to explain the
occurrence of a pickers’ strike in October 2004. The strike lasted two days, during which a
significant portion of the pickers refused to gather mushrooms, instead parading with signs at
the buying station. However, it seems never to have occurred to anyone that the strike would
lead to labor negotiations. Who would represent labor and who would represent management?
The success of the strike, according to everyone with whom I spoke, was measured by the
number of newspaper reports that came out about it. This makes the strike more similar to the
exposure of a scandal*/one of the more effective tools against supply chain exploitation.
 SUPPLY CHAIN CAPITALISM 171

the process the town has somehow become a part of one of the most dynamic growth
areas in China.
Where ‘‘work’’ as imagined by nineteenth- and twentieth-century labor movements
is not a framework for people’s descriptions of their activities, it will be really hard to
mobilize around familiar labor slogans or the notion of ‘‘solidarity’’ that they
inspired. Another set of articulations is needed. These will probably have to stay close
to cultural niches and the links between them.
Let me restate my argument. Supply chain capitalism makes use of diverse social-
economic niches through which goods and services can be produced more cheaply.
Such niches are reproduced in performances of cultural identity through which
suppliers show their agility and efficiency. Such performances, in turn, are
encouraged by new figures of labor and labor power in which making a living
appears as management, consumption, or entrepreneurship. These figurations blur
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the lines between self-exploitation and superexploitation, not just for owner-
operators but also for the workers recruited into supplier enterprises. Through
such forms of exploitation, supply chain capitalism creates both great wealth and
great poverty.
If supply chains use cultural diversity, does that mean that supply chain capitalism
is in control of diversity at a global scale? Geographer Susanne Freidberg’s (2004)
comparison of anglophone and francophone supply chains for French beans is helpful
in explaining why not. She shows us the heterogeneity of supply chains, particularly in
their use of cultural diversity. Freidberg’s supply chains link France and Burkina Faso,
on the one hand, and Great Britain and Zambia, on the other. Despite their similar
geographies and identical product, the chains are quite different. French chains
fetishize difference, putting the work of translation in the hands of merchants; British
chains require cultural similarity as a technique of ‘‘supply chain management.’’
Freidberg shows how these differences build on entangled histories of power and
respond to the possibilities of postcolonial relations between metropoles in Europe
and peripheries in Africa. National and colonial histories*/rather than ‘‘economic’’
functional requirements*/explain the divergent trajectories of the chains. Freid-
berg’s analysis allows us to consider the power of supply chain capitalism without
attributing total control to it. Diversity is both ‘‘inside’’ and ‘‘outside’’ supply chain
capitalism. It both makes supply chain capitalism work and, upon occasion, gets in its
way.
It is in this light, indeed, that one can appreciate the pleasures together with the
dangers of diversity. Because diversity is not entirely created by employers, it offers a
wealth of resources, for better or worse, that workers use without considering the
best interests of their employers. At their very best, supply chains can offer sites for
self-expression that are unavailable in more conventional forms of livelihood. The
mushroom pickers I am studying want to be foraging in the mountains. Here they can
combine making a living and revitalizing ethnic and gender histories. Supply chains
are not always evil. Furthermore, even in the most exploitative situations, nonwork
identities are not only about labor discipline; they also open alternatives. James
Hamm (2007) describes a man working in Mexico’s maquiladora industry whose
dreams of becoming an independent furniture craftsman sustain his hopes for a better
 172 TSING

future.32 Like J. K. Gibson-Graham (2006), Hamm imagines creative alternatives

emerging from within the interstices between capitalist and noncapitalist spaces.
Supply chain performances of niche specificity can make such alternatives more
evident, as workers endorse projects of identity that move them beyond (as well as,
of course, within) the limitations of their workplaces. There are possibilities for a
more livable world here as well as perils. But neither of these can be addressed so
long as Utopian thinkers and critical analysts ignore diversity within the structure of
capitalism.

Into the Labyrinth

Niche-based capitalism is not omnipotent. Indeed, almost by definition, it is

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disorganized. Despite the paranoid exertions of top-of-the-chain firms such as Wal-

Mart, no one can fully keep track of the activities of every firm on the chain. As Nike,
quoted at the start of this essay, put it, ‘‘With such cultural, societal and economic
diversity, our supply chain is not only large, but complex and ever-changing, making
compliance standards and assurance, as suggested by our Code of Conduct, and
precise progress measurement extremely difficult.’’33
Niche-based capitalism depends on firms that ply the edge of economic sustain-
ability*/and thus negotiate, too, the edge of legitimacy. It is necessarily rent by
scandals. Supply chains that generate high profits depend on firms that break not just
national laws but also every conceivable humanitarian and environmental standard.
Some of them get caught and exposed. Such scandals do not destroy the system.
However, they do present openings for criticism and oppositional mobilizations. Such
openings will continue to be plentiful as long as supply chains are squeezed for
maximum profits. Radical critics and activists should use them.
Using such openings is one way of staying politically close to supply chain
hierarchies. This kind of political work requires careful attention to the specificities
of particular labor-and-capital-making niches. But this specificity is not enough; our
analysis must consider supply chain axes as well as the matrix of other connected and
disconnected niches in which a particular niche is embedded.34 The articulation
across such different niches is important in creating misery*/or decent livelihoods. I
am not asking that political theorists and activists descend into the pointillism of one
niche, one struggle. Instead, my goal is to turn attention to the full tapestry of
gender, race, and national status through which supply chain exploitation becomes
possible.

32. I owe this insight, and the citation, to Kenan Erçel. Hamm’s analysis concerns both the man
and his wife, but his analysis of the wife, which refuses earlier feminist simplifications by
abandoning the specificity of women’s issues, is less convincing.
33. I am grateful to Stade (forthcoming) for introducing me to Nike’s web site: http://www.
nike.com/nikebiz/nikebiz.jhtml;bsessionid"14BOXLC4W4QMACQCGIPCF4YKAIZEMIZB?page"
25&cat"businessmodel (accessed 2 February 2006).
34. Bonacich and Wilson (2005) offer a nice example of thinking through the vulnerabilities of
supply chains in their suggestion that the site to begin to organize Wal-Mart would be logistic
workers, to whom Wal-Mart has brought sharply declining standards.
 SUPPLY CHAIN CAPITALISM 173

Political theory almost never looks at tapestries. It is proud of its monocolor

landscapes, which somehow seem more ‘‘theoretical’’ for their oversimplifications.
Reading them from the United States, it is difficult not to associate such theoretical
aspirations with the simplifications of U.S. hegemony. U.S. Americans learn to see the
world in simple colors. If U.S. Americans learn even one language other than English,
they are unusual talents. We almost never notice more than one non!/U.S. place at a
given moment in history; it is enough for now, for example, to know that Iraq is out
there, and every other place vanishes from the news. Yet in other parts of the world,
it really isn’t unusual to know several different languages and to be rather
knowledgeable about many countries. To ask for a more polyglot political theory
should not be impossible.
Supply chain capitalism demands it.
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Acknowledgments
While I have tried to hold on to the naı¨ve enthusiasm that gave birth to this essay, I
also want to acknowledge its many midwives. The first version was prepared for
Tania Li’s capitalism study group at the University of Toronto in December 2005, and
the participants in that seminar deserve my hearty thanks for their comments.
Subsequent versions were presented at a capitalism seminar of the Institute for
Advanced Feminist Research of the University of California, Santa Cruz; at a
conference on globalization at Stanford University; at the 2006 anthropology
Megaseminar in Denmark; at the Markets in Time seminar at the University of
Minnesota; as a colloquium for sociologists at the University of California, Santa
Barbara; and at the 2007 conference, Capitalism and Poverty, in Manchester. I am
grateful for the useful feedback from each of those occasions; with humility, I admit
that I have been unable to incorporate most of it without starting another paper.
Certainly, I tried, and the long period before this paper’s publication reflects that
eventually abandoned struggle. I also want to acknowledge the many conversations
to which I am indebted, beginning with the stimulus of the Feminism and Global War
group of the IAFR as well as the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of
California at Santa Cruz; Lisa Rofel and Sylvia Yanagisako’s challenge to think about
capitalism; Neferti Tadiar’s ‘‘feminist rage’’; and the collaborative energies of the
Matsutake Worlds Research Group. Great conversations, research insights, and
comments from Mark Anderson, Gopal Balakrishnan, Henry Bernstein, Kum-kum
Bhavnani, Nils Bubandt, Liam Campling, Julie Chu, Paulla Ebron, Bregje Van Eekelen,
Kenan Erçel, John Foran, Dorian Fougeres, Julie Graham, Maia Green, Donna
Haraway, Barbara Hariss-White, Gail Hershatter, Karen Ho, Hjorleifur Jonsson,
Uma Kothari, Tania Li, Emily Martin, Megan Moodie, Lisa Rofel, James Scott, Bettina
Stoetzer, and Sylvia Yanagisako were essential ingredients. Again, I have not been
able to incorporate most of what they taught me here, but I hope it shows up in my
subsequent work. Finally, the patience and generosity of Jack Amariglio and Karen
Ho in soliciting versions of this paper for publication have helped me take this essay
off the shelf despite my awareness of its flaws.
 174 TSING

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 Copyright Henrietta L. Moore 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

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photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher.

Fourth printing, 1995

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Moore, Henrietta L.
Feminism and anthropology / Henrietta L. Moore,
p. cm.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8166-1748-1 ISBN 0-8166-1750-3 (pbk.l
1. Anthropology—Philosophy. 2. Ethnology—Philosophy. 3. Women.
4. Feminism. I. Title.
GN33.M56 1988
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 1
FEMINISM AND ANTHROPOLOGY:
THE STORY OF A RELATIONSHIP
Anthropology is the study of man embracing woman.
Bronislaw Malinowski

The feminist critique in social anthropology, as in the other social

sciences, grew out of a specific concern with the neglect of women
in the discipline. However, unravelling the history of that neglect is
difficult because of the ambiguous way in which social anthropology
has always treated women. Women were not ignored in traditional
anthropology.
At the level of 'observation' in fieldwork, the behaviour of women has,
of course, like that of men, been exhaustively plotted: their marriages,
their economic activity, their rites and the rest. (Ardener, 1975a: 1)
Women have always been present in ethnographic accounts, primarily
because of the traditional anthropological concern with kinship and
marriage. The main problem was not, therefore, one of empirical
study, but rather one of representation. In a famous study which
discusses this problem, the authors analysed the different interpret-
ations given by male and female ethnographers to the position and
nature of Australian Aboriginal women. The male ethnographers
spoke of the women as profane, economically unimportant and
excluded from rituals. The female researchers, on the other hand,
described the women's central role in subsistence, the importance of
women's rituals and the respectful way in which they were treated by
men (Rohrlich-Leavitt et al., 1975). Women were present in both sets
of ethnographies, but in very different ways.
The new 'anthropology of women' thus began, in the early 1970s, by
confronting the problem of how women were represented in anthro-
pological writing. The initial problem was quickly identified as one of
male bias, which was seen as having three layers or 'tiers'. The first
2 The Story of a Relationship

layer consists of the bias imported by the anthropologist, who brings to

the research various assumptions and expectations about the relation-
ships between women and men, and about the significance of those
relationships for an understanding of the wider society.
Male bias is carried into field research. It is often claimed that men in
other cultures are more accessible to outsiders (especially male outsid-
ers) for questioning. A more serious and prior problem is that we think
that men control the significant information in other cultures, as we are
taught to believe they do in ours. We search them out and tend to pay
little attention to the women. Believing that men are easier to talk to,
more involved in the crucial cultural spheres, we fulfill our own
prophecies in finding them to be better informants in the field. (Reiter,
1975: 14)

The second bias is one inherent in the society being studied. Women
are considered as subordinate to men in many societies, and this view
of gender relations is likely to be the one communicated to the
enquiring anthropologist. The third and final layer is provided by the
bias inherent in Western culture. The argument here is that, when
researchers perceive the asymmetrical relations between women and
men in other cultures, they assume such asymmetries to be analogous
to their own cultural experience of the unequal and hierarchical nature
of gender relations in Western society. A number of feminist anthro-
pologists have now made the point that, even where more egalitarian
relations between women and men exist, researchers are very often
unable to understand this potential equality because they insist on
interpreting difference and asymmetry as inequality and hierarchy
(Rogers, 1975; Leacock, 1978; Dwyer, 1978; see chapter 2 for further
discussion of this point).
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that feminist anthropologists saw
their initial task as one of deconstructing this three-tiered structure of
male bias. One way in which this could be done was by focusing on
women, by studying and describing what women really do, as opposed
to what men (ethnographers and informants) say they do, and by
recording and analysing the statements, perceptions and attitudes of
women themselves. However, correcting male bias in reporting, and
building up new data on women and women's activities, could only be
a first step - albeit a very necessary one - because the real problem
about incorporating women into anthropology lies not at the level of
empirical research but at the theoretical and analytical level. Feminist
anthropology is, therefore, faced with the much larger task of
reworking and redefining anthropology theory. 'Just as many feminists
found that the goals of the women's movement could not be fulfilled
 The Story of a Relationship 3

by the "add-women-and-stir method", so women's studies scholars

discovered that academic fields could not be cured of sexism simply by
accretion' (Boxer, 1982: 258). Anthropologists quickly recognized
themselves as 'heirs to a sociological tradition' that has always treated
women as 'essentially uninteresting and irrelevant' (Rosaldo, 1974:
17). But they also recognized that simply 'adding' women to traditional
anthropology would not resolve the problem of women's analytical
'invisibility': it would not make the issue of male bias go away.

Models and muting

Edwin Ardener was among the first to recognize the significance of
'male bias' for the development of models of explanation in social
anthropology. He proposed a theory of 'muted groups', in which he
argued that the dominant groups in society generate and control the
dominant modes of expression. Muted groups are silenced by the
structures of dominance, and if they wish to express themselves they
are forced to do so through the dominant modes of expression, the
dominant ideologies (Ardener, 1975b: 21-3). Any group which is
silenced or rendered inarticulate in this way (gypsies, children,
criminals) may be considered a 'muted' group, and women are only
one such case. According to Ardener, 'mutedness' is the product of the
relations of dominance which exist between dominant and sub-
dominant groups in society. His theory does not imply that the 'mute'
should actually be silent, nor does it necessarily imply that they are
neglected at the level of empirical research. Women may speak a great
deal, their activities and responsibilities may be minutely observed by
the ethnographer, as Ardener points out, but they remain 'muted'
because their model of reality, their view of the world, cannot be
realized or expressed using the terms of the dominant male model. The
dominant male structures of society inhibit the free expression of
alternative models, and sub-dominant groups are forced to structure
their understanding of the world through the model of the dominant
group. As far as Ardener is concerned, the problem of muting is a prob-
lem of frustrated communication. The free expression of the 'female
perspective' is blocked at the level of ordinary, direct language.
Women cannot use the male-dominated structures of language to say
what they want to say, to give an account of their view of the world.
Their utterances are oblique, muffled, muted. Ardener, therefore,
suggests that women and men have different 'world-views' or models
of society (Ardener, 1975a: 5).1 He goes on to link the existence of
4 The Story of a Relationship
'male' and 'female' models to the problem of male bias in ethnographic
accounts.
Ardener argues that the kinds of models provided by male infor-
mants are the sort of models which are familiar and intelligible to
anthropological researchers. This is because researchers are either
men, or women trained in a male-oriented discipline. Anthropology
itself orders the world in a male idiom. The fact that linguistic concepts
and categories in Western culture equate 'man' with society as a
whole - as in 'mankind', and as in the use of the male pronoun to mean
both he and she - has led anthropologists to imagine that the 'male
view' is also 'society's view'. Ardener's conclusion is that male bias
exists not just because the majority of ethnographers and informants
are male, but because anthropologists - women and men - have been
using male models drawn from their own culture to explain male
models present in other cultures. As a result, a series of homologies is
established between the ethnographer's models and those of the
people (men) who are being studied. Women's models are suppressed.
The analytical and conceptual tools to hand actually prevent the
anthropologist from hearing and/or understanding the views of
women. It is not that women are silent; it is just that they cannot be
heard. 'Those trained in ethnography evidently have a bias towards
the kinds of models that men are ready to provide (or to concur in)
rather than towards any that women might provide. If the men appear
"articulate" compared with the women, it is a case of like speaking to
like' (Ardener, 1975a: 2).
Ardener correctly identifies the problem as residing not just in the
practice of anthropological fieldwork, but in the conceptual frame-
works which underlie that practice. Theory always informs the way in
which we collect, interpret and present data, and as such it can never
be neutral. Feminist anthropology is not, therefore, about 'adding'
women into the discipline, but is instead about confronting the
conceptual and analytical inadequacies of disciplinary theory. The task
itself is a formidable one, but the most immediate question is one of
how it should be tackled.

Women studying women

Ardener's contention that men and women have different models of
the world obviously applies as much to the anthropologist's society as
it does to the society being studied by the anthropologist. This fact
raises the interesting question of whether female anthropologists look
at the world differently from their male colleagues and, if so, whether
 The Story of a Relationship 5

this gives them some special advantage when it comes to studying

women. These kinds of issues were taken up very early on in the
development of the 'anthropology of women', and fears were ex-
pressed that what had once been 'male bias' would be replaced by a
corresponding 'female bias'. If the model of the world was inadequate
when seen through the eyes of men, why should it be any less so when
seen through the eyes of women? The issue of whether women
anthropologists are more qualified than their male colleagues to study
other women remains a contentious point. The privileging of the
female ethnographer, as Shapiro points out, not only casts doubt on
the ability of women to study men, but ultimately casts doubt on the
whole project and purpose of anthropology: the comparative study of
human societies.
Implicit in many discussions of sex bias, and in much of the literature in
women's studies . . . is the assumption that only women can or should
study women - what we might call the it-takes-one-to-know-one
position. This attitude, prompted by a feminist awareness of the
distorting views of women held by the largely male social scientific
establishment, also finds support in the practicalities of fieldwork; the
division between men's and women's social worlds is sharply drawn in a
large number of societies. Tendencies towards a sexual division of labour
in our profession, however, require critical reflection more than they
require epistemological justification or a new source of ideological
support. After all, if it really took one to know one, the entire field of
anthropology would be an aberration. (Shapiro, 1981: 124-5)

Women in the ghetto

Milton (1979), Shapiro (1981) and Strathern (1981a) have all pointed
to problems concerning the assumption of a privileged status by
women ethnographers with regard to the women they study. Critical
reflection on this issue suggests that the problems are of three kinds.
First, there is the argument about ghettoization and the possible
formation of a sub-discipline. This argument is concerned with the
position and status of women's anthropology within the discipline as a
whole. The most salient fear is that, if an explicit focus on women or
the 'female point of view' arises as an alternative to a focus on men and
the 'male point of view', then much of the force of feminist research is
lost through a segregation which consistently defines such work as the
'not male': the 'female anthropology'. This fear arises in part because
the 'anthropology of women', unlike any other aspect of anthropology,
consists of women studying women. The women who study women
fear not ghettoization but marginalization, and this is a very well-
grounded fear. However, to see the issues in these terms misses the
6 The Story of a Relationship

point somewhat because it totally fails to take into account the very im-
portant distinction between the 'anthropology of women' and feminist
anthropology. The 'anthropology of women' was the precursor to
feminist anthropology; it was very successful in bringing women 'back
into view' in the discipline, but in so doing it was more remedial than
radical. Feminist anthropology is more than the study of women. It is
the study of gender, of the interrelations between women and men,
and of the role of gender in structuring human societies, their histories,
ideologies, economic systems and political structures. Gender can no
more be marginalized in the study of human societies than can the con-
cept of 'human action', or the concept of 'society'. It would not be pos-
sible to pursue any sort of social science without a concept of gender.
This does not, of course, mean that efforts to marginalize feminist
anthropology will cease. They will not. Anthropology has sometimes
been praised for the way in which feminist critiques have found
acceptance in mainstream anthropology, and for the way in which the
study of gender has become an accepted part of the discipline (Stacey
and Thome, 1985). This praise may be deserved, at least in part, but we
do need to heed those who point to the relatively small number of
courses on gender, to the difficulty of getting research funds to work on
gender issues, and to the relatively small number of employed women
anthropologists. It is still abundantly clear that the political marginali-
zation of feminist scholarship has much to do with the gender of its
practitioners.
The accusation that the study of women has become a sub-discipline
within social anthropology can also be tackled by reformulating our
perception of what the study of gender involves. Anthropology is
famous for a remarkable intellectual pluralism, as evidenced by the
different specialist sub-divisions of the discipline, for example,
economic anthropology, political anthropology, cognitive anthro-
pology; the various specialist areas of enquiry, such as the anthro-
pology of law, the anthropology of death, historical anthropology;
and the different theoretical frameworks, such as Marxism, structura-
lism, symbolic anthropology.2 It is true that there is considerable
disagreement in anthropology about how such typologies of the
discipline should be constructed. However, when we try to fit the
study of gender relations into a typology of this kind, we immediately
become aware of the irrelevance of the term 'sub-discipline' with
regard to modern social anthropology. In what sense are any of the
categories in such a typology sub-disciplinary? This question is one
which is further complicated by the fact that the study of gender
relations could potentially occupy a position in all three categories.
Attempts to assign sub-disciplinary status to feminist anthropology
have more to do with processes of political containment than with
serious intellectual considerations.
 The Story of a Relationship 7

The universal woman

Returning to the issue of women studying women, the second problem
concerning the proposition that 'it takes one to know one' concerns the
analytical status of the sociological category 'woman'. The anxieties
about ghettoization and the formation of a sub-discipline of 'women's
anthropology' are, of course, related to genuine fears about marginali-
zation, but they are also connected to the ghettoization of 'women' as
a category and/or object of study in the discipline. The privileged
relationship between female ethnographer and female informant
depends on the assumption of a universal category 'woman'. How-
ever, just as constructs like 'marriage', the 'family', and the
'household' require analysis, so too does the empirical category
'woman'. The images, attributes, activities and appropriate behaviour
associated with women are always culturally and historically specific.
What the category 'woman', or, for that matter, the category 'man',
means in a given context has to be investigated and not assumed
(MacCormack and Strathern, 1980; Ortner and Whitehead, 1981a). As
Brown and Jordanova point out, biological differences do not provide
a universal basis for social definitions. 'What cultures make of sex
differences is almost infinitely variable, so that biology cannot be
playing a determining role. Women and men are products of social
relations, if we change the social relations we change the categories
"woman" and "man" ' (Brown and Jordanova, 1982: 393).
On the basis of this argument, the concept 'woman' cannot stand as
an analytical category in anthropological enquiry, and consequently
there can be no analytical meaning in such concepts as 'the position of
women', the 'subordination of women' and 'male dominance' when
applied universally. The inevitable fact of biological difference
between the sexes tells us nothing about the general social significance
of that difference. Anthropologists are well aware of this point, and
they recognize that feminist anthropology must not claim that women
cannot be confined to and defined by their biology while simul-
taneously refining female physiology into a cross-cultural, social
category.

Ethnocentrism and racism

The third problem with regard to the theoretical and political complex-
ities of women studying other women concerns the issues of race and
ethnocentrism (bias in favour of one's own culture). Anthropology has
been, and is still, critically involved in coming to terms with its colonial
past, and with the power relationship which characterizes the encoun-
ter between those who study and those who are studied (Asad, 1973;
Huizer and Mannheim, 1979). However, anthropology has yet to
8 The Story of a Relationship

respond to the arguments of black anthropologists and black feminists

who point to the racist assumptions which underlie much anthropo-
logical theorizing and writing (Lewis, 1973; Magubane, 1971; Owusu,
1979; Amos and Parmar, 1984; Bhavnani and Coulson, 1986). This is,
in part, because anthropology has tended to approach the problem
of Western cultural bias - which it recognizes and has analysed
exhaustively - through the notion of ethnocentrism. The fundamental
importance of the critique of ethnocentrism in anthropology is not in
doubt (see chapter 2 for a demonstration of this point). Historically, an-
thropology has emerged out of, and been sustained by, a dominant
Western discourse. Without a concept of ethnocentrism, it would be
impossible to question the dominant categories of discipline thinking,
to think outside the theoretical parameters those categories impose,
and to interrogate the foundations of anthropological thought. The
concept of ethnocentrism underlies anthropology's critique of anthrop-
ology. However, there are issues which cannot be contained in, or
confronted under, the notion of ethnocentrism, because they are not
engaged by the terms of this internal critique. Anthropology talks
about the 'ethnocentric' assumptions of the discipline rather than the
'racist' assumptions. The concept of ethnocentrism, while immensely
valuable, tends to sidestep the issue somewhat.3 This can be demon-
strated by looking afresh at some of the material already discussed in
this chapter.
At the beginning of this chapter I discussed the debates which arose
in the new 'anthropology of women' concerning male bias in the
discipline. One sort or layer of male bias was correctly analysed as be-
ing inherent in Western cultural assumptions, and was seen as being
imposed on other cultures through the process of anthropological
interpretation. This argument is undoubtedly correct, but it must be
seen itself as part of an emerging body of anthropological theory. It is
quite clear that as a theoretical proposition it contains the assumption
that anthropologists come from Western cultures, and that, by
extension, they are white. Critics would, of course, be quite justified in
saying that to assume that someone comes from a Western culture does
not mean that it is also assumed that they are white; they might add
that Western cultural biases will be evident in the work of Western-
trained anthropologists whether they are Westerners or not. These are
fairly standard responses, but to accept them uncritically also means
accepting the argument that when the term 'anthropologist' is used it
automatically refers to both black and white anthropologists. This is
difficult because feminist anthropologists know only too well that the
term 'anthropologist' has not always included women. Exclusion by
omission is still exclusion.
However, the deconstruction of the sociological category 'woman',
 The Story of a Relationship 9

with the recognition that the experiences and activities of women

always have to be analysed in their socially and historically specific
contexts, provides a basis from which feminist anthropologists could
begin to respond to the arguments concerning racism in the discipline.
There are a number of reasons why this should be so. First, it forces us
to reformulate the privileging of the woman ethnographer with regard
to the women she studies, and to acknowledge that the power relations
in the ethnographic encounter are not necessarily ones which are
erased simply by commonalities of sex. Secondly, it brings into
theoretical and political focus the fact that, while women in a variety of
societies share similar experiences and problems, these similarities
have to be set against the very different experiences of women
worldwide, especially with regard to race, colonialism, the rise of
industrial capitalism and the interventions of international develop-
ment agencies.4 Thirdly, it shifts the theoretical focus away from
notions of 'sameness', from ideas about the 'shared experience of
women' and the 'universal subordination of women', towards a critical
rethinking of concepts of 'difference'. Anthropologists have always
recognized and emphasized cultural difference; it has been the bedrock
of the discipline. Furthermore, it has been the aspect of anthropology
which feminists and many others outside the discipline have ap-
plauded most. Anthropological data have been extensively used as the
basis for a critique of Western culture and its assumptions. This is why
it is necessary to say something about why the anthropological concept
of 'cultural difference' is not the same thing as the notion of 'difference'
which is beginning to emerge in feminist anthropology.
Anthropology has struggled long and hard to establish that 'cultural
difference' is not about the peculiarities and oddities of 'other cultures',
but rather about recognizing cultural uniqueness, while at the same
time seeking out the similarities in human cultural life.5 This is the
basis for the comparative project in anthropology. Understanding
cultural difference is essential, but the concept itself can no longer
stand as the ruling concept of a modern anthropology, because it
addresses only one form of difference among many. Anthropology has
always investigated kinship, ritual, economics and gender in terms of
the way in which these are organized, constructed and experienced
through culture. The differences which have been observed have
therefore been interpreted as cultural differences. But, once we agree
that cultural difference is only one form of difference among many, this
approach becomes insufficient. Feminist anthropology has recognized
this insufficiency in so far as it formulates its theoretical questions in
terms of how economics, kinship and ritual are experienced and
structured through gender, rather than asking how gender
is experienced and structured through culture. It has also gone on to
10 The Story of a Relationship

ask how gender is structured and experienced through colonialism,

through neo-imperialism and through the rise of capitalism. But it
must be said that it has, for the most part, still to confront the question
of how gender is constructed and experienced through race. This is
largely because anthropology still has to unravel and take on board the
difference between racism and ethnocentricism (see chapter 6).
Feminist anthropology is not alone, by any means, in its attempts
to understand difference and to look at the complex ways in which
gender, race and class intersect and cross-cut each other, as well as the
way in which all three intersect with colonialism, the international
division of labour and the rise of the modern state. Marxist anthro-
pology, world systems theory, historians, economic anthropologists
and many other practitioners in the social sciences are engaged in
parallel projects. The question of difference, however, poses a particu-
lar problem for feminists.

Feminism and difference6

When we move away from the privileged status of the woman
ethnographer with regard to the women she studies, and away from
the concept of 'sameness' on which the notion of the universal
'woman' is based, we find ourselves questioning, not only the
theoretical assumptions of social anthropology, but the aims and
political cohesiveness of feminism. 'Feminism', like 'anthropology', is
one of those words which everybody thinks they know the meaning
of. In a minimalist definition, feminism could be taken to refer to the
awareness of women's oppression and exploitation at work, in the
home and in society as well as to the conscious political action taken by
women to change this situation. Such a definition has a number of con-
sequences. First, it implies that, at some fundamental level, there exists
a unitary body of women's interests, which should be and can be
fought for. Secondly, it is clear that although feminism recognizes
differences in feminist politics - socialist feminists, Marxist feminists,
radical separatists and so on - the underlying premise of feminist
politics is that there is an actual, or potential, identity between women.
This premise obviously exists because it is the basis on which or from
which the unitary body of women's interests is derived. Thirdly,
feminist politics further depends for its cohesion - whether potential or
actual - on women's shared oppression. The recognition of shared
oppression is the basis for 'sexual polities' premised on the notion that
women as a social group are dominated by men as a social group
(Delmar, 1986: 26). The end result is that feminism as a cultural
critique, as a political critique and as a basis for political action is
 The Story of a Relationship 11

identified with women - not with women in their socially and

historically distinct context, but with women as a sociological category.
The problem for feminism is that the concept of difference threatens to
deconstruct this isomorphism, this 'sameness', and with it the whole
edifice on which feminist politics is based.
Both anthropology and feminism have to cope with difference.
Looking at the relationship between feminism and anthropology, we
can see that feminist anthropology began by criticizing male bias
within the discipline, and the neglect and/or distortion of women and
women's activities. This is the phase in the 'relationship' which we can
refer to as the 'anthropology of women'. The next phase was based
on a critical reworking of the universal category 'woman', which was
accompanied by an equally critical look at the question of whether
women were especially well equipped to study other women. This led,
quite naturally, to anxieties about ghettoization and marginalization
within the discipline of social anthropology. However, as a result of
this phase, feminist anthropology began to establish new approaches,
new areas of theoretical enquiry, and to redefine its project not as the
'study of women' but as the 'study of gender'. As we enter the third
phase of this relationship, we see feminist anthropology begin to try to
come to terms with the real differences between women, as opposed
to contenting itself with demonstrations of the variety of women's
experiences, situations and activities worldwide. This phase will
involve the building of theoretical constructs which deal with differ-
ence, and will be crucially concerned with looking at how racial
difference is constructed through gender, how racism divides gender
identity and experience, and how class is shaped by gender and race. In
the process of this, feminist anthropology will be involved not just in
reformulating anthropological theory but in reformulating feminist
theory. Anthropology is in a position to provide a critique of feminism
based on the deconstruction of the category 'woman'. It is also able to
provide cross-cultural data which demonstrate the Western bias in
much mainstream feminist theorizing (see chapters 5 and 6 for further
discussion of this point). The third, and current, phase of the
relationship between feminism and anthropology is thus characterized
by a move away from 'sameness' towards 'difference', and by an
attempt to establish the theoretical and empirical grounds for a
feminist anthropology based on difference.
This page was intentionally left blank
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Butler, Judith.
Undoing gender/by Judith Butler.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-96922-0 (alk. paper) – ISBN 0-415-96923-9 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Sex role. 2. Gender identity, I. Title.
HQ1075.B89 2004
305.3–dc22 2003066872

ISBN 0-415-96922-0 (hb)

ISBN 0-415-96923-9 (pb)
 2. Gender Regulations

A t first glance, the term “regulation” appears to suggest the

institutionalization of the process by which persons are made
regular. Indeed, to refer to regulation in the plural is already to
acknowledge those concrete laws, rules, and policies that constitute
the legal instruments through which persons are made regular. But it
would be a mistake, I believe, to understand all the ways in which
gender is regulated in terms of those empirical legal instances because
the norms that govern those regulations exceed the very instances in
which they are embodied. On the other hand, it would be equally
problematic to speak of the regulation of gender in the abstract, as if
the empirical instances only exemplified an operation of power that
takes place independently of those instances.
Indeed, much of the most important work with feminist and lesbian/
gay studies has concentrated on actual regulations: legal, military, psy-
chiatric, and a host of others. The kinds of questions posed within such
scholarship tend to ask how gender is regulated, how such regulations
are imposed, and how they become incorporated and lived by the sub-
jects on whom they are imposed. But for gender to be regulated is not
simply for gender to come under the exterior force of a regulation.1 If
gender were to exist prior to its regulation, we could then take gender
as our theme and proceed to enumerate the various kinds of regula-
tions to which it is subjected and the ways in which that subjection
 Gender Regulations 41

takes place. The problem, however, for us is more acute. After all, is
there a gender that preexists its regulation, or is it the case that, in
being subject to regulation, the gendered subject emerges, produced in
and through that particular form of subjection? Is subjection not the
process by which regulations produce gender?
It is important to remember at least two caveats on subjection and
regulation derived from Foucaultian scholarship: (1) regulatory power
not only acts upon a preexisting subject but also shapes and forms that
subject; moreover, every juridical form of power has its productive
effect; and (2) to become subject to a regulation is also to become sub-
jectivated by it, that is, to be brought into being as a subject precisely
through being regulated. This second point follows from the first in
that the regulatory discourses which form the subject of gender are
precisely those that require and induce the subject in question.
Particular kinds of regulations may be understood as instances of a
more general regulatory power, one that is specified as the regulation of
gender. Here I contravene Foucault in some respects. For if the Fou-
caultian wisdom seems to consist in the insight that regulatory power has
certain broad historical characteristics, and that it operates on gender as
well as on other kinds of social and cultural norms, then it seems that
gender is but the instance of a larger regulatory operation of power. I
would argue against this subsumption of gender to regulatory power that
the regulatory apparatus that governs gender is one that is itself gender-
specific. I do not mean to suggest that the regulation of gender is para-
digmatic of regulatory power as such, but rather, that gender requires
and institutes its own distinctive regulatory and disciplinary regime.
The suggestion that gender is a norm requires some further elabo-
ration. A norm is not the same as a rule, and it is not the same as a
law.2 A norm operates within social practices as the implicit standard
of normalization. Although a norm may be analytically separable from
the practices in which it is embedded, it may also prove to be recalci-
trant to any effort to decontextualize its operation. Norms may or may
not be explicit, and when they operate as the normalizing principle in
social practice, they usually remain implicit, difficult to read, discernible
most clearly and dramatically in the effects that they produce.
For gender to be a norm suggests that it is always and only tenu-
ously embodied by any particular social actor. The norm governs the
social intelligibility of action, but it is not the same as the action that
 42 Undoing Gender

it governs. The norm appears to be indifferent to the actions that it

governs, by which I mean only that the norm appears to have a sta-
tus and effect that is independent of the actions governed by the norm.
The norm governs intelligibility, allows for certain kinds of practices
and action to become recognizable as such, imposing a grid of legi-
bility on the social and defining the parameters of what will and will
not appear within the domain of the social. The question of what it
is to be outside the norm poses a paradox for thinking, for if the norm
renders the social field intelligible and normalizes that field for us, then
being outside the norm is in some sense being defined still in relation
to it. To be not quite masculine or not quite feminine is still to be
understood exclusively in terms of one’s relationship to the “quite mas-
culine” and the “quite feminine.”
To claim that gender is a norm is not quite the same as saying that
there are normative views of femininity and masculinity, even though
there clearly are such normative views. Gender is not exactly what one
“is” nor is it precisely what one “has.” Gender is the apparatus by
which the production and normalization of masculine and feminine
take place along with the interstitial forms of hormonal, chromosomal,
psychic, and performative that gender assumes. To assume that gender
always and exclusively means the matrix of the “masculine” and “femi-
nine” is precisely to miss the critical point that the production of that
coherent binary is contingent, that it comes at a cost, and that those
permutations of gender which do not fit the binary are as much a part
of gender as its most normative instance. To conflate the definition of
gender with its normative expression is inadvertently to reconsolidate
the power of the norm to constrain the definition of gender. Gender is
the mechanism by which notions of masculine and feminine are pro-
duced and naturalized, but gender might very well be the apparatus by
which such terms are deconstructed and denaturalized. Indeed, it may
be that the very apparatus that seeks to install the norm also works
to undermine that very installation, that the installation is, as it were,
definitionally incomplete. To keep the term “gender” apart from both
masculinity and femininity is to safeguard a theoretical perspective
by which one might offer an account of how the binary of masculine
and feminine comes to exhaust the semantic field of gender. Whether
one refers to “gender trouble” or “gender blending,” “transgender” or
“cross-gender,” one is already suggesting that gender has a way of
 Gender Regulations 43

moving beyond that naturalized binary. The conflation of gender with

masculine/feminine, man/woman, male/female, thus performs the very
naturalization that the notion of gender is meant to forestall.
Thus, a restrictive discourse on gender that insists on the binary of
man and woman as the exclusive way to understand the gender field
performs a regulatory operation of power that naturalizes the hege-
monic instance and forecloses the thinkability of its disruption.
One tendency within gender studies has been to assume that the
alternative to the binary system of gender is a multiplication of gen-
ders. Such an approach invariably provokes the question: how many
genders can there be, and what will they be called?3 But the disrup-
tion of the binary system need not lead us to an equally problematic
quantification of gender. Luce Irigaray, following a Lacanian lead, asks
whether the masculine sex is the “one” sex, meaning not only “the
one and only,” but the one that inaugurates a quantitative apprach to
sex. “Sex” in her view is neither a biological category nor a social one
(and is thus distinct from “gender”), but a linguistic one that exists,
as it were, on the divide between the social and the biological. “The
sex which is not one” is thus femininity understood precisely as what
cannot be captured by number.4 Other approaches insist that “trans-
gender” is not exactly a third gender, but a mode of passage between
genders, an interstitial and transitional figure of gender that is not
reducible to the normative insistence on one or two.5

Symbolic Positions and Social Norms

Although some theorists maintain that norms are always social

norms, Lacanian theorists, indebted to the structuralism of Claude
Lévi-Strauss, insist that symbolic norms are not the same as social
ones, and that a certain “regulation” of gender takes place through
the symbolic demand that is placed on psyches from their inception.
The “symbolic” became a technical term for Jacques Lacan in 1953
and became his own way of compounding mathematical (formal) and
anthropological uses of the term. In a dictionary on Lacanian parlance,
the symbolic is explicitly linked with the problem of regulation: “The
symbolic is the realm of the Law which regulates desire in the Oedipus
complex.”6 That complex is understood to be derived from a primary
 44 Undoing Gender

or symbolic prohibition against incest, a prohibition that makes sense

only in terms of kinship relations in which various “positions” are
established within the family according to an exogamic mandate. In
other words, a mother is someone with whom a son and daughter do
not have sexual relations, and a father is someone with whom a son
and daughter do not have sexual relations, a mother is someone who
only has sexual relations with the father, and so forth. These relations
of prohibition are encoded in the “position” that each of these family
members occupies. To be in such a position is thus to be in such a
crossed sexual relation, at least according to the symbolic or normative
conception of what that “position” is.
The consequences of this view are clearly enormous. In many ways
the structuralist legacy within psychoanalytic thinking exerted a mon-
umental effect on feminist film and literary theory, as well as feminist
approaches to psychoanalysis throughout the disciplines. It also paved
the way for a queer critique of feminism that has had, and continues
to have, inevitably divisive and consequential effects within sexuality
and gender studies. In what follows, I hope to show how the notion
of culture that becomes transmuted into the “symbolic” for Lacanian
psychoanalysis is very different from the notion of culture that remains
current within the contemporary field of cultural studies, such that the
two enterprises are often understood as hopelessly opposed. I also plan
to argue that any claim to establish the rules that “regulate desire” in
an inalterable and eternal realm of law has limited use for a theory
that seeks to understand the conditions under which the social trans-
formation of gender is possible. Another concern regarding the sym-
bolic is that the prohibition of incest can be one of the motivations
for its own transgression, which suggests that the symbolic positions
of kinship are in many ways defeated by the very sexuality that they
produce through regulation.7 Lastly, I hope to show that the distinc-
tion between symbolic and social law cannot finally hold, that the sym-
bolic itself is the sedimentation of social practices, and that radical
alterations in kinship demand a rearticulation of the structuralist pre-
suppositions of psychoanalysis, moving us, as it were, toward a queer
poststructuralism of the psyche.
To return to the incest taboo, the question emerges: what is the
status of these prohibitions and these positions? Lévi-Strauss makes
clear in The Elementary Structures of Kinship that nothing in biology
 Gender Regulations 45

necessitates the incest taboo, that it is a purely cultural phenomenon.

By “cultural,” Lévi-Strauss does not mean “culturally variable” or
“contingent,” but rather according to “universal” laws of culture.
Thus, for Lévi-Strauss, cultural rules are not alterable rules (as Gayle
Rubin subsequently argued), but are inalterable and universal. The
domain of a universal and eternal rule of culture—what Juliet Mitchell
calls “the universal and primordial law”8—becomes the basis for the
Lacanian notion of the symbolic and the subsequent efforts to divide
the symbolic from both the biological and social domains. In Lacan,
that which is universal in culture is understood to be its symbolic or
linguistic rules, and these are understood to support kinship relations.
The very possibility of pronomial reference, of an “I,” a “you,” a
“we,” and “they” appears to rely on this mode of kinship that operates
in and as language. This is a slide from the cultural to the linguistic,
one toward which Lévi-Strauss himself gestures toward the end of The
Elementary Structures of Kinship. In Lacan, the symbolic becomes
defined in terms of a conception of linguistic structures that are irre-
ducible to the social forms that language takes. According to struc-
turalist terms, it establishes the universal conditions under which the
sociality, that is, communicability of all language use, becomes possi-
ble. This move paves the way for the consequential distinction between
symbolic and social accounts of kinship.
Hence, a norm is not quite the same as “symbolic position” in the
Lacanian sense, which appears to enjoy a quasi-timeless character, regard-
less of the qualifications offered in endnotes to several of Lacan’s semi-
nars. The Lacanians almost always insist that a symbolic position is not
the same as a social one, that it would be a mistake to take the symbolic
position of the father, for instance, which is after all the paradigmatically
symbolic position, and mistake that for a socially constituted and alter-
able position that fathers have assumed throughout time. The Lacanian
view insists that there is an ideal and unconscious demand that is made
upon social life which remains irreducible to socially legible causes and
effects. The symbolic place of the father does not cede to the demands
for a social reorganization of paternity. Instead, the symbolic is precisely
what sets limits to any and all utopian efforts to reconfigure and relive
kinship relations at some distance from the oedipal scene.9
One of the problems that emerged when the study of kinship was
combined with the study of structural linguistics is that kinship positions
 46 Undoing Gender

were elevated to the status of fundamental linguistic structures. These

are positions that make possible the entry into language, and which,
therefore, maintain an essential status with respect to language. They
are, in other words, positions without which no signification could
proceed, or, in different language, no cultural intelligibility can be
secured. What were the consequences of making certain conceptions of
kinship timeless, and then elevating them to the status of the elementary
structures of intelligibility?
Although Lévi-Strauss purports to consider a variety of kinship
systems, he does so in the service of delimiting those principles of
kinship that assume cross-cultural status. What is offered by struc-
turalism as a “position” within language or kinship is not the same as
a “norm,” for the latter is a socially produced and variable framework.
A norm is not the same as a symbolic position. Moreover, if a sym-
bolic position is more appropriately regarded as a norm, then a sym-
bolic position is not the same as itself, but is, rather, a contingent norm
whose contingency has been covered over by a theoretical reification
that bears potentially stark consequences for gendered life. One might
respond within the structuralist conceit with the claim, “But this is the
law!” What is the status of such an utterance, however? “It is the
law!” becomes the utterance that performatively attributes the very
force to the law that the law itself is said to exercise. “It is the law”
is thus a sign of allegiance to the law, a sign of the desire for the law
to be the indisputable law, a theological impulse within the theory of
psychoanalysis that seeks to put out of play any criticism of the sym-
bolic father, the law of psychoanalysis itself. Thus, the status given to
the law is, not surprisingly, precisely the status given to the phallus,
where the phallus is not merely a privileged “signifier” within the
Lacanian scheme but becomes the characteristic feature of the theo-
retical apparatus in which that signifier is introduced. In other words,
the authoritative force that shores up the incontestability of the sym-
bolic law is itself an exercise of that symbolic law, a further instance
of the place of the father, as it were, indisputable and incontestable.
Although there are, as Lacanians will remind us, only and always
contestations of the symbolic, they fail to exercise any final force to
undermine the symbolic itself or to force a radical reconfiguration of
its terms.
 Gender Regulations 47

The authority of the theory exposes its own tautological defense

within the fact that the symbolic survives every and any contestation
of its authority. It is not only a theory, that is, that insists upon mas-
culine and feminine as symbolic positions which are finally beyond all
contestation and which set the limit to contestation as such, but one
that relies on the very authority it describes to shore up the authority
of its own descriptive claims.
To separate the symbolic from the social sphere facilitates the dis-
tinction between the Law and variable laws. In the place of a critical
practice that anticipates no final authority, and which opens up an
anxiety-producing field of gendered possibilities, the symbolic emerges
to put an end to such anxiety. If there is a Law that we cannot dis-
place, but which we seek through imaginary means to displace again
and again, then we know in advance that our efforts at change will
be put in check, and our struggle against the authoritative account of
gender will be thwarted, and we will submit to an unassailable author-
ity. There are those who believe that to think that the symbolic itself
might be changed by human practice is pure voluntarism. But is it?
One can certainly concede that desire is radically conditioned without
claiming that it is radically determined, and one can acknowledge that
there are structures that make desire possible without claiming that
those structures are timeless and recalcitrant, impervious to a reiterative
replay and displacement. To contest symbolic authority is not neces-
sarily a return to the “ego” or classical liberal notions of freedom,
rather to do so is to insist that the norm in its necessary temporality
is opened to a displacement and subversion from within.
The symbolic is understood as the sphere that regulates the assump-
tion of sex, where sex is understood as a differential set of positions,
masculine and feminine. Thus, the concept of gender, derived as it
is from sociological discourse, is foreign to the discourse on sexual
difference that emerges from the Lacanian and post-Lacanian frame-
work. Lacan was clearly influenced by Lévi-Strauss’s The Elementary
Structures of Kinship, first published in 1947, approximately six years
before Lacan uses the term.10 In the Lévi-Straussian model, the posi-
tion of man and woman is what makes possible certain forms of sex-
ual exchange. In this sense, gender operates to secure certain forms of
reproductive sexual ties and to prohibit other forms. One’s gender, in
 48 Undoing Gender

this view, is an index of the proscribed and prescribed sexual relations

by which a subject is socially regulated and produced.
According to Lévi-Strauss the rules that govern sexual exchange
and which, accordingly, produce viable subject positions on the basis
of that regulation of sexuality are distinct from the individuals who
abide by those rules and occupy such positions. That human actions
are regulated by such laws but do not have the power to transform
the substance and aim of their laws appears to be the consequence of
a conception of law that is indifferent to the content that it regulates.
How does a shift from thinking about gender as regulated by symbolic
laws to a conception of gender as regulated by social norms contest
this indifference of the law to what it regulates? And how does such
a shift open up the possibility of a more radical contestation of the
law itself?
If gender is a norm, it is not the same as a model that individuals
seek to approximate. On the contrary, it is a form of social power that
produces the intelligible field of subjects, and an apparatus by which
the gender binary is instituted. As a norm that appears independent of
the practices that it governs, its ideality is the reinstituted effect of those
very practices. This suggests not only that the relation between prac-
tices and the idealizations under which they work is contingent, but
that the very idealization can be brought into question and crisis,
potentially undergoing deidealization and divestiture.
The distance between gender and its naturalized instantiations is
precisely the distance between a norm and its incorporations. I suggested
above that the norm is analytically independent of its incorporations,
but I want to emphasize that this is only an intellectual heuristic, one
that helps to guarantee the perpetuation of the norm itself as a time-
less and inalterable ideal. In fact, the norm only persists as a norm to
the extent that it is acted out in social practice and reidealized and
reinstituted in and through the daily social rituals of bodily life. The norm
has no independent ontological status, yet it cannot be easily reduced to
its instantiations; it is itself (re)produced through its embodiment,
through the acts that strive to approximate it, through the idealizations
reproduced in and by those acts.
Foucault brought the discourse of the norm into currency by argu-
ing in The History of Sexuality (vol. 1), that the nineteenth century saw
the emergence of the norm as a means of social regulation which is
 Gender Regulations 49

not identical with the operations of law. Influenced by Foucault, the

sociologist, François Ewald, has expanded upon this remark in several
essays.26 Ewald argues that the action of the norm is at the expense
of the juridical system of the law, and that although normalization
entails an increase in legislation, it is not necessarily opposed to it, but
remains independent of it in some significant ways (“Norms” 138).
Foucault notes that the norm often appears in legal form, that the nor-
mative comes to the fore most typically in constitutions, legal codes,
and the constant and clamorous activity of the legislature (Foucault,
“Right of Death and Power Over Life”). Foucault further claims that
a norm belongs to the arts of judgment, and that although a norm is
clearly related to power, it is characterized less by the use of force or
violence than by, as Ewald puts it, “an implicit logic that allows power
to reflect upon its own strategies and clearly define its objects. This
logic is at once the force that enables us to imagine life and the living
as objects of power and the power that can take ‘life’ in hand, creat-
ing the sphere of the bio-political” (“Norms” 138).
For Ewald, this raises at least two questions, whether, for instance,
modernity participates in the logic of the norm and what the relation
between norms and the law would be.12 Although the norm is some-
times used as synonomous with “the rule,” it is clear that norms are
also what give rules a certain local coherence. Ewald claims that the
beginning of the nineteenth century inaugurates a radical change in the
relationship between the rule and the norm (“Norms” 140), and that
the norm emerges conceptually not only as a particular variety of rules,
but also as a way of producing them, and as a principle of valorization.
In French, the term normalité appears in 1834, normatif in 1868,
and in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century, we get the nor-
mative sciences (which, I gather, gets carried forward in the name of
the division at the contemporary American Political Science Association
meetings called “normative political theory”); the term “normalization”
appears in 1920. For Foucault as well as Ewald, it corresponds to the
normalizing operation of bureaucratic and disciplinary powers.
According to Ewald, the norm transforms constraints into a mech-
anism, and thus marks the movement by which, in Foucaultian terms,
juridical power becomes productive; it transforms the negative restraints
of the juridical into the more positive controls of normalization; thus
the norm performs this transformative function. The norm thus marks
 50 Undoing Gender

and effects the shift from thinking power as juridical constraint to think-
ing power as (a) an organized set of constraints, and (b) as a regulatory
mechanism.

Norms and the Problem of Abstraction

This then returns us to the question not only of how discourse might
be said to produce a subject (something everywhere assumed in cultural
studies but rarely investigated in its own right), but, more precisely, what
in discourse effects that production. When Foucault claims that discipline
“produces” individuals, he means not only that disciplinary discourse
manages and makes use of them but that it also actively constitutes them.
The norm is a measurement and a means of producing a common
standard, to become an instance of the norm is not fully to exhaust the
norm, but, rather, to become subjected to an abstraction of commonal-
ity. Although Foucault and Ewald tend to concentrate their analyses of
this process in the nineteenth century and twentieth century, Mary Poovey
in Making a Social Body dates the history of abstraction in the social
sphere to the late eighteenth century. In Britain, she maintains, “The last
decades of the eighteenth century witnessed the first modern efforts to
represent all or significant parts of the population of Britain as aggregates
and to delineate a social sphere distinct from the political and economic
domains” (8). What characterizes this social domain, in her view, is the
entrance of quantitative measurement: “Such comparisons and measure-
ment, of course, produce some phenomena as normative, ostensibly
because they are numerous, because they represent an average, or because
they constitute an ideal towards which all other phenomena move” (9).
Ewald seeks a narrower definition of the norm in order to understand
its capacity to regulate all social phenomena as well as the internal
limits it faces in any such regulation (“Power” 170–71). He writes:

what precisely is the norm? It is the measure which simultane-

ously individualizes, makes ceaseless individualisation possible
and creates comparability. The norm makes it possible to locate
spaces, indefinitely, which become more and more discrete,
minute, and at the same time makes sure that these spaces never
enclose anyone in such a way as to create a nature for them,
 Gender Regulations 51

since these individualising spaces are never more than the expres-
sion of a relationship, of a relationship which has to be seen
indefinitely in the context of others. What is a norm? A principle
of comparison, of comparability, a common measure, which is
instituted in the pure reference of one group to itself, when the
group has no relationship other than to itself, without external
reference and without verticality. (“Norms” 173, my emphasis)

According to Ewald, Foucault adds this to the thinking of normal-

isation: “normative individualisation is not exterior. The abnormal
does not have a nature which is different from that of the normal. The
norm, or normative space, knows no outside. The norm integrates any-
thing which might attempt to go beyond it—nothing, nobody, whatever
difference it might display, can ever claim to be exterior, or claim to pos-
sess an otherness which would actually make it other” (“Norms” 173).
Such a view suggests that any opposition to the norm is already
contained within the norm, and is crucial to its own functioning.
Indeed, at this point in our analysis, it appears that moving from a
Lacanian notion of symbolic position to a more Foucaultian concep-
tion of “social norm” does not augment the chances for an effective
displacement or resignification of the norm itself.
In the work of Pierre Macheray, however, one begins to see that
norms are not independent and self-subsisting entities or abstractions
but must be understood as forms of action. In “Towards a Natural
History of Norms,” Macheray makes clear that the kind of causality
that norms exercise is not transitive, but immanent, and he seeks
recourse to Spinoza and Foucault to make his claim:
To think in terms of the immanence of the norm is indeed to refrain
from considering the action of the norm in a restrictive manner, seeing
it as a form of “repression” formulated in terms of interdiction exercised
against a given subject in advance of the performance of this action,
thus implying that this subject could, on his own, liberate himself or
be liberated from this sort of control: the history of madness, just like
that of sexuality, shows that such “liberation,” far from suppressing
the action of norms, on the contrary reinforces it. But one might also
wonder if it is enough to denounce the illusions of this anti-repressive
discourse in order to escape from them: does one not run the risk of
reproducing them on another level, where they cease to be naive but
 52 Undoing Gender

where, though of a more learned nature, they still remain out of step
in relation to the context at which they seem to be aiming? (185)
By maintaining that the norm only subsists in and through its actions,
Macheray effectively locates action as the site of social intervention: “From
this point of view it is no longer possible to think of the norm itself in
advance of the consequences of its action, as being in some way behind
them and independent of them; the norm has to be considered such as it
acts precisely in its effects in such a way, not so as to limit the reality by
means of simple conditioning, but in order to confer upon it the maxi-
mum amount of reality of which it is capable” (186, my emphasis).
I mentioned above that the norm cannot be reduced to any of its
instances, but I would add: neither can the norm be fully extricated from
its instantiations. The norm is not exterior to its field of application. Not
only is the norm responsible for producing its field of application, accord-
ing to Macheray (187), but the norm produces itself in the production
of that field. The norm is actively conferring reality; indeed, only by virtue
of its repeated power to confer reality is the norm constituted as a norm.

Gender Norms

According to the notion or norms elaborated above, we might say

that the field of reality produced by gender norms constitutes the back-
ground for the surface appearance of gender in its idealized dimensions.
But how are we to understand the historical formation of such ideals,
their persistence through time, and their site as a complex convergence
of social meanings that do not immediately appear to be about gender?
To the extent that gender norms are reproduced, they are invoked and
cited by bodily practices that also have the capacity to alter norms in
the course of their citation. One cannot offer a full narrative account
of the citational history of the norm: whereas narrativity does not fully
conceal its history, neither does it reveal a single origin.
One important sense of regulation, then, is that persons are regu-
lated by gender, and that this sort of regulation operates as a condi-
tion of cultural intelligibilty for any person. To veer from the gender
norm is to produce the aberrant example that regulatory powers (med-
ical, psychiatric, and legal, to name a few) may quickly exploit to shore
up the rationale for their own continuing regulatory zeal. The question
 Gender Regulations 53

remains, though, what departures from the norm constitute something

other than an excuse or rationale for the continuing authority of the
norm? What departures from the norm disrupt the regulatory process
itself?
The question of surgical “correction” for intersexed children is one
case in point. There the argument is made that children born with
irregular primary sexual characteristics are to be “corrected” in order
to fit in, feel more comfortable, achieve normality. Corrective surgery
is sometimes performed with parental support and in the name of nor-
malization, and the physical and psychic costs of the surgery have
proven to be enormous for those persons who have been submitted,
as it were, to the knife of the norm.13 The bodies produced through
such a regulatory enforcement of gender are bodies in pain, bearing
the marks of violence and suffering. Here the ideality of gendered mor-
phology is quite literally incised in the flesh.
Gender is thus a regulatory norm, but it is also one that is pro-
duced in the service of other kinds of regulations. For instance, sexual
harassment codes tend to assume, following the reasoning of Catharine
MacKinnon, that harassment consists of the systematic sexual subor-
dination of women at the workplace, and that men are generally in
the position of harasser, and women, as the harassed. For MacKinnon,
this seems to be the consequence of a more fundamental sexual sub-
ordination of women. Although these regulations seek to constrain
sexually demeaning behavior at the workplace, they also carry within
them certain tacit norms of gender. In a sense, the implicit regulation
of gender takes place through the explicit regulation of sexuality.
For MacKinnon, the hierarchical structure of heterosexuality in
which men are understood to subordinate women is what produces
gender: “Stopped as an attribute of a person, sex inequality takes the
form of gender; moving as a relation between people, it takes the form
of sexuality. Gender emerges as the congealed form of the sexualization
of inequality between men and women” (Feminism Unmodified 6–7).
If gender is the congealed form that the sexualization of inequality
takes, then the sexualization of inequality precedes gender, and gender is
its effect. But can we even conceptualize the sexualization of inequality
without a prior conception of gender? Does it make sense to claim that
men subordinate women sexually if we don’t first have an idea of what
men and women are? MacKinnon maintains, however, that there is no
 54 Undoing Gender

constitution of gender outside of this form of sexuality and, by implica-

tion, outside of this subordinating and exploitative form of sexuality.
In proposing the regulation of sexual harassment through recourse
to this kind of analysis of the systematic character of sexual subordi-
nation, MacKinnon institutes a regulation of another kind: to have a
gender means to have entered already into a heterosexual relationship
of subordination; there appear to be no gendered people who are out-
side of such relationships; there appear to be no nonsubordinating het-
erosexual relations; there appear to be no nonheterosexual relations;
there appears to be no same-sex harassment.
This form of reducing gender to sexuality has thus given way to
two separate but overlapping concerns within contemporary queer
theory. The first move is to separate sexuality from gender, so that to
have a gender does not presuppose that one engages sexual practice
in any particular way, and to engage in a given sexual practice, anal
sex, for instance, does not presuppose that one is a given gender.14 The
second and related move within queer theory is to argue that gender
is not reducible to hierarchical heterosexuality, that it takes different
forms when contextualized by queer sexualities, indeed, that its bina-
riness cannot be taken for granted outside the heterosexual frame, that
gender itself is internally unstable, that transgendered lives are evidence
of the breakdown of any lines of causal determinism between sexual-
ity and gender. The dissonance between gender and sexuality is thus
affirmed from two different perspectives; the one seeks to show possi-
bilities for sexuality that are not constrained by gender in order to
break the causal reductiveness of arguments that bind them; the other
seeks to show possibilities for gender that are not predetermined by
forms of hegemonic heterosexuality.15
The problem with basing sexual harassment codes on a view of sex-
uality in which gender is the concealed effect of sexualized subordi-
nation within heterosexuality is that certain views of gender and cer-
tain views of sexuality are reinforced through the reasoning. In
MacKinnon’s theory, gender is produced in the scene of sexual subor-
dination, and sexual harassment is the explicit moment of the institu-
tion of heterosexual subordination. What this means, effectively, is that
sexual harassment becomes the allegory for the production of gender.
In my view, the sexual harassment codes become themselves the instru-
ment by which gender is thus reproduced.
 Gender Regulations 55

It is the regulation of gender, argues legal scholar Katherine Franke,

that remains not only uninterrogated in this view, but unwittingly abet-
ted. Franke writes:

What is wrong with the world MacKinnon describes in her

work is not exhausted by the observation that men dominate
women, although that is descriptively true in most cases. Rather,
the problem is far more systematic. By reducing sexism to only
that which is done to women by men, we lose sight of the under-
lying ideology that makes sexism so powerful . . . . The subor-
dination of women by men is part of a larger social practice
that creates gendered bodies—feminine women and masculine
men. (“What’s Wrong With Sexual Harassment?” 761–62)

The social punishments that follow upon transgressions of gender

include the surgical correction of intersexed persons, the medical and
psychiatric pathologization and criminalization in several countries
including the United States of “gender dysphoric” people, the harass-
ment of gender-troubled persons on the street or in the workplace,
employment discrimination, and violence. The prohibition of sexual
harassment of women by men that is based on a rationale that assumes
heterosexual subordination as the exclusive scene of sexuality and gen-
der thus itself becomes a regulatory means for the production and
maintenance of gender norms within heterosexuality.16
At the outset of this essay, I suggested several ways to understand
the problem of “regulation.” A regulation is that which makes regular,
but it is also, following Foucault, a mode of discipline and surveillance
within late modern forms of power; it does not merely constrict and
negate and is, therefore, not merely a juridical form of power. Insofar
as regulations operate by way of norms, they become key moments in
which the ideality of the norm is reconstituted, its historicity and vul-
nerability temporarily put out of play. As an operation of power, reg-
ulation can take a legal form, but its legal dimension does not exhaust
the sphere of its efficaciousness. As that which relies on categories that
render individuals socially interchangeable with one another, regula-
tion is thus bound up with the process of normalization. Statutes that
govern who the beneficiaries of welfare entitlements will be are actively
engaged in producing the norm of the welfare recipient. Those that
 56 Undoing Gender

regulate gay speech in the military are actively engaged in producing

and maintaining the norm of what a man or what a woman will be,
what speech will be, where sexuality will and will not be. State regu-
lations on lesbian and gay adoption as well as single-parent adoptions
not only restrict that activity, but refer to and reenforce an ideal of
what parents should be, for example, that they should be partnered,
and what counts as a legitimate partner. Hence, regulations that seek
merely to curb certain specified activities (sexual harassment, welfare
fraud, sexual speech) perform another activity that, for the most part,
remains unmarked: the production of the parameters of personhood, that
is, making persons according to abstract norms that at once condition
and exceed the lives they make—and break.
 MARY D O U G L AA S
C O L L E C T E D W O R[IKS
KS

VOLUM E X

CONSTRUCTIVE DRINKING

Perspectives on Drink from Anthropology

London and New York

 First published in 1987 by
the Press Syndicate o f the University o f Cambridge

This edition published 2003

b y Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

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but points out that some im perfections in the original m ay be apparent
I

INTRODUCTORY
1. A distinctive anthropological perspective

Mary Douglas
The scope of this volume
This volume is designed to amplify the claim that anthropologists have a
distinctive perspective on drinking. According to Dwight Heath 1 few
anthropologists before the 1970s would set out deliberately to study pat-
terns of thought and action concerning drink. In spite of this lack of concen-
tration on the subject they had nevertheless written a great deal on alcohol.
This was because whatever other concerns inspired their ethnographic pro-
ject they could not avoid taking note of the importance of drinking in the
lives of the people they lived among. The record they thus constituted was
based on "felicitous by-products of field research". In consequence,
anthropologists have a frankly different focus on alcohol. They do not
necessarily treat it as a problem. In effect, Dwight Heath's earlier review of
the anthropological literature on alcohol up to 1970 shows the anthropol-
ogists bringing their own professional point of view to bear interestingly
upon the same materials studied by specialists on alcohol abuse. The re-
search of the latter is inevitably focused upon pathology. Their research on
drinking has been instituted precisely because of grave problems; their
assumptions and methods are problem-oriented. Dwight Heath argued that
the anthropologists' evidence suggests that the medical and sociological re-
search exaggerates the problems. In concentrating on the excess and abuse
of alcohol, they are tending to express a strong bias of western culture and
one which Joseph Gusfield has shown2 to be particularly entrenched in
America. From the wider comparative standpoint of anthropology, "prob-
lem drinking" is very rare and alcoholism seems to be "virtually absent
even in many societies where drunkenness is frequent, highly esteemed and
actively sought". 3 Even in the United States where there is so much concern
about alcohol abuse, the most pessimistic estimate is that alcohol-related
troubles afflict fewer than 10 percent of those who drink.
Anthropologists bring several challenges to the assumptions of other
writers on alcohol. They challenge the common view that some races are,
because of their biological inheritance, peculiarly vulnerable to ill effects
from alcohol. They challenge the view that alcohol leads to anomie. They
would be more satisfied with the notion that a state of anomie leads to alco-
holism and they are prepared to face the theoretical problems involved in

3
4 MARY DOUGLAS

defining anomie. They find no clear relation between the use of alcohol and
a tendency to aggressive or criminal behavior. They dispute that drunken
behavior exemplifies a relaxation of cultural constraints before the levelling
effects of nature: Drunkenness also expresses culture in so far as it always
takes the form of a highly patterned, learned comportment which varies
from one culture to another: pink elephants in one region, green snakes in
another. The general tenor of the anthropological perspective is that cel-
ebration is normal and that in most cultures alcohol is a normal adjunct to
celebration. Drinking is essentially a social act, performed in a recognized
social context. If the focus is to be on alcohol abuse, then the anthropol-
ogists' work suggests that the most effective way of controlling it will be
through socialization. In an ideal comparative program in which anthropol-
ogists and medical researchers collaborate, the former would provide sys-
tematic analysis of the quantity and incidence of rules governing drinking.
The comparative project would involve comparing degrees of alcohol
imbibed by an average individual against the local pattern of rules about
where, when, and what to drink, and in whose company. Predictions about
alcoholism would have to be based on an analysis of these patterns of rules,
a very complex and technical task.
Meanwhile, some immediate difficulties with the dichotomy proposed by
Dwight Heath spring to mind. What is meant by "problem drinking"? How
severe must a problem be before it gets counted into the statistics? What is
meant by "alcoholism" or by "alcohol-related troubles"? Are we to take
the native view of troubles? In which case the incidence of drinking trouble
is likely to be assessed by natives as lower in a heavy-drinking culture than
by the medical sociologists. And what about the bias of the latter? Do they
vary from one generation to the next in their assessment of the evil effects of
demon rum? Do the experts from wine-producing countries take a lighter
view of the dangers than experts from the grain-based alcohol regions? In
what was described as a forum for debate which any scholar from other
fields must envy, Current Anthropology recently published a remarkable
discussion of these questions.4 Robin Room, writing as Science Director of
the Alcohol Research Group Institute of Epidemiology and Behavioral
Medicine5 summarized his own experience of the contrast between anthro-
pologists and two other classes of persons. On the one hand indigenous
peoples in positions of responsibility in the Caribbean or in Papua, New
Guinea tend to join their concern about the severity of the alcohol problem
with that of doctors and epidemiologists. This is especially the case for
regions undergoing urbanization and rapid change. On the other hand, the
anthropologists tend to downgrade the issue. Robin Room confirmed more
or less the same dichotomy, using Dwight Heath's 1975 paper as a main
point of reference. Whereas Dwight Heath argued that the anthropologists
had got a more balanced perspective, Robin Room reversed the values in
favor of the epidemiologists. All the ticklish issues of professional bias were
 Anthropological perspective 5

publicly examined by experienced anthropologists who have concentrated

in the last decade or more upon problems of alcoholism. The upshot was
agreement that in this important field of inquiry the two kinds of specialists
should not let their work run in parallel tracks. In future, social and cultural
studies of alcohol use should be matched by medical studies. This is the
point to which this volume is addressed.
To become as systematic as the epidemiologists, cultural anthropology
will need to develop some new tools. It seems clear that the discussion in
Current Anthropology ran into the sand at two points. First, changing ob-
server's bias as between different generations of researchers only becomes
important over a long time span or if a subject is changing so swiftly that the
new frames of reference have to be taken into account. This has not been
the case with the anthropologists' study of alcoholism, as Dwight Heath's
second review article (published here) confirms. He has updated his ori-
ginal review to cover the 1970-80 decade. The answers show more sophisti-
cation and subtlety, but the questions raised are recognizably the same. It is
just as well to lay the issue of professional bias aside, since it is impossible to
research and since other more measurable matters need to be studied
anyway. Second, native attitudes to alcohol problems are part of the subject
of inquiry and cannot be treated as parameters for measuring degrees of
trouble. It would seem that there is at present no way of establishing a cul-
tural level of tolerance for alcohol against which to ask the questions im-
plicit in the debate in Current Anthropology: do cultural constraints
dictating a restricted framework for drinking enable more individuals to
absorb more alcohol with less apparent physical effect? Does cultural train-
ing which enables individuals to hold their drink more easily protect their
livers from damage? Most likely not. Does the individual breaking out of a
set of cultural constraints drink more deeply and more dangerously than
one whose heavy drinking is culturally expected and approved? What dif-
ference does the surrounding culture's attitude to drunkenness make to the
prospects of an addict's cure?
In a comparison of drinking habits among two Southwest Indian tribes,
Kunnitz and Levy suggest that the cirrhosis mortality rates, which are much
lower among Navaho than among the Hopi, reflect the Hopi condemnation
of drinking and their rejection of the addict, while the Navaho rather expect
young men to be heavy drinkers and never force them into isolation or fail
to welcome them back into the community. 6 On much the same lines an in-
teresting literature on Jewish attitudes to alcohol seeks to explain the break
between the traditional Jewish sobriety and the heavy alcohol addiction of
Jews in New York. 7 Does the assimilation of Jewish immigrants to Ameri-
can norms account for Jewish alcoholism in America? The answer is: No,
not assimilation to some other cultural norm, but distance from traditional
orthodoxy and from all that the ceremonial participation does to enable
Jews to reenact solidarity and to renew the moral authority of their faith.
6 MARY DOUGLAS

This kind of explanation covers both the New York Jews and the New York
Irish. As Richard Stivers has said, Catholicism offers nothing like the same
ritual control of personal behavior as Judaism. Its specialized and therefore
isolated clergy preach temperance and stay outside of the public drinking
places where their flock tends to gather: the Catholic Church "is not a
viable reference group in terms of drinking".8 Its ceremonies do not incor-
porate drinking within the ritual frame. Ringing the changes on the same in-
terest in the boundaries of religious authority, important studies of Latin
American drinking patterns introduce the element of power and status
advantage. Among Mexicans before the conquest, drinking pulque was a
rite of corporate identification. In modern Mestizo society drinking is part
of the individual's competition to assert himself, with feats of consumption
being supported by insults and drunken fighting. Whereas by contrast,
within the Indian community "prescribed drunkenness never gave rise to
addiction, social problems, or guilt".9
This considerable literature on the social conditions affecting alcoholism
may perhaps overplay the idea of community as the answer to alcohol prob-
lems. Community authority, community rituals, community solidarity, they
seem to bring drinking under control. But sometimes the form of the com-
munity is aggressively competitive, and the drinker who follows its customs
puts his health at risk. Clearly this approach needs a precise method for
comparing community structure. Though several anthropologists have
experimented with such methods and are confident of their value, nothing
has been done to use cultural analysis10 to examine problems of alcoholism.
These methods of estimating the relative strength of various forms of social
control would be eminently practicable for comparative studies of alcohol
use.
Two other approaches to the relation between culture and alcohol carry
very different moral and academic intentions. The first, the project in the
sociology of sociability, was started by David Reisman in the mid 1950s
inspired by George Simmel and based on a Chicago seminar on play and
leisure. What was obviously an extremely stimulating collaboration for
those involved, was summed up in 1968 as a chronicle of frustration and
achievement.11 Their inquiries into parties and informal social networks
continually bumped against the lack of theoretical work in the comparison
of culturally received ideas. They needed some measure or concept of
levels of sociability but the cultural anthropologists' contribution was not in
evidence. Another thing that is very striking about this literature on parties
and drinking is that practically nothing is said about the drinks. The same
applies to the writing by anthropologists on the ethno-science of drinking.
In this literature the anthropologists seem to earn the reproaches of their
medical colleagues for their unwillingness to recognize pathology where it
seems obvious, and for their horror of ethnocentric judgments.12 James
Spradley, in You Owe Yourself a Drunk: An Ethnography of Urban
 Anthropological perspective 17

Nomads (1970)13 says it was written with "the wish to provide social justice
for the skid row alcoholic". It starts with the clarion call: "The American
city is convulsed with pain." These ethnographies of bars and flops14 fall in
some unsatisfactory place between genres, not nearly as interesting to read
as a novel, not any use at all for getting justice, nor even for raising the level
of understanding of the problems of alcoholism.
The drinks themselves are one of the important gaps in the subject of
alcoholism which this anthology is not intended to remedy. We can only
signpost it and take care to describe how some of the drinks are made and
how their manufacture enters into the economy. Fortunately, the French
anthropologists 15 are taking a great interest in fermentation processes from
the points of view of nutrition, biochemistry and economic organization. As
their work on palm wine and maize beer is extended by others, this particu-
lar omission in our knowledge will gradually be rectified.
At first it seemed that an anthropological collection would emphasize the
relation between physical, evolutionary, and socio-cultural processes.
Many questions about drinking arise on the border of society and biology.
For example, in many civilizations women are habitually excluded from
taking strong alcohol. One might look for an ancient wisdom which protects
the vulnerable foetus by a general rule applied to all females. If that line is
followed what could be said about the sources of such rules? Are they ex-
plicitly based on gynecology or do they result from a happy convergence of
medical and social ideas? If women for whatever reason tend to be excluded
from alcohol, one can be curious about the health value of the other drinks
that would, in a carefully partitioned society, be classed as peculiarly appro-
priate for women. If the classification has purely social functions, thirsty
women or women wanting to celebrate might be driven in default to very
unhealthy alternatives. Water is often contaminated; tea and coffee are not
perfect health drinks. Furthermore, protection of women from dangerous
foods is not universally practiced. Do we expect to find women drinking
alcohol freely only when the social norms are broken down? "Gin, gin was
mother's ruin", runs the old vaudeville chorus. It is tempting to go straight
from these reflections to theories of social pathology, assuming that a stable
society would have worked out all the best solutions, and that the break-
down of mores by industrialization or invasion or migration will have pro-
duced indiscriminate feeding, drinking and alcohol abuse. It was looking
for a chapter on women's drinking or to any work that would give a rounded
view of the nutritional and toxic aspects of drinking in general, that I was
referred to Dwight Heath's review of the anthropological work on alcohol.
A subsequent search in the literature led me to decide that it is premature to
attempt to study the interface of biology and culture when the drinks them-
selves have not even been catalogued and their properties are not known.
Nor have the cultural aspects of drinking been adequately studied. It is diffi-
cult to find any survey of all the drinks used in a given population, to say
8 MARY DOUGLAS

nothing of the relation between them. In view of this I have merely indi-
cated certain fields that are ready for systematic research.
Phenomenologists keep saying that the world is socially constructed.
Where drinks are concerned, there are at least three distinct ways in which
that happens. First, drinks give the actual structure of social life as surely as
if their names were labels affixed upon expected forms of behavior. Second,
the manufacture of alcohol is an economic activity of consequence. Third,
the ceremonials of drinking construct an ideal world. To develop these
three functions of drinking I have been able to draw on accounts of some
exotic drinks, some alcoholic and others not, but I have not attempted to
include all of those wonderful brews which anthropologists encounter.

Drinks construct the world as it is

For Joseph Gusfield drinking is a form of ritual. Very much a symbolic
interactionist he treats alcohol and coffee as two opposing pointers. Coffee
cues the shifts from playtime to worktime and alcohol cues the transition
from work to playtime, as every American reader will recognize in their
own drinking behavior. What we are not so well aware of is that this is a
relatively new pattern, dependent on a major shift in the division of labor.
The big distinction in contemporary western culture is that between work
and leisure, a segregation that holds across classes and sexes and occu-
pations. Gusfield points out that in the pre-industrial work pattern men
worked in all-male teams, as construction workers still do. In that pattern,
the dominant cleavage is between work and home, work being associated
with males and home with females. In this case, drinking alcohol, strong
drink at that, is not separated from work, and by that token, it does not
belong in the home.
Drinks also act as markers of personal identity and of boundaries of
inclusion and exclusion. Gerald Mars gives a brief account of longshore-
men's drinking patterns in which exclusion from the tavern takes on the
darkest possible aspect. On the docks men are judged by how well they
carry their drink and by how generously they spend on drink. Belonging to
a gang as an insider means everything, more regular work, higher earnings,
mutual aid and a comfortable place in the tavern. A man's progress up the
ranks from outsider to established insider depends on his role as a drinking
companion as much as upon skills and devotion to work. How warm and
friendly this inclusion sounds by contrast with its sinister side. The outsiders
drink, though not in the tavern; they carry a bottle of wine or cheap rum
which they call 'screech' and they draw their fellow drinkers to the parking
lot by a nod or a wink. All that this boundary between insiders and outsiders
means for entitling a worker to negotiate boldly with the foreman, to speak
up against exploitation and to take other risks at work is eloquently brought
out. Just because alcohol in this setting is the gate of access to all that is most
 Anthropological perspective 9

desired, a person suffering social rejection would understandably turn to

compensatory drinking, to possess at least the symbol of what he does not
have. This suggests a vein for research among the social uses of alcohol: the
more that alcohol is used for signifying selection and exclusion the more
might we expect its abuse to appear among the ranks of the excluded. Again
it suggests that much of the anthropologists' work is among people whose
drinking behavior follows a generally inclusive pattern. This in itself may
account for their finding that alcoholism is rarer than in western industrial
society, where selective hospitality16 promotes competitive individualism.
Exclusion takes many forms, some very subtle. Connoisseurship in the
matter of wines is in itself a field for competition. We must take note of the
exclusionary potential represented by the serried ranks of vintage and
lesser wines in Europe. Amazing in itself is the trained palate that can rec-
ognize and name the vineyard, the year, even the growth of particular
wines. Apparently, the top wine taster needs to keep his palate in form by
never relaxing his specialized daily practice, like a violinist and quite unlike
a language speaker who can always pick up the nuances of a language once
learnt well. Dorothy Sayers attributed to Peter Wimsey these skills when
she had him win the bet with Freddie Arbuthnot at the Egotists' Club by
naming blindfold the vintage years of seventeen wines. Then he was admit-
tedly in good form. But when two imposters both presented as Lord Peter
tried to buy military secrets, the Comte de Reuil unmasked them by a wine
tasting contest in which the real Lord Peter easily triumphed. "Even the
most brilliant forger can scarcely forge a palate for wine." 17 So, con-
noisseurship has power for identifying the person as well as the wine. Not
knowing may deliver one into the hands of manipulators. Connoisseurship
also has its own power for social domination. Who could afford to let the
hotel waiter get the upperhand and yet, how much expertise is needed to
stop the waiter from forcing a humiliating dependence upon himself?18
These essays treat drinking as a medium for constructing the actual world.
The drinks are in the world. They are not a commentary upon it, nor a sur-
face nor a deep structure model of its relations. They are as real as bricks
and mortar. They are examples of things that constitute the world, they
enter into bundles of other real things, with times and lists of names and
calendrical connections. Sampling a drink is sampling what is happening to
a whole category of social life. 19 We have to show that what is being catego-
rized at any tavern meeting or home reunion is a part of a social ordering.
Of course anthropologists do not suppose that extreme poverty makes
this refined signalling and constructing impossible. Anne Calabresi's
account of a Tuscan farmer's wine-making and wine-drinking settles this de-
cidedly. A lyrical tranquility and sweet order transforms the hardships of
daily life in the farm. We learn how the grapes fit into the series of fruits,
and of how fruits contrast as luxuries with the vegetables and cereals on the
farm; the pride in quality and the frugal use. The every day ordinary table
10 MARY DOUGLAS

wine, which is watered and drunk with meals, contrasts with the Vin Santo
used for special occasions and for consecration at Mass. It is rare to have a
description of how this venerable drink is actually made, and a surprise to
learn that after the juice fermented within the grape, the final process is so
quick and the actions so simple.
With only one source of alcohol, Ndolamb Ngokwey shows how the Lele
distinguish many kinds of palm wine and allocate them to different social
categories building their sense of community around it. As anthropologists
we do not idealize community or suppose that it always prevents individual
competitiveness. Often the community channels the competition. Farnham
Rehfisch's account of competitive beer drinking illustrates the agonistic
role of drinking in making partnerships and gaining personal reputation.
Looking at the social uses of drinks reveals sensitive mechanisms for redefi-
nition of roles. Mary Anna Thornton's essay is a rare account of the whole
range of drinks used in a given community to express the whole range of
social relations. She finds that an Austrian village polarizes social events
towards two opposite types, the one exemplifying degrees of intimacy and
the other, degrees of formal celebration. Each type of event is matched by
its associated family of drinks. The insight enables her to make a convincing
ascent from ethnographic catalogue to a higher level of abstraction.
At this point we should ask how the anthropologist can make a systematic
comparison of cultural attitudes to put side by side with biomedical infor-
mation. The answer is to resist the temptation to plunge deeper and deeper
into a search for bias-free data. Success depends on having a researchable
problem about cultural comparison, to find appropriate abstractions and
counting and calculating techniques for expressing them. The drinking
habits we have described here are all fraught more or less intensely with
social concerns. In the Austrian countryside drinking sekt together
guarantees nothing about mutual support, whereas drinking schnapps does.
In the Tuscan farmhouse, Vin Santo is brought out only on very special oc-
casions. Frenetic gulping of screech in the car lot outside contrasts dramati-
cally and tragically with comfortable beer drinking in the warm dockside
tavern. The whole subject of inclusion and exclusion is probably ripe to be
handled by the information theoretic approach developed by Jonathan
Gross and colleagues on food habits.20
In a culture that knows only one drink, signifying friendship, or two
drinks, one signifying insider and the other signifying outsider status, a
heavy weight of concern is likely to pile upon the boundary of shared drink-
ing. We could start to prognosticate alcohol addiction adding to the despair
of the person who finds himself already an outsider and about to be ex-
cluded from the round of drinks. The Austrian case presented here is rela-
tively simple, with only two main kinds of drinks. When there are many
kinds of drinks, each partitioning a piece of social knowledge and helping to
articulate a diversified social universe, we could also risk prognosticating
 Anthropological perspective 11

intolerance of drunkenness - if a great deal of information had to be coded

on to drinks a high value would be set on the physical and mental controls
needed for sending and reading the messages. So we would expect that the
more discriminated social information that is carried in the drinking code,
the less tolerance in the community for abuse of alcohol and so the more
mutual monitoring and effective control. As to the research, the sheer
amount of information that is carried by a complete range of available
drinks could be calculated and related to expectations about performance.
Various applications of information theory could be used for providing the
objective background to cultural behaviour that will help medical resear-
chers assess social factors conducive to alcoholism

Drinking constructs an ideal world

The essays in this collection have not been chosen to illustrate false con-
structions of the world. However, we shall not have met the demands of the
subject if we only insist on how drinks really constitute the world by being
the occasions of gatherings of particular sorts and by serving as brightly col-
ored material labels of events. There is also a sense in which drinks perform
the other task of ritual. They make an intelligible, bearable world which is
much more how an ideal world should be than the painful chaos threatening
all the time. To bring out this aspect as a separate ritual construction we
have four essays.
Paul Antze takes up the ancient relation between religion and alcohol.
His chapter on Alcoholics Anonymous shows how this prestigious organiz-
ation works like a religious cult, following the rituals of conversion and in-
corporation described by anthropologists in other societies.
Elizabeth Bott's cool style, introducing the orders of rank and power and
authority in the island realm of Tonga, is in itself like the unobtrusive,
methodical preparation for the Kava ceremony. Two myths about the
origin of the ceremony yield to the analysis by which she uncovers envy,
fratricidal hatred, and unspeakable desires to kill with poison. The myths
deal with the destruction and restoration of a brother and son: they state the
passionate problems of enmity and rivalry in a ceremonially abstracted
form: the tale is reenacted with the pounding of the Kava root and its sol-
ution in water and distribution as a soothing drink. By the ceremony, the
Tongans transcend emotions and enhance their consciousness of belonging
in a larger society. The passions she is writing about are not the strange fan-
tasies of an exotic people. She is a psychoanalyst as well as an anthropol-
ogist and she is telling us that she recognizes our dreams in their
ceremonies. The Tongan construction of a world in which victims can be re-
stored to life and in which rivals can tolerate each other's presence is a ver-
sion of the sociability which David Reisman's research team were trying to
identify.
12 MARY DOUGLAS

In something of the same spirit, Haim Hazan's friends in the old people's
Day Centre in the East End of London create a myth and a ceremony that
holds grim realities at bay. Coming together daily to enjoy a free lunch, tea,
meetings, entertainment and welfare counselling, they know very well they
are destitute. They are the left-behind poor. Hazan has shown elsewhere21
that their adaptation to their plight is to deny their past. Throwing them-
selves hectically into the life of the Centre, they make its egalitarian mutual
aid the only reality. The present which they collectively construct denies the
external world of family neglect and physical decay. The process of con-
struction revolves around making tea, sharing it out with sugar and biscuits
on a strictly equal basis. Tea time is the focus of dramatic confrontations.
They must practice exclusiveness upon one another to enforce conformity
to their adopted values. They rally to protect their fragile world of short, re-
petitive cycles from the hostile march of time in the outside world. The
strict order and peace of their own tea time contrasts with the disagreeable
hustle and discontent of the staff-regulated lunchtime. Lunch is a sign that
points towards the inexorable slide to decay and change, the world they
strive to exclude. Partaking of tea, they collude to hold time still. These
tricks of consciousness, contrived but unacknowledged, are hard for ethno-
graphers to reach. To do their work they have to be hidden from even the
performers. But every novelist knows that this is how the structure of time
and place and personality is conveyed, if he knows his craft at all. Lisa
Gurr's essay considers Simenon's signalling of the distinctions in a peculiar
and diverse world she calls Maigret's Paris. For the sake of a continuous
stream of stories over three decades Maigret's Paris has to have a time-
defying quality. This chapter plays an important part in this book in draw-
ing our attention to the difference between ideal types and fictional types.
Deconstructing of an ideal world by kava drinking or by tea drinking is not a
deception or fiction like Simenon's ideal Paris. The difference between
these ideal worlds defined by kava and tea and those imaginary worlds of
fiction is clear. We have classed the former here as ideal, in distinction to
the worlds where screech is the unpleasing alternative to beer or sekt the
formal alternative to merry toasts in schnapps, not because they are false.
They are not false worlds, but fragile ones, momentarily upheld and easily
overturned. They are more precarious than worlds constructed upon a
stable distribution of power and that is the only reason for putting them in a
separate section

Alcohol entrenches the alternative economy

The last section deals analytically with the place of alcohol in three kinds of
political economy. Alcohol production and distribution as an industry is
peculiarly conducive to monopoly. It provides a uniform product, its manu-
facture offers large economies of scale, it has low carrying costs and is
 Anthropological perspective 13

highly in demand. In the Polish case, described by Hillel Levine, demand

for alcohol was used as a means for economic control, to prop a rich but vul-
nerable section of the economy by insulating it from modernization. Con-
trast this with the role of alcohol in developing an alternative economy,
almost an alternative currency, in the history of the Chiapas Highlands in
Mexico, recorded by Thomas Crump. Here is an instance of how the black
market in rum succeeded in mobilizing resources that would otherwise
seem to have been blocked. The combination of owning a trucking busi-
ness, having some spare investment capital and supplying bootleg rum at
locally affordable prices (by escaping tax) created new centers of power,
working against the institutions which would have excluded Indians from
economic development.
In Poland in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the Jews found
themselves squeezed between peasants and landlords in a system of newly
consolidated agrarian feudalism. The landlords instituted a monopoly of
the manufacture and distribution of alcohol, for which they licensed Jewish
entrepreneurs. The export of grain from Poland to urbanizing Europe had
been a prime source of profit in the sixteenth century, but a century later
the lesson of commercial organization had been learned so well that along
with price fluctuations, Polish farming had to compete with more efficient
agriculture and food provisioning in Europe. Through the seventeenth and
eighteenth century, the magnates were concentrating their holdings of land
and the terms of trade were such that the lower nobility were losing out to
the upper nobility and the peasants were losing out even more to the lower
nobility. Their new conditions of serfdom were more constraining and
degrading than anywhere else in Europe. At this point, already complain-
ing of the low productivity of his peasants, the lord was making greater
quantities of intoxicants available to them. It may have partly been because
"Drunken peasants are more easily beaten into sullen obedience." But
more significantly, the gentry saw their interest in preventing the monetiza-
tion of the economy. They did not want a labor market based on rent and
wages rather than on feudal service. When the ideal was an autarchic pro-
ductive unit in which only the lord would have dealing with the outside
world, the manufacture of alcohol on the estate was a mechanism for
siphoning off spare cash. If the peasants could accumulate a little cash, it
was better to provide ways of spending it that reverted to the landlord.
Some estates actually required serfs to buy a stipulated minimum of alcohol
as part of their feudal obligations. This attempt to create a closed monetary
system opened a niche for commerce, otherwise carefully excluded. And
here the Jewish communities were enrolled. The Jews foresaw quite cor-
rectly that by accepting concessions to organize the monopoly of production
and sale of alcohol they would antagonize and become targets for peasants'
wrath. The history of Polish alcohol shows the unfolding tragedy of Polish
anti-Semitism in its early stages.
14 MARY DOUGLAS

The current interest in the alternative or black economy must turn more
and more towards the anthropology of drink. These essays correct the per-
spective of sociological and medical writers, whose focus is so strongly upon
personal degradation of individual alcoholics. Anthropologists do not friv-
olously disregard these questions. But to end this section and the volume on
the cheerful note struck by Heath's reviews of the subject, consider how
wine enlivens the alternative economy that flourishes in Soviet Georgia.
Soviet authorities disapprove of Georgian traditions of hospitality as a vast
misuse of resources. But they are powerless to prevent a pattern of drinking
that sustains private networks and softens the austerities of bureaucracy
while creating much needed channels for the flow of resources in a real
alternative economy.

Acknowledgments
This volume began with the meetings of six panels on food at the Tenth Congress of
the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in Delhi in
1978. This was the first session of the Congress at which the newly formed ICAF
(the International Commission on the Anthropology of Food), which was founded
and chaired by Ravindra Khare, took responsibility for organising panels on food
and food problems. There was no panel on drink, but a few papers addressed the
topic. Making these the basis of a collection, soliciting additional articles and other
editorial processes have taken much too long. I am grateful to the earliest contribu-
tors for their patience. I also thank Dr. Lita Osmundsen, who, as Director of the
Wenner Gren Foundation, has always been a generous supporter of ICAF. Grate-
ful acknowledgments are also due to Dr. Arjun Appadurai, who started the volume
and to Andrew Leslie and Helen McFaul who have given steadfast help.

Notes
1 Heath, Dwight, 1975, "A critical review of ethnographic studies of alcohol use,"
in R. Gibbons, Y. Israel, H. Kalant, R. Popham, W. Schmidt, and R. Smart
(eds.) Research Advances in Alcohol and Drug Problems, vol. 2, John Wiley &
Sons, N.Y.
2 Gusfield, Joseph, 1963, Symbolic Crusade: Status, Politics and the American
Temperance Movement. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, II., idem, 1981,
The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking, Driving and the Symbolic Order,
University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
3 Heath, 1975, op.cit., p. 57.
4 Room, Robin, 1984, "Alcohol and ethnography: a case of problem deflation?"
in Current Anthropology 25, no. 2, April, 1984:169-91.
5 Room, Robin, 1984, ibid., p. 169.
6 Kunitz, S. J. and Levy, J. E., 1971, "The epidemiology of alcoholic cirrhosis in
two southwestern Indian tribes," in Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol 32,
no. 3: 706-20, Sept. 1971.
7 Snyder, Charles, 1978, Alcoholism and the Jews, Acturus Paperbacks, S. Illinois
University Press, Carbondale, II. idem, 1982, "Alcoholism among Jews in
 Anthropological perspective 15

Israel: a pilot study," in Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol 43, no. 7: 623-
54, July.
8 Stivers, Richard, 1976, A Hair of the Dog: Irish Drinking and American
Stereotypes, Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, p. 87.
9 MacMarshall, ed., 1979, Beliefs, Behaviors and Alcoholic Beverages: A Cross
Cultural Survey, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan, p. 49.
10 Douglas, Mary, 1970, Natural Symbols, Barrie & Rocklife; idem, 1982, In the
Active Voice, R. K. P. Gross, J. & Rayner, S. 1984. Measuring Culture, Colum-
bia University Press. Mars, Gerald, 1982, Cheats at Work, Allen & Unwin.
11 Reisman, David, 1960, "The vanishing host," Human Organisation 19, no. 1,
Spring: 17-27; idem, 1960, "Sociability, permissiveness, and equality," in Psy-
chiatry 23, no. 4: 323-40; idem, 1964, "The sociability project: a chronicle of
frustration and achievement," in Sociologists at Work, Phillip Hammond, ed.,
Basic Books, N.Y.
12 Fox, Richard, 1978, "Ethnicity and alcohol use," by A. S. Brown, in Medical
Anthropology 2, no. 4: 53.
13 Spradley, James, 1970, You Owe Yourself a Drunk: An Ethnography of Urban
Nomads, Little, Brown & Co., N.Y., p. viii.
14 Cavan, Sherri, 1966, Liquor License: An Ethnography of Bar Behavior, Aldine
Publishing Co., Chicago. Dollard, John, 1945, "Drinking mores of the social
classes," in Alcohol, Science and Society, Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alco-
hol, New Haven, Conn. Roebuck, J. B., and Krese, W., 1976, The Rendezvous:
A Case Study of an After Hours Club, Free Press, N.Y. Stone, Gregory, 1962,
"Drinking styles and status arrangements," in Society, Culture and Drinking
Patterns, J. Pittman and C. Snyder, eds., Wiley, N.Y. pp. 121-45.
15 de Lestrange, Marie-Therese, 1981, "La consommation de 'biere de mil' a
eyolo, village Bassari du Senegal oriental," in Objets et Mondes 21, no. 13:107-
14. Fournier, Dominique, "Le pulque et le sacrifice humain Chez les
Azteques," L'Imaginaire du Vin, ed. Jeanne Lafitte, Marseille, 1983.
16 Douglas, Mary, ed., 1984, Food in the Social Order: Studies of Food and Festiv-
ities in Three American Communities, Russell Sage Foundation, Basic Books,
N.Y.
17 Sayers, Dorothy, 1972, Lord Peter, A Collection of All the Lord Peter Wimsey
Stories, Harper and Row, N.Y.
18 Mars, Gerald and Nicod, Michael, 1984, The World of Waiters, George Allen
and Unwin, London.
19 Goodman, Nelson, 1978, "When is art: samples," ch. 4 in Ways ofWorldmak-
ing, Hackett Publishing Co., Indianapolis.
20 Gross, Jonathan, 1984, "Measurement of calendrical information in foodtaking
behavior," in Food in the Social Order, op.cit.
21 Hazan, Haim, 1980, The Limbo People: A Study of the Constitution of the Time
Universe Among the Aged, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., London.
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ga e Mead made fam , "a a ."1 a i h h e he emba a me -
The - i a da , a eek, a m h( i h i m m ki g, beggi g, c e ed
me e le he magic m me e e b ea - i eek , a he ema ical
c me ) - he decide , f ea I ha e l , a i .
e e bee i e able fa h m, ha Of c e, like d i ki g d i g P
a e eal, a d he he bec me a hibi i , da , m ki g ma ih a a,
a m, ga , e i i e, m a he ic, c ckfigh , bei g a a f "The Bali e e
h gh, bei g Bali e e, al a eci e Wa f Life," e hele g ha e
l c lled e . Y ha e c ed, i g, a d i h e a di a f e e c .
meh , me m al me a h ical A d, like P hibi i ma ih a a,
had li e. Th gh a e e ac f m ime ime he lice ( h , i
l ake a a Bali e e ( e ha be b 1958 a lea , e e alm all Bali
ha ), a e a lea ega ded a a e eb Ja a e e) feel called
h ma bei g a he ha a cl d a make a aid, c fi ca e he c ck a d
g f i d. The h le c m le i f , fi e a fe e le, a d e e
ela i hi d ama icall cha ge a d he e e me f hem i he
,i he maj i f ca e , a ge le, al ical f a da a bjec le
m affec i a e e - a l -ke ed, hich e e , meh , ge lea ed,
a he la f l, a he ma e ed, a he e e h gh cca i all , i e cca
bem ed ge iali . i all , he bjec die .
M ife a d I e e ill e m ch A a e l , he figh a e all held
i he g f i d age, a m f i a ecl ded c e f a illage i emi
a i g, a d e e , a begi ec ec , a fac hich e d l he
d b he he a e eall eal af e ac i a li le - e m ch, b he
all, e i g e, he , e da Bali e e d ca e ha e i l ed
af e a i al, a la ge c ckfigh a a all. I hi ca e, h e e , e ha be
held i he blic a e ai e m e ca e he e e ai i g m e f a
f a e ch l. ch l ha he g e me a able
N , a fe ecial cca i a ide, gi e hem, e ha beca e aid had
c ckfigh a e illegal i Bali de he bee fe ece l , e ha , a I ga he ed
Re blic (a , f al ge he ela f m b e e di c i , he e a
ed ea , he e e de he D ch), a i ha he ece a b ibe had
la gel a a e l f he e e i bee aid, he h gh he c ld ake
i a i m adical a i ali m e d a cha ce he ce al a ea dd a
b i g i h i . The eli e, hich i a la ge a d m e e h ia ic c d
i h a ac i g he a e i f he
la .
i G eg Ba e a d Ma ga e Mead, Bali e e
Cha ac e : A Ph g a hic A al i (Ne Y k: The e e g. I he mid f he
Ne Y k Academ f Scie ce , 1942), 68. hi d ma ch, i h h d ed f e le,

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Cliff d i cl di g, ill a a e , m elf a d had a a ged i . Whe he ck d e
Gee
m ife, f ed i a i gle b d a d he a he i e , i ed ff hi
he i g, a e ga i m i he li e al a g, a d l ged i he c ld a ,
e e, a ck f ll f liceme a med he a le g h he f d him i i g
i h machi e g a ed . Amid he e i g a e e hi head, ha
g ea c eechi g c ie f" li i ! li i ! " he had bee a a ba hi g he he
f m he c d, he liceme j m ed h le affai had cc ed a d a ig
, a d, i gi g i he ce e f a f i . The did belie e him a d
he i g, bega i g hei g fi ed him h ee h d ed iah, hich
a d like ga g e i a m i ic he illage ai ed c llec i el .) Seei g
e, h gh g i g fa a ac al m ife a d I, "Whi e Me ," he e i
l fi e hem. The e ga i m he a d, he licema e f med a
came i a l a a a i c m cla ic d ble ake. Whe he f d hi
e ca e ed i all di ec i . Pe le ice agai he a ked, a ima el ,
aced d he ad, di a ea ed head ha i he de il did e hi k e e e
fi e all , c ambled de la d i g he e. O h f fi e mi e
f m , f lded hem el e behi d icke lea ed i a l defe e,
c ee , c led c c ee . C ck d ci g a im a i ed de c i i f
a med i h eel ha e gh h a d ha e e e, de ailed a d
c ff a fi ge a h le h gh a acc a e ha i a m , ha i g
f e e i g ildl a d. E e ba el c mm ica ed i h a li i g h
hi g a d a d a ic. ma bei g a e m la dl d a d he il
O he e abli hed a h l gical lage chief f m e ha a eek, be
i ci le, Whe i R me, m ife a d I a i hed. We had a e fec igh be
decided, l ligh l le i a a e he e, he aid, l ki g he Ja a e e
l ha e e e el e, ha he hi g a i he e e. We e e Ame ica
d a . We a d he mai fe ; he g e me had clea ed ;
illage ee , h a d, a a f m e e e he e d c l e; e e e
he e e e e li i g, f e e e g i g i eab k ell Ame ica
ha ide f he i g. Ab half a ab Bali. A d e had all bee he e
d a he f gi i e d cked dde d i ki g ea a d alki g ab c l al
l i ac m d - hi ,i ed ma e all af e a d did k
- a d e, eei g hi g ahead f a hi g ab a c ckfigh . M e e ,
b ice field , e c ,a da e had ee he illage chief all da ,
e high lca , f ll ed him. A he m ha e g e . The lice
he h ee f came mbli g i he ma e ea ed i a he al di a a .
c a d, hi ife, h had a a e l A d, af e a dece i e al, be ilde ed
bee h gh hi f hi g bef e, b elie ed ha e i ed a d a ed
hi ed a able, a ablecl h, h ee f jail, did e.
chai , a d h ee c f ea, a d e all, The e m i g he illage a a
i h a e lici c mm ica i c m le el diffe e ld f .N
ha e e , a d , c mme ced i l e e e l ge i i ible, e
ea, a d gh c m e el e . e e dde l he ce e f all a e
A fe m me la e , e f he i , he bjec f a g ea i g
liceme ma ched im a l i he f a m h, i e e , a d, m e ecial
a d, l ki g f he illage chief. (The l , am eme . E e e i he illage
chief had l bee a he figh , he k e e had fled like e e e el e.

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The a ked ab i agai a d agai i e ha a e ge e ali able eci Dee la :
e
(I m ha e ld he , mall de ail e f achie i g ha m e i ece i he Bali e e
b mall de ail, fif ime b he e d f fa h l gical field k, a , c ckfigh
he da ), ge l , affec i a el , b i e b f me i ked e ell. I led
i i e l ea i g : "Wh did ' a dde a d all c m le e acce
j a d he e a d ell he lice h a ce i a cie e emel diffic l
e e ? " "Wh did ' j a f ide e e a e. I ga e me
e e l a chi g a d be he ki d f immedia e, i ide- ie
i g?" "We e eall af aid f h e g a fa a ec f " ea a me ali
li le g ?" A al a , ki e he icall " ha a h l gi f a e
mi ded a d, e e he fleei g f hei e gh flee headl g i h hei b
li e ( , a ha e ed eigh ea la e , jec f m a med a h i ie mall
e de i g hem), he ld' m d ge . A d, e ha m im
i ed e le, he gleef ll mimicked, a f all, f he he hi g migh
al e a d e agai , g acele ha e c me i he a ,i me e
le f i g a d ha he claimed ickl a c mbi a i em i al
e e a ic- icke facial e e e l i , a a , a d hil hical
i . B ab e all, e e e a e d ama f ce al ig ifica ce he ci
emel lea ed a d e e m e e h ei e a e I de i ed
i ed ha e had im l " lled de a d. B he ime I lef I had e
a e " ( he k e ab h e ab a m ch ime l ki g i c ck
) a d a e ed Di i g i hed Vi figh a i i chc af , i iga i ,
i a ,b had i ead dem a ca e, ma iage.
ed lida i i h ha e e
c illage . (Wha e had ac all jDali, mai l beca e i i Bali, i a
dem a ed a c a dice, b ell- died lace. I m h l g , a ,
he e i fell hi i ha .) E e he i al, cial ga i a i , a e f
B ahma a ie , a ld, g a e, half a child ea i g, f m f la , e e le
-Hea e e h beca e fi a f a ce, ha e all bee mic c ical
cia i i h he de ld ld e l e ami ed f ace f ha el i e
e be i l ed, e e di a l , i a c ck b a ce Ja e Bel called "The Bali
figh , a d a diffic l a ach e e e e Tem e ."2 B , a ide f m a fe
he Bali e e, had called i hi a i g ema k , he c ckfigh ha ba e
c a d a k ab ha had ha l bee iced, al h gh a a la
e ed, ch ckli g ha il a he hee b e i fc mi g e i i a
e a di a i e f i all. lea a im a a e ela i f ha
I
Bali, be ea ed i be acce ed. bei g a Bali e e "i eall like" a he e
I a he i g i fa a e m e celeb a ed he me a.3 A m ch
la i hi he c mm i a c f Ame ica face i a ball a k, a
ce ed, a d e e e i e li e all "i ."
The h le illage e ed , b 2 Ja e Bel , "The Bali e e Tem e ," i Ja e
abl m e ha i e e ld ha e he Bel , ed., T adi i al Bali e e C l e (Ne
i e (I migh ac all e e ha e g e Y k : C l mbia U i e i P e , 1970 ; igi
all bli hed i 1935), 85 -110.
ha ie , a d accide al h
became e fm be i f ma ), 3 The be di c i f c ckfigh i g i agai
a d ce ai l e m ch fa e . Ge i g Ba e a d Mead' (Bali e e Cha ac e , 24-25,
ca gh , alm ca gh , i a ice aid 140), b i , , i ge e al a d abb e ia ed.

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Cliff d g lf li k , a a ace c ck (a d e hich a ea i i c i
ack, a da
Gee
ke able, m ch f i
Bali a ea l a A.D. 922), i
face i a ed me a
c ck i g. F i i h icall
l a a e l c ck mea "he ," " a i ,"
ha a e figh i g he "cham i ," "ma f a ," " li ical
e. Ac all , i i
me .
ca dida e," "bachel ," "da d ," "lad
T a e h ha bee i Bali kille ,"a " gh g ." A m ma
le g h f ime, he dee h e
ch l gicalbeha i e me ab e hi a
ide ifica i f Bali e e me i h hei
i i c m a ed a aille c ck h
c ck i mi akable. The d bleabe a h gh he had a la ge,
e d e he e i delibe a e. I
kec aci la e e. A de e a e ma h
ac l he ame a i Bali e e makea i a lad ,ei a i al eff e ica e
i E gli h, e e d ci g him he elfamef m a im ible i a i i
i ed j ke , ai ed , a dlike edi aed i g c ck h make e
i e b ce i ie . Ba e a d Mead ha
fi al l ge a hi e me d ag him
e e gge ed ha , i li e i alh g hea Ba c mm de c i .A i
li e e c ce i f he b d ag ama e , h f mi e m ch, gi e li le,
e a a el a ima ed a , c cka dabeg e dge ha i c m a ed a
ie ed a de achable, elf- ec a ck i hich,
g held e b he ail, lea a a
i e , amb la ge i al he i f
i h a life h i fac e gagi g him. A
hei .4 A d hile I d ha e
ma iageable he g ma ill h i h
ki d f c ci ma e ial eihe he i e e me e i a e j b
c fi m di c fi m hi i a ig i i gmake a g d im e i i
i , he fac ha he a e ma calledc"a figh
li ei g c ck caged f he fi
mb l a e celle ce i ab aime."5
i dC bi ial , a , li ical c
able, a d he Bali e e ab e a, i ehe ii a ce di e,a d ee
de , a he fac ha a e a gd me a e all c m a ed c ck
hill. figh .6 E e he e i la d i elf i e
The la g age f e e da m ali m i cei ed f m i ha e a a mall, d
h h gh, he male ide f i , i h c ck, i ed, eck e e ded, back a ,
e i h image . Sab g, he df ail ai ed, i e e al challe ge la ge,
feckle , ha ele Ja a.7
4 Ibid., 25 - 26. The c ckfigh i al i hi
Bali e e c l e i bei g a i gle e blic ac 5 Ch i iaa H kaa , The La f he Ja a P a a
i i f m hich he he e i all a d (L d : L ac, 1958), 39. The la ha a a a
e e l e cl ded. Se al diffe e ia i i c l ( . 17) i h he el c a b ideg m e. Ja
all e emel la ed d i Bali a d m a P a a, he bjec f a Bali e e U iah m h,
ac i i ie , f mal a d i f mal, i l e he a e d he l d h ha ffe ed him he
ici a i f me a d me e al g d, l elie f i h d ed e a gi l : "G dl
c mm l a li ked c le . F m eligi , Ki g, m L d a d Ma e / I beg , gi e
li ic , ec mic , ki hi , d e , Bali me lea e g / ch hi g a e e i m
i a a he " i e " cie , a fac b h i c mi d ; / like a figh i g c ck e caged / i deed I
m a di mb li m clea l e e . E e am m me le / I am al e / a e he flame
i c e he e me d i fac la ha bee fa ed."
m ch f a le - m ic, ai i g, ce ai ag i
c l al ac i i ie - hei ab e ce, hich i l 6F he e, ee V. E. K , He Ada ech a
ela i e i a ca e, i m e a me e ma e f Bali, 2d ed. ( 'G a e hage: G. Naeff, 1932), i
fac ha ciall e f ced. T hi ge e al a de de h.
e , he c ckfigh , e i el f, b , a d f me
( me - a lea Bali e e me - d e e 7 The e i i deed a lege d he effec ha he
a ch), i he m iki g e ce i . e a a i f Ja a a d Bali i d e he ac i

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 B he i imac f me i h hei i i . The a e ba hed i he ame ce e Dee la :
e
c ck i m e ha me a h ical. Bali m ial e a a i f e id a e , me he Bali e e
e e me , a a a la ge maj i dici al he b , fl e ,a d i i c ckfigh
f Bali e e me , e da e m hich i fa a e ba hed, a d f a i e
am f ime i h hei fa i e , c ck j ab a f e . Thei c mb a e
g mi g hem, feedi g hem, di c c ed, hei l mage d e ed, hei
i g hem, i g hem agai e immed, hei leg ma aged,
a he , j ga i g a hem i ha a d he a e i ec ed f fla i h
mi e f a admi a i a d d eam he i ed c ce a i f a dia
elf-ab i . Whe e e ee a m d me cha . A ma h ha a a
g f Bali e e me a i g idl i i f c ck , a e h ia i he li e
he c cil hed al g he ad i al e e f he e m, ca e dm f
hei hi d , h lde f a d, hi life i h hem, a d e e h e, he
k ee fa hi , half m e f hem e helmi g maj i , h e a i
ill ha e a e i hi ha d , h ldi g h gh i e e ha e i el a a
i be ee hi high , b ci g i ge l i h hem, ca a d d e d ha eem
a dd e g he i leg , f l a ide , b al hem
fli g i fea he i h ab ac e ali , el e , a i di a e am f ime
hi g i agai a eighb ' i h hem. "I am c ck c a ," m la d
e ei i i , i hd a i g i l d, a i e di a aff cia ad b Bali
a d hi l i calm i agai . N a d e e a da d , ed m a a he e
he , ge a feel f a he bi d, a ma m ea he cage, gi e a he ba h,
ill fiddle hi a i h me e el e' c d c a he feedi g. "We' e all
c ck f a hile, b all b m i g c ck c a ."
a d a i lace behi d i , a he The mad e ha me le i ible di
ha j ha i g i a ed ac him me i ,h e e , beca e al h gh
a h gh i e e me el a a imal. i i e ha c ck a e mb lic e e
I he h e a d, he high- alled e i mag ifica i f hei e '
cl e he e he e le li e, figh i g elf, he a ci i ic male eg i
c ck a e ke i icke cage , m ed i Ae ia e m , he a e al e e
f e e l ab a mai ai he i - a d a he m e immedia e
im m bala ce f a d hade. e - f ha he Bali e e ega d a
The a e fed a ecial die , hich a ie he di ec i e i , ae he icall , m
me ha acc di g i di id al he all , a d me a h icall , f h ma a
ie b hich i m l mai e, if ed f :a imali .
im i ie i h fa m e ca e ha i i The Bali e e e l i agai a
he me e h ma a e g i g ea i beha i ega ded a a imal-like ca
a d ffe ed he a imal ke el b ke ha dl be e e ed. Babie a e
el. Red e e i ffed d hei all ed c a lf ha ea . I ce ,
beak a d hei a e gi e hem h gh ha dl a ed, i a m ch le
h if i g c ime ha be iali . (The
fa e f l Ja a e e eligi fig e h a ia e i hme f he ec d
i hed ec him elf agai a Bali e e i dea h b d i g, f he fi bei g
c l e he ( he a ce f K a ia
f ced li e like a a imal.8) M de
ca e ) h a a a i a e c ckfigh i g
gamble . See Ch i iaa H kaa , Agama 8 A i ce c le i f ced ea ig
Ti ha (Am e dam : N d-H lla d che, ke e hei eck a d c a l a ig gh
1964), 184. a d ea i h hei m h he e. O hi , ee

D dal Fall 2005 6l

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Cliff d m a e e e e ed - i c l e, fail e, lca ic e i - alm al
Gee
da ce, i al, m h - i me eal fa a i l e hem. A d ha fam
a ic a imal f m. The mai be h lida i Bali, The Da f Sile ce
i ec i i fili g he child' ee h (Nje i), he e e e i ile a d
he ill l k like a imal fa g . N imm bile all da l g i de a id
l defeca i b ea i g i ega ded a c ac i h a dde i fl f dem
a di g i g, alm b ce e ac i i , cha ed m me a il f hell, i e
be c d c ed h iedl a d i a el , ceded he e i da b la ge- cale
beca e f i a cia i i h a imali c ckfigh (i hi ca e legal) i alm
. E e falli g d a f m f e e illage he i la d.
cl m i e i c ide ed be bad f I he c ckfigh , ma a d bea , g d
he e ea . A ide f m c ck a d a a d e il, eg a d id, he c ea i e e
fe d me ic a imal - e , d ck - f a ed ma c li i a d he de c
f em i al ig ifica ce, he Bali i e e f l e ed a imali f e i
e ea ea e i e a imal a d ea a bl d d ama f ha ed, c el , i
hei la ge mbe fd g me el le ce, a d dea h. I i li le de ha
call l b i ha h bic c el . I he , a i he i a iable le, he
ide if i g i h hi c ck, he Bali e e e f he i i g c ck ake he ca ca
ma i ide if i g j i h hi ideal f he l e - f e limb f m limb
elf, e e hi e i , b al , a d a b i e aged e - h me ea , he
he ame ime, i h ha he m fea , d e i h a mi e f cial emba
ha e , a d ambi ale ce bei g ha i i , a me , m al a i fac i , ae he ic
i fa ci a ed b - The P e di g
f Da k , a d ca ibal j . O ha a ma
e .
h ha l a im a figh i me
The c ec i f c ck a d c ck
ime d i e eck hi famil h i e
figh i g i h ch P e , i h ahed ac i e he g d , a ac f me a h i
mali ic dem ha h ea e c cal (aa d cial) icide. O ha i eek
l i ade he mall, clea ed- ffi g aceea hl a al g e f hea e a d hell
i hich he Bali e e ha e ca efhe
ll Bali e e c m a e he f me he
b il hei li e a d de i imhabi
d f a ma h e c ck ha j ,
a i i e e he
lici . A c ckfigh , a la e ha f a ma h e c ck
c ckfigh , i i he fi i a ceha
a blj d l .
ac ifice ffe ed, i h he a ia e
cha a d bla i , he demV^ ckfigh
i ( e adje ; ab ga ) a e held
de acif hei a e , ca i ibal
a i g ab fif fee a e. U all
h ge . N em le fe i al h ldhe be begi a d la e af e a d
c d c ed il e i made. (If i i h ee f h il e .
mi ed me e ill i e i abl Ab
fall i i e e e a a e ma che
a a ce a d c mma d i h he( ehe ice) c m i e a g am. Each ma ch
f a a ge ed i i ha he e iigh eci el like he he i ge e al a
be immedia el c ec ed.) C llece i e : he e i mai ma ch, c
e e a al e il - ill e , cec i be ee i di id al ma che ,
a ia i i hei f ma , a d each i a
a ged a c m le el ad h c ba i . Af
Ja e Bel , "C m Pe ai i g T i i
Bali," i Bel , ed., T adi i al Bali e e C le a e, figh ha e ded a d he em i al
49 ; he abh e ce f a imali ge deb
e all i, i clea ed a a - he be aid,
Ba e a d Mead, Bali e e Cha ac e , 22. he c e c ed, he ca ca e

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 e ed - e e , eigh , e ha e e a c c ie ced i h a mall h le i Dee la :
e
d e me li eglige l i he i g laced i a ail f a e , i hich i he Bali e e
i h a c ck a d eek fi d he e a l gi ake ab e - e ec d i k, c ckfigh
cal e f i . Thi ce , hich a e i dk a a je g a d ma ked a
a el ake le ha e mi e ,a d begi i g a d e d b he bea i g f a
f e a g d deal l ge , i c d c ed li g g. D i g he e e - e ec
i a e bd ed, bli e, e e di em d he ha dle ( e ga gkeb) a e
bli g ma e . Th e immedia el e mi ed ch hei e . If, a
i l ed gi e i a be b di g i ed, me ime ha e , he a imal ha e
idel ga e i ; h e h , emba f gh d i g hi ime, he a e
a edl , a e, a em e e d me icked , fl ffed, lled, dded, a d
h ha he h le hi g i eall he i e i l ed, a d back i he
ha e i g. ce e f he i g a d he ce begi
A ma ch made, he he h ef l agai . S me ime he ef e figh a
e i e i h he ame delibe a e i diffe all, e kee i ga a ,i hich
e ce, a d he elec ed c ck ha e hei ca e he a e im i ed ge he de
( adji) affi ed - a ha , i a icke cage, hich all ge hem
ed eel d ,f fi e i che l g. e gaged.
Thi i a delica e j b hich l a mall M f he ime, i a ca e, he
i f me , a half-d e c ck fl alm immedia el a e
i m illage , k h d a he i a i g-bea i g, head- h
e l . The ma h a ache he al i g, leg-kicki ge l i f a imal f
ide hem, a d if he e he e, ab l e, a d i i
a i i i e a a d him he a bea if l, a be alm ab
-leg f he ic im. The a e af ac , a Pla ic c ce f ha e. Wi h
fi ed b i di g a l g le g h f i g i m me e he he d i e
a d he f f he a d he leg h me a lid bl i h hi . The
f he c ck. F ea I hall c me ha dle h e c ck ha deli e ed he
e e l , i i d e me ha diffe e bl immedia el ick i ha i
l f m ca e ca e, a d i a b e i e ill ge a e bl , f if he d e
l delibe a e affai . The l e ab he ma ch i likel e di am
i e e i e - he a e ha e ed l all m al ie a he bi d ildl
a ecli e a d he da k f he m , hack each he iece . Thi i a ic
h ld be ke f he igh f m la l e if, a f e ha e , he
e ,a d f h. A d he a e ha dled,
b hi ea d , i h he ame c i c ck m e le de e d h
c mbi a i ff i e a d e killed he i a i , a c ide a i h e im
ali he Bali e e di ec a d i al b a ce i agai ela i e he im a ce f he
figh . Whe affi e a d c ck ha dle a e
jec ge e all .
me e he ha he e , he a e alm
The affi ed, he c ck a e
al a a i e cl e ela i e - a b he c
laced b hei ha dle ( h ma i - a e i ima e f ie d f hi . The a e
ma be hei e ) faci g e h alm e e i f hi e ali , a
he fac ha all h ee ill efe he c ck a
a he i he ce e f he i g.9 A
"mi e," a "I" f gh S -a d-S , a d ,
9 E ce f im a , mall-be figh ( dem a e . Al , e -ha dle -affi e i
he e i f figh "im a ce," ee bel ) ad e d be fai l fi ed, h gh i di id al
affi i g i all d e b me e he ma a ici a e i e e al a d f e e cha ge
ha he e . Whe he he e ha dle hi le i hi a gi e e.

D dal Fall 2005 63

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Cliff d ick i i ic im' b d , f he he S di g all hi mel d ama -
Gee
agg e i a he me c f hi ded hich he c d acked igh a d
f e. he i g f ll i ea ile ce, m
Wi h he bi d agai i he ha d f i g hei b die i ki e he ic m a
hei ha dle , he c c i k h i h he m eme f he a imal ,
h ee ime af e hich he c ck hich chee i g hei cham i i h
ha la ded he bl m be e d dle ha d m i , hif i g f
h ha he i fi m, a fac he dem he h lde , i g f he head,
ae b a de i g idl a d he falli g back e ma e a he c ck i h
i kf ac c i k. The c c i he m de ca ee a d
he k ice m e a d he figh m e ide f he i g (i i aid ha ec
ec mme ce.
a me ime l e e e a d fi ge
D i g hi i e al, ligh l e f m bei g a e i e), gi g f
mi e , he ha dle f he ded
a d agai a he gla ce ff a d
c ck ha bee ki g f a icall ae he - i a a b d f e a di
i , like a ai e a chi g a ma led b a il elab a e a d eci el de ailed
e be ee d , ge i i ha e fle .
a la , de e a e f ic . He blThe e le , ge he i h he de el
i i m h, i g he h le chicke ed l e f c ck a d c ckfigh i g
head i hi m h a d cki g hich acc m a ie hem, a e i e
a d bl i g, fl ff i , d d i alm-leaf ma c i
ff i (l a ;
i h a i f medici e , a d al) a ed f m ge e a i
ge e all ie a hi g he ca hi k
ge efa i a a f he ge e al legal
a e he la ce f i i hich
a d c l al adi i f he illage .
ma be hidde me he e i hi iA . aBfigh , he m i e ( aja k m g-, dj
he ime he i f ced i back kemba
d ) - he ma h ma age he
he i all d e ched i chicke bl c d, c - i i cha ge f hei a lica
b , a i i efigh i g, a g d ha dle i ia d hi a h i i ab l e. I ha e
h hi eigh i g ld. S me f ehem
e ee a m i e' j dgme e
ca i all make he dead alk, a lea i ed a bjec , e e b he m e
l g e gh f he ec d a d fi al de de l e , ha e I e e hea d,
d. e e i i a e, a cha ge f fai e
I he climac ic ba le (if he e i e; di ec ed agai e, , f ha ma e ,
me ime he ded c ck im l c m lai ab m i e i ge e al.
e i e i he ha dle ' ha d imme O l e ce i all ell- ed, lid,
dia el a i i laced d agai ), he a d, gi e he c m le i f he c de,
c ck h la ded he fi bl al k ledgeable ci i e e f m hi j b,
l ceed fi i h ff hi eake ed a d i fac me ill b i g hei c ck
e .B hi i fa f m a i e l figh e ided e b ch me .
i able c me, f if a c ck ca alk I i al he m i e h m acc a
he ca figh , a d if he ca figh , he ca i f chea i g, hich, h gh a e i
kill, a d ha c i hich c ck e he e eme, cca i all a i e, a e e
i e fi . If he ded e ca ge fe ed ; a d i i he h i he i f e
a ab i a d agge il he he e ca e he e he c ck e i e i
d , he i he fficial i e , e e all ge he decide hich (if ei he ,
if he him elf le e a i a f , h gh he Bali e e d ca e f
la e . ch a c me, he e ca be ie ) e

64 D dal Fall 2005

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 fi . Like ed a j dge, a ki g, a ie , e . B i gi g a c ck a im a figh Dee e la :
a da licema , he i all f he e, a d a ,f a ad l male, a c m l he Bali e e
de hi a ed di ec i he a imal d f ci i e hi ; a a i f figh , c ckfigh
a i f he figh ceed i hi he hich e e all held ma ke da ,
ci ic ce ai f he la . I he d e a a maj ce f blic e e e ;
f c ckfigh I a i Bali, I e e ce a age f he a a a a ed e
a a al e ca i ab le . I deed, ibili f i ce ; a d he c ck i g,
I e e a a e al e ca i , he a ila , di he ce e f he il
ha h e be ee c ck , a all. lage ea h e he m me f Ba
Thi c i ed ble e fa e e li e e ci ili - he c cil h e, he
hich, ake a a fac f a e, i age igi em le, he ma ke lace, he ig
ammeled a d, ake a a fac f c l al e , a d he ba a ee. T da , a
e, i f m e fec ed, defi e he c ck fe ecial cca i a ide, he e e
figh a a ci l gical e i . A c ckfigh ec i de make e a a eme f
i ha , ea chi g f a ame f me he c ec i be ee he e ci eme
hi g e eb a e e gh be called f c llec i e life a d h e f bl d
ag a d c ele e gh im ible, b , le di ec l e e ed,
be called a c d, E i g G ffma ha he c ec i i elf emai i ima e
called a "f c ed ga he i g" - a e f a d i ac . T e ei ,h e e ,i i
e e g ed i a c mm fl ece a he a ec f c ck
f ac i i a d ela i g ea he figh i g a d hich all he he
i e m f ha fl .10 S ch ga he i g i ,a d h gh hich he e e ci e
mee a d di e e ; he a ici a i hei f ce, a a ec I ha e h fa
hem fl c a e; he ac i i ha f c e di l ig ed. I mea , f c e, he
hem i di c ee - a a ic la e ce gambli g.
ha e cc a he ha a c i
e ha e d e . The ake hei f m lhe Bali e e e e d a hi g i a
f m he i a i ha e ke hem, im le a ha he ca c i e d
he fl hich he a e laced, a i a c m lica ed e, a d hi ge e
G ffma i ; b i i a f m, a d a ali a i c ckfigh age i g i e ce
a ic la e e, e hele . F he i i .
a i , he fl i i elf c ea ed, i j I he fi lace, he e a e f
delibe a i , gical e a i , bl ck be , h.11 The e i he i gle a ial be
mee i g , i -i , c ckfigh , b he c l
al e cc a i - he e, a e hall il Thi d, hich li e all mea a i deli
ee, he celeb a i f a i al - ble ai ma k, a i a bi hma k a ei i
hich l ecif he f c b , a e, i ed a ell f a de i i a c
ca e, f a a , f ec i ffe ed i a l a ,
a embli g ac a da a gi g ce
f a a d-i f me e el e i a legal ce
e , b i g i ac all i bei g. em ial c e ,f a ea e ad a ced i a
I cla ical ime ( ha i i a , b i e deal, f a ig laced i a field i
he D ch i a i f 1908), he dica e i e hi i i di e, a d f he
he e e e b ea c a a d im a fa fai hf l ife f m h e l e

e la m ali , he agi g f a he h ba d m gai a i fac i e

de he him. See K , He Ada ech a Bali ;
c ckfigh a a e lici l cie al ma
The d Pigea d, Ja aa -Nede la d Ha d
? E i g G ffma , E c e : T S die i de b ek(G i ge : W l e , 1938); H. H.
he S ci l g f I e ac i (I dia a li : B bb J b ll, O dja aa che-Nede la d che W de
Me ill, 1961), 9 -10. lij (Leide : B ill, 1923).

D dal Fall 2005 65

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Cliff d i he ce e be ee he i ci al ( h Of he 57 ma che f hich I ha e
Gee
ke e gah), a d he e i he cl d f e e ac a d eliable da a he ce e
i he al e a d he i g be ee be , he a ge i f m 15 i ggi 500,
membe f he a die ce ( h ke a i). i h a mea a 85 a d i h he di ib
The fi i icall la ge ; he ec d i bei g a he iceabl im dal :
icall mall. The fi i c llec i e, i mall figh (15 i ggi ei he ide f 35)
l i g c ali i f be cl e i g acc i g f ab 45 e ce f he
a d he e ; he ec d i i di id al mbe ; medi m e (20 i g
al, ma ma . The fi i a ma e f gi ei he ide f 70) f ab 25 e
delibe a e, e ie , alm f i ea ce ; a d la ge (75 i ggi ei he ide
a geme b he c ali i membe f 175) f ab 20 e ce , i h a fe
a d he m i e h ddled like c i a e mall a d e la ge e a
i he ce e f he i g ; he ec d he e eme . I a cie he e he
i a ma e f im l i e h i g, blic mal dail age f a ma al lab e - a
ffe , a d blic acce a ce b he e b ickmake , a di a fa m ke , a
ci ed h ga d i edge . A d m ma ke e - a ab 3 i ggi a
c i l , a d a e hall ee m e da , a d c ide i g he fac ha figh
eali gl , he e he fi i al a , i h e e held he a e age ab e e 2.5
e ce i ,e e m e , he ec d, e all da i he immedia e a ea I died, hi
i h e ce i ,i e e ch. Wha i a i clea l e i gambli g, e e if he
fai c i i he ce e i a bia ed e be a e led a he ha i di id al
he ide. eff .
The ce e be i he fficial e, The ide be a e, h e e , me hi g
hedged i agai i h a eb k f el e al ge he . Ra he ha he lem ,
le , a d i made be ee he c ck legali ic ac maki g f he ce e , a
e , i h he m i e a e ee a d ge i g ake lace a he i he fa hi
blic i e .12 Thi be , hich, a I i hich he ck e cha ge ed
a , i al a ela i el a d me ime k he i a he c b.
e la ge, i e e ai ed im l b he The e i a fi ed a d k dd a a
e i h e ame i i made, b digm hich i ac i e ie
b him ge he i hf fi e, me f m 10 - 9 a he h e d 2 -1 a
ime e e eigh , allie - ki , illage he l g: 10 - 9, 9 - 8, 8 - 7, 7 - 6, 6 - 5,
ma e , eighb , cl e f ie d . He ma , 5 - 4, 4 - 3,3 - 2, 2 -1. The ma h
if he i e eciall ell- -d , i he back he de d g c ck (lea
e e be he maj c ib , h gh, i g a ide h fa i e , keb , a d
if l h ha he i i l ed i de d g , gai, a e e abli hed f he
a chica e , he m be a ig ifica m me ) h he h - ide m
e. be i dica i g he dd he a be
gi e . Tha i , if he h ga al, "fi e,"
12 The ce e be m be ad a ced i ca h b
b h a ie i he ac al figh . The m he a he de d g a 5 - 4 ( ,
i e h ld he ake il he deci i i e f him, 4 - 5) ; if he h "f , " he
de ed a d he a a d hem he i e , a i a 4 - 3 (agai , he i g
a idi g, am g he hi g , he i e e em he " h ee"), if " i e," a 9 - 8, a d
ba a me b h i e a d l e ld feel
. A ma backi g he fa i e, a d
if he la e had a ff e all f ll i g
hi defea . Ab 10 e ce f he i e ' h c ide i g gi i g dd if he ca
ecei a e b ac ed f he m i e' ha e ge hem h e gh, i dica e he
a d ha f he figh . fac b c i g he c l e f ha

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c ck- "b ," " eckled," ha h , he begi f c i e Dee la :
e
e e . 3 a he a e ial be i g ai , f e he Bali e e
A dd - ake (backe f he de f m fa ac he i g. The ake ie c ckfigh
d g) a d dd -gi e (backe f he h he gi e i l ge dd , he
fa i e) ee he c d i h hei gi e h he ake i h e
e .14 The ake , h i he e i
13 Ac all , he i g f c ck , hich i e
emel elab a e (I ha e c llec ed m e ha
hi i a i , ill ig al h la ge a
be he i he make a he dd he i
e cla e , ce ai l a c m le e li ), i
ba ed c l al e, b a e ie f i h i g b h ldi g a mbe f fi
de e de , i e ac i g, dime i , hich i ge i f f hi face a d ig
cl de, be ide c l , i e, b e hick e , l m l a i g hem. If he gi e , he ed,
age, a d em e ame . (B edig ee. The
e lie i ki d, he be i made ; if he
Bali e e d b eed c ck a ig ifica
e e , , fa a I ha e bee able di c d e , he l ck ga e a d he
e , ha e he e e d e . The a il, j gle ea ch g e .
c ck, hich i he ba ic figh i g ai e e The ide be i g, hich ake lace
he e he i f d, i a i e he af e he ce e be ha bee made a d
A ia, a d e ca b a g d e am le i he i i ea ced, c i he i a i
chicke ec i f alm a Bali e e ma ke
f a he e f m 4 5 i ggi 50 i gc e ce d f h a backe f
m e.) The c l eleme i me el he e he de d g ffe hei i i
mall ed a he e ame, e ce he a e h ill acce hem, hile
he c ck f diffe e e -a i ci h e h a e backi g he fa i eb
le he m be - ha e he ame c l , i
d like he ice bei g ffe ed, h
hich ca e a ec da i dica i f m e
f he he dime i ("la ge eckled" .
e all f e e icall he c l f he c ck
" mall eckled," e c.) i added. The e a e h he a e de e a e be b
c di a ed i h a i c m l gical idea a h e dd .
hich hel ha e he maki g f ma che , Alm al a dd -calli g, hich
ha , f e am le, figh a mall, head g, e d be e c
e al i ha a
eckled b - - hi e c ck i h fla -l i g
a e ime alm
all calle a e call
fea he a d hi leg f m he ea ide f he
i g a ce ai da f he c m le Bali e e i g he ame hi g, a ff a d
cale da , a d a la ge, ca i , all-black c ck he l g e d f he a ge (5 - 4 4 - 3)
i h f ed fea he a d bb leg f m he a d he m e , al c e all ,
h ide a he da , a d . All hi a d he h e d i h g ea e le
i agai ec ded i alm-leaf ma c i a d
e eed a d a g ea e le e de
e dle l di c ed b he Bali e e ( h d
all ha e ide ical em ), a d f ll- cale c m g ee. Me c i g "fi e" a d fi di g
e ial-c m- mb lic a al i f c ck cla hem el e a e ed l i h c ie f
ifica i ld be e emel al able b h "b " a c i g " i ," ei he d a
a a adj c he de c i i f he c ckfigh i g he he calle fai l ickl i h
a d i i elf. B m da a he bjec , h gh
e e i e a d a ied, d eem be c m hem e i i g f m he ce e a hei
le e a d ema ic e gh a em ch a 14 F e f e h g a hic c m le e
a al i he e. F Bali e e c m l gical idea e , i h ld be ed ha i i ible f
m e ge e all ee Bel , ed., T adi i al Bali e e he ma backi g he fa i e - he dd -gi e
C l e, a d J. L. S elle g ebel, ed., Bali: S d - make a be i hich he i if hi c ck
ie i Life, Th gh , a d Ri al (The Hag e : W. i he e i a ie, a ligh h e i g f he
a H e e, i960) ; f cale d ical e , Cliff d dd (I d ha e e gh ca e be e ac ,
Gee , Pe , Time, a d C d c i Bali : A b ie eem cc ab ce e e fif ee
E a i C l al A al i (Ne Ha e , C .: e ma che ). He i dica e hi i h
S hea A ia S die , Yale U i e i , 1966), d hi b h i g a ih (" ie") a he ha he
45-53 c ck- e, b ch be a e i fac i f e e .

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Cliff d -ge e ffe a e a ed . If f lfilled be de e a el fi d
Gee
he cha ge i made a d a e a e ill a la -mi e a e a a ice he ca
ca ce, he ced e i e ea ed i a li e i h. (Whe e he ce e be i mall,
m e " e e ," a d , l a el , he i e e d cc : be i g die
a d i he e la ge figh , eachi g ff, aili g i ile ce, a dd le g h
he l ima e " i e" " e " le el . Oc e a d e le l e i e e .) I a la ge
ca i all , if he c ck a e clea l mi be , ell-made ma ch - he ki d f
ma ched, he e ma be a dm e ma ch he Bali e e ega d a " eal c ck
me a all, e e a m eme d figh i g" - he m b ce e ali , he
he cale 4 - 3,3 - 2, e , e a el e e ha hee cha i ab b eak
2 -1, a hif hich i acc m a ied b l e, i h all h e a i g, h i g,
a decli i g mbe f be a a hif hi g, clambe i g me i i e g,
a d i acc m a ied b a i c ea a effec hich i l heigh e ed b he
i g mbe . B he ge e al a e i i e e ill e ha fall i hi a
f he be i g m ea h e dde e , a he a if me e had
l ge di a ce he cale a d he, ed ff he c e , he he li
f ide be , e i e le f e e g g d , he c ck a e d ,
m e , i h he e helmi g maj i a d he ba le begi .
f be falli g i he 4 - 3 8-7 Whe i e d , a he e f m fif ee
a ge.15 ec d fi e mi e la e , all be a e
A he m me f he elea e f he immedia el aid. The e a e ab l el
c ck b he ha dle a ache , he lOU , a lea a be i g e .O e
c eami g, a lea i a ma ch he e he ma , f c e, b f m a f ie d be
ce e be i la ge, eache alm f e f e ffe i g acce i g a age , b
ied i a he emai i g ffe acce i m ha e he
m e al ead i ha d a d, if l e,
15 The eci e d amic f he m eme f m a i he , bef e he
he be i g i e f he m i ig i g, m
e ma ch begi . Thi i a i le,
c m lica ed, a d, gi e he hec ic c di i
de hich i cc , m diffic l d ,
a d a I ha e e e hea d f a di ed
a ec f he figh . M i ic e ec di g m i e' deci i ( h gh d b le
l m l i le b e e ld babl be ec he em me
ime be me), I ha e
e a deal i h i effec i el . E e im e al e e hea df a el hed be , e
i i icall - he l a ach e al e
ha beca e i a ked- c ckfigh
e h g a he ca gh i he middle f all hi -
i i clea ha ce ai me lead b h i de e c d he c e
e ce migh be, a
mi i g he fa i e ( ha i , maki g he e he a e e ed be me ime f
i g c ck- e call hich al a i i ia e he chea e , d a ic a d immedia e.
ce ) a d i di ec i g he m eme f he I i ,i a ca e, hi f mal a m
dd , he e " i i leade " bei g he m e me be ee bala ced ce e be
acc m li hed c ckfigh e -c m- lid-ci i e
a d bala ced ide e ha e he
be di c ed bel . If he e me begi
cha ge hei call , he f ll ; if he begi c i ical a al ical blem f a he
make be , d he a d - h gh he e hich ee c ckfigh age i g a he
i al a a la ge mbe f f a ed be li k c ec i g he figh he ide
c i gf h e l ge dd he e d - ld f Bali e e c l e. I al g
he m eme m e le cea e . B a de
ge he a g ab l i gi a d
ailed de a di g f he h le ce
a ai ha , ala , i i e likel e e dem a i g he li k.
ge : a deci i he i a med i h eci e The fi i ha eed be made
b e a i f i di id al beha i . i hi c ec i i ha he highe he

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ce e be , he m e likel he ma ch figh , h e de 40 i ggi , i i 1.9 Dee la :
e
ill i ac al fac be a e e e. Sim 1(19 a d 10).l6 he Bali e e
le c ide a i f a i ali gge N , f m hi i i - ha he c ckfigh
ha . If a e be i g 15 i ggi a highe he ce e be he m e e ac l a
c ck, migh be illi g g al g fif -fif i i he c ckfigh i -
i h e e m e e e if feel hi g m e le immedia el f l
a imal me ha he le mi i g. l : (1) he highe he ce e be , he
B if a e be i g 500 a e e , g ea e i he ll he ide be i g
e likel be l a he d . Th , i a d he h - dd e d f he age i g
la ge-be figh , hich f c ei l e ec m a d ice e a; (2) he highe
he be e a imal , eme d ca e i he ce e be , he g ea e he l me f
ake ee ha he c ck a e ab a ide be i g a d ice e a.
e e l ma ched a i e, ge e al c di The l gic i imila i b h ca e .
i , g aci , a d a i h ma l The cl e he figh i i fac e e
ible. The diffe e a f adj i g m e , he le a ac i e he l g e d
he f he a imal a e f e em f he dd ill a ea a d, he ef e,
l ed ec e hi . If e c ck eem he h e i m be if he e a e be
ge , a ag eeme ill be made ake . Tha hi i he ca e i a a e
i i hi a a ligh l le ad a f m me e i ec i , f m he Bali
age a gle - a ki d f ha dica i g, e e' a al i f he ma e , a d
a hich affi e a e, i i aid, f m ha m e ema ic b e a
e emel killed. M e ca e ill be i I a able c llec . Gi e he
ake , , em l killf l ha dle diffic l f maki g eci e a d c m
a d ma ch hem e ac l a abili le e ec di g f ide be i g, hi
ie . a g me i ha d ca i me ical
I h , i a la ge-be figh he e f m, b i all m ca e he dd -gi e ,
e make he ma ch a ge i el fif dd - ake c e al i , a i e
fif i i i e m ,a di ced mi ima addle he e he b lk
c ci l fel a ch. F medi m (a a g e , - hi d h ee- a e
figh he e ei me ha le , a d i m ca e ) f he be a e ac all
f mall e le e , h gh he e i al made, a h ee f i f he
a a eff make hi g a lea al g he cale a d he h e e d
a ima el e al, f e e a 15 i g
gi (5 da ' k) e a make i6 A mi g l bi mial a iabili , he
a e e -m e be i a clea l fa de a ef m a fif -fif e ec a i i he
able i a i . A d, agai , ha a i 60 i ggi a d bel ca e i 1.38 a da d de i
ic I ha e e d bea hi . I m 57 a i , (i a e-di ec i e ) a 8 i 100
ma che , he fa i e 33 ime e ibili b cha ce al e ; f he bel 40
i ggi ca e i i 1.65 a da d de ia i ,
all, he de d g 24, a 1.4 1 a i . B if ab 5 i 100. The fac ha he e de a e
e li he fig e a 60 i ggi ce h gh eal a e e eme me el i dica e ,
e be , he a i be 1.1 1 agai , ha e e i he malle figh he e
(12 fa i e , 11 de d g ) f h e de c ma ch c ck a lea ea abl e e
ab e hi li e, a d 1.6 1 (21 a d 13) l e i . I i a ma e f ela i e ela a i
f he e e a d e ali a i , hei
f h e bel i . O , if ake he
elimi a i . The e de c f high-be c e
e eme , f e la ge figh , h e be c i -fli i i i , fc e, e e
i h ce e be e 100 i ggi he m e iki g, a d gge he Bali e e k
a i i 1 1 (7 a d 7) ; f e mall i e ell ha he a e ab .

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Cliff d f he la ge-ce e -be figh ha f a e eall c adic ea
Gee
he mall e, i h medi m e ge he , b a f a i gle la ge em
e all i be ee . I de ail, he fi i , i hich he ce e be i , eak,
fc e, e ac , b he ge e al a e he "ce e f g a i ," d a i g, he
i i ec i e : he e f he la ge i i he m e , he ide be
ce e be ll he ide be a d a d he h - dd e d f he cale.
i e e -m e a e i di ec l The ce e be h "make he game,"
i al i i e, beca e i i e e ha be e , defi e i , ig al
i di ec l i al he deg ee ha , f ll i g a i f Je em Be
hich he c ck a e i fac e e l ham' , I am g i g call i "de h."
ma ched. A f he l me e i , The Bali e e a em c ea e a
al age i g i g ea e i la ge-ce e i e e i g, if ill, "dee ," ma ch
be figh beca e ch figh a e c id b maki g he ce e be a la ge a
e ed m e "i e e i g," l i he ible ha he c ck ma ched ill be
e e ha he a e le edic able, b , a e al a d a fi e a ible, a d he
m e c ciall , ha m e i a ake i c me, h , a edic able a
hem - i e m f m e , i e m f ible. The d al a cceed. Nea
he ali f he c ck , a d c e l half he ma che a e ela i el i i
e l , a e hall ee, i e m f al, ela i el i e e i g-i m b
cial e ige.17 ed e mi l g , " hall " - affai .
The a ad f fai c i i he mid B ha fac m e a g e agai
dle, bia ed c i he ide i h m i e e a i ha he fac ha
a me el a a e e. The be i g m ai e , e , a d la igh
em , h gh f mall i c g e , a e medi c e a g e agai he ie
ha a i ic eff i di ec ed a d
17 The ed c i i age i g i malle figh f di a d, i h a ce ai f e e
( hich, f c e, feed i elf; e f he c ,a ima e i . The image f a i
ea e le fi d mall figh i e e i g
ic ech i e i i deed e ac : he ce
i ha he e i le age i g i hem, a d c
a i i e f la ge e ) ake lace i h ee
e be i a mea , a de ice, f c ea i g
m all ei f ci g a . Fi , he e i a im "i e e i g," "dee " ma che , he
le i hd a al f i e e a e le a de ff ea , a lea he mai ea ,
ha e a c f c ffee cha i h a f ie d. h he a e i e e i g, he ce f
Sec d, he Bali e e d ma hema icall hei fa ci a i , he b a ce f hei
ed ce dd , b be di ec l i e m f a ed
dd a ch. Th , f a 9 ? 8 be , e ma de h. The e i h ch ma che
age 9 i ggi , he he 8 ; f 5 - 4, e a e i e e i g - i deed, f he Bali e e,
age 5, he he 4. F a gi e c e c e i i el ab bi g - ake f
i , like he i ggi , he ef e, 6.3 ime a he ealm f f mal c ce i m e
m ch m e i i l ed i a 10 - 9 be a i a
b adl ci l gical a d cial- ch
2-1 be , f e am le, a d, a ed, i mall
l gical e , a d a le el ec
figh be i g e le a d he l ge e d.
Fi all , he be hich a e made e d be mic idea f ha "de h" i gami g
e- a he ha -, h ee-, i me f he am .18
e la ge figh , f - fi e-fi ge e.
(The fi ge i dica e he m l i le a ed f he i8 Be ide age i g he e a e he ec mic
be dd a i e, ab l e fig e . T a ec f he c ckfigh , e eciall i e cl e
fi ge i a 6 ? 5 i a i mea a ma a c ec i i h he l cal ma ke em hich,
age 10 i ggi he de d g agai 12, h gh ec da b h i m i a i a d
h ee i a 8 - 7 i a i , 21 agai 24, a d i f c i ,a e i h im a ce. C ck
.) figh a e e e e hich a e h

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jDe ham' c ce f "dee la " i I ge i e dee la , hi i he ca e f Dee la :
e
f d i hi The The f Legi la i .19 b h a ie . The a e b h i e hei he Bali e e
B i he mea la i hich he ake head . Ha i g c me ge he i ea ch c ckfigh
a e high ha i i , f m hi ili a ia f lea e he ha e e e ed i a e
a d i , i a i al f me e gage la i hi hich ill b i g he a ici
i i a all. If a ma h ef ei a a ,c ide ed c llec i el , e ai
h a d d ( i ggi ) age a he ha e lea e. Be ham' c
fi e h d ed f i a e e be , he cl i a , he ef e, ha dee la
ma gi al ili f he d he a d a imm al f m fi i ci le a d, a
i i clea l le ha he ma gi al ical e f him, h ld be e e ed
di ili f he e he a d l e. legall .
B m e i e e i g ha he e hical
i he ma c me, me ime f m i e di blem, a lea f c ce he e,
a a ea , b ell e 90 e ce , babl i ha de i e he l gical f ce f Be
e 95, a e e l cal affai , a d he l cali ham' a al i me d e gage i ch
c ce ed i defi ed b he illage, la , b h a i a el a d f e , a d
e e b he admi i a i e di ic , b b he e e i he face f la ' e e ge. F
al ma ke em. Bali ha a h ee-da ma Be ham a d h e h hi k a he d e
ke eek i h he familia " la - em" e
a i . Th gh he ma ke hem el e ha e ( ada mai l la e , ec mi ,
e e bee e highl de el ed, mall m a d a fe chia i ), he e la a i
i g affai i a illage a e, i i he mic e i , a I ha e aid, ha ch me a e i
gi ch a i a he ge e all ma k a i al - addic , fe i hi , child e ,
- e e a e mile , e e eigh
f l , a age , h eed l be
eighb i g illage ( hich i c em a
Bali i all g i g mea a he e f m ec ed agai hem el e . B f he
fi e e ele e h a d e le) f m Bali e e, h gh a all he d
hich he c e f a c ckfigh a die ce, i f m la e i i ma d , he e
deed i all all f i , ill c me. M f he la a i lie i he fac ha i ch la
figh a e i fac ga i ed a d ed b
m e i le a mea e f ili , had
mall c mbi e f e al me cha de
he ge e al emi e, e gl held b hem e ec ed, ha i i a mb l f m al
a d i deed b all Bali e e, ha c ckfigh a e im , e cei ed im ed.
g df ade beca e " he ge m e f I i , i fac , i hall game , e
he h e, he make i ci c la e." S all elli g i hich malle am fm e
a i f hi g a ell a a ed hee a ei l ed, ha i c eme a d dec
cha ce gambli g game ( ee bel ) a e e
a d he edge f he a ea ha hi e e eme f ca h a e m e ea l
ake he ali f a mall fai . Thi c m f ili a d di ili , i he
ec i f c ckfigh i g i h ma ke a d ma di a , e a ded e e - f lea
ke elle i e ld, a , am g he hi g , e a d ai , ha i e a d ha i
hei c j c i i i c i i (R el f G i ,
e . I dee e , he e he am
P a a iBali, 2 l . [Ba d g: N. V. Ma a Ba ,
1954]) i dica e . T ade ha f ll ed he c ck f m e a e g ea , m ch m e i a
f ce ie i al Bali a d he ha ake ha ma e ial gai : amel , e
bee e f he mai age cie f he i la d' eem, h , dig i , e ec - i a d,
m e i a i .
h gh i Bali a f dl f eigh ed
d, a .20 I i a ake mb lical
19 The h a e i f d i he Hild e h a la
i , I e a i al Lib a f P ch l g , 1931,
e 106 ; ee L. L. F lle , The M ali f La 20 Of c e, e e i Be ham, ili i
(Ne Ha e , C . : Yale U i e i P e , mall c fi ed a a c ce m e a
1964), 6ff. l e a d gai , a d m a g me he e migh

D dal Fall 2005 71

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Cliff d l ,f (a fe ca e f i ed addic gam im i i f mea i g life i he ma
Gee
ble a ide) e' a i ac all j e d a d ima c di i f h ma
al e ed b he c me f a c ckfigh ; e i e ce, ha acce f ig ifica ce
i i l , a d ha m me a il , af m e ha c m e a e f he ec m
fi med i l ed. B f he Bali e e, ic c i l ed.21 Ac all , gi e he
f h m hi g i m e lea able e e -m e ali f he la ge ma ch
ha a aff bli el deli e ed e , im a cha ge i ma e ial f
m e ai f l ha e bli el e e am g h e h eg la l a ici
cei ed - a ic la l he m al ac a e i hem eem i all e i e ,
ai a ce , decei ed b face , beca e ma e m e le e e
a e a chi g - ch a ai i e d ama e he l g .I i , ac all , i he
i dee i deed. malle , hall figh , he e e fi d
Thi , I m e immedia el , i he ha df l f m e e, addic - e
a ha he m e d e ma e , gamble i l ed - h e h a ei
ha he Bali e e i m e c ce ed i mai l f he m e - ha " eal"
ab l i g 500 i ggi ha 15. S ch cha ge i cial i i , la gel
ac cl i ld be ab d. I i be d a d, a e affec ed. Me f hi
ca e m e d e , i hi ha dl ma e , l ge , a e highl di ai ed b
iali ic cie , ma e a d ma e e " e c ckfigh e " a f l h d
m ch ha he m e f i e i k he de a d ha he i all ab ,
m e fal f he hi g , ch a lga ia h im l mi he i
e' ide, e' i e, e' di a f i all. The a e, he e addic , ega d
i , e' ma c li i , e al ik, ed a fai game f he ge i e e h i
agai l m me a il b agai e a , h e h d de a d, ake
blicl a ell. I dee c ckfigh a a li le m e a a f m, me hi g
e a d hi c llab a , a d, a e ha i ea e gh d b l i g hem,
hall ee, a le e b ill i e eal h gh he f ce f hei g eed, i
e e al hei backe he ide, i a i al be mi ma ched c ck .
hei m e he e hei a i. M f hem d i deed ma age i
I i i la ge a beca e he ma gi al
di ili fl i g ea a he highe 21 Ma Webe , The S ci l g f Religi (B
le el f be i g ha e gage i ch : Beac P e , 1963). The e i hi g
ecificall Bali e e, f c e, ab dee e
be i g i la e' blic elf, all
i g ig ifica ce i h m e , a Wh e' de
i el a d me a h icall , h gh he c i i fc e b i a ki g-cla di
medi m f e' c ck, he li e. A d ic f B dem a e : "Gambli g la
h gh a Be hami e hi migh eem a im a le i he li e f C e ille
me el i c ea e he i a i ali f e le. Wha e e game he c e b la ,
he e e i e ha m ch f he , he he ea l al a be he c me. Whe
he e i hi g a ake, he game i c
Bali e e ha i mai l i c ea e i he ide ed a eal c e . Thi d e mea ha
mea i gf l e f i all. A d a ( f l he fi a cial eleme i all-im a . I ha e
l Webe a he ha Be ham) he f e e l hea d me a ha he h f
i i g a m ch m e im a ha he
be m e ca ef ll i e m f a de ial ha m e a ake. The c e b c ide la
f he Bali e e, a f a e le, ili i g f m e he eal e f kill a d, le
( lea e, ha i e ... ) i me el ide ifiable a ma e f m ell he m e i a ake,
i h eal h. B ch e mi l gical blem he i c ide ed a g d c m e i ." W. F.
a ei a ca e ec da he e e ial Wh e, S ee C e S cie , 2d ed. (Chicag :
i : he c ckfigh i le e. U i e i f Chicag P e , 1955), 140.

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 hem el e i a ema kabl h ime, malle ma che a d he edge . Ne , Dee e la :
b he e al a eem be e he e a e h e h figh c ck i mall, he Bali e e
f hem a d, a i g hei la d a d cca i all medi m ma che , b c ckfigh
elli g hei cl he i de be , a ha e he a j i i he la ge
a a
ic la ime.22 e , h gh he ma be f m ime
Thi g ad a ed c ela i f" a ime he ide i h e. A d fi all ,
gambli g" i h dee e figh a d, i he e a e h e, he eall b a ial
e el , "m e gambli g" i h hal membe f he c mm i , he lid
l e e i i fac i e ge e al. Be ci i e a d h m l cal life e
hem el e f m a ci m al hie l e , h figh i he la ge figh a d
a ch i he e e m . A ed ea lie , be hem a d he ide. The f c
a m c ckfigh he e a e, a d he i g eleme i he e f c ed ga he i g ,
e edge f he c ckfigh a ea, a la ge he e me ge e all d mi a e a d de
mbe f mi dle , hee -cha ce e fi e he a he d mi a e a d de
gambli g game ( le e, dice h , fi e he cie . Whe a Bali e e male
c i - i , ea- de - he- hell) e a alk , i ha alm e e a i e a ,
ed b c ce i ai e . O l me , ab " he e c ckfigh e ," he beba
child e , ad le ce ,a d a i he h ("be ") dj k g ("cage
f e le h d ( e ) kee e "), i i hi f e ,
figh c ck - he e emel , he h e h b i g he me ali f he
ciall de i ed, he e all idi ea-a d- hell game i he i e dif
c a ic - la a he e game , a , f fe e , i a ia e c e f he
c e, e a e le el . C ckfigh i g c ckfigh , he d i e gamble ( ? ,a
me ld be a hamed g a he e d hich ha he ec da mea i g
ea hem. Sligh l ab e he e e le f hief e ba e), a d he i f l
i a di g a e h e h , h gh he ha ge - , ha he mea . F ch a
d hem el e figh c ck , be he ma , ha i eall g i g i a ma ch
22 The e eme hich hi mad e i c i me hi g a he cl e a affai e
cei ed cca i g - a d he fac ha i i d'h e ( h gh, i h he Bali e e al
c ide ed mad e - i dem a ed b he e f ac ical fa a , he bl d ha i
Bali e e f lk ale I T h g K i g. A gamble be illed i l fig a i el h ma ) ha
c me de a ged b hi a i ha , lea i g he id, mecha ical c a k f a l
a i , he de hi eg a ife ake machi e.
ca e f he ec i e e b if i i a b
b feed i a mea hi figh i g c ck if i
Wha make Bali e e c ckfigh i g
i a gi l. The m he gi e bi h a gi l, b dee i h m e i i elf, b
a he ha gi i g he child he c ck he ha , he m e f i ha i i l ed he
gi e hem a la ge a a d c ceal he gi l m e , m e ca e ha e : he
i h he m he . Whe he h ba d e
mig a i f he Bali e e a hie a
he c ck , c i g a ji gle, i f m him
ch i he b d f he c ckfigh . P
f he dece i a d, f i , he e kill
he child. A g dde de ce d f m hea e a d ch l gicall a Ae ia e e e a i
ake he gi l he kie i h he . The f he ideal/dem ic, a he a ci i ic,
c ck die f m he f d gi e hem, he male elf, ci l gicall i i a e all
e ' a i i e ed, he g dde b i g he Ae ia e e e a i f he c m le
gi l back he fa he h e i e him i h
field f e i e b he c lled,
hi ife. The i gi e a "Geel K mk m
me je" i Jac ba H kaa - a Lee e m ed, ce em ial, b f all ha dee
B mkam , S kje e Ve hale a Bali l fel , i e ac i f h e el e i he
( 'G a e hage : Va H e e, 1956), 19 - 25. c e f e e da life. The c ck ma

D dal Fall 2005 73

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Cliff d be ga e f hei e ' e ce a e hem, i a a -f - h le
Gee
ali ie , a imal mi f chic f m, a , i h d e di i .
b he c ckfigh i - m e e ac l , de Fi , he illage i d mi a ed b f
libe a el i made be - a im la i f la ge, a ili eal, a l e d gam
he cial ma i , he i l ed em f de ce g hich a e c a l
c c i g, e la i g, highl c i g i h ea he a d f m he
a eg - illage , ki g , i iga maj fac i i he illage. S me ime
i cie ie , em le c g ega i , he g a d , a he he
"ca e " - i hich i de ee li e.23 la ge e e he malle
A da e ige, he ece i affi m e l all he affilia ed e le ;
i , defe d i , celeb a e i , j if i , a d me ime he e a e i de e de l .
j lai ba k i i (b , gi e he The e a e al bfac i i hi hem,
gl a c i i e cha ac e f Bali e e bfac i i hi he bfac i ,a d
a ifica i , eek i ), i e ha he a he fi e le el f di i c i .
ce al d i i g f ce i he cie , A d ec d, he e i he illage i elf,
al - amb la e i e , bl d ac ifice , alm e i el e d gam , hich i
a d m e a e cha ge a ide - i i f ed all he he illage d
he c ckfigh . Thi a a e am eme ab i i c ckfigh ci c i ( hich,
a d eemi g i, ake a he a e lai ed, i he ma ke egi ), b
h a e f m E i g G ffma , "a a hich al f m allia ce i h ce ai
bl dba h. "24 f he e eighb agai ce ai h
The ea ie a make hi clea , e i a i a illage li ical a d
a d a lea me deg ee dem cial c e . The e ac i a i i
a ei ,i i ke he illage h e h ,a e e he e i Bali, i e di
c ckfigh i g ac i i ie I b e ed he i c i e;b he ge e al a e fa
cl e - he e i hich he aid c ie ed hie a ch f a i al ie be
c ed a d f m hich m a i ical ee highl c a eb a i
da a a e ake . ba ed g i g (a d, h , be ee
A all Bali e e illage , hi e- he membe f hem) i e i el ge
Tihi ga , i he Kl gk g egi f e al.
hea Bali - i i ica el ga i ed, C ide , he , a f he ge
a lab i h f allia ce a d i i . e al he i ha he c ckfigh , a d e e
B , like ma , fc a e ciall he dee c ckfigh , i f dame
g , hich a e al a g , all a d ama i a i f a c ce ,
a ic la l a d , a d e ma c he f ll i g fac , hich a id e
e ded e h g a hic de c i i I ill
23 F a f lle de c i i f Bali e e al im l ce be fac - h gh
cial c e, ee Cliff d Gee , "F m a d
he c c e e e ide ce-e am le , a e
Va ia i i Bali e e Village S c e," Ame i
me , a d mbe ha c ld be
ca A h l gi 61 (1959) : 94 -108 ; "Tihi
ga , A Bali e e Village," i R. M. K e ja a b gh bea i f hem
i g a , Village i I d e ia (I haca, N.Y. : C i b he e i ea d mi akable :
ell U i e i P e , 1967), 210 - 243 ; a d,
h gh i i a bi ff he m a Bali e e il i. A ma i all e e be agai a
lage g , V. E. K , De D e bliek ga a c ck ed b a membe f hi ki
Pag i g i ga (Sa [Ne he la d ] : C. A. g . U all he ill feel bliged be
Mee , 1933). f i , he m e he cl e he ki ie

24 G ffma , E c e , 78. a d he dee e he figh . If he i ce ai

74 D dal Fall 2005

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i hi mi d ha i ill i , he ma illage fac i a e ed a he ha Dee la :
e
j be a all, a ic la l if i i l i ed, e ace ba e. he Bali e e
a ec dc i ' bi d if he figh i a c ckfigh
hall e. B a a le he ill feel he 5. Alm all ma che a e ci l gicall
ele a .Y eld m ge ide
m i a d, i dee game , ea
c ck figh i g, c ck i h
l al a d e . Th he g ea maj i f
a ic la g backi g, i hg
he e le calli g "fi e" " eckled"
backi g hich i m all ela ed i
dem a i el a e e e i g hei alle
a clea a . Whe d ge hem,
gia ce hei ki ma , hei e al a
he game i e hall , be i g e
i f hi bi d, hei de a di g f
l , a d he h le hi g e d ll, i h
babili he , e e hei h e f
ea ed i c me. e a e he immedia e i ci al a d
a addic gamble a all i e e ed.
2. Thi i ci le i e e ded l gicall . If
6. B he ame ke , a el ge
ki g i i l ed ill
c ck f m he ame g ,e e m e
a
allied ki g agai a
a el f m he ame bfac i ,a d i
allied ei he ame a , a d
all e e f m he ame b- bfac i
h gh he e i l ed e k f
( hich ld be i m ca e ee
allia ce hich, a I a , make hi , a
e ded famil ) figh i g. Simila l , i
a he , Bali e e illage.
ide illage figh membe f he il
3. S , ,f he illage a a h le. If a lage ill a el figh agai ea he ,
ide c ck i figh i g a c ck f m e e h gh, a bi e i al , he ld
illage ill e d he d i h e h ia m hei h me
l cal e. If, ha i a a e ci c m a ce g d.
b cc e e a d he , a c ck
7. O he i di id al le el, e le i l ed
f m ide c ckfigh ci c i i
i a i i i ali ed h ili ela i
figh i g ei ide i ill al e d
hi , called ik, i hich he d
he "h me bi d."
eak he i e ha e a hi g d
4. C ck hich c me f ma di a ce i h each he ( he ca e f hi f mal
a e alm al a fa i e ,f he he b eaki g f ela i a e ma : ife-ca
i he ma ld ha e da ed b i g e, i he i a ce a g me , li ical dif
i if i a a g d c ck, he m e he fe e ce ) ill be e hea il , me ime
f he he ha c me. Hi f ll e a e, f alm ma iacall , agai ea he i
c e, bliged him, a d he ha i a f a k a d di ec a ack he
he m e g a d- cale legal c ckfigh a e e ma c li i , he l ima e g d f
held ( h lida ,a d ) he e le hi a , f he e .
f he illage ake ha he ega d be
8. The ce e be c ali i i , i all b
he be c ck i he illage, ega dle f
he hall e game , al a made b
e hi , a d g ff hem, al
c al allie - " ide m e "i
h gh he ill alm ce ai l ha e
i l ed. Wha i " ide" de e d
gi e dd hem a d make la ge be
he c e , fc e, b gi e i ,
h ha he a e a chea ka e il
ide m e i mi ed i i h he mai be ;
lage. Ac all , ch "a a game ," h gh
if he i ci al ca ai e i , i i
i f e e , e d me d he e
made. The ce e be , agai e eciall
be ee illage membe ha he c
i dee e game , i h he m di ec
a l cc i g "h me game ," he e
a d e e e i f cial i i ,

D dal Fall 2005 75

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Cliff d hich i e f he ea h b hi 13. I ick , c -l al i a i , f
Gee
a d ma ch maki g a e ded b ch hich i hi e a di a il c m le
a ai f ea e, f i e e , emba a cial em he e a e f c e ma ,
me ,a d . he e a ma i ca gh be ee m e
le e all bala ced l al ie , he e d
9. The le ab b i gm e -
a de ff f ac f c ffee me
ha ma b f a be b i
hi g a id ha i g be , a f m f be
e - em (a d he Bali e e a e i e ha i emi i ce f ha f Ame ica
c ci f hi ) f m imila c id
e i imila i a i .25
e a i : a e e e a he ec mic
me c f e em ha a . Gambli g 14. The e le i l ed i he ce e be
deb , hich ca ge i e la ge a a h a e, e eciall i dee figh , i all al
e h - e m ba i , a e al a f ie d , a leadi g membe f hei g -
e e e emie , c all eaki g. ki hi , illage, ha e e . F he ,
h e h be he ide (i cl di g he e
10. Whe c ck a e c all i ele
e le) a e, a I ha e al ead ema ked,
a e al fa a a e c ce ed he m e e abli hed membe f he il
( h gh, a me i ed, he alm e e
lage - he lid ci i e . C ckfigh i g i
a e each he ) d e e aka
f h e h a ei l ed i he e e da
ela i e a f ie d h m he i be i g ,
li ic f e ige a ell, f h,
beca e if k h he i be i g a d
me , b di a e , a d f h.
he k k ,a d g he he
a ,i ill lead ai . Thi le i e 15. S fa a m e i c ce ed, he e
lici a d igid; fai l elab a e, e e a h lici l e e ed a i de a di i
e a ificial eca i a e ake a id ha i i a ec da ma e . I i ,a I
b eaki g i . A he e lea m e ha e aid, f im a ce ; Bali e e a e
e d ice ha he i d i g, a d he ha ie l e e e al eek ' i c me
ha a e d i g. ha a e el e. B he mai l l k
he m e a a ec f he c ckfigh
11. The e i a ecial d f be i g
a elf-bala ci g, a ma e f j m i g
agai he g ai , hich i al he d
m e a d, ci c la i g i am g a fai
f " a d me" (m a). I i c ide ed
l ell-defi ed g f e i c ck
a bad hi g d , h gh if he ce e be
figh e . The eall im a i a d
i mall i i me ime all igh a l g a
l e a e ee m l i he e m,a d
d d i f e .B he la ge
he ge e al a i de a d age i g i
he be a d he m e f e e l d i ,
a h e f clea i g , f maki g a
he m e he " a d me" ack ill lead
killi g (addic gamble agai e ce ed),
cial di i .
b ha f he h e la e ' a e : "Oh,
12. I fac , he i i i ali ed h ili G d, lea e le me b eak e e ." I e ige
ela i , ik, i f e f mall i i ia ed e m,h e e , d a b eak
( h gh i ca e al a lie el e he e) e e , b , i a m me a , c a e
b ch a " a d me" be i a dee figh , f a , i e l . The alk ( hich g e
i g he mb lic fa i he fi e. Simi all he ime) i ab figh agai
la l , he e d f ch a ela i hi a d ch-a d- ch a c ck f S -a d-S hich
e m i f mal cial i e c e 25 B. R. Be el , P. F. La e feld, a d W. N.
i f e ig ali ed (b , agai , ac all McPhee, V i g : A S d f O i i F ma i i
b gh ab ) b e he he f he a P e ide ial Cam aig (Chicag : U i e i f
e emie i g he he ' bi d. Chicag P e , 1954).

76 D dal Fall 2005

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 c ck dem li hed, h m ch THE MORE A MATCH IS . . . Dee la :
e
, a fac e le, e e f la ge be , he Bali e e
i. Be ee ea a e al (a d/ e
a el emembe f a le g h f ime, c ckfigh
al e emie )
h gh he ill emembe he da he
did i Pa L h' fi e c ck f ea . 2. Be ee high a i di id al

16. Y m be c ck f THE DEEPER THE MATCH.

g a ide f m me e l al c ide a
i ,f if d e le ge e all THE DEEPER THE MATCH . . .
ill a , "Wha ! I he df he
i. The cl e he ide ifica i f c ck a d
like f ? D e he ha e g Ja a
ma ( : m e e l , he dee e he
De Pa a [ he ca i al ] be , he i ma ch he m e he ma ill ad a ce hi
ch a im a ma ?" Th he e i a
be , m cl el -ide ified- i h c ck).
ge e al e e be l h
ha a e im a l call , b ha 2. The fi e he c ck i l ed a d he
a e im a ha l k m e e ac l he ill be ma ched.
d e e e el e a fi e e be
3. The g ea e he em i ha ill be i
i al . Simila l , h me eam e le m
l ed a d he m e he ge e al ab
be agai ide c ck he ide
i i he ma ch.
ill acc ei -a e i cha ge - f j
c llec i g e fee a d eall bei g 4. The highe he i di id al be ce e
i e e ed i c ckfigh i g, a ell a agai a d ide, he h e he ide be
bei g a ga a di l i g. dd ill e d be, a d he m e be i g
he e ill be e all.
17. Fi all , he Bali e e ea a hem
el e a e i e a a e f all hi a d ca 5. The le a "ec mic" a d he m e a
a d, a lea a e h g a he , d a e " a " ie f gami g ill be i l ed,
m fi i a ima el he ame a d he " lide " he ci i e h ill be
e m a I ha e. Figh i g c ck , alm gami g.26
e e Bali e e I ha e e e di c ed he
I
e e a g me h ld f he hal
bjec i h ha aid, i like la i g i h
l e he figh , c lmi a i g, i a e
fi e l ge i g b ed. Y ac i a e
e ed- ig e e, i he c i - i i g
illage a d ki g i al ie a d h ili
a d dice- h i g am eme .F
ie , b i " la " f m, c mi g da ge
dee figh he e a e ab l e e
l a de a ci gl cl e he e e
limi , h gh he e a e f c e ac i
i f e a d di ec i e e al a d
cal e , a d he e a e a g ea ma leg
i e g agg e i ( me hi g hich,
e d-like ale f g ea D el-i - he-S
agai , alm e e ha e i he mal
c mba be ee l d a d i ce i
c e f di a life), b i e,
cla ical ime (f c ckfigh i g ha al
beca e, af e all, i i " l a c ckfigh ."
a bee a m ch a eli e c ce a a
M e b e a i f hi c ld la e), fa dee e ha a hi g
be ad a ced, b e ha he ge e al
26 A hi i a f mal a adigm, i i i e ded
i i , if made, a lea ell-deli di la he l gical, he ca al, c e
ea ed, a d he h le a g me h fa f c ckfigh i g. J hich f he e c ide
ca be ef ll mma i ed i a f mal a i lead hich, i ha de , a d b
a adigm : ha mecha i m , i a he ma e - e I
ha e a em ed hed me ligh i he
ge e al di c i .

D dal Fall 2005 77

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Cliff d a e, e e a i c a ,c ld d ce JL e make hi g ha e ," A
Gee
da a he e i Bali. de a i hi eleg f Yea , "i
I deed, e f he g ea c l e he e i e i he alle f i a i g... a
f Bali i a i ce, called af e hi a i a f ha e i g, a m h." The
f he , "The C ckfigh e ," h c ckfigh ,i hi c ll ial e e,
ha e ed be a a a a e dee c ck make hi g ha e . Me g al
figh i h a eighb i g i ce he leg icall h milia i g e a he
he h le f hi famil - fa he , b h a d bei g alleg icall h milia ed b
e , i e , i e - e e a a i a ed e a he , da af e da , gl i g i
b c mm e e . Th a ed, e l i he e e ie ce if he ha e i
he e ed di a ch he a , m hed, c hed l ligh l m e
egai he h e, ec i e he Bali e l b i if he ha e .B e'
e e high adi i , a d b ild i m a eall cha ge . Y ca a ce d
e f l, gl i , a d e a e. he a ladde b i i g c ckfigh ;
Al g i h e e hi g el e ha he Bali ca , a a i di id al, eall a
e e ee i figh i g c ck - hem el e , ce d i a all. N ca de ce d i
hei cial de , ab ac ha ed, ma
c li i , dem ic e - he al ee The ld ma be Si a a d, h ,
he a che e f a i e, he a li e i a g ea alace i he k , h gh he
ga , e l e, h -mad la e i h he d e k hi . I ime, he he de
eal fi e, he k a ia i ce.27 cide i i hi a d c llec he mi ed
c ck. Lif ed i Si a' e e ce, he i gi
e he ch ice f h ee c ck . The fi c :
27 I a he f H kaa - a Lee e "I ha e bea e fif ee e ." The ec d
B mkam ' f lk ale ("De Ga ," S kje c , "I ha e bea e e -fi e e ."
e Ve hale a Bali, 172 -180), a l ca e The hi d c , "I ha e bea e he Ki g."
S d a, a ge e , i , a d ca ef ee ma h "Tha e, he hi d, i m ch ice," a he
i al a acc m li hed c ckfigh e , l e , de he , a d e i hi ea h.
i e hi acc m li hme , figh af e figh Whe he a i e a he c ckfigh , he i a ked
il he i l fm e b d hi f a e fee a d e lie , "I ha e m e ;
la c ck. He d e de ai , h e e - "I I ill a af e m c ck ha ." A he i
be ," he a , " he U ee W ld." k e e i , he i le i beca e he
Hi ife, a g d a d ha d ki g ma , ki g, h i he e figh i g, di like him a d
k i gh m ch he e j c ckfigh i g, h e e la e him he he l e a d ca
gi e him he la " ai da " m e g a d a ff. I de e e ha hi ha
be . B , filled i h mi gi i g d e hi e , he ki g ma che hi fi e c ck agai
f ill l ck, he lea e hi c ck a h me a d he he ' . Whe he c ck a e laced d ,
be me el he ide. He l e all b he he ' flee , a d he c d, led b he a
ac i a d e ai af d a df a ga ki g, h i la gh e . The he ' c ck
ack, he e he mee a dec e i , d ,a d he flie a he ki g him elf, killi g him i h
ge e all a e i i g ld begga lea i g a a ab i he h a . The he flee . Hi
aff. The ld ma a k f f d, a d he he h e i e ci cled b he ki g' me . The c ck
e d hi la c i b him me. The ld cha ge i a Ga da, he g ea m hic bi d f
ma he a k a he igh i h he he I die lege d, a d ca ie he he a d hi ife
, hich he he gladl i i e him d .A afe i he hea e .
he ei f d i he h e, h e e , he he Whe he e le ee hi , he make he he
ell hi ife kill he la c ck f di e . ki g a d hi ife ee a d he e a
Whe he ld ma di c e hi fac , he ell ch ea h. La e hei , elea ed b Si a,
he he he ha h ee c ck i hi m al e a d he he -ki g a ce hi
ai h a d a he he ma ha e e f i e i e e a he mi age. ("I ill figh
hem f figh i g. He al a k f he he ' m e c ckfigh . I ha e be he U ee a d
acc m a him a a e a , a d, af e .") He e e he he mi age a d hi
he ag ee , hi i d e. bec me ki g.

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 ha a .28 All ca d i e j a d hem, h e hi icall i i ed Dee la :
e
a , ffe a d i h a d, he c a ecia e he c c i , mea i g he Bali e e
c c ed e a i f d a ic a d m me f l - i ible, a gible, g a able - " eal," c ckfigh
a m eme al g a ae he ic em i a idea i al e e. A image, fic i ,
bla ce f ha ladde , a ki d f behi d a m del, a me a h , he c ckfigh i a
he-mi a j m hich ha he mea fe e i ;i f c i i ei
l k f m bili i h i ac ali . he a age cial a i
A a a f m-f ha , fi all , heigh e hem ( h gh, i i la - i h
i ha e a e deali g i h - he c ck fi e a , i d e a bi f b h), b , i a
figh e de di a , e e da e e i medi m f fea he , bl d, c d ,a d
e ce c m ehe ible b e e i gi m e , di la hem.
i e m f ac a d bjec hich ha e The e i f h i i ha e e
had hei ac ical c e e ce e cei e ali ie i hi g - ai i g ,
m ed a d bee ed ced ( , if e b k , mel die , la - ha e d
fe , ai ed) he le el f hee a ea feel e ca a e li e all be he e ha
a ce , he e hei mea i g ca be m e c me, i ece ea , i he e ce
e f ll a ic la ed a d m e e ac l e f ae he ic he .29 Nei he he
e cei ed. The c ckfigh i " eall eal" e ime f he a i , hich emai
l he c ck - i d e kill a hi , h e f he a die ce, hich e
e, ca a e a e, ed ce a e mai hei , ca acc f he agi a
a imal a , al e he hie a chical el i f e ai i g he e e i f
a i am g e le, efa hi he a he . We a ib e g a de , i , de
hie a ch ; i d e e e edi ib e ai , e be a ce i g f d ;
i c me i a ig ifica a . Wha i ligh e ,e e g , i le ce, fl idi
d e i ha , f he e le i h h bl ck f e. N el a e aid ha e
e em e ame a d he c e i , e g h, b ildi g el e ce, la m
Lea a d C ime a d P i hme d ;i me m, balle e e. I hi ealm
ca che he e heme - dea h, ma f ecce ic edica e , a ha he
c li i , age, ide, l , be efice ce, c ckfigh , i i e fec ed ca e a lea ,
cha ce - a d, de i g hem i a i "di ie f l" d e eem a all
e c m a i g c e, e e hem a al, me el , a I ha e j de ied i
i ch a a a h i elief a ac ical c e e ce, me ha
a ic la ie f hei e e ial a e. li g.
I ac c i hem, make The di ie f l e a i e , " me
h ," fac j c i f h ee
28 Addic gamble a e eall le decla ed a ib e f he figh : i immedia e
(f hei a i ,a e e e el e' , i he i ed) d ama ic ha e; i me a h ic c
ha me el im e i hed a d e all di e ;a di cial c e .Ac l al
g aced. The m mi e addic gamble i
m c ckfigh ci c i a ac all a e high
ca e a ia h ld ff m f hi c ide 29 F f , me ha a ia , ea me , ee
able la d hi habi . Th gh e e S a e La ge , Feeli g a d F m (Ne Y k:
e i a el ega ded him a a f l a d e Sc ib e , 1953) ; Richa d W llheim, A a d I
( me, m e cha i able, ega ded him a ick), Objec (Ne Y k : Ha e a d R , 1968) ;
he a blicl ea ed i h he elab a e def Nel G dma , La g age f A (I dia a
e e ce a d li e e d e hi a k. O he li : B bb -Me ill, 1968); Ma iceMe lea
i de e de ce f e al e a i a d blic P , "The E e a d he Mi d," ihi The P i
a i Bali, ee Gee , Pe , Time, a d mac f Pe ce i (E a , 111. : N h e e
C d c , 28-35. U i e i P e , 1964), 159 -190.

D dal Fall 2005 7g

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Cliff d fig e agai a cial g d, he figh i elf, a a ic la e b f f m.
Gee
i a ce a c li e ge f a imal The e i he ma ch maki g, he e i he
ha ed, a m ck a f mb lical el e , be i g, he e i he figh , he e i he
a d a f mal im la i f a e e l - e i m ha d e defea -
i , a d i ae he ic e de i e a d he e i he h ied, emba a ed
f m i ca aci f ce ge he he e a i g fm e . The l e i c
di e e eali ie . The ea i i di i led. Pe le d if a a f m him, l k
e f li ha i ha ma e ial effec (i h gh him, lea e him a imila e
ha me, b he a e mi ) ; he ea hi m me a de ce i bei g,
ha i i di ie f l i ha , j i i g e e hi face, a d e , ca le a d
ide elfh d, elfh d c ck , a d i ac , he f a . N a e i e c
c ck de c i ,i b i g imagi g a la ed, e e eha hed; ce a
a i e eali a i a dime i f Bali ma ch i e ded he c d' a e i
eee e ie ce mall ell- b c ed all he e , i h l ki g
f m ie . The a fe fa e e f back. A had f he e e ie ce
g a i i ha i i i elf a a he d b emai i h he i ci al , e
bla k a d a i ec acle, a c m ha e e i h me f he i e e ,
m i f bea i g i g a d h bbi g f a dee figh , a i emai i h
leg , i effec ed b i e e i gi a e he e lea e he hea e af e eei g
e i e f me hi g e li g i he a e f l la ell- e f med ; b i
a i a h a d a die ce li e, , i e fade bec me a m a
e e m e mi l , ha he a e. chema ic mem - a diff e gl
A a d ama ic ha e, he figh di la a ab ac h dde - a d all
a cha ac e i ic ha d e eem e e e ha . A e e i e f m li e
ma kable il e eali e ha i d e l i i e e - he e i i
ha e be he e : a adicall a mi elf c ea e . B , he e, ha ee i
ical c e.30 Each ma ch i a ld e e ed i a i g f fla he , me
m e b igh ha he , b all f
hem di c ec ed, ae he ic a a.
30 B i i h c ckfigh ( he a ba ed
he e i 1840) i deed eem ha e lacked i , Wha e e he c ckfigh a ,i a i
a d ha e ge e a ed, he ef e, a i e diffe .
e famil f ha e . M B i i h figh e e B , a I ha e a g ed le g hil el e
"mai ," i hich a eag eed mbe f c ck he e, he Bali e e li e i .31
e e alig ed i eam a d f gh e iall .
Thei life, a he a a ge i a d e
Sc e a ke a d age i g k lace b h
he i di id al ma che a d he mai a cei e i , i le a fl , a di ec i al m e
a h le. The e e e al "ba le R ale ," b h me f he a , h gh he e
i E gla d a d he C i e ,i hich a e , a d he f e ha a - ff
la ge mbe f c ck e e le l e a ce la i f mea i g a d ac i ,a a
i h he e lef a di g a he e d he ic .
A d i Wale , he -called "Wel h mai " f l
l ed a elimi a i a e , al g he li e , 1957) ; a d La e ce Fi -Ba a d, Figh i g
f a e e -da e i ame , i e S (L d : Odham P e , 1921).
ceedi g he e d. A a ge e, he
c ckfigh ha e ha le c m i i al fle i 31 Pe , Time, a d C d c , e . 42ff. I am,
bili ha , a , La i c med , b i i e h e e , he fi e ha e a g ed
i el i h a . O c ckfigh i g m e ge i : ee G. Ba e , "Bali, he Val e S em f a
e all , ee A ch R , The A f C ckfigh i g S ead S a e," a d "A Old Tem le a d a Ne
(Ne Y k: De i -Adai , 1949); G. R. Sc , M h," i Bel , ed., T adi i al Bali e e C l e,
Hi f C ckfigh i g (L d : Cha le Skil 384-402,111-136.

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 h hmic al e a i f h e i d i fac ha e i .33 A d, beca e he c Dee la :
e
he " me hi g" ( ha i , me hi g e gge ha he e de i g, if le he Bali e e
ig ifica ) i ha e i g a d e all ha a aigh f a d de c i i i c ckfigh
h e he e " hi g" ( ha i , e hele m e ha a idle fa c , i
hi g m ch) i - be ee ha he i he e ha he di ie f l e - he di
hem el e call "f ll" a d "em " ie f l e f he figh , ( ,a a ,
ime , , i a he idi m, "j c e " ece a il ) i a , h eem
a d "h le ." I f c i g ac i i d i fac a he h ghl e j i -
ab i g-gla d , he c ckfigh i eme ge . The la gh e i he c ck i g
me el bei g Bali e e i he ame a i i a de ic i fh hi g li e al
hich e e hi g f m he m adic e l a e am g me , b , ha i alm
c e fe e da life, h gh he e, f h , f m a a ic la a gle,
cla gi g i illi m igamela m ic, he imagi a i el a e.34
he i i i g-da - f- he-g d em le cele The a gle, f c e, i a ifica
b a i a e. I i a imi a i f he . Wha , a e ha e al ead ee ,
c a e e f Bali e e cial life, he c ckfigh alk m f cibl ab
a de ic i fi , e e a e e i i a ela i hi , a d ha i a
fi ;i i a e am le f i , ca ef ll e ab hem i ha he a e ma e f
a ed.32 life a d dea h. Tha e ige i a
If e dime i f he c ckfigh '
c e, i lack f em al di ec i 33 N h F e, The Ed ca ed Imagi a i
ali , make i eem a ical egme f (Bl mi g :U i e i f I dia a P e ,
he ge e al cial life, h e e , he h 1964), 99
e , i fla - , head- -head ( -
34 The e a e he Bali e e al e a d di
) agg e i e e , make i eem a al e hich, c ec ed i h c a e em
c adic i , a e e al, e e a b e ali he e ha d a d b idled agg e
i f i . I he mal c e f hi g , i e e he he , ei f ce he e e ha
he Bali e e a e h he i f b he c ckfigh i a ce c i i h di
a cial life a d a di ec ega i f i : ha
e i e e f e c flic . Obli e,
he Bali e e call am?, a d ha he call ali g.
ca i , bd ed, c lled, ma e
Ram? mea c ded, i , a d ac i e, a d i
f i di ec i a d di im la i - ha
a highl gh -af e cial a e : c ded ma
he call al , " li hed," " m h" - ke , ma fe i al , b ee a e all am? a ,
he a el face ha he ca a a fc e, i , i he e eme, a c ckfigh . Ram?
f m, a el e i ha he ca e ade. i ha ha e i he "f ll" ime (i
i e, e i, " ie ," i ha ha e i he "em
B he e he a hem el e a ild
" e ). Pali g i cial e ig , he di , di
a dm de , ma ic e l i fi ie ed, l , ed-a d feeli g e ge
i c al c el . A e f l e de i g he e' lace i he c di a e f cial
f life a he Bali e e m dee l d ace i clea , a d i i a eme d l di
a i ( ada a h a e F e ha fa ed, imme el a ie - d ci g a e.
Bali e e ega d he e ac mai e a ce f a
ed f Gl ce e ' bli di g) i e i
ial ie a i (" k he e hi "
he c e f a am le f i a he d i be c a ), bala ce, dec m, a ela
i hi , a d f h, a f dame al
32 F he ece i f di i g i hi g am g de ed life (k ama) a d ali g, he f hi l
"de c i i ," " e e e a i ," "e em lifica i gc f i f i i he c ambli g c ck
i ," a d "e e i " (a d he i ele a ce f e em lif a i f de e em a d c a
"imi a i " all f hem) a m de f mb l dic i . O am? ee Ba e a d Mead, Bali
ic efe e ce, ee G dma , La g age f A , e e Cha ac e , 3, 64 ; ali g, ibid., 11, a d
6 -10, 45 - 91, 225 - 241. Bel , ed., T adi i al Bali e e C l e, 9 ff.

D dal Fall 2005 8l

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Cliff d f dl e i b i e i a a e ec , a d c ec - he c lli i f
Gee
e e he e e l k i Bali - i he e i h he di i i e e f a
illage, he famil , he ec m , he i i i ea a fe f e ce i f m
a e. A ec lia f i f P l e ia he f me he la e , a a fe hich
i le a k a d Hi d ca e , he hie a i a ce a de c i i a d a j dgme .
ch f ide i he m al backb e f (L gicall , he a fe c ld, f c e,
he cie . B l i he c ckfigh a e a ell g he he a ; b , like m
he e ime hich ha hie a f he e f , he Bali e e a e a g ea
ch e e ealed i hei a al c l . deal m e i e e ed i de a di g
E el ed el e he e i a ha e f e i me ha he a e i de a di g
e e, a hick cl d f e hemi m a d c ck .)
ce em , ge e a d all i , he a e Wha e he c ckfigh a a f m he
he e e e ed i l he hi e di di a c e f life, lif i f m he
g i e f a a imal ma k, a ma k hich ealm f e e da ac ical affai , a d
i fac dem a e hem fa m e ef d i i h a a a f e la ged
fec i el ha i c ceal hem. Jeal im a ce i , a f c i ali ci
i a m ch a a f Bali a i e, e l g ld ha e i , ha i ei f ce
a g ace, b ali a cha m ; b i h a di c imi a i ( ch ei f ce
he c ckfigh he Bali e e ld me i ha dl ece a i a cie
ha e a m ch le ce ai de a di g he e e e ac claim hem), b
f hem, hich i , e mabl , h he ha i ide a me a cial c mme
al e i highl . a he h le ma e f a i g
A e e i ef m k ( he i h ma bei g i fi ed hie a chical
k ) b di a a gi g ema ic c a k a d he ga i i g he maj
e i ch a a ha e ie c a f c llec i e e i e ce a d ha
e i all a c ibed ce ai hi g a me . I f c i , if a
a e c e i all a c ibed he , call i ha , i i e e i e : i i a Bali e e
hich a e he ee ac all e eadi g f Bali e e e e ie ce; a
hem. T call he i d a c i le, a S e he ell hem el e ab hem el e .
e d e, fi e a d ma i la e
imb e, a Sch e be g d e , , cl e Jl he ma e hi a i e gage
ca e, ic e a a c i ic a i a bi f me a h ical ef c i g f
a di l e bea , a H ga h d e , i
c c ce al i e ; he e abli hed
f m H. H. D age , "The C ce f 'T al
c j c i be ee bjec a d hei B d ,'" i S a e La ge , ed., Reflec i
ali ie a e al e ed a d he me a - A (Ne Y k: O f d U i e i P e , 1961),
fall ea he , mel dic ha e, c l al 174. O H ga h, a d hi h le blem -
j ali m - a e cl hed i ig ifie he e called "m l i le ma i ma chi g" - ee
E. H. G mb ich, "The U e f A f he S d
hich mall i he efe
f S mb l ," i Jame H gg, ed., P ch l g
e .35 Simila l , c ec - a dc a d he Vi al A (Bal im e : Pe g i B k ,
1969), 149 -170. The m e al e m f hi
35 The S e e efe e ce i hi "The M i e f ema ic alchem i "me a h ical
f Me a h ," ("Y like i de he ee a fe ," a d g d ech ical di c i fi
i a m , / Beca e e e hi g i half dead. / ca be f d i M. Black, M del a d Me a h
The i d m e like a c i le am g he lea e (I haca, N.Y. : C ell U i e i P e , 1962),
/ A d e ea d i h mea i g") ; he 25ff ; G dma , La g age a A , 44ff ; a d W.
Sch e be g efe e ce i he hi d f hi Fi e Pe c , "Me a h a Mi ake," Se a eeRe ie
O che al Piece (O 16), a d i b ed 66 (1958): 78-99.

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 e' , f i hif he a al i f c lla , fa a a h l g i c Dee la :
e
c l al f m f m a e dea i ge ce ed, ha c l al f m ca be ea he Bali e e
e al a allel di ec i g a ga i m, ed a e , a imagi a i e k b il c ckfigh
diag i ga m m, deci he i g a f cial ma e ial , ha e be
c de, de i g a em - he d mi ema icall e l i ed.38
a a al gie i c em a a h I he ca e a ha d, ea he c ck
l g - e i ge e al a allel i h figh a a e i b i g a fea e
e e a i g a li e a e . If e ake f i (i m i i , he ce al fea e
he c ckfigh , a he c llec i el f i ) ha ea i g i a a i e a a
ai ed mb lic c e, a a mea ime, he m b i al e a i e ,
f " a i g me hi g f me hi g" ( ld e d b c e:i e f em
i ke a fam A i elia ag), he i f c g i i e e d . Wha he c ck
e i faced i h a blem i cial figh a i a i a cab la f e
mecha ic b cial ema ic .36 F ime - he h ill f i k, he de ai f
he a h l gi , h ec ce i l , he lea e f i m h. Ye ha
i hf m la i g ci l gical i ci i a i me el ha i k i e ci i g,
le , i h m i g a ecia l de e i g, i m h g a if i g,
i g c ckfigh , he e i i , ha ba al a l gie f affec , b ha i i
d e e lea ab ch i ci le f he e em i , h e am led, ha
f m e ami i g c l e a a a em cie i b il a d i di id al
blage f e ? ge he . A e di g c ckfigh a d a
S ch a e e i f he i fa ici a i g i hem i , f he Bali e e,
e be d i e ma e ial, a d e e a ki d f e ime al ed ca i . Wha
be d e bal, i , h gh me a h ical, he lea he e i ha hi c l e'
, fc e, all ha el. The i e e h a d hi i a e e ibili ( ,a
e a i a ae adi i f he Middle a , ce ai a ec f hem) l k like
Age , hich, c lmi a i g i S i a, he elled e e all i a c llec
a em ed ead a e a Sc i e, i e e ; ha he a e ea e gh
he Nie chea eff ea al e alike be a ic la ed i he mb lic
em a gl e he ill e f a i gle ch e ; a d - he di ie
( he Ma ia e ea hem a i g a - ha he e i hich hi e
gl e e ela i ), a d he ela i i acc m li hed c i fa
F e dia e laceme f he e igma
ic e f he ma ife d eam i h he 38 L? i-S a ' " c ali m" migh eem
a e ce i . B i i l a a a e e,
lai e f he la e , all ffe ece f , a he ha aki g m h , em i e , ma
de , if e all ec mme dable iage le , ha e e a e i e e ,
e .37 B he idea emai he e ical L? i-S a ake hem a ci he l e,
l de el ed; a d he m e f d hich i e m ch he ame hi g. He
d e eek de a d mb lic f m
36 The ag i f m he ec db k f he O i e m fh he f c i i c c e e i
ga ,O I e e a i .F a di c i fi , a i ga i e e ce i (mea i g , em
a df he h le a g me f f eei g " he i , c ce , a i de ) ; he eek de
i
f e ... f m he i f c i e a d hem e i el i e m f hei i e al
i i g," a d c c i g, h , a ge e al c e, i d? e de de je , de bje ,
he me e ic , ee Pa l Ric e , F e d a d Phi e de ec e e. F m ie f hi a
l h (Ne Ha e , C . : Yale U i e i ach - ha i gge i e a d i defe ible -
P e , 1970), 2 ff. ee Cliff d Gee , "The Ce eb al Sa age : O
he W k f L? i-S a ," E c e 48 (1967) :
37 Ibid. 25-32.

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Cliff d chicke hacki g a he mi dle l ch a cha ac e a Mica be i Dicke ,
Gee
bi . d ' feel ha he e m ha e bee
E e e le, he e b ha i , l e a ma Dicke k e h a e ac l like
i f m f i le ce. The c ckfigh hi : feel ha he e' a bi f Mica
i he Bali e e eflec i hei : be i alm e e b d k ,i
i l k, i e,i f ce, i fa ci a i . cl di g elf. O im e i fh
D a i g alm e e le el f Bali ma life a e icked eb e, a d
eee e ie ce, i b i g ge he emai f m f l e a d di ga
heme - a imal a age , male a ci i ed. B ec a l fi d hi g i
i m, e gambli g, a i al li e a e ha dde l c - di a e a d
, ma e ci eme , bl d ac ifice - b i gi f c a g ea ma ch im
h e mai c ec i i hei i l e e i , a d hi i a f ha A i
me i h age a d he fea f age, a d, le mea b he ical i e al
bi di g hem i a e f le hich h ma e e .3^
a ce c ai hem a d all hem
I i hi ki d f b i gi g f a ed
la , b ild a mb lic c ei
e e ie ce f e e da life f c
hich, e a d e agai , he eali
ha he c ckfigh , e a ide f m ha
f hei i e affilia i ca be i elligi
life a " l a game" a d ec ec ed
bl fel . If, eN h F e agai ,
i a "m e ha a game," acc m
eg ee Macbe h lea ha a ma
li he , a d c ea e ha , be e
feel like af e he ha gai ed a ki gd m
ha ical i e al, c ld be
a dl hi l, Bali e e g c ck
called a a adigma ic h ma e e -
figh fi d ha a ma , all
ha i , e ha ell le ha ha
c m ed, al f, alm b e i el
e ha he ki d f hi g ha ld
elf-ab bed, a ki d f m al a c m,
ha e if, a i he ca e, life e e a
feel like he , a acked, me ed,
a d c ld be a f eel ha ed b le f
challe ged, i l ed, a d d i e i e l
feeli g a Macbe h a d Da id C e field
he e eme f f , he ha all a e.
i m hed bee b gh all l . E ac ed a d ee ac ed, fa i h
The h le a age, a i ake back
e d, he c ckfigh e able he Bali e e,
A i le ( h gh he P e ic a he a , ead a d e ead, Macbe h e able ,
ha he He me e ic ), i h a
i : ee a dime i f hi bjec i
i . A he a che figh af e figh i h
B he e [a ed he hi ia ], he ac i e a chi g f a e a d a
A i le a , e e make a eal a e be (f c ckfigh i g ha m e
me a all, ce ai l a ic la e i e e a a e ec a ha
cific e . The e ' j bi ell c e d g aci g d ), he g fa
ha ha e ed, b ha ha e : milia i h i a d ha i ha a
ha did ake lace, b he ki d f hi g him, m ch a he a e i e li e e
ha al a d e ake lace. He gi e i g a e he ab bed ie e
he ical, ec i g, ha A i le f ill life g l l m e familia
call i e al e e . Y ld ' g i h hem i a a hich e hi b
Macbe h lea ab he hi f jec i i him elf.40
Sc la d - g i lea ha a 39 F e, The Ed ca ed Imagi a i , 63-64.
ma feel like af e he' gai ed a ki g
d ma dl hi l. Whe mee 40 The e f he, E ea , " a al"
i al idi m f e ce i - " ee," " a che ,"

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 Ye , beca e - i a he f h e a Ihe c ckfigh , he , he Bali e e Dee la :
e
ad e , al g i h ai ed feeli g a d f m a d di c e hi em e ame he Bali e e
c e e ced ac , hich ha ae a d hi cie ' em e a he ame c ckfigh
he ic - ha bjec i i d e ime. O , m e e ac l , he f m a d di
e l e i il i i h ga i ed, a c e a a ic la face f hem. N
f m ge e a e a d ege e a e he e l a e he e a g ea ma he c l al
bjec i i he e e d l di la . e idi g c mme a ie a
Q a e , ill life , a d c ckfigh a e hie a ch a d elf- ega d i Bali, b
me el eflec i fa ee i i g he e a e a g ea ma he c i ical ec
e ibili a al gicall e e e ed; he f Bali e e life be ide he a ifi
a e i i e age i he c ea i a d ca a d he ag i ic ha ecei e
mai e a ce f ch a e ibili . If e ch c mme a . The ce em c e
ee el e a a ack f Mica be i c a i g a B ahma a ie , a ma e f
i f m eadi g m ch Dicke (if e b ea h c l, al imm bili , a d
ee el e a ill i ed eali , i aca c ce a i he de h
i f m eadi g li le) ; a d imila f bei g, di la a adicall diffe e ,
l f Bali e e, c ck , a d c ckfigh . b he Bali e e e all eal, e
I i i ch a a , c l i g e e ie ce f cial hie a ch - i each a d
i h he ligh he ca i i , a he ha he mi a ce de . Se i
h gh ha e e ma e ial effec he he ma i f he ki e ic em i ali f
ma ha e, ha he a la hei le, a a imal , b i ha f he a ic a i
a ,i cial life.41 le e f di i e me ali , i e e e
a ili di ie . The ma fe i
al a he illage em le , hich m bi
a d f h - i m e ha all mi leadi g
he e, f he fac ha , a me i ed ea lie ,
li e he h le l cal la i i elab
Bali e e f ll he g e f he figh a a eh i g f i i i gg d - g ,
m ch ( e ha , a figh i g c ck a e ac all da ce , c m lime , gif - a e he
a he ha d ee e ce a bl fm i , i i al i f illage ma e agai
m e) i h hei b die a i h hei e e , hei a i e ali a d jec a
m i g hei limb , head , a d k i ge
m d f ami a d .42 The c ck
al mimic f he c ck ' ma e e , mea
ha m ch f he i di id al' e e ie ce f
he figh i ki e he ic a he ha i al. If be) b acke ed i he ci l g fa .I a
e e he e a a e am le f Ke e h B ke' ca e, he a em de i ciali e he c ce
defi i i fa mb lic ac a " he da ci g fa i b a f he ge e al a h l gical
fa a i de" (The Phil h f Li e a F m, c i ac de i ciali e all im a
e . ed. [Ne Y k: Vi age B k , 1957], 9) cial c ce - ma iage, eligi , la , a i ali
he c ckfigh i i . O he e m le f - a d h gh hi i a h ea ae he ic he
ki e he ic e ce i i Bali e e life, Ba e ie hich ega d ce ai k f a a be
a d Mead, Bali e e Cha ac e , 84 - 88 ; he d he each f ci l gical a al i , i i
ac i e a e f ae he ic e ce i i ge e al, h ea he c ic i , f hich R be
G dma , La g age f A , 241 - 244. G a e claim ha e bee e ima ded a hi
Camb idge i , ha me em a e be e
41 All hi c li g f he ccide al g ea i h ha he .
he ie al l l ill d b le di b ce ai
f ae he icia a he ea lie eff f 42 F he c ec a i ce em , ee V. E.
a h l gi eak f Ch i ia i a d K , "The C ec a i f he P ie ," i
emi m i he ame b ea h di bed ce ai S elle g ebel, ed., Bali, 131 -154 ; f ( me
f he l gia . B a l gical e ha e agge a ed) illage c mm i , R el f
i a e( h ld be) b acke ed i he ci l G i , "The Religi Cha ac e f he Bali e e
g f eligi , j dgme al e a e( h ld Village," ibid., 79 -100.

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Cliff d figh i he ma e ke Bali e e F c i ali m li e , a d d e
Gee
life, a m e ha b llfigh i g i ch l gi m. B ega d ch f m a
S a i h. Wha i a ab ha life i " a i g me hi g f me hi g," a d
alified e e challe ged a i gi meb d , i a lea e
b ha he e all el e c l he ibili f a a al i hich
al a eme a ab i .B he e i a e d hei b a ce a he ha
hi g m e i i g i hi ha i ed c i e f m la fe i g acc
he fac ha Raci e a d M li? e e e f hem.
c em a ie , ha he ame e le A i m e familia e e ci e i cl e
h a a ge ch a hem m ca eadi g, e ca a a he e i a
d .43 c l e' e e i e ff m a de d
The c l e f a e le i a e emble a he e el e. O e ca a ,a I
f e , hem el e e emble , hich ha e he e, i hi a i gle, m e le
he a h l gi ai ead e b ded f m a d ci cle eadil i h
he h lde f h e h m he i i . O e ca m e be ee f m i
e l bel g. The e a e e m ea ch f b ade i ie i f mi g
diffic l ie i ch a e e i e, me h c a . O e ca e e c m a e f m
d l gical i fall make a F e dia f m diffe e c l e defi e hei
ake, a d me m al e le i ie a cha ac e i eci cal elief. B ha
ell. N i i he l a ha mb l e e he le el a hich e e a e , a d
ic f m ca be ci l gicall ha dled. h e e i ica el , he g idi g i ci
le i he ame : cie ie , like li e , c
ai hei i e e a i . O e ha
43 Tha ha he c ckfigh ha a ab l lea h gai acce hem.
Bali i al ge he i h e ce i a d
he di ie i e e e ab he ge e al a
e f Bali e e life i h ll i h ea
i a e ed b he fac ha i eek f
Decembe 1965, d i g he hea al f ll i g
he cce f l c i Djaka a, be ee
f a d eigh h a d Bali e e (i a
la i f ab milli ) e e killed, la ge
l b ea he - he b i he
c . (J h H ghe , I d e ia U hea al
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Public Anthropology
ROBERT BOROFSKY
Center for a Public Anthropology, United States, and Hawai‘i Pacific University, United States

Public anthropology represents the interface between anthropology, as an academic dis-

cipline, and the broader public that supports it and, ideally, finds much value in it. In
one sense, public anthropology dates back to before the Enlightenment. In another, it
is relatively recent. At its core is a central question: What value does anthropology have
and for whom?
If we view public anthropology as an effort to present in nonacademic terms insights
about how life is lived beyond the pale of Western societies, then it might be perceived
as dating back to various travelogues before the seventeenth century. Marco Polo’s late
thirteenth-century adventures (recorded by Rustrichello da Pisa and known today as
The Travels of Marco Polo), for example, describe his travels to the court of Kublai Khan
in China. Like many accounts of the period, it remained unclear where truth left off and
fantasy began.
During the Enlightenment, explorers frequently took care to provide credible reports
of what they experienced in their adventures to other parts of the world. Among the
most famous accounts were the journals from James Cook’s three voyages published
in the late 1700s. They were best sellers; first editions sold out quickly. (The account of
Cook’s third voyage—a three-volume work of over 1,600 pages—sold out in three days.)
The journals provided a reasonably empirical account of life across a broad swath of the
Pacific as experienced by Cook and his crew, experiences later anthropologists were able
to build on.
But public anthropology, as a term referring to a certain focus within anthropology, is
fairly recent. Robert Borofsky coined the term in the 1990s for the University of Califor-
nia Press series he was editing—focused, he suggested, on addressing public problems
in public ways. Over the next decade, the term expanded beyond this book series to
the point where doing an online search for it now brings up over 100,000 links. Why
such popularity? Public anthropology seems a response to two concerns voiced within
anthropology today. First, anthropology deals with all sorts of intriguing questions that
should interest a wide audience. But the anthropologically oriented books that are best
sellers and win prominent prizes today are not usually written by anthropologists; they
tend to be written by nonanthropologists. Many anthropologists feel their own writings
should receive similar recognition Second, anthropologists have done much good—not
only in helping to enrich human understanding but also in improving many people’s
lives in tangible ways. Yet even with millions of students taking anthropology and mak-
ing reference to the discipline’s accomplishments, anthropology is not always given the
respect many anthropologists feel it deserves.

The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Edited by Hilary Callan.

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1899
2 P U BL I C A NT HR OP OL OGY

Defining public anthropology

The definition outlined in the introductory paragraphs is fairly straightforward but a

host of public anthropology programs use the term in various ways, emphasizing that
not everyone perceives the field in the same way today.
In the MA program in public anthropology at the American University, for
example, “students explore the workings of culture, power, and history in everyday
life and acquire skills in critical inquiry, problem solving, and public communication”
(American University 2017). A Tufts University web page states: “Public anthropology
includes both civic engagement and public scholarship … in which we address
audiences beyond academia. It is a publicly engaged anthropology at the intersection
of theory and practice, of intellectual and ethical concerns, of the global and the local”
(Tufts University 2017).
A web page discussing the Public Anthropology Initiative at Duke University
describes it as: “(1) training in public communication skills and community-based
research; (2) collaborations … to address social problems; and (3) forums for
critically reflecting upon lessons learned from public engagement.” The Public Issues
Anthropology program at the University of Guelph focuses “on the interface between
anthropological knowledge and issues crucial to governance, public discourse, liveli-
hoods, civil society, and contemporary public issues.” The American Anthropologist’s
public anthropology section highlights “anthropological work principally aimed at
nonacademic audiences.” Reading between the lines of these overlapping perspectives,
one can perceive suggestions of the concerns noted earlier—a desire for anthropological
writings to be better recognized; anthropologists’ good deeds to be better appreciated.
Anthropologists have not always felt as marginalized. During the first half of the
twentieth century, James Frazer’s The Golden Bough and Margaret Mead’s Coming of
Age in Samoa engaged a wide range of readers beyond the academy in significant ways.
What happened? Basically, a trend that had been building from the early 1900s came
to dominate the discipline. By the late 1960s, anthropology very much embraced the
academy and the academy very much embraced anthropology. The founders of anthro-
pology in the mid- to late 1800s resided outside universities, either as private scholars
(e.g., Henry Lewis Morgan) or as government officials (e.g., James Mooney and John
Wesley Powell), but with the rise of universities as centers of learning in the late 1800s,
more and more anthropologists became associated with academic settings. (It might be
viewed as starting with Franz Boas becoming a professor of anthropology at Columbia
University in 1899.)
A key turning point involved the expansion of university enrollments during the
1960s stemming from the post-World War II baby boom. This led to a significant
expansion of both anthropology departments and students majoring in the discipline.
It meant anthropologists no longer had to write for the broader public in order to
be published. Authors could now sell thousands of books if their colleagues required
them in their anthropology classes. Today, numerous academically oriented publishers
find it profitable to focus solely on publishing books destined for classroom use.
What is striking—in comparison to, say, the 1930s—is how most anthropologists
now primarily frame their work in academic terms. Today, as Andrew Abbott writes,
 P U BL I C A NT HR OP OL OGY 3

“professionals draw their self-esteem more from their own world than from the
public’s” (Abbott 1988, 119). We might perceive the tendency for anthropologists
to separate themselves from the broader public in terms of purity and pollution.
Following the work of Mary Douglas (1966), the pure remain comfortably ensconced
within anthropology, producing publications that few read outside the discipline.
The impure write for a broader public that, in the eyes of colleagues, diminishes (or
pollutes) these individuals’ professional status.
Public anthropology might be viewed as anthropologists striving to have a foot in two
camps (so to speak). Public anthropologists want status conferred on them by academic
colleagues for their academic work but they also want the broader public to take note
of their work. It might be seen as a survival strategy—while their tenure and promotion
depend on academic publications, the public impact of their publications has become
a central concern to administrators and politicians allocating research funding.

Public anthropology’s relation to applied anthropology

A common question raised concerning public anthropology is how it differs from

applied anthropology. We might query why such a differentiation needs be made—as
if ambiguous fields such as these must be distinguished, one from the other, as baseball
fans might differentiate between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees.
Perhaps the best way to proceed, if one insists on making a differentiation, is to
examine the different contexts in which they both originated. Applied anthropology
had its roots in late nineteenth-century British and American colonialism. Colonial
governments were interested in understanding how various groups under their “rule”
lived—to keep relations with them relatively positive. The American Bureau of Ethnol-
ogy, for example, sponsored precedent-setting studies by Cushing, Dorsey, Stevenson,
and Mooney describing North American Indian life and how it was changing under
American domination.
The Society for Applied Anthropology was formally established in 1941 “to promote
the investigation of the principles of human behavior and the application of these
principles to contemporary issues and problems” (SfAA, n.d.). As the journal Applied
Anthropology (later renamed Human Organization) indicated in its opening editorial,
“Applied Anthropology is designed not only for scientists, but even more for those
concerned with putting plans into operations, administrators, psychiatrists, social
workers, and all those who as part of their responsibility have to take action in
problems of human relations.” Robert Trotter, Jean Schensul, and Kristin Kostick note
that today applied anthropology tends to have a practical orientation motivated by
two concerns: “One is to produce research that has straightforward findings that can
be used for direct interventions or implications that can lead to recommendations for
policy change … The other is to test and improve anthropological theory through
devising experiments in sociocultural interventions or policy changes” (2015, 661).
Public anthropology grew out of a different context. It was coined to give an upbeat
name to the California book series being developed in the late 1990s. As phrased in the
4 P U BL I C A NT HR OP OL OGY

front matter of its early books: “The California Series in Public Anthropology empha-
sizes the anthropologist’s role as an engaged intellectual. It continues anthropology’s
commitment to being an ethnographic witness, to describing in human terms how life
is lived beyond the borders of many readers’ experiences. But it also adds a commitment
through ethnography to reframing the terms of public debate—transforming received,
accepted, understandings of social issues with new insights, new framings” (Lock 2002,
ii). The series did not make reference to applied anthropology for two reasons. First, it
wanted to convey that the series was exploring new possibilities. By the 1990s, applied
anthropology no longer had the same positive “buzz” that it had in the 1940s, 1950s, and
1960s. In addition, over time applied anthropology had developed a somewhat tense
relationship with theoretically inclined academics in cultural anthropology. The series
wanted to avoid that tension.
While popular within the discipline, the series has not transformed the discipline.
Rather, it has highlighted suggestive possibilities. Two presidents (Mikhail Gorbachev
and Bill Clinton) as well as three Nobel Laureates (Amartya Sen, Jody Williams, and
Mikhail Gorbachev) have contributed to the series either through books or forewords.
Its list includes such prominent authors as Paul Farmer and Philippe Bourgois.
In recent decades, numerous terms have arisen that, like public anthropology, focus
on the reaching out to the broader public. Thomas Hylland Erikson, for example, states:
“Engaging Anthropology takes an unflinching look at why the discipline has not gained
the popularity and respect it deserves” (2006, back cover). Practicing Anthropology,
which has existed as a formal organization since 1983, works “to understand and help
people around the world” (Practicing Anthropology, n.d.). Activist anthropology,
according to the University of Texas’s anthropology department, “is predicated on
the idea that we need not choose between first rate scholarship on the one hand, and
carefully considered political engagement on the other” (University of Texas at Austin,
n.d.).
Despite the florescence of such terms, public anthropology remains the generally
preferred term. Using online search links as a rough standard of popularity, public
anthropology has over 100,000 links; practicing anthropology has roughly 38,000;
engaging anthropology 10,000; and activist anthropology 4,000. Why have these
other terms not replaced public anthropology? This entry’s author would suggest it
derives from the social structures associated with the term—“public anthropology”
has numerous respected graduate programs and a book series with the University of
California Press.

Key concerns

Focusing on public anthropology’s key concerns offers a way to highlight its trans-
formative intent (Borofsky 2011). If anthropology wishes to be better recognized and
better appreciated, then it cannot continue with the same academic orientations of years
past. The structures that turn the discipline in on itself need be challenged, need be
transformed. At its best, public anthropology entails not only reaching out beyond the
discipline in ways that support the common good but also reshaping the discipline to
 P U BL I C A NT HR OP OL OGY 5

foster these efforts on a continuing basis. This can be seen in examining four of the
field’s central concerns.

Changing current standards of accountability

Accountability within anthropology tends to focus on peer-reviewed publications in
academic journals and university presses, standards that reinforce the academic status
quo. Producing more publications on more topics, however, is not necessarily the same
as producing more knowledge. (We may simply be producing more vague, uncertain,
unverified possibilities with our publications.)
Rather than focusing on quantitative calculations—publishing x number of articles
or books—accountability might be better phrased in pragmatic terms. It should con-
sider: What is the significance of the problem being addressed? To what degree does
the author succeed in addressing it? What impact does the author’s publications have
beyond the academy? Framing accountability in this manner allows it to bridge the
academic–public divide. It draws others into appreciating the discipline’s broader value.
As an example, one might cite Franz Boas. With the rise of Nazism in Central Europe,
he spoke out against its racist theories of development—both with the academy and the
broader public. In May 1936, Boas appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Time called
Boas’s The Mind of Primitive Man ([1911] 1961) “the Magna Carta of self-respect” for
non-Western peoples.
There is a caution we must note in framing accountability in terms of public impact.
Readers should not be tripped up by how objectivity has been altered in meaning, espe-
cially within the academy since the late 1800s. When the social sciences moved into
universities, objectivity became redefined to involve avoiding politically charged top-
ics that might upset the status quo. But objectivity does not refer to avoiding certain
topics to appear professionally respectable. Being a “disinterested” professional does
not mean being uninterested in the world outside one’s laboratory. It means putting
the larger society’s interests ahead of one’s own interests or the interests of those one
works for.
Objectivity derives from the open, public analysis of divergent accounts. We
know an account is more objective, more credible, more scientific, after various
individuals—whatever their personal biases—independently confirm the knowledge
claims made by someone else (“Metaphysicians” 2014). The value of focusing on
outcomes is that they can be objectively assessed. We can ask: In what ways and to what
degree does an author’s solution effectively address the problem being considered?
Framing accountability in this way highlights anthropology’s power to help others.

Fostering transparency
Public anthropology also emphasizes the renewed concern with research transparency.
Today billions of dollars are “squandered” (to use The Economist’s phrasing) because
researchers do not report their failures and/or ambiguous results, leaving a very imper-
fect picture of, for example, which drugs actually work.
6 P U BL I C A NT HR OP OL OGY

Greater ethnographic transparency might well help resolve important anthropologi-

cal debates. Take, for example, the heated debate over whether the Yanomami are (or are
not) particularly violent, an issue that has drawn worldwide attention. Readers may be
surprised to learn that key data, central to the argument, have never been made public.
Quoting Napoleon Chagnon, the author who initiated the argument and the source of
the most significant data on it: “I have never published data that would enable some-
one to determine who specifically was a ‘killer,’ his name, his village, his age, how many
wives he had, and how many offspring. In short, the data needed to make the criticism
that Fry makes cannot be gleaned from my published data” (in Miklikowska and Fry
2012, 61). Given the role of Chagnon’s data in the argument, this means the issue is
unlikely to be resolved without new research that, in publicly presenting its data, allows
others to confirm them.
Regarding Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s famous (or infamous) The Bell
Curve (1994), Nicholas Lehman notes that a key reason for the initial positive popular
response to the book was because:
The ordinary routine of neutral reviewers having a month or two to go over the book with
care did not occur … The [initial] debate … was conducted in the mass media by people
with no independent ability to assess the book. It wasn’t until late 1995 that the most
damaging criticism of The Bell Curve began to appear, in tiny academic journals … The
Bell Curve, it turns out, is full of mistakes ranging from sloppy reasoning to miscitations
of sources to outright mathematical errors. (Lehman 1997)

Without transparency regarding the data supporting an author’s conclusions—allowing

others to examine and confirm the author’s assertions—neither anthropology nor the
other social sciences can produce credible results that the general public will respect
and rely on. Otherwise, it will be mostly a matter, as it is with the Yanomami, of people
arguing past one another without any possibility of resolution.

Changing the ethical focus to benefiting others

Public anthropology stresses the importance of moving beyond “do no harm” as an
ethical standard—anthropology, it suggests, should focus on benefiting others.
First, the “do no harm” standard creates serious complications in trying to delin-
eate what is and is not “harm.” This became clear when the American Anthropological
Association (AAA) was unsuccessful in its attempt to sanction Chagnon for his actions.
Though sanctions were rejected by a vote that involved less than 15 percent of the AAA’s
membership, the issue remains in dispute. How much more valuable it would have been
if, instead of arguing over how much harm Chagnon may (or may not) have done,
the committee in charge of the investigation had collected empirical data on whether
Chagnon (and the other anthropologists who worked among the Yanomami) had, in
the conduct of their fieldwork, made sure the Yanomami benefited in clear and paral-
lel terms to the benefits the anthropologists gained from their research. It would have
emphasized to other anthropologists as well as the general public the researchers’ ability
to help the Yanomami rather than, as now, the harm they may (or may not) have caused.
 P U BL I C A NT HR OP OL OGY 7

Second, focusing on “do no harm” sidesteps important ethical dilemmas. What

happens, for example, when the people we are studying are suffering from a range of
maladies? Do we leave them be, knowing we are not the source of their problems, that
we have not harmed them? Or do we try to help the people who are helping us with
our research?
Focusing on “do no harm” also sidesteps the moral dilemma of how to compensate
informants for their help. Anthropologists might argue over what type of benefits they
might reasonably offer to those who help them with their research. But rarely is the
issue of fair recompense highlighted in the literature. Emphasizing “do no harm” nicely
sidesteps having to discuss it. Imagine the impact anthropologists might have if they
could assert, as Partners in Health does, that they have sought “to bring the benefits of
modern medical science to those most in need of them and to serve as an antidote to
despair” (Partners in Health, n.d.). It would make the public value anthropology more.

Finding ways to work with others beyond the discipline

Rarely do anthropologists, working on their own, have the power to bring significant
social change. To be effective, public anthropologists need the energy and momen-
tum generated by other organizations with their ability to mobilize people and persist
through time. Stated succinctly: public anthropology works best when it collaborates with
others to facilitate a common goal.
Partners in Health demonstrates this well by the way it partners with local commu-
nities. It builds its medical support structures on a community’s existing structures and
it uses community personnel at its medical support staff.
The Center for a Public Anthropology’s developing collaboration with Altmetric.com
is another example. The goal is to draw anthropologists into becoming active partici-
pants in the public domain by providing metrics for which anthropological articles are
cited in media around the world. By working together, the project will have the data,
credibility, and support to help facilitate and reward change within the discipline.

Emphasizing anthropology’s impact

In reframing the discipline, public anthropology opens up exciting possibilities for serv-
ing the common good. Here are a few.

Conceptualizing important issues

Comparison is central to anthropology. Public anthropology can build on it to help peo-
ple better understand the world around them. An example is Jean-Pierre Filiu’s From
Deep State to Islamic State (2015). In examining responses to the Arab Spring across the
Middle East, he uses a comparative perspective to make sense of the region’s current
tensions, conflicts, and brutalities. Prominent dictatorships, Filiu suggests, fostered reli-
gious radicalism to provide them with a mission—namely, to stamp the radicals out.
The Arab Spring’s democratic revolution was soon followed by a counterrevolution in
8 P U BL I C A NT HR OP OL OGY

which not only various dictatorships increased their power (e.g., Egypt) but so did cer-
tain religious radicals (e.g., Islamic State). This counterrevolution created the present
stand-off between authoritarian “deep states” and religiously fervent “Islamic states.”
In placing the present conflicts in a comparative perspective, Filiu helps us make sense
of the puzzling dynamics now at work across the whole region.

Speaking truth to power (exposés)

In speaking truth to power, public anthropologists can foster social justice. Exposés
work best, however, when they are targeted—when anthropologists find groups that
will benefit from assisting them to bring their exposés to public light.
A good example is how the anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes helped facilitate
the conviction of the first person ever convicted of organ trafficking in the United States.
She not only traced his organ network and the transactions at the heart of it but also,
with the FBI enmeshed in a major case of political corruption in New Jersey, she skill-
fully drew the bureau into also following up on this case because it was related to the
other one.

Writing narratives with impact

Anthropologists can certainly write for broader audiences. Unfortunately, many anthro-
pologists feel more comfortable operating within academic contexts that discourage
“accessible” writing. When anthropologists win prominent prizes for their writing, such
as David Kertzer (2015) winning the Pulitzer Prize, they tend to deal with topics outside
the discipline’s normal purview—Italian history in Kertzer’s case.
Academics seeking to reach broader audiences beyond the discipline need keep the
following standards in mind. First, is the problem the book addresses framed in a way
that draws broad public interest? Second, does the book draw readers into seeing how
a topic in an unfamiliar locale can be relevant and exciting to Western audiences? And
third, does the book keep the reader’s attention through an understanding of the char-
acters involved?

Summary

Public anthropology is a project in the making. In reaching out to broader audiences, it

seeks to create new structures that will revitalize anthropology and the public’s appre-
ciation of it.

SEE ALSO: Action Anthropology; Activism; Anthropology beyond the Academy:

Communicating the Subject to Nonspecialists; Anthropology, Careers in; Anthropol-
ogy, Public Perceptions of; Applied Anthropology; Boas, Franz (1858–1942); Chile,
Anthropology in; Colombia, Anthropology in; Conflict and Security; Corporate
Social Responsibility; Cultural Brokers; Cultural Politics; Digital Anthropology;
Display, Anthropological Approaches to; Empiricism; Energy Issues in Develop-
ment; Enlightenment, the; Environmental Anthropology; Environmental Justice;
 P U BL I C A NT HR OP OL OGY 9

Environmental Vulnerability and Resilience; Ethnographic Spectacle; Global Health;

Indigenous Peoples and Higher Education; International Development, Anthropology
in; International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES); Israel,
Anthropology in; Mead, Margaret (1901–78); Multimodality; Museums and Source
Communities; Norway, Anthropology in; Policy, Anthropology and; Praxis; Protest;
Quality-of-Life Issues in Development; Rappaport, Roy (1926–97); Representation,
Politics of; Research Traditions on Law in Anglo-American Anthropology; Social
Darwinism

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Abbott, Andrew. 1988. The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
American University. 2017. “Anthropology Masters Program.” Accessed October 18, 2017, www.
american.edu/cas/anthropology/masters-mission.cfm.
Boas, Franz. (1911) 1961. The Mind of Primitive Man. New York: Free Press.
Borofsky, Robert. 2011. Why a Public Anthropology? Kailua, HI: Center for a Public Anthropol-
ogy.
Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London:
Routledge.
Erikson, Thomas Hylland. 2006. Engaging Anthropology: The Case of a Public Presence. New York:
Berg.
Filiu, Jean-Pierre. 2015. From Deep State to Islamic State: The Arab Counter-Revolution and its
Jihadi Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Frazer, James. 1906–15. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. 3rd ed. London:
Macmillan.
Herrnstein, Richard and Charles Murray. 1994. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure
in American Life. New York: Free Press.
Kertzer, David. 2015. The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism
in Europe. New York: Random House.
Lehman, Nicholas. 1997. “The Bell Curve Flattened.” Slate, January 18. Accessed April 18, 2017,
http://www.slate.com/articles/briefing/articles/1997/01/the_bell_curve_flattened.html.
Lock, Margaret. 2002. Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death. California
Series in Public Anthropology, No. 1. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Mead, Margaret. (1928) 1961. Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth
for Western Civilization. New York: William Morrow.
“Metaphysicians: Combating Bad Science.” 2014. The Economist, March 16.
Miklikowska, Marta, and Douglas Fry. 2012. “Natural Born Nonkillers: A Critique of the
Killers-Have-More-Kids Idea.” In Nonkilling Psychology, edited by Daniel Christie and Joan
Evan Pim, 3–67. Honolulu: Center for Global Nonkilling.
Partners in Health. n.d. Accessed April 19, 2017, http://www.pih.org/pages/our-mission.
Practicing Anthropology (National Association for the Practice of Anthropology). n.d. Accessed
April 19, 2017, http://practicinganthropology.org/practicing-anthro.
SfAA (Society for Applied Anthropology). n.d. Accessed April 18, 2017, http://www.sfaa.net/
about.
Trotter, Robert, Jean Schensul, and Kristin Kostick. 2015. “Theories and Methods in Applied
Anthropology.” In Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology, edited by Russell Bernard
and Clarence Gravlee, 661–93. 2nd ed. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
10 P U BL I C A NT HR OP OL OGY

Tufts University. 2017. “Undergraduate Program: Public Anthropology.” Accessed October 18,
2017, https://ase.tufts.edu/anthropology/undergraduate/public.htm.
University of Texas at Austin. n.d. Accessed April 19, 2017, https://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/
anthropology/programs-and-subdisciplines/Activist-Anthropology.php.
This page was intentionally left blank
 Thematic Section Articles 23

Public Anthropology in the

21st Century, with Some
Examples from Norway
Thomas Hylland Eriksen

DOI: 10.21104/CL.2016.1.01

Abstract Although there seems to be broad Keywords public anthropology, Norway,

agreement within the discipline about the history of anthropology, interdisciplinarity.
desirability of a public anthropology, there
is less certainty, or agreement, not only The article is based on a keynote
about how to achieve it in a responsible way speech given by the author at the EASA
but also about its very raison- d’être. What symposium ‘Making anthropology
should an anthropology which engages matter’, Vila Lanna, Prague, 14–15
closely with non-academic publics seek to October 2015, with the support of the
achieve? Starting with a historical overview, Czech Academy of Sciences and the Czech
the article argues that the lack of a clear Association for Social Anthropology.
societal task or assignment liberates
anthropology from problem solving for Contact Prof. Thomas Hylland Eriksen,
the state, enabling it to stimulate the University of Oslo, Department of Social
collective imagination by making bold Anthropology, Norway; e-mail: t.h.eriksen@
comparisons and unexpected conjectures. sai.uio.no; http://hyllanderiksen.net.
The empirical examples from Norway
show how public anthropologists can Jak citovat / How to cite Eriksen, Thomas
successfully mix the ‘light’ and the ‘heavy’ in Hylland. (2016). Public Anthropology in the
getting their argument across and raising 21st Century, with Some Examples from
anthropological issues while also engaging Norway. eský lid 103, 23–36. doi:http://
with a broad, non-academic public. dx.doi.org/10.21104/CL.2016.1.01
24 eský lid 103 1 2016

The relationship of anthropology to the wider public sphere has gone through
several stages, or ebbs and flows. Until the end of the 19th century, anthropol-
ogy scarcely existed as an independent intellectual endeavour but was large-
ly a gentlemanly pursuit or an unintended but not unwelcome side effect of
exploration and colonization. Those who contributed to the emergence of an-
thropology as a distinctive field of scientific knowledge, from Lewis Henry
Morgan in the US to Henry Maine and E. B. Tylor in England, positioned them-
selves in a broader ecology of ideas and the pursuit of knowledge. The pro-
fessionalization of anthropology as an academic discipline began in earnest
around the turn of the last century, enabling later practitioners to withdraw
increasingly from social concerns and other approaches to human culture
and society. While many 19th-century anthropologists were not ‘public an-
thropologists’ in the contemporary sense, they engaged with a broader pub-
lic than most academic anthropologists of the 20th century did.
The increasing institutionalization of anthropology as an academic dis-
cipline in the twentieth century enabled many anthropologists to effectively
withdraw from the surrounding society (Eriksen 2006; Low and Merry 2010).
Concerns voiced by some, such as A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, about making an-
thropology a ‘real science’ modelled on physics and biology encouraged this
kind of retreat into the ivory tower, and as the internal demographics of an-
thropology soared after the Second World War, the professional communi-
ty grew large enough to begin to spin a cocoon around itself. Like a growing
corporation, it increasingly became self-contained, self-reproducing and self-
su cient, until sheer demographic growth, decades later, again led to porous
boundaries and defections.
However, there has been no straightforward movement from openness to
closure. Important anthropologists who contributed to this very institutional-
ization, notably Franz Boas, were engaged with broader societal issues, and
Boas was an important public critic of racist pseudoscience. Among his stu-
dents Margaret Mead hardly needs an introduction, but as the author of for-
ty-four books and more than a thousand articles, keeping up the momentum
until her death in 1978, she was arguably the public anthropologist par excel-
lence in the twentieth century. There were also many others whose work was
read outside academia and who engaged in various ways with the world at
large. Bronislaw Malinowski gave lectures on primitive economics to anyone
who cared to listen; Marcel Mauss was engaged in French politics as a mod-
erate socialist; and one could go on.
In a sense, anthropologists have always engaged with publics outside of
anthropology. Sometimes, this has led to their academic marginalization – one
could easily be written off as an intellectual lightweight if one got involved
in advocacy or applied work, say, for development agencies – and there has,
as noted by many (e.g. Pels and Salemink 1999; Borofsky 2011), been a clear,
and arguably unproductive, tendency to rank pure research above applied
 Public Anthropology in the 21st Century, with Some Examples from Norway 25

research. Similarly, the hierarchy ranking di cult academic writing for peo-
ple in the know above lucid writing for the general public is also debatable.
The fact remains that most of the anthropologists who are widely read by stu-
dents put most of their intellectual energy into basic research and theory, and
we therefore need to be reminded of the fact that they have all coexisted with
other anthropologists who either went out of their way to establish a broader
dialogue about the human condition or who actively sought to mitigate suf-
fering and contribute to social change.
In our world of multiple transnational networks and global fl ows, the
contrast between ‘us, the knowers’ and ‘them, the objects of study’, which
was always questionable, has now become untenable, and anthropologists
now venture into fi elds and delineate their topics of inquiry in ways that
were unheard of only a generation ago (see MacClancy 2002 for some exam-
ples). As Sam Beck and Carl Maida (2013) put it, the contemporary world is
in many ways borderless. The consequences of the destabilization of bound-
aries for the anthropological endeavour are many, and some of the most im-
portant consequences become evident in the debates around public anthro-
pology: Who can legitimately say what, and on whose behalf can they say it?
What are the benchmark criteria for good ethnography? What can anthropol-
ogists offer to the societies they study? And – in a very general sense – what is
the exact relationship between anthropological research and the social and
cultural worlds under study? These questions, which were always relevant,
have become inevitable, and increasingly di cult to answer, in the border-
less world of the 21st century.
Anthropology has, in the past, succeeded spectacularly in combating racial
prejudices and biological determinism, accounting for – and, at least in the case
of Margaret Mead, contributing to – cultural change and throwing unexpected
analogies and thought-provoking contrasts into the world, sometimes succeed-
ing in ‘making the exotic familiar and the familiar exotic’. Our failure to de-
fine a single public agenda over recent decades – and here I am using the word
public loosely to include the media, politics, students and general intellectual
debate – is actually quite serious. It does not mean that anthropologists are, in
general, working with useless and irrelevant topics, that they are engaged in
a self-enclosed activity of high sophistication akin to the ‘glass bead game’ de-
scribed in Herman Hesse’s last and most important novel, Das Glasperlenspiel,
translated into English variously as The Glass Bead Game and Magister Ludi
(Hesse 1949 [1943]). The glass bead game has no ulterior point beyond that of
allowing its players to display their dazzling skill and intellectual dexterity,
and as the novel’s protagonist Joseph Knecht comes to realize, the single-mind-
ed commitment to the game demanded of its players makes them unfit for liv-
ing in the world. Hesse’s novel comments on self-enclosed, self-congratulatory
academic pursuits with little relevance beyond academia. Novelists and poets
have been known to regard literary studies, not least in their post-structuralist
26 eský lid 103 1 2016

versions, in such terms. But anthropology? Well, clearly not. What attracted
many of us to anthropology in the first place – the possibility of raising funda-
mental philosophical questions while simultaneously engaging with the world
of real, existing people – is still there. However – and this is a matter of regret
for all of us – it is still largely to be found inside a cocoon.

Anthropology as cultural critique

Although there seems to be broad agreement within the discipline about the
desirability of a public anthropology, there is less certainty, or agreement,
not only about how to achieve it in a responsible way, but also about its very
raison-d’être. What should an anthropology which engages closely with non-
academic publics seek to achieve? There are several possible approaches to
this question.
A position enunciated at the time of the radical student movement of the
1960s saw anthropology as an inherently critical discipline in a vaguely left-
wing sense (e.g. Berreman 1968). To the extent that anthropologists are closer
to ‘ordinary people’ than other researchers, including other social scientists,
advocacy on behalf of local communities facing potential conflict with corpo-
rations or states may seem to follow logically from the experiences and social
obligations resulting from fieldwork. It is doubtless true that when anthro-
pologists act or write on behalf of the people they conduct research on, they
are more often than not defenders of the particular and local against various
forms of standardization, state power and global neoliberalism. While this is
an often laudable and even necessary task, the critical role of public anthro-
pology can be taken further than advocacy for various kinds of local move-
ments. This is especially, but not exclusively, evident when anthropologists
engage with issues in their own society.
Conducting anthropological research at home has its rewards and pit-
falls, mostly resulting from the close relationship of the researcher to the re-
searched. This has been more thoroughly formulated as a theory by sociolo-
gists than by anthropologists, some of whom still tend to think of ‘anthropology
at home’ as an exception. Just as post-structuralism was replacing neo-Marx-
ism as the dominant non-orthodox theoretical orientation in the social scienc-
es, Giddens (1984) pointed out that the social scientist enters into a ‘double
hermeneutic’ relationship in his or her society, since the concepts and analy-
ses of the social sciences are both informed by lay concepts and in turn influ-
ence them. There is, in other words, a two-way hermeneutic process taking
place. For instance, the anthropological concept of ethnicity has entered every-
day discourse, while the political concept of integration (regarding minorities)
has, conversely, influenced social research on the issue. Years before Giddens,
the philosopher Hans Skjervheim (1957) described a related duality in a sem-
inal essay marking the beginning of the Norwegian critique of positivism. He
 Public Anthropology in the 21st Century, with Some Examples from Norway 27

showed that, far from being an aloof and objective observer, the social sci-
entist is both participant and observer (an epistemological position not to be
confused with the methodological device of participant observation). There
can, accordingly, be no neutral ground from which to view society.
Social scientists are, in other words, entwined with broader public dis-
course and societal concerns, whether they like it or not; indeed, critics of
positivism have long pointed out that this is true of all scientifi c enquiry.
Writing in the context of the burgeoning radical student movements in the
late 1960s, Jürgen Habermas thus distinguished between three ‘knowledge
interests’ (Erkenntnisinteressen, Habermas 1971/1968), which he associated
with the three main branches of academic inquiry. The natural sciences, he
said, were driven by a technical interest and found their justification in ex-
plaining natural relationships and processes in ways enabling control and
technological progress. The inherent knowledge interest of the humanities
(Geisteswissenschaften) was practical (in the Kantian sense) and aimed to deep-
en and maintain the communicative community on which both society and
individuality depended. Finally, the knowledge interest of the social sciences
was liberating, aiming to expose and account for the power relations of soci-
ety, thereby contributing to the critical self-understanding of its inhabitants.
Habermas worried that the technical knowledge interest was becoming over-
ly dominant across the academic disciplines. It is easy to find evidence sup-
porting this view today, when most social science research is commissioned
directly or indirectly by state institutions, the humanities are judged on their
instrumental usefulness, and New Public Management provides the yardstick
for assessing academic achievement.

Being irrelevant in a relevant way

Seen against the backdrop of Habermas, Giddens, the critique of positivism

and the perceived need for public engagement, it is fairly obvious that not all
social science satisfies the criteria for representing a liberating knowledge in-
terest. Some – perhaps most – social science is closely aligned with social engi-
neering, planning and the formal structuring of society, and in state budgets
social research is justified by referring to its usefulness. It belongs to the do-
main of the technical knowledge interest. Its dialectical negation, the broad
family of approaches and persuasions coming under the umbrella of critical
social science, either aims to improve a flawed socioeconomic system by ad-
dressing racism, inequality, misogyny etc., or to replace it with a better one.
It can be liberating, but it depends conceptually on that from which it seeks
liberation.
Anthropology is in a privileged position to develop a third way beyond
system maintenance and social criticism, one which is arguably more in ac-
cordance with the notion of liberating knowledge held by young Habermas
28 eský lid 103 1 2016

(and his more radical predecessors in the Frankfurt school). Being an inher-
ently subversive and unpredictable partner in the long conversation about
who we are and where we are going, I would like to argue that anthropology
can, and should, take on the role of Anansi, the trickster, in the sprawling fau-
na of the social and human sciences. In West African and Caribbean folklore,
Anansi the spider always gets the upper hand in confrontations with larger
and stronger adversaries because of his imaginative and bold ways of turn-
ing his apparent weakness into a virtue. Since nobody fears him, he is capa-
ble of surprising them and makes the rhino, the lion and the python fall vic-
tim to their own vanity.
Similarly, the typical anthropological approach does not take received wis-
dom for granted, refuses to be co-opted by polarising discourses and insists on
the right to view society simultaneously as ‘observer and participant’. We will
now move on to a consideration of the situation in Norway, a country where
public anthropologists are fairly thick on the ground (Eriksen 2006; 2013). In
this small Northern European country, anthropologists often give public talks
in forums ranging from Rotary clubs to Oslo’s popular House of Literature;
they comment on public events in the media, and several write regular col-
umns, op-eds and the occasional book for a general readership.
In keeping with the prevailing instrumentalist view of knowledge, repre-
sentatives of the different academic disciplines in Norway sometimes speak
of their ‘societal assignment’ (samfunnsoppdrag). As far as the social sciences
are concerned, the economists run the country (through powerful institutions
such as the Ministry of Finance, Statistics Norway and the Central Bank); the
political scientists look after the nuts and bolts of government at all levels,
from foreign policy to municipal councils; and the sociologists defend the wel-
fare state and gender equality. What about the social anthropologists? There
are many of them in Norway, which may have the largest proportion of an-
thropologists in the world. With no clearly defined professional niches, they
work in many areas, from development NGOs and local government to com-
munication agencies, libraries and the media, in addition to having a wide-
ranging academic presence well beyond the universities, in research insti-
tutions of various kinds. A previous President of the Sámi Parliament was
trained as an anthropologist, as was a former Minister of Development. Yet
anthropology remains more of a vocation than a profession. It is unclear why
the country – or any country – needs anthropologists, and there is an ongoing
struggle to show why anthropology matters. To this end, Norwegian anthro-
pologists have for many years made themselves visible in the public sphere.
Moreover, a subject called ‘sociology and social anthropology’ is the most pop-
ular optional subject in secondary school, and many Norwegians have an idea
of what anthropologists are and do. It is commonly assumed that anthropolo-
gists are politically radical; they are expected to defend immigrants and indig-
enous peoples, to criticize New Public Management and predatory capitalism,
 Public Anthropology in the 21st Century, with Some Examples from Norway 29

to take a detached, sometimes ironic position on Norwegian nationalism, and

to favour green and leftist politics. While this is empirically simplistic – for ex-
ample, the most famous Norwegian anthropologist, Fredrik Barth (b. 1928), is
largely apolitical – it is not altogether wrong. Economic anthropology is very
different from economic science in that it has been just as preoccupied with
gift exchange as with markets, at least as concerned with the human econo-
my as with profitability, and when economic anthropologists study central
banks or the financial crisis (Holmes 2013; Appadurai 2015) they see them as
cultural systems. Political anthropology, likewise, has a long-standing inter-
est in symbols, kinship and ritual, with power struggles often added almost
as an afterthought.
In the public eye, anthropologists represent a kind of intellectual habitus
which renders them susceptible to favouring egalitarian small-scale societies
and cultural diversity. Yet, compared to the other social sciences, anthropol-
ogists do not have a societal assignment – samfunnsoppdrag. It may seem as
if their main task in the public sphere is to make unexpected comparisons, to
ask unusual questions and to interrogate the received wisdom. It is not our
job to be worried. As a result, Norwegian anthropologists have often played
the part of the trickster, like the Ash Lad (Askeladden) in Norwegian fairy-
tales (Witoszek 1998), or Anansi in West African and Caribbean lore (Eriksen
2013).
Nevertheless, precisely because society has not provided anthropology
with a set of social issues to deal with, an area of responsibility or a problem-
solving mandate, there is a real risk of withdrawal. As elsewhere, Norwegian
anthropologists are rather fond of talking amongst themselves and often for-
get to include the outside world in their conversations. The science-fiction au-
thor Tor Åge Bringsværd once likened the relationship of society to science
with the act of sending a shuttle into outer space. Society has invested mon-
ey and effort into this endeavour, with the obligation on the part of the space
shuttle to return and explain what it has seen. Too often, Bringsværd said,
the space shuttle just stays out there without returning, which is a source of
great disappointment for the greater public.
It is easy to sympathize with this sentiment. For what is the use of knowl-
edge if it only circulates among the initiates? This is not to say that every an-
thropologist should popularize the subject, engage in the increasingly messy
meshwork that is public debate and go out and preach the gospel of anthro-
pology to the unwashed heathens. In fact, those who do depend on those who
don’t; without the often arcane and di cult original research which never
travels beyond seminar rooms and online university libraries, public anthro-
pologists would have nothing to be public about. Some of the best-loved and
most admired Norwegian anthropologists rarely made public appearances out-
side academia. One example is the late Reidar Grønhaug (1938–2005, see Vike
2010). Intellectually agile and original, generous and interested, Grønhaug was
30 eský lid 103 1 2016

so reticent and shy that he scarcely even published his own work, allowing un-
finished writings to languish in his drawer, but at least ensuring that some of
his finest texts circulated among students and colleagues as mimeos. A good
example is the strikingly original ‘Transaction and Signification’ (Grønhaug
1975), a spirited synthesis of Barth and Lévi-Strauss where the centrepiece
was a reanalysis of the beer-hall scene in Clyde Mitchell’s The Kalela Dance
(Mitchell 1956). Many other examples could also be mentioned.
The tension between the internal and the external, between openness and
closure, between building knowledge and sharing it, represents a fundamen-
tal dilemma in all group dynamics. A version of this tension is wonderful-
ly described by Sahlins in his old, memorable if contested article ‘Poor Man,
Rich Man, Big Man, Chief’ (Sahlins 1963),1 in which he outlines the structur-
al dilemma of the Melanesian ‘big man’. In order to ensure his power base,
he must spend considerable amounts of time with his relatives and support-
ers in the village and offer gifts to them. However, he also has to build alli-
ances with outsiders, mainly to prevent war and feuding, but also to extend
his sphere of influence. Yet if the big man spends too much time and resourc-
es on outsiders, his kinfolk and supporters will begin to grumble and may
eventually depose him. He thus has to strike a fine balance between the in-
ternal cohesion of the group and the creation of alliances, or between con-
solidation and expansion.
Anthropologists who have gone out of their way to communicate with
a non-anthropological audience have often been reminded of the broader sig-
nificance of Sahlins’s perspective. If you go out into the world, you may flour-
ish, and it may enrich your own people by making them more famous and at-
tractive to others; but it may also be your own undoing since you start doing
business with outsiders before paying your debts at home.
For a long time, Norwegian anthropologists have taken their chances. What
sets Norwegian anthropology apart is not only the fact that anthropologists are
fairly numerous in this country, but also that they are a familiar sight, individ-
ually and collectively, in the public sphere. Regular as clockwork, Norwegian
anthropologists appear on radio and in the newspapers every year before
Christmas to explain the logic of gift exchange, often with a sideways glance
to the potlatch and Melanesia; when spring comes, they comment on the ritu-
als and symbols of football supporters; around Easter, they may write or talk
about the peculiar Norwegian habit of spending Easter skiing in the moun-
tains; and in autumn, they may take part in more serious discussions about
the significance of the Muslim headscarf among Norway’s growing Muslim mi-
nority. They risk becoming academic court jesters, but they may equally well

1 Incidentally, this is also the title of a song performed by a group of students and
junior staff at parties since the early 1990s. The lyrics were written by Bjarne Træen,
and in its most eclectic incarnation the band was called Pigs for the Ancestors.
On a number of occasions over the years, I have played a bit of sax on it.
 Public Anthropology in the 21st Century, with Some Examples from Norway 31

be those who can speak the truth to those in power because they have no vest-
ed interests. To use Milan Kundera’s contrast from his Unbearable Lightness
of Being (1984), there is both lightness and gravity in the work of the public
anthropologist. I will now consider, with the help of a few examples, the re-
lationship between lightness and weight in Norwegian public anthropology,
and will argue that it has changed since the turn of the millennium.

The light and the heavy in public anthropology

An anthropologist specialising in food and consumption, Runar Døving wrote

his doctoral dissertation about change and continuity in the food habits of
a small hamlet in south-eastern Norway. Active in the public sphere, at the time
of his dissertation work he wrote an op-ed in the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet
where he defended the hot dog against its detractors. Without mentioning
Bourdieu once, Døving (2002) persuasively and convincingly attacked food
snobbery and the new culinary distinctions resulting from forms of individu-
alization and differentiation that he associated with neoliberal deregulation.
The article was written with verve and passion, it was light-hearted and fun
to read, yet at the same time it was serious and heavy. Tracing the develop-
ment of food processing from pre-modern to industrial times, Døving points
out that the mass-produced food of today, jeered at by the culinary elites, is
tastier and more wholesome than the unique and painstakingly hand-made
food romanticized by the food snobs. In fact, he says, the contemporary abun-
dance of industrially produced food ought to be celebrated, considering the
food scarcities and hard work implied in food production just a couple of gen-
erations ago. He then goes on to describe how children had to contribute to
food production, how that expensive luxury called butter was distributed in
open, unhygienic containers (and went off quickly), and how Dad had to work
fifty hours a week while Mum and the oldest children spent the afternoons
rinsing and salting herring. Døving’s seemingly light-hearted defence of the
hot dog ‘with that exciting tomato sauce, the ketchup’ thus turned out to be
a bitter critique of new class distinctions and a defence of the achievements
of modern food production. One of the very best of his many op-eds, the arti-
cle summarized a small library’s worth of recent food anthropology debate,
posing as a defence of hot dogs, fish pudding and tinned mackerel.
Some years earlier, the anthropologist Hans Christian (Tian) Sørhaug car-
ried out an applied research project on drug addicts in Oslo. One of his find-
ings was that they could meaningfully be compared to hunters and gatherers:
their storage capacity was low; they relied on immediate returns from invest-
ments; they were itinerant; group size was flexible but small; and there was
a continuous, accepted tension between egotism and solidarity. Theirs was
a ‘harvesting economy’. This discovery was genuine and original and contrib-
uted to a deeper understanding of the plight of the city’s heroin addicts. Yet
32 eský lid 103 1 2016

the comparison could easily be perceived as light-hearted, almost facetious.

After all, the society in which drug addicts live and the forces that have cre-
ated their situation are very different from the world of hunters and gather-
ers, and in order to appreciate the comparison you have to put aside prior as-
sumptions about cultural differences. You had to be able to switch between
a playful mode exploring options and lifeworlds, and a serious concern with
the plight of the homeless heroin addicts.
Similarly, Eduardo Archetti was interviewed by the Oslo newspaper
Aftenposten some time in the late 1990s about the prolonged graduation party-
ing that took place among Norwegian teenagers after leaving school. A unique
tradition, these celebrations known locally as russefeiring (Eriksen 2013) are
characterized by alcohol and frivolous partying in parks and other public
spaces, and last for more than two weeks, from May Day to Constitution Day,
17 May, when the celebrations reach a climax of sorts. Asked about this ritu-
al, Archetti, himself the father of two teenage children at the time, respond-
ed that this was a powerful and meaningful experience to those young peo-
ple, not least because it was the first time that many of them had participated
in rituals that involved sex and intoxicating substances. It may safely be as-
sumed that more than a few anxious parents did not find his comments re-
assuring. Nevertheless, the point is that Archetti did not see it as his assigned
task to take the part of the worried social scientist, to tell the parents, for ex-
ample, that it was important that they stayed awake and had a good chat with
their children when they returned home from the day’s partying, or that girls
should never walk home alone in a drunken state. His job was to view the
graduation celebrations as a ritual, not as a social problem.
I have briefly introduced three anthropological interventions in the pub-
lic sphere, which – unlike most public anthropology – represent a complex
rhetorical position, where the intended logos risks being drowned out by the
perceived pathos. Although serious in intent, they all reveal a light, playful
dimension as well, even involving a perceptible degree of jocularity. The an-
thropologists in question have all embarked on a risky journey, but one which
is arguably more common among social anthropologists than in any other ac-
ademic profession in the country. The risk consists in not being taken seri-
ously because people only remember the jokes and not their context. This is
a familiar problem for political satire (if it is too funny, people forget that it is
serious) and for science fiction (superficial readers remember the technolo-
gy but not the philosophical or political insights), and, similarly, anthropolo-
gists who expose their comparative imagination in public risk being written
off as irresponsible dilettantes. Yet it is an open question whether this some-
what indeterminate aspect of public anthropology is ultimately a problem or
an advantage.
 Public Anthropology in the 21st Century, with Some Examples from Norway 33

Anarchists of Western academia

The times have changed since the turn of the millennium. In the recent past,
Norwegian anthropologists, the anarchists of academia, could occasionally
fi nd themselves being co-opted by the entertainment industry. More than
once has more than one of us been accused of having become ‘a song and
dance man’. Although the spirit of the times has changed in this century and
there is less room for irresponsible play with ideas than at the height of post-
modernist optimism in the 1990s, anthropologists can still, on a good day, be
counted on to say weird or unexpected things. Yet today, at a time of rising
Islamophobia (in Norway currently represented within the government it-
self ), di cult refugee issues, rampant marketization and an instrumental-
ist view of knowledge operating in tandem with New Public Management to
threaten the freedom of the universities, the lightness of the recent past, of
which I have given a few examples, has almost faded from sight. Although
there was a serious underlying concern below the lightness I have depicted
– Døving was concerned with class, Archetti with the pain and excitement of
becoming an adult, Sørhaug with the double binds and illusions of absolute
freedom among drug addicts – it seemed harmless and indeed legitimate to
play the part of Anansi the spider.
The fact that lightness can become unbearable was brought home to me
in a dreadful and rather personal way a few years ago. Ideological polariza-
tion had already been developing for some time, fanned by the Islamic ter-
rorist attacks on New York, London and Madrid, and social anthropologists
were increasingly being associated with a naïve multiculturalism gone awry.
For many years, some of us had been questioning social boundaries, asking
critical questions with a bearing on the ethnic dimension of Norwegian na-
tionalism. Then, at the height of summer 2011, a bomb exploded. The major-
ity that anthropologists had been busy deconstructing now had to be recon-
structed, and violent means were deemed necessary to this end.
As a matter of fact, ‘deconstructing the majority’ has become something
of a catchword in Norway since the terrorist attack in 2011, when an unem-
ployed right-wing extremist killed 77 people. In his manifesto and YouTube
video, posted online immediately before the attack, he had quoted me in sev-
eral places, the most notorious quotation (which has subsequently appeared
on right-wing websites worldwide) being my view, taken from an interview
on an obscure University of Oslo web page (www.uio.no/culcom), that it was
about time that we deconstructed the majority, since we had devoted so much
attention to the minorities. Before and after the terrorist attack, this statement
(from 2009) has often been denounced as hate speech against the Norwegian
people, its originator labelled a traitor. In short, when I spoke about decon-
structing the majority, I misjudged the readership. The notion questioned
the self–other boundary and pointed to the internal diversity among ethnic
34 eský lid 103 1 2016

Norwegians as a possible means of building an abstract community not based

on race and kinship. Since deconstruction refers to taking something apart,
ethnic nationalists worried about their boundaries felt threatened. However,
even in the cheerful 1990s, when Norwegian anthropologists made fun of ear-
nest, flag-waving nationalism, there was always an underlying, serious in-
tention. Behind the jokes, we intended to raise questions about inclusion and
exclusion in ethnically complex societies, asking whether ethnic nationalism
was a helpful vehicle of identity in a world which was ‘on the move’ (Bauman)
and, ultimately, asking what a meaningful delineation of the word ‘we’ might
be. The message, normative but founded on anthropological knowledge about
cultural diversity, was that all human lives have value, that solidarity with
others does not necessarily follow ethnic lines, that imagined communities
are less homogeneous than is often assumed, and that a collective identity
not based on cultural similarity was perfectly imaginable and could be fea-
sible. Following the terrorist attack and its aftermath, which has seen an in-
creasing ideological polarization around questions of identity and inclusion
in Norwegian society, the lightness typical of the anthropology of the recent
past may have been one of the first casualties.
This is a shame, because anthropology can be at its heaviest when it is at
its lightest.

Avoiding pitfalls

Since problem-solving for the government or the corporations is not an op-

tion, anthropologists have to find other ways of being relevant – or, as Tian
Sørhaug once said, true to the light/heavy duality of the work of the public
anthropologist – ‘we’ve always been irrelevant, but it seems that we have
to find new ways of being irrelevant these days’. There has been a shift to-
wards a more aggressive, uncharitable and hostile view of cultural diversity
in dominant parts of society, and this shift requires that public anthropolo-
gists change their tactics. Since some version of social anthropology is known
to the Norwegian public sphere, the problem is not so much – as it might have
been in the 1960s and 70s – that people out there don’t understand what an-
thropologists are saying; they understand it perfectly well and dismiss it as
irrelevant (in the wrong way) and potentially subversive. Accordingly, it is
more di cult to produce the kinds of discussions that might be productive
than it was before the recent shift towards a stronger assertion of bounda-
ries and a more conservative view of identity.
It is beyond the scope of this short contribution to resolve these issues.
Instead, I would like to conclude with a reminder that there are two pitfalls
to be avoided, namely oversimplification and obscurantism. This should be
the overarching aim of public anthropology – to make things as simple as pos-
sible, but not simpler (as Einstein reputedly said); to encourage imagination,
 Public Anthropology in the 21st Century, with Some Examples from Norway 35

but not confusion. The knowledge regime which is currently dominant prior-
itizes not only instrumentally useful knowledge (useful, that is, for the pow-
ers that be, mainly in politics and the economy) but also anything that can
be measured (Eriksen 2015). Since our strength lies in producing knowledge
about phenomena that cannot easily be counted or measured, anthropologists
have to make an effort to show the relevance of their irrelevant knowledge.
Equally, if nobody understands what we are saying, that is not an indication
of profundity but of poor language skills and muddled thought. As Marshall
McLuhan once put it, ‘even mud can give the illusion of depth’.
We can be sand in the machinery, but we can also open up new vistas.

February 2016

References

Appadurai, Arjun. 2015. Banking on Habermas, Jürgen. 1971/1968. Knowledge

Words: The Failure of Language in the and Human Interests, tr. Jeremy
Age of Derivative Finance. Chicago: Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press.
University of Chicago Press. Hesse, Hermann. 1949 [1943]. The
Beck, Sam – Maida, Carl A. (eds.). 2013. Glass Bead Game. New York:
Toward Engaged Anthropology. Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
New York: Berghahn. Holmes, Douglas. 2013. Banking on
Berreman, Gerald. 1968. Is Anthropology Words: The Failure of Language in the
Alive? Current Anthropology 9, 5: 391–396. Age of Derivative Finance. Chicago:
Borofsky, Robert. 2011. Why a Public University of Chicago Press.
Anthropology? Kindle book, Center Kundera, Milan. 1984. The
for Public Anthropology. Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Døving, Runar. 2002. Kjendiskokker og New York: Harper & Row.
ketchuphat (‘Celebrity Chefs and Ketchup Low, Setha – Merry, Sally Engle.
Hatred’). Dagbladet: 9 February. 2010. Engaged Anthropology:
Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. 2006. Diversity and Dilemmas. Current
Engaging anthropology: The case for Anthropology 51, supp. 2: 203–226.
a public presence. Oxford: Berg. MacClancy, Jeremy (ed.). 2002. Exotic No
Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. 2013. The Anansi More: Anthropology on the Front Lines.
position. Anthropology Today 29, 6: 14–17. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. 2015. What Mitchell, J. Clyde. 1956. The Kalela
Everybody Should Know about Nature- Dance: Aspects of Social Relationships
Culture: Anthropology in the Public among Urban Africans in Northern
Sphere and ‘The Two Cultures’. In: Rhodesia. Livingstone: Rhodes-
Beck, Sam – Maida, Carl A. (eds.): Public Livingstone Papers 27.
anthropology in a borderless world. Pels, Peter – Salemink, Oscar (eds.).
Oxford: Berghahn: Chapter 10. 1999. Colonial Subjects: Essays on the
Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution Practical History of Anthropology. Ann
of Society. Cambridge: Polity. Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Grønhaug, Reidar. 1975. Transaction Sahlins, Marshall. 1963. Poor Man, Rich
and Signification. Typescript, Man, Big Man, Chief: Political Types in
University of Bergen. Melanesia and Polynesia. Comparative
Studies in Society and History 5: 285–303.
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Skjervheim, Hans. 1957. Deltakar og

tilskodar (‘Participant and Observer’).
Mimeo. Oslo: Department of Sociology.
Vike, Halvard. 2010. Reidar Grønhaugs
metode – en kraftlinje i norsk
sosialantropologi (‘Reidar
Grønhaug’s Method – a Line of Power in
Norwegian Social Anthropology’). Norsk
antropologisk tidsskrift 21, 4: 211–222.
Witoszek, Nina. 1998. Norske
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(Norwegian Nature Mythologies: From
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This page was intentionally left blank
a NAOM I SCH N E I DE R book
 Paul Farmer
Partner to the Poor
A Paul Farmer Reader

Edited by

Haun Saussy

Foreword by

Tracy Kidder

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFOR NIA PR ESS

Berkeley Los Angeles London
For Didi,
Catherine, Elisabeth, and Sebastien

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished

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University of California Press

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London, England

© 2010 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Farmer, Paul, 1959–
Partner to the poor : a Paul Farmer reader / Paul Farmer ;
edited by Haun Saussy.
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-520-25711-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-520-25713-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Poor—Medical care. 2. Medical anthropology. 3. Social
medicine. 4. Epidemiology. 5. Public Health. I. Saussy,
Haun, 1960– II. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Poverty—Personal Narratives. 2. Social Medicine—
Personal Narratives. 3. Internationality—Personal Narratives.
4. Physician's Role—Personal Narratives. 5. Social Justice—
Personal Narratives. WA 31 F234p 2009]
RA418.5.P6F375 2010
362.1086 '942—dc22 2009038154

Manufactured in the United States of America

19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is printed on Cascades Enviro 100, a 100% post con-

sumer waste, recycled, de-inked fiber. FSC recycled certified
and processed chlorine free. It is acid free, Ecologo certified,
and manufactured by BioGas energy.
 10

The Consumption of the Poor

Tuberculosis in the Twenty-First Century
(2000)

Are you unaware that vast numbers of your fellow men suffer or perish
from need of the things that you have to excess, and that you required
the explicit and unanimous consent of the whole human race for you to
appropriate from the common subsistence anything besides that required
for your own?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

BACK WITH A VENGEANCE?

The World Health Organization recently announced that in 1999 alone nearly
two million persons died of tuberculosis.1 Not since the turn of the century, when
tuberculosis was the leading cause of young adult deaths in most U.S. cities, has
the disease claimed so many lives. Tuberculosis, we are told, has returned “with a
vengeance.”2 In the language of the day, it is an “emerging infectious disease.” In
scientific publications and in the popular press, the refrain is the same: tubercu-
losis, once vanquished, is now resurging to trouble us once again.
Yet tuberculosis has been with us all along; only from a highly particular point
of view can it be seen as an emerging, or even “reemerging,” disease. “Thinking in
terms of a returned tuberculosis,” objects Katherine Ott, “obscures the unabated
high incidence of tuberculosis worldwide over the decades.”3 Those who experi-
ence tuberculosis as an ongoing concern are the world’s poor, whose voices have
systematically been silenced. Yet they deserve a hearing, if for no other reason
than that the poor infected with the tubercle bacillus are legion. Some estimate
that as many as two billion persons—a third of the world’s population—are cur-
rently infected with quiescent but viable Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This figure
corroborates another: tuberculosis remains, at this writing, the world’s leading
infectious cause of preventable deaths in adults.4

222
 The Consumption of the Poor 223

Tuberculosis is thus two things at once: a completely curable disease and the
leading cause of young adult deaths in much of the world. As we enter a new cen-
tury, it is instructive to compare our circumstances to the situation that prevailed
at the end of the nineteenth century. At that time, Robert Koch had recently iden-
tified the tubercle bacillus, but no effective treatment existed. “Consumption”
was the leading cause of death and the most feared of diseases. “During the late
nineteenth century,” notes Frank Ryan, “there was a growing fear that the disease
might destroy European civilization.”5
Although its victims during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries included
members of all classes, TB has always disproportionately affected the poor. For
example, English mortuary registers from the 1830s reveal that although tuber-
culosis deaths were common, they were increasingly so at the lower end of the
social ladder: “The proportion of ‘consumptive cases’ in ‘gentlemen, tradesmen
and laborers’ was 16, 28, and 30 percent respectively.”6 The affluent could “take
the cure” in a number of ways—they could travel to different climes or enjoy
protein-rich diets—but case-fatality rates were high among all those with “gal-
loping consumption.”
With the advent of improved sanitary conditions and the development of
food and trade surpluses, tuberculosis incidence declined in the industrializing
nations, particularly in those communities and classes that enjoyed the great-
est benefits of these transformations. Still, the infection remained widespread
yet patterned in its distribution. In 1900, annual death rates from tuberculosis
for white Americans approached 200 per 100,000 population. “Among black
Americans,” adds historian Barbara Rosenkrantz, “the figure was 400 deaths per
100,000, approximately the same level recorded in the middle of the 19th century
for the population as a whole.”7 Black Americans were enjoying the fruits of
medical progress with a fifty-year lag.
Technology has often been presented as the remedy for social ills, and the
development of effective tuberculosis chemotherapy was hailed as the beginning
of the end of the disease. But the poor remained much more likely to become
infected and ill with M. tuberculosis. When they were sick with complications
of tuberculosis, they were more likely to receive substandard therapy—or no
therapy at all. In the years after the Second World War, those with access to the
new antituberculous medications could expect to be cured of their disease. Who
had access to streptomycin and PAS (para-aminosalicylic acid, one of the first
antituberculous drugs) in the late 1940s? Fortunate citizens of the United States
and a handful of European nations, all with well-established and encouraging
trends in tuberculosis incidence that predated effective chemotherapy. Thus risk,
though never evenly shared, became increasingly polarized.
By mid-century, tuberculosis was still acknowledged as a problem in certain
quarters, but it was becoming less and less of a concern. One historian has argued
224 Anthropology amid Epidemics

that “TB had all but disappeared from public view by the 1960s.”8 The reasons for
this invisibility stem in part from the decreasing absolute incidence in wealthy
nations and in part from persistent patterns of differential susceptibility. Writing
in 1952, René Dubos and Jean Dubos observed that “while the disease is now only
a minor problem in certain parts of the United States, extremely high rates still
prevail in the colored population.” Nor were poor outcomes distributed merely by
race. Within racial categories, differential risk remained the rule. Among whites,
these authors noted, the case-fatality rate was “almost seven times higher among
unskilled laborers than among professional persons.”9 Ironically, then, the advent
of effective therapy seems to have further entrenched this striking variation in dis-
ease distribution and outcomes. Inequalities operated both locally and globally:
the “TB outcome gap” between rich and poor grew, and so too did the outcome
gap between rich countries and poor countries.
In short, the “forgotten plague” was forgotten in large part because it ceased to
bother the wealthy. In fact, if tuberculosis is reexamined from the point of view
of those living in poverty, a radically different picture emerges. In the twentieth
century, at least, tuberculosis has not really emerged so much as reemerged from
the ranks of the poor.10 One place for diseases like tuberculosis to “hide” is among
poor people, especially when the poor are socially and medically segregated from
those whose deaths might be considered more significant. Who are these throw-
away people? I propose to rethink these issues by drawing on life histories of
people afflicted with tuberculosis and by seeking to ground their experience in
the political economy of this plague.
For more than a decade, I have worked as both ethnographer of and physician
to populations bearing excess burdens of tuberculosis. In central Haiti, where I
have worked since 1983, I have conducted hundreds of open-ended interviews
with people afflicted with tuberculosis, not only hearing their stories but also
coming to understand their own complex views of disease causation. In Peru,
I have served as medical director of an effort to treat one of the most dreaded
forms of the disease—multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDRTB). In the pro-
cess, I have learned a great deal about how social inequalities come to have
pathogenic effects. In the United States, where tuberculosis is a rare disease, I
have been privileged to meet those for whom it is far from rare: poor people
of color and those newly arrived from areas in which tuberculosis remains
endemic. More recently, my work in tuberculosis has taken me to jails and pris-
ons in these countries and to others in Russia, Azerbaijan, and Latvia.11

PWATRINÈ IN CENTRAL HAITI: JEAN DUBUISSON

Jean Dubuisson, who has never been sure of his age, lives in a small village in
Haiti’s Central Plateau, where he farms a tiny plot of land. He shares a two-room
 The Consumption of the Poor 225

hut with his wife, Marie, and their three surviving children. All his life, recounts
Jean, he has “known nothing but trouble.” His parents lost their land to the
Péligre hydroelectric dam, which flooded the valley where they lived—a loss that
plunged their large family into misery. Long before Jean became ill, he and Marie
were having a hard time feeding their own children: two of them died before
their fifth birthdays, and that was before the cost of living became intolerable.
And so it was a bad day when, sometime in 1990, Jean began coughing. For a
couple of weeks, he simply ignored his persistent hack, which was followed by an
intermittent fever. There was no clinic or dispensary in his home village, and the
costs of going to the closest clinic (in a nearby town) are prohibitive enough to keep
men like Jean shivering on the dirt floors of their huts. But then he began having
night sweats. Night sweats are bad under any conditions, but they are particularly
burdensome when you have only one sheet and often sleep in your clothes.
Marie insisted that it was time to seek professional treatment for Jean’s illness.
But it was already late September, Jean argued, and school would be starting
soon. There would be tuition to pay, books and notebooks to buy, school uni-
forms to sew for the children. Jean did not seek medical care; instead he drank
herbal teas as empiric remedies for the grip, a term similar to “cold” in North
American usage.
Jean’s slow decline continued over the course of several months, during which
he lost a good deal of weight. The next event, in the story told by Jean and Marie,
was when he began to cough up blood, in late December of 1990. This is common
in rural Haiti, and most people living there do not believe that the grip can cause
it. Instead, Jean and his family concluded that he was pwatrinè—stricken with
tuberculosis—and they knew that he had two options: to travel to a clinic or to
seek care from a voodoo priest. These were not mutually exclusive options, but,
as Jean had no enemies, he concluded that his tuberculosis was due to “natural
causes” rather than to sorcery. Emaciated and anemic, he went to the clinic clos-
est to his home village.
At the clinic, he paid two dollars for multivitamins and the following advice:
eat well, drink clean water, sleep in an open room and away from others, and go
to a hospital. Jean and Marie recounted this counsel without a hint of sarcasm,
but nonetheless evinced a keen appreciation of its total lack of relevance. In
order to follow these instructions, the family would have had to sell off its chick-
ens and its pig, and perhaps even what little land they had left. They hesitated,
understandably.
Two months later, however, a second, massive episode of hemoptysis sent them
to a church-affiliated hospital not far from Port-au-Prince. There Jean, still cough-
ing, was admitted to an open ward. We were unable to review his records, but we
know that he stayed for a full two weeks before being referred to a sanatorium.
During his stay, Jean was charged four dollars per day for his bed; at the time, the
226 Anthropology amid Epidemics

per capita income in rural Haiti was about two hundred dollars per year. When
the hospital’s staff wrote prescriptions for him, he was required to pay for each
medication before it was administered. Thus, although Jean could not tell us what
therapies he received while an in-patient, he knew that he actually received less
than half of the medicine prescribed. Furthermore, the only meals he ate in the
hospital were those prepared by Marie: most Haitian hospitals do not serve food.
Jean continued to lose weight, and he simply discharged himself from the
hospital when the family ran out of money and livestock. He did not go to the
sanatorium. Needless to say, the cough persisted, as did the night sweats and
fever. “We were lucky, though,” added Jean. “I stopped coughing up blood.”
After reaching home, Jean, bedridden, was visited by a cousin who lived in
Bois Joli, a small village served by Proje Veye Sante, a Haitian organization that
was then sponsoring a comprehensive tuberculosis treatment project.12 The pro-
gram, which included financial aid and regular visits from community health
workers, had been designed for people like Jean Dubuisson and for a country
like Haiti—that is, it was designed for poor and hungry people with tuberculosis
who receive shabby treatment wherever they go. Unfortunately, the project then
served the permanent residents of only sixteen villages and was based in a village
over two hours from Jean’s house. “Several [villagers] had benefited from it,”
recalled Jean’s cousin, “so I suggested that he move to Bois Joli, so then he would
be eligible for this assistance.”
Marie Dubuisson “took down the house” and moved her husband and children
to Bois Joli. “We didn’t have a tin roof or good land,” she added philosophically, “so
it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. And Jean needed the treatment.” The skeletal
man with sunken eyes and severe anemia began therapy in May of 1991. Jean
gained eighteen pounds in his first three months of treatment. His oldest daughter
was found to have tuberculosis of the lymph nodes, and she too was treated.
Jean was cured of his tuberculosis, but this cure, in many respects, came too
late. Although he is now free of active disease, his left lung was almost completely
destroyed. He grows short of breath after only minimal exertion. Marie now does
most of the household’s manual labor, depending on her daughter (who was also
cured) for assistance in carrying water and hoeing. “I have a hard time climbing
hills,” Jean reports, surveying the steep valley before him. “And that’s a bad thing
when you’re trying to get by up in the hills.”

MDRTB AND FUJISHOCK IN URBAN PERU:

CORINA BAYONA

Corina Bayona was born in 1942 in Huánuco, in Peru’s Central Sierra. Like most
of the region’s poorer peasants, her parents found it increasingly difficult to
wrest a living from the unforgiving countryside. When Corina married Carlos
 The Consumption of the Poor 227

Valdivia, both had dreams of escaping the harshness of rural life. A son, Jaime,
was born before Corina was twenty.
In 1974, the three of them emigrated to Carabayllo, the new and sprawling
slum north of Lima, one of Latin America’s most rapidly growing cities. The
edges of the settlement consisted of “invasiones”—dry and dusty slopes dotted
with ramshackle shelters built first of straw and cardboard and plastic, and then
rebuilt in dun-colored brick years later, when the squatters no longer feared that
they would be removed by force. To settlers and to visitors alike, the steep and
treeless fringes of Carabayllo looked like the surface of the moon.
Soon Corina, Carlos, and Jaime moved into a one-room house. During the
1970s and 1980s, Corina worked as a maid in a schoolteacher’s house; Carlos
worked as a night watchman in the industrial area south of Lima. Their house
eventually had electricity, if no running water, and Corina and Carlos were able
to send Jaime to high school. Carlos recalls this time as relatively secure, despite
the political violence that often struck the city. Unemployment was high in
Carabayllo, although not as high as it would later become, and they were lucky to
have two jobs, especially since their son’s new wife and baby precipitously added
two more mouths to feed in the mid-1980s.
At some point in 1989, Corina began coughing. Initially, she attempted to treat
herself with herbal remedies, primarily because she was unable to visit the clinic.
Although a public health post was based nearby, it was closed during the hours
that Corina was in Carabayllo. What Corina lacked most was time: it took her
more than two hours on public buses to commute to work each day. When her
cough worsened, she finally went to the post, where a doctor raised the possibility
of tuberculosis. A smear of her sputum revealed the tubercle bacillus, and she
began standard antituberculous therapy.
In August of 1990, shortly after Alberto Fujimori was elected president of
Peru, the urban poor underwent what they later termed fujishock—the rapid
implementation of one of the most draconian structural adjustment policies in
the hemisphere. Inflation spiraled, and public services, including health care,
were trimmed back sharply.13 Soon Carlos was out of work.
Implemented in 1990 under pressure from the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and other multilateral agencies, the “shock
therapy” administered for Peru’s inflationary crisis created an economic reces-
sion by imposing a number of new economic policies: the government ended
price supports for fuel and food, devalued the currency, and imposed a 14 percent
sales tax on all domestic purchases. Another key component of the reform plan
involved privatization of state industries; by 1997, these reforms had expanded
to encompass the health sector. Whatever the long-term budgetary advantages
reaped by this drastic and sudden overhaul of the Peruvian economy, the poor
have continued to bear the brunt of these reforms. Just one year after fujishock
228 Anthropology amid Epidemics

was implemented, the number of people officially classified as “poor” increased

from seven to twelve million, while a signal decrease in social funding hobbled
the state’s ability to support this burgeoning number of impoverished citizens.
Although their numbers later decreased as Peru’s economy rebounded, these
policies had already taken their toll on the Peruvian poor.
In the midst of all these problems, Corina began coughing again. More spu-
tum was collected for a smear, which was positive, and for culture. When Carlos
later returned for the culture results, however, he was informed that the specimen
had been misplaced. In April of 1991, after more delays and worsening symptoms,
Corina was formally diagnosed with relapsed pulmonary tuberculosis. Given the
health post’s inconvenient hours and long waits—and also, as one of her doctors
noted, the significant stigma associated with tuberculosis—she began receiving
treatment at a private clinic.
What Corina gained in privacy and convenience she lost in increased costs. As
was not uncommon in those months after fujishock, the family’s meager savings
were soon expended; Corina was unable to complete her treatment. As her hus-
band recalls it, they could afford to buy only two of the four drugs prescribed.14
Corina became sicker and soon could no longer work. When she next sought
care, this time in a public health center in Carabayllo, physicians there discovered
that she did not respond to standard therapy. When her condition worsened still
further, in April of 1991, she was advised to seek care in a hospital.
Corina first presented to a private university teaching hospital, but she could
not afford to purchase the medications and supplies prescribed. She was referred
to the public facility not far away. At the private hospital, Corina had been told
that she would have to pay for supplies; at the public facility, where supplies were
extremely scarce, she was told that she must bring her own—including syringes,
gloves, and gauze. Further, Corina had the ill fortune to arrive at this hospital
just before the national health workers’ strike, which was called in response to
the new government’s massive cuts in public spending. During the strike, most
ambulatory treatment was simply suspended; Corina received, in essence, no
care for her tuberculosis during this time.
In August of 1991, shortly after the strike ended, Corina returned for her medi-
cations. A physician roundly upbraided her: “Señora, it’s your own fault that you
did not complete your treatment. Why didn’t you come before?” Brusquely, he
sent her to yet another facility, complaining that she was not from his hospital’s
catchment area. This third hospital, though close to the Valdivia household, was
not highly regarded, and Corina complained that there too she received a cool
welcome. She was summarily referred back to the local health post for her care.
Dr. Raúl García, director of the Peruvian community-based organization
Socios En Salud, had just initiated a health survey of Carabayllo. He met Corina
in the course of inquiring about drug-resistant tuberculosis in the area. She was,
 The Consumption of the Poor 229

he recalls, scarred by her interactions with the health care system. “Every time
she went to the hospital, the physicians were mean or impolite to her. They had
labeled her as noncompliant.” Thus branded, Corina “felt attacked.” “She was
filled with fear,” continued Dr. García. “She resolved not to return to seek care at
the health center.”
Carlos Valdivia was troubled by this resolution, for Corina continued to dete-
riorate. She coughed incessantly and became short of breath, even at rest. Her
son, still living at home, worried for his mother. “You should go back to the
health center,” he pleaded, “so that they will cure you.” But soon Jaime began
to cough as well. “He didn’t want to go either,” recalled Dr. García, “because
he didn’t want to be treated the way they had treated his mother.” Eventually
Jaime sought treatment at the local post, but he too failed to respond to standard
therapy.
For the next three years, Corina and Jaime lived with active pulmonary tuber-
culosis. Their household, wracked by coughing, was increasingly tense. Jaime’s
wife left, leaving behind their two infants, and Carlos began to drink. Late in
the summer of 1994, Corina began to cough up blood. When at last she sought
care for this condition, it was documented that her infecting strain had become
resistant to all first-line antituberculous drugs except ethambutol. For reasons
that remain unclear, the doctors then prescribed those very same medications
for her again. Corina of course failed to respond to these agents—and, worse, she
had a life-threatening reaction to one of them in November. Shortly thereafter,
she was advised to give up completely on her “futile” efforts to treat her disease.
But Corina and her family were not so easily dissuaded. Upon inquiring, they
learned that other drugs were available but that the public health system could
not provide them free of charge. Among the drugs prescribed by a pulmonologist
were two new agents, ciprofloxacin and ethionamide, with an estimated cost of
500 soles a month—eight times her husband’s income when he’d been fortunate
enough to have a job.
Carlos Valdivia, seeing his family dying before him, each month searched
high and low for 500 soles for his wife and for his son, because by then it had
become clear that Jaime also had drug-resistant tuberculosis. Sometimes Carlos
succeeded; often he did not. “What unemployed person in Carabayllo could find
1000 soles a month?” reflected Carlos sadly. His son died in December of 1995,
leaving behind the two small children.
Corina, finding herself the primary caretaker for her grandchildren, found
new reasons to fight for survival. Dr. García recalls her saying, “I thought that
I’d lived long enough until I had these two children to take care of. All I ask is
for God to let me live in order to care for them.” Through the efforts of a local
community-based organization, Corina eventually received therapy with a mul-
tidrug regimen designed for resistant tuberculosis disease. The medications were
230 Anthropology amid Epidemics

provided for free, but she soon had another adverse reaction: bruises erupted on
her legs. A pulmonologist advised her to stop taking all of her medications and
recommended another culture of her sputum.
In February 1996, one week before Corina died, Carlos went to the health post
with yet another sputum sample. The plan, he knew, was to find other medica-
tions that his wife might be able to take. Suddenly, however, Corina became
severely short of breath. Carlos took her to the clinic, and an auxiliary nurse
subsequently tried to place her in two different hospitals. In the emergency room
of the teaching hospital, the staff informed Corina: “We have nothing we can do
for you; your case is too chronic.” After that, Corina stated that she would not
return to the local public hospital, to which she had been again referred. “I would
rather wait for the end at home than go back there,” she said. She did not have
long to wait.

FROM HARLEM TO VIETNAM AND BACK: CALVIN LOACH

Calvin Loach was born in New York City in 1951. His parents were both from the
Carolinas. Shortly before Calvin’s birth, they had emigrated to the city hoping
to find steady work and respite from the racism that had so limited their eco-
nomic opportunities in the South. New York, they found, was not much better.
As Calvin and his two sisters were growing up, their father toiled in a series of
unrewarding and short-lived jobs; later, and for many years, their mother worked
in the medical records department of a Brooklyn hospital.
Calvin attended public high school, where his academic performance was
fairly unremarkable, and graduated in 1969. There was talk, at the time, of his
attending a local community college, but Calvin never completed an application.
In the second month of his second job, at age nineteen, he was drafted into the
U.S. Army.
Calvin spoke rarely about his tour of duty in Vietnam. He saw active combat
in April 1971 and was part of a platoon that sustained heavy fire and loss of life.
Calvin was not wounded by gunfire, but during a march in rough terrain he
sustained a penetrating wound to the sole of his right foot. This injury soon
became infected, eventually requiring surgery and intravenous antibiotics. It
subsequently became the source of many problems for him.
Another problem stemming from Calvin’s tour of duty concerned heroin.
In one telling, the former soldier linked the use of opiates to the chronic pain
that resulted from his injury; in another account, his regular use of heroin pre-
ceded this injury by several months. In any case, it was in Vietnam, and not in
New York, that Calvin first used the drug, which was inexpensive, readily avail-
able, and (according to many) widely used by the increasingly demoralized U.S.
soldiers.
 The Consumption of the Poor 231

In 1972, Calvin returned to New York City, where he lived with his mother
and one of his sisters; his father had returned to North Carolina. Although he
did drink and smoke, sometimes heavily, Calvin initially did not use heroin in
the United States; upon returning, he knew no one else who was involved with
the drug. It was during a visit to Boston, where his mother’s cousins owned
part of a convenience store, that Calvin was reintroduced to heroin and also to
cocaine. From the late 1970s until 1992, Calvin used heroin, sometimes steadily
and sometimes intermittently.
Most social histories obtained from his medical records suggested that Calvin
never had a steady job after Vietnam, but a more thorough interview, by a social
worker at a Boston-area Veterans Administration hospital, documented over
three years of full-time employment in a furniture warehouse. At the time,
Calvin was living with a woman who had previously worked for his cousins. His
girlfriend told another social worker that Calvin had turned again to heroin after
he lost this job in 1982. This girlfriend strongly discouraged his drug use, and it
led her to leave him.
In 1991, Calvin was hospitalized for an episode of staphylococcal endocarditis,
which permanently damaged one of his heart valves. During this hospitalization,
Calvin’s old foot injury became increasingly painful and began to drain pus.
He was diagnosed with osteomyelitis (infection of the bone) and received two
months of therapy for the infection.
It was during this hospital stay, which lasted almost a month, that Calvin
developed a dislike for the hospital milieu. The feeling, it seems, was mutual:
medical records describe Calvin as “difficult” and, in one instance, “verbally
abusive.” The word “noncompliant” is found throughout his records, although it
is not entirely clear why, since Calvin was well on his way to completing difficult
therapy for endocarditis and osteomyelitis, and in the previous year he had used
an antihypertensive medication with regularity.
By the time Calvin was referred for expert management of his addiction, he
had already spent a month withdrawing from narcotics, without the help of opi-
ates or benzodiazepines. By his account, he did not use heroin again, although he
later received methadone.
Some months later, in the spring of 1992, Calvin began to cough. As a heavy
smoker, he initially attributed the cough to bronchitis, which he’d had intermit-
tently for years. He was reluctant to return to the VA clinic. When he began
to experience fevers and drenching sweats, Calvin was sure that he had AIDS;
this made him even less enthusiastic about seeking medical care. These symp-
toms eventually drove him to the emergency room, however, and there he was
promptly diagnosed not with AIDS but with pulmonary tuberculosis.
Calvin initially responded to a three-drug regimen, which he took for sev-
eral weeks. He felt that one drug—it’s not clear which one, though it was not
232 Anthropology amid Epidemics

isoniazid—made him itch, and so he stopped taking it. Cultures later revealed
that his infecting strain was resistant to isoniazid. Thus, although public health
officials believed that Calvin was taking two effective agents, he was actually
taking only one. It is difficult to know, in retrospect, how much of the incorrect
treatment Calvin received was physician-directed. It is clear that he reported his
distressing itch to his private physician and was instructed to “take pyridoxine
with isoniazid”—even though it had been demonstrated by then that his strain
of TB was resistant to isoniazid. Calvin also received conflicting information
regarding the interaction of methadone with his antituberculous drugs: the
public health nurse, who seemed more concerned and better informed than his
doctor, worried about such an interaction; his internist dismissed this possibility.
About six months into therapy, Calvin noted that his cough was worsen-
ing. A chest radiograph suggested relapse, although sputum studies, urged by a
tuberculosis outreach worker, did not reveal the tubercle bacillus in his lungs. His
internist then added another drug to Calvin’s regimen. Although his laboratory
results were reviewed, his documented resistance to isoniazid must have been
missed again, because the drug was continued.
Calvin felt better, but his improvement was short-lived. By December 1992,
reported the tuberculosis outreach worker, Calvin “felt as sick as he had ever
been.” He continued to take his medications but did not return to either the pub-
lic health clinic or the VA clinic. In January, quite possibly with active pulmonary
disease, Calvin “took off,” by bus or by train, for New York City.
Calvin’s internist, an affable but busy man, subsequently attributed his patient’s
poor response to “his HIV infection.” When reminded that, in fact, multiple
serologies had revealed Calvin to be HIV-negative, the physician recalled that
his patient’s infecting strain of M. tuberculosis was “mildly resistant.” He further
ventured that Calvin, “notoriously noncompliant,” was just “not with the pro-
gram.” In any case, Calvin’s doctor never heard from him again. When New York
public health authorities created a central information bank about tuberculosis
patients, Calvin Loach’s name was not among those listed.

MAKING SENSE OF MISERY:

FROM ETHNOGRAPHY TO POLITICAL ECONOMY

Jean, Corina, and Calvin all had unfavorable outcomes. At what point in the
trajectories of their lives were their fates sealed? Were their experiences typical of
what it’s like to have tuberculosis at the end of the twentieth century?
Dr. García, who met Corina near the end of her life, remarked that her expe-
rience revealed to him “the significance of external factors and their effects
on the lives of poor people. These factors determined whether Corina lived or
died.” Critical perspectives on tuberculosis must link ethnography to political
 The Consumption of the Poor 233

economy and ask how large-scale social forces become manifest in the morbidity
of unequally positioned individuals in increasingly interconnected populations.
Poverty, social inequality, economic policy, war, discrimination along lines of
race and gender and class, medical incompetence—which forces were significant
in structuring the risks faced by Jean, Corina, and Calvin, as well as their poor
outcomes?
Take the cases one by one. Much could be said about Jean’s experience in rural
Haiti. Looking at ethnographic literature reveals that much has been said, but
most anthropologists have focused on “voodoo” and sorcery accusations. After a
decade of living in the same region, I was accustomed to ferreting out accusations
of sorcery and had previously spent some years trying to make sense of them.
And that, paradoxically, is the primary function of such accusations: to make
sense of suffering. But the causes of that suffering are less often commented upon.
As Haiti produces few nonagricultural products, it is safe to say that Jean is
a member of its only truly productive class: the rural peasantry. But member-
ship in that class brought certain “birthrights.” For example, Jean is, de facto, a
member of the poorest class in the hemisphere. From the day he was born, he was
guaranteed the “right” not to attend school, to have no access to electricity or safe
drinking water, and to have little access to medical care. Jean was also guaranteed
no role whatsoever in the running of the country he and those like him were
supporting. He was born, as the Haitians say, with a baboukèt, a muzzle, on his
mouth. In fact, Jean fared better than many Haitian peasants, since tuberculosis
is the leading cause of death in his age group. But delays in therapy meant perma-
nent damage to Jean’s lungs, forever compromising his ability to feed his family—
a precarious enough enterprise in contemporary Haiti, even for the hardy.
Corina similarly typifies the experience of Latin Americans living with multi-
drug-resistant tuberculosis. Although she may have been originally infected
with a drug-resistant strain of M. tuberculosis, it is equally probable that her
disease became resistant during the course of intermittent and poorly conceived
therapy. Her son, Jaime, however, was likely to have been infected with a drug-
resistant strain from the beginning. How common are such experiences in Peru?
The country has been praised for its greatly improved tuberculosis control pro-
gram, which has systematized the diagnosis and treatment of the disease, made
first-line medications more widely available, and instituted directly observed
therapy.15 But Corina did not fit into the prevailing algorithm, which does not
take account of increasing drug resistance on the part of the bacillus; subsidized
retreatment schemes, while available, are inadequate for patients like her.
Indeed, while attention is focused on the detection and control of susceptible
tuberculosis disease, cases such as Corina’s will inevitably take on greater epi-
demiological significance. Corina was sick and infectious for at least six years,
as Jaime’s tragic death reveals. She worked during most of those years, taking
234 Anthropology amid Epidemics

crowded buses across Lima twice a day. At this writing, hundreds of cases of
highly resistant tuberculosis have been documented in northern Lima; only a few
of these patients are receiving appropriate therapy. All of them may be presumed
to be infectious.
What of Calvin’s experience in the United States, a country vastly more
wealthy than Peru (although Peru itself boasts a per capita income ten times
higher than that of rural Haiti)? Calvin was probably registered as one of the
thousands of “excess cases”16 reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
in 1991. As an African American and an injection drug user, he fits the bill: the
brunt of the recent epidemic has been borne by U.S. citizens living in poverty,
many of them people of color, as a review by David McBride makes clear.17
Nor was Calvin’s clinical course atypical of the lot of the U.S. poor with
tuberculosis. Although his fate is unknown, he clearly received inappropriate
care and was “lost to follow-up.” This is much less common in Massachusetts
than in New York, where dismantling of the tuberculosis control program had
made it difficult to ensure successful completion of therapy. In 1989, for example,
fewer than 50 percent of New York tuberculosis patients who began treatment
could be declared cured.18 In one study conducted in Harlem Hospital, almost
90 percent of patients did not complete therapy for their disease.19 An overview
from the New York City Department of Health painted a grim picture: “By 1992,
the situation in New York City looked bleak. The number of cases of tuberculosis
had nearly tripled in 15 years. In central Harlem, the case rate of 222 per 100,000
people exceeded that of many Third World countries. Outbreaks of multidrug-
resistant tuberculosis had been documented in more than half a dozen hospitals,
with case fatality rates greater than 80 percent, and health care workers were
becoming ill and dying of this disease.”20
Did Calvin also have multidrug-resistant tuberculosis? Although resistance
to more than one drug was never documented, Calvin was put at high risk of
developing resistance and of infecting others when his physician continued to
give him a medication to which the strain was resistant and later added a single
drug to an already failing regimen—a well-known recipe for generating drug
resistance. In reviewing the histories of patients with drug-resistant tuberculo-
sis who had been referred to a leading hospital in Colorado, Artin Mahmoudi
and Michael Iseman discovered an average of 3.9 physician-directed errors per
patient.21
Medical errors are readily discerned in the other cases as well, and this mis-
management is linked to the patients’ poverty. Jean saw a nurse and two physi-
cians and spent two weeks (along with all his family’s savings) in a hospital
before receiving effective antituberculous therapy elsewhere. Furthermore, the
long duration of his active disease, including his time on an open ward, helps to
explain why transmission continues apace in settings like Haiti. Corina’s initial
 The Consumption of the Poor 235

sputum sample was lost, and her providers mistook drug resistance for non-
compliance. When she was at last correctly diagnosed, she was prescribed an
inadequate regimen, which she took when she could afford it—a good way to
engender resistance to even second-line drugs.
In all these cases, the patients were blamed for their failure to respond to ther-
apy. In every case, the patients’ agency—their ability to comply with costly and
difficult regimens—was exaggerated. Certainly patients may be noncompliant.
But how relevant is such a notion in the case of Jean Dubuisson? Biomedical
practitioners told him to eat well. He “refused.” They told him to drink clean
water, and yet he persisted in drinking from the only stream near his village. He
was instructed to sleep in an open room and away from others, and here again he
was “noncompliant,” as he built no such addition on to his two-room hut. Most
important, he was instructed to go to a hospital. Jean was “grossly negligent” and
dragged his feet for months.
Can we, in good conscience, blame our patients for a failure to make new
technologies available? Is the locus of blame to be found in the hearts and minds
of the sick? Can we claim that personal motivation or cultural beliefs will deter-
mine the efficacy of medical interventions, when we can readily document that
economic and logistical barriers to access continue to play a major role in the
delivery of health care?
A broad view of tuberculosis brings into relief the political, cultural, and
economic barriers to effective tuberculosis treatment (and chemoprophylaxis).
Such a view reveals “compliance” to be an analytically flimsy, even vacuous,
concept in countries such as Haiti, where the poor are systematically put at risk
of tuberculosis and then denied access to adequate care. Richard Horton writes of
the “institutional inertia” impeding effective tuberculosis control, identifying not
patients but rather national governments, science policymakers, the market, and
national health infrastructures as the chief impediments.22 Yet all too often, the
notion of patient noncompliance is used as a means of explaining away program
failure. Patient-dependent failure should be a “diagnosis of exclusion”—invoked
only after poor program design and lack of access are excluded.
One can also exaggerate the effects of medical mismanagement, which does
not by itself explain skewed rates of tuberculosis distribution. Physician-directed
errors do not create poverty or social inequalities, and it is along these lines that
rates of tuberculosis vary. Other questions raised by these cases are harder to
answer but nonetheless worth considering. For example, did Peru’s structural
adjustment plan increase Corina’s risk of a tuberculosis death? Corina was driven
from the Peruvian Central Sierra by the collapse of the agrarian order and other
complex economic transformations. But once in Carabayllo, she and her family
were subjected to a new set of vagaries: they were beset no longer by drought and
storm but rather by equally uncontrollable, and even less predictable, shifts in eco-
236 Anthropology amid Epidemics

nomic policy. Decisions made in far-off World Bank headquarters, for example,
led to significant changes in the employment structure of Lima and to massive
fluctuations in the price of key commodities. Corina soon found herself the maid
to a woman who would eventually become only slightly less poor than she was—
fujishock took its toll on schoolteachers, too. When Corina became ill with drug-
resistant tuberculosis, she and her family were in essence helpless to combat it.
In Calvin’s experience, what role did racism play? He wondered more than
once about its contribution to his care. In the VA hospital, he felt punished
because of his history of drug use, and he was irritated by the predominantly
white staff’s relative tolerance of alcoholism—the ranking substance-abuse prob-
lem of most of the other patients, who were largely white. But the more important
effects of racial discrimination may have been those that led to his becoming
infected with tuberculosis in the first place. As a black Vietnam veteran living
in the inner city and injecting drugs, Calvin was certainly in a high-risk group.
Furthermore, conscription for this war was to some extent distributed by the very
same forces that had driven his parents out of the Jim Crow South, as the army
ranks were disproportionately filled with young African Americans. And among
the troops, those with the grimmest prospects back home seemed to be those
most likely to use heroin or opium.

FROM ETHNOGRAPHY TO SOCIAL HISTORY

Reflecting on tuberculosis mortality in the world today brings a troubling ques-

tion to the fore: does TB’s association with poverty damn it to irrelevance in the
eyes of the powerful, who, after all, control funding for everything from treat-
ment to research? In August 1994, an official of the International Union against
Tuberculosis and Lung Disease seemed to say as much. “You never hear about TB
in North America,” he commented to a journalist, “because of who gets it these
days: immigrants, natives, poor people and AIDS patients for the most part.”23
It would appear that diseases predominantly afflicting the poor are unlikely to
garner funding—unless they begin to “emerge” into the consciousness and space
of the nonpoor.
A look back over past professional commentary on the differential distribu-
tion of tuberculosis reveals that this neglect was not always the case. A huge
literature documents the pernicious synergy between poverty and tuberculosis.
During its first 150 or so years, the United States, like Europe, counted tuberculo-
sis as its number one killer. Lemuel Shattuck’s Report of the Sanitary Commission
of Massachusetts, 1850, named “consumption” as the leading cause of U.S. deaths,
and this remained true even in the latter part of the century, when rates began
to fall sharply.24 But tuberculosis rates differed variably between the sexes, and
reliably along lines of race and class.
 The Consumption of the Poor 237

Perhaps not surprisingly, given TB’s importance, differences in mortality and

susceptibility among various social groups occasioned much comment. In fact,
according to historian Georgina Feldberg, “concern about differential suscepti-
bility dominated American discussions of tuberculosis from the mid-nineteenth
century onward.” But interpretations of these differences, continues Feldberg,
depended on the social perspectives of the commentators: “As each generation
attempted to make sense of this preferential, or differential, susceptibility, the
explanations they offered reflected and reinforced their uncertainties about a
changing scientific and social order.”25
For example, “Southerners commonly believed that blacks suffered from a dis-
tinctive form of consumption, known as ‘negro consumption.’ ”26 Susceptibility,
in this view, was genetically determined. This construct not only demonstrated
a vested interest in an agrarian, slave-holding social order but also reflected, to
some extent, prevailing medical views. An 1844 editorial in the Boston Medical
and Surgical Journal asserted that the “reality of hereditary influence on the
production of phthisis [as tuberculosis was then known] is so universally admit-
ted, that it would seem a sort of scientific heresy to doubt it.”27 Feldberg summa-
rizes these views: “The hereditarian/environmental debate persisted as Northern
commentators regularly attributed excessive mortality to the ‘general insalu-
brity of the sections of the city inhabited by [blacks], the crowded conditions of
their dwellings, insufficient nourishment, and the other influences of poverty,’
while Southerners more typically cited the ‘habitual improvidence’ of the black
races.” 28
Similar theories abounded in discussions of why such great numbers of Native
Americans died of tuberculosis. Although solid evidence from Peru documents
TB’s pre-Columbian existence in the hemisphere, there is less evidence of tuber-
culosis among the native population in North America before the arrival of
the Europeans, and there is little doubt that rates increased dramatically after
contact. But TB’s rise among the native peoples was so clearly linked to a rapid
decline in their standard of living that hereditary arguments were widely seen as
less compelling.29
The belief that tuberculosis was hereditary was dealt a near-lethal blow by
Robert Koch’s discovery of the tubercle bacillus in 1882. “One has been accus-
tomed until now to regard tuberculosis as the outcome of social misery,” Koch
wrote, “and to hope by relief of distress to diminish the disease. But in the future
struggle against this dreadful plague of the human race one will no longer have to
contend with an indefinite something, but with an actual parasite.”30
Paradoxically, perhaps, but fortuitously, the idea of tuberculosis as “the out-
come of social misery” was not undermined by the discovery of its etiology.
In the latter part of the century, persistent poverty and rising inequality were
increasingly believed to contribute to differential mortality. One prominent phy-
238 Anthropology amid Epidemics

sician “venture[d] to assert that the necessary privations of poverty on the one
hand, and the absurd excesses of wealth on the other, tend more to the forma-
tion of tubercles in children than all other causes combined.”31 By 1900, observe
Dubos and Dubos, “it had become obvious that tuberculosis was most prevalent
and most destructive in the poorest elements of the population, and that healthy
living could mitigate its harmful effects. Reformers could attack the disease from
two directions, by improving the individual life of man and by correcting social
evils.”32 Both of these approaches, never neatly demarcated, were advocated by
public health officials, most of whom were physicians.
Many in the nascent antituberculosis movement, which in the earlier part of
the twentieth century was linked to the establishment of sanatoriums, believed
that education was the key to curing the disease. One side effect of this belief was
a habit of infantilizing the sufferers. Reformers wrote of “careless consumptives”
who needed above all to be trained. As one classic statement of this view would
have it: “People are now infected by consumption through ignorance on the part of
those who give and receive infection. Each man whose habits have been corrected,
even by a short residence in the sanatorium will neither do nor willingly permit to
be done by others acts which before would have seemed perfectly natural.”33
But other medical reformers continued to argue that “tuberculosis is closely
associated with all the social problems of housing, food, wages, rest, clothing,
and insurance and can in no way be separated from them.”34 Feldberg, whose
excellent work has restored to the historical score the voices of physicians whose
understanding of tuberculosis was firmly biosocial, points out that “well into the
twentieth century, American physicians held fast to an etiology that included
microbes but also found room for malnutrition, unemployment, crowding, the
living conditions in slums, and other social ills.” As one example, she cites a 1921
publication by pathologist Allen Krause, director of the Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity tuberculosis laboratories: “The solution of the tuberculosis problem is
partly dependent on the removal of other evils and inequalities which constitute,
no doubt, a more fundamental problem than does tuberculosis itself.”35
Hybrids of these positions also emerged. Barbara Rosenkrantz writes of Ellen N.
LaMotte’s The Tuberculosis Nurse (A Handbook for Practical Workers in the Tuber-
culosis Campaign), published in 1915:
LaMotte assembled facts showing that tuberculosis was principally a disease of
the poor, afflicting both those who were “financially handicapped and so unable
to control their environment,” and “those who are mentally and morally poor, and
lack intelligence, will power, and self control.” Her conclusion that “People of this
sort . . . constitute almost the entire problem—otherwise the situation would be so
simple that the word problem would not apply” conflicted uncomfortably with her
intention of encouraging nurses to go forth and help the poor to defend themselves
against tuberculosis.36
 The Consumption of the Poor 239

The increased susceptibility of the African American population continued

to engender racial speculations. John Bessner Huber’s popular 1906 text derided
discriminatory “phthisophobia” but argued that “the negro’s small lung capacity,
as compared with that of the white, and his deficient brain capacity render him
less resistant to the disease when once acquired.” Huber concluded by warning
that “unless the hygienic and moral surroundings of the race are improved there
is danger of its extinction.”37 In a 1926 paper called “Vital Capacity of the Negro
Race,” two Alabama physicians published their findings (based on research con-
ducted on prisoners and children) that “low vital capacity is a racial characteris-
tic, and that vital capacity standards applied to white people cannot be directly
applied to the negro race.”38
When anatomic considerations could not be invoked, commentators specu-
lated about the “bizarre beliefs” of the afflicted. In seeking to explain the persis-
tence of tuberculosis among the urban poor, Edward Livingston Trudeau wrote
of “the blind love of ‘the average proletarian . . . for the chorus of city life.’ ”39
High rates of tuberculosis among immigrants were commonly blamed on their
“lifestyles” and lack of cleanliness.40 It was widely argued that “superstition” and
“conjuring” were to some extent responsible for poor health outcomes among
African Americans, views that were echoed even among black professionals. For
example, a survey entitled “Superstition and Health,” conducted in 1926 by the
National Urban League, cites a young black physician practicing in New York:
“Ignorance, cherished superstitions and false knowledge often govern Negroes
in illnesses and hamper recoveries. Young Negroes show patriarchal obeisance
to the aged—the aged are, in a large measure, fatalists. They are willing to leave
all to whatever their fate may be, the fatalism that has cursed the Orient for
centuries. This fatalism exasperates the physician, for it ties his hands and tends
to nullify his efforts.”41
Strong associations between tuberculosis and race and class did not weaken
as the century progressed, but calling attention to such associations did not
typically lead to compassionate responses. Changing conceptions of tuberculosis
transmission—due in part to the frenetic campaign against spitting in public
places—led many to regard with hostility and fear those who were popularly
held to have high rates of tuberculosis, such as black people and foreigners.42 In a
1923 address to a state medical society, one physician observed that “tuberculosis
continues to be a serious problem with [Negroes], and because of their asso-
ciation with whites . . . as cooks, nurses, maids, [and] laundresses,” black people
represented a “menace to whites.”43 Such interpretations were common well into
the 1960s. “In the South,” McBride points out, “segregationists attempted to turn
blacks’ excessive tuberculosis mortality rates into justification for keeping white
and black youths from attending integrated schools.”44
Racial differentials, tightly tied to class divisions, became further entrenched
240 Anthropology amid Epidemics

Table 10.1 Leading Causes of Death by Age and Race, United States, 1940
(per 100,000 population)

Nonwhites, Ages 25–34 Whites, Ages 25–34

Cause of Death Rate Cause of Death Rate

1. Tuberculosis 196.3 Tuberculosis 40.0

2. Major cardiovascular-renal diseases 120.6 Major cardiovascular-renal diseases 39.3
3. Homicide 75.2 Other accidents (nonvehicular) 25.3
4. Influenza and pneumonia 57.6 Motor vehicle accidents 24.4
5. Other accidents (nonvehicular) 44.1 Malignant neoplasms 16.3

Source: Grove and Hetzel, Vital Statistics Rates in the United States, 1940–1960.

as effective therapies were developed (see table 10.1). Although tuberculosis con-
tinued to decline among all U.S. citizens, rates among blacks remained relatively
high, particularly among young black adults, for whom tuberculosis remained
the leading cause of death even during the Second World War. A 1946 study
by Jacob Yerushalmy found that, although tuberculosis mortality in relation to
overall mortality in whites declined substantially in the period 1900–1940, no
such encouraging progress was reported for nonwhites.45 In fact, not only was
mortality from tuberculosis among nonwhites not declining as rapidly as overall
mortality, but in 1938 a three-decade downward trend was reversed, and by 1943
the tuberculosis death ratios surpassed those from 1930. Deaths were highly con-
centrated in the large industrial cities to which blacks had been drawn through-
out the first decades of the century: “From 1938 to 1939 black TB mortality rose
in New York City from 949 deaths to 1,036. In numerous other major cities,
blacks were more than one-half of those dead from TB in 1939. That year blacks
suffered 50 percent of the TB deaths in Baltimore; 58 percent in New Orleans;
72 in Washington, D.C.; 78 in Birmingham; 78 in Atlanta; and 79 in Memphis.
Nationally, blacks suffered 5,925 deaths or 32 percent of the TB deaths reported in
the nation’s 46 largest cities.”46
In 1946, one prominent Harlem physician took city, state, and federal author-
ities to task for ignoring the tuberculosis problem among African Americans,
which during the war years had claimed thousands of lives: “Here is a conta-
gious disease killing people in the low income brackets at an outrageous rate,
yet health authorities don’t get excited. Several days ago, a plane flew experts
from Boston to Texas because of 5 children ill with infantile paralysis—not a
death but just becoming ill. They wanted to protect the other children. We in
Harlem want protection too, not from just a paralyzed limb but from death
itself.” 47
 The Consumption of the Poor 241

But afflicted communities had never been less likely to be construed as such.
With the development of effective therapy, which began in 1943, energies turned
increasingly toward treatment of the individual case. “At the national meetings
of public health officials and TB experts,” recounts McBride, “this optimistic and
narrow concept of public health, which focused on the patient and not groups at
risk or conditions and social behaviors that created this risk, prevailed.” 48 By the
late 1950s, tuberculosis was regarded as a disease well on its way to being eradi-
cated, and little interest remained in attacking the disease at its roots.
If individuals, and not the conditions endured by entire communities or
classes, are increasingly seen as the sole repositories of risk, has there at least
been a corresponding decrease in the differential risk so well described for the
pre-antibiotic era? On the contrary, inequalities of risk seem to be increasing. For
example, tuberculosis rates have dropped substantially among Native Ameri-
cans, but less rapidly than among other groups. J. M. Michael and M. A. Michael,
in reviewing the health status of contemporary Native Americans, report, as
do others, increased morbidity and decreased life expectancy.49 And although
tuberculosis plays a small role in these grim figures, it takes on a new significance
if disparities of risk become the focus. In looking at age-adjusted mortality rates,
1987 tuberculosis deaths among Native Americans exceeded those among “all
races” by 400 percent. Thus tuberculosis still tops the list of disorders dispropor-
tionately killing Native Americans.
The story is similar for other minorities in the United States, where “the
decrease [in tuberculosis] has been considerably greater among whites than non-
whites. As a result, the ratio of the annual risk of tuberculosis among nonwhites
to the risk among whites has risen from 2.9 in 1953 to 5.3 in 1987.”50 Increasing
inequalities of risk belie the claim of a “national problem” of excess cases; they
reveal, rather, a scenario in which longstanding inequalities of risk are now being
further accentuated.
Similarly desocialized readings of tuberculosis continue to hold sway today.
The reasons for treatment failures and for TB’s persistence are often sought in
the psychological traits of individual “defaulters” or in the cultural attributes
of groups held to be “at risk.” And yet in no instance has it been clearly dem-
onstrated that rates of tuberculosis vary by beliefs or by psychological makeup.
In no instance have educational interventions for those deemed “at risk” been
shown to inflect trends in tuberculosis incidence. The occurrence of tuberculosis
has varied primarily with economic development; tuberculosis case-fatality rates
have varied with ready access to effective therapy. Pierre Chaulet puts it well: as
an “index of poverty, [tuberculosis] underlines inequalities of income and in the
distribution of wealth. . . . In a world both off-track and ‘deregulated,’ TB persists
and spreads, striking always the poor.”51
242 Anthropology amid Epidemics

MODEST INTERVENTIONS AND PRAGMATIC SOLIDARITY

As a new century opens, we are challenged not only to explain the uneven
distribution of tuberculosis but also to explain poor therapeutic outcomes in
a time when effective treatments have existed for decades. Between 1943, when
Selman Waksman and coworkers discovered streptomycin, and the late 1970s,
over a dozen drugs with demonstrable effectiveness against tuberculosis were
developed. New diagnostic methods, including immune-fluorescence staining
and new culture methods, are equally impressive. In fact, in 1997 the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration approved a test that can identify and amplify myco-
bacterial gene sequences in a matter of minutes. Now in the pipeline are tools
that might identify resistant strains in less than twenty-four hours. We have the
scientific knowledge—but the hard truth is that the “we” in question does not
include the vast majority of the two million people who died from tuberculosis in
1999. We must acknowledge that our guilt surpasses that of earlier generations,
who lacked our resources: Michael Iseman, one of the world’s leading authorities
on tuberculosis, is right to use the word “shameful” in describing our failure to
touch tuberculosis prevalence in much of the world.52
Looking to the future, it is difficult to muster optimism. The arrival of strains
of M. tuberculosis resistant to all first-line and many second-line drugs is surely
a harbinger of pan-resistant strains to come. And HIV looms: ever-increasing
numbers of co-infected individuals, most of them poor, promise millions of
cases of reactivation tuberculosis. These “excess cases” will in turn infect tens
of millions. The failure to curb tuberculosis prior to these truly novel problems
slammed shut a window of opportunity.
Although tuberculosis is inextricably tied to poverty and inequality, experi-
ence shows that modest interventions have effected dramatic changes in out-
come. In Haiti, we showed that listening to people with tuberculosis meant
listening to stories not only of sorcery but of hunger and bad harvests and leaky
roofs and dirt floors. We discovered that attending to these problems during the
course of treatment could double cure rates.53 We knew that merely listening to
such stories could be termed solidarity, but we came to believe that pragmatic
solidarity is what the afflicted were demanding.
Pragmatic solidarity means increased funding for tuberculosis control and
treatment. It means making therapy available in a systematic and committed
way. For example, we now know that short-course, multidrug regimens can
lead to excellent outcomes in even the most miserable settings. Even in settings
of relative affluence, the impact of modest interventions can be substantial. In
San Francisco, one project addressed poor attendance at tuberculosis clinics by
moving the clinics to the times and places desired by the patients and by replac-
ing staff who placed the blame for poor outcomes on the patients.54 In New York,
 The Consumption of the Poor 243

where the chances of compliance among injection drug users with tuberculosis
were wearily dismissed as hopeless, one clinic more than trebled rates of comple-
tion. Much of the success was due to directly observed therapy, but a compre-
hensive, convenient, and user-friendly approach clearly had an impact, too.55
Especially critical—and important to underline when confronted with claims
that treating susceptible disease will somehow make MDRTB go away—were
efforts in New York to speed the rate at which resistant strains were identified
and treated with antibiotics to which they had demonstrated susceptibility.56
Pragmatic solidarity means preventing the emergence of drug resistance when-
ever possible, but it also means treating people like Corina Valdivia. Currently, a
massive pandemic of MDRTB in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet
Union is becoming even more massive—with minimal public comment and even
less public action.57 Problems of this dimension call for public subsidies of costly
second-line drugs as well as for the development of new drugs.58
In identifying the microbiological cause of consumption, Koch had hoped to
end the era in which tuberculosis could be addressed only “by relief of distress.”
But tuberculosis remains, at this writing, “the outcome of social misery.” If it
is true, as Feldberg argues, that “scientific professionalism . . . fundamentally
eroded the therapeutic impulse to social reform,” 59 surely it would be an error to
divorce efforts to confront tuberculosis from broader efforts to confront social
misery. We still have something to learn from the analysis of those who did not
have our tools at their disposal. In 1923, pathologist Allen Krause made the fol-
lowing observation: “More or less poverty in a community will mean more or less
tuberculosis, so will more or less crowding and improper housing, more or less
unhygienic occupations and industry.”60 This statement remains as true today as
it was seventy-five years ago.
At the same time, it is necessary to avoid “public health nihilism.” 61 Even
if we lack the formulas necessary to “cure” poverty and social inequalities,
we do have at our disposal the cure for almost all cases of tuberculosis. Those
who remain committed to addressing tuberculosis by championing increased
access to effective drugs must resist restricting their field of analysis of the
tuberculosis problem. We are told to choose, in Haiti and in much of Africa,
between treating tuberculosis and treating malnutrition. We are told to choose,
in Peru, between treating those with susceptible and resistant strains. We are
told to choose, in Harlem, between more funding for tuberculosis and more
funding for affordable housing. Calls for more ambitious interventions are
trumped by a peculiarly bounded utilitarianism: such interventions, we are told,
are not “cost-effective.” The inadequacies, the multiple ironies, of such analyses
are not lost on the poor. In Peru, for example, it is impossible to ignore that a
much-praised tuberculosis program is funded in part by the World Bank, one
of the institutions that mandated the structural adjustment program that led to
244 Anthropology amid Epidemics

increased suffering—and perhaps increased tuberculosis risk—for the Peruvian

poor.
It is possible, of course, to exaggerate the significance of any one policy change.
To cite Dr. García again: “If there had not been fujishock, it would have been some-
thing else. In Peru, there’s always something beating down the poor.” Although
Dubos and Dubos mistakenly identify tuberculosis with a time—the nineteenth
century—rather than with the inhumane conditions faced by billions on this
planet, on another score they are right: “It is only through gross errors in social
organization, and mismanagement of individual life, that tuberculosis could reach
the catastrophic levels that prevailed in Europe and North America during the
nineteenth century, and that still prevail in Asia and much of Latin America
today.”62
As decision-making power—about social organization and about individual
life—comes to be increasingly concentrated in the hands of a very few, we must
ask: Who gets to determine the boundaries of analysis? Who is to determine
what is “cost-effective” and what is not? As a global economy is “restructured,”
is there no room for alternative strategies of development—alternative visions
of providing health care to the poor? Increasingly, it is the pharmaceutical and
insurance and health care industries, and also international agencies (including,
most prominently, financial institutions), that determine who will have access
to effective medical care. But the power of technological advancement stems not
merely from the wonders of science. It stems, too, from the power of moral per-
suasion. We can call for certain measures not because they are “cost-effective”—
the current and unchallenged mantra—but because they are the best we can do
for the sick.
A focus on complex epidemics—including not only tuberculosis but also
HIV—offers a stinging rebuke to the “cost-effectiveness” argument advanced
in public policy debates. At least four sets of reasons—one clinical, one epide-
miological, one analytic, and one moral—lead us to conclude that ignoring these
plagues is an unacceptable strategy. The clinical reasons are straightforward—we
have effective therapies to cure even drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis, and
the anti-HIV armamentarium is expanding rapidly. People like Jean, Corina, and
Calvin exist, and they matter. Cost-effectiveness arguments against treating such
maladies are also epidemiologically flawed: in this era of increasing global travel,
“local” epidemics rarely remain local for very long.
The oft-heard insistence that it is too expensive to treat MDRTB in poor
countries is additionally a failure of social analysis in at least two ways. First,
the hypothesis that we lack sufficient means to cure all tuberculosis cases, every-
where, is unsupported by data. In fact, the degree of accumulated world wealth is
altogether unprecedented. Second, such a head-in-the-sand approach represents
a failure of ethnographic analysis. As we have seen, and as social scientists who
 The Consumption of the Poor 245

study the therapeutic itineraries of tuberculosis patients know, a slow death from
the disease is not quietly accepted by the young adults who are its chief victims.
Thanks to increased access to information, patients and their loved ones know
that MDRTB can be treated with second-line drugs, just as AIDS patients in
many poor countries now know about the existence of effective antiviral thera-
pies. In middle-income countries such as Peru, which are in reality inegalitarian
settings where wealth and poverty are in close juxtaposition, second-line antitu-
berculous drugs are in fact already available—for sale at exorbitant prices.
Finally, arguments against treating disease in settings of poverty are morally
unsound. Through analytic chicanery—the claim that the world is composed of
discretely bounded nation-states, some rich, some poor—we are asked to swal-
low what is, ultimately, a story of growing inequality and our willingness to
countenance it. But careful systemic analysis of pandemic disease leads us to see
links, not disjunctures. When these failures of analysis are pointed out, the real
reason that MDRTB and HIV are treatable in the United States and “untreatable”
in Peru or Haiti comes into view. Opposition to the aggressive treatment of such
afflictions in developing countries may be justified as “sensible” or “pragmatic,”
but, as a policy, it is tantamount to the differential valuation of human life, since
those advocating it, regardless of their nationality, would never accept such a
death sentence for themselves. It is because the afflicted tend to be poor, and also
from marginalized and stigmatized groups more generally—and thus less valu-
able—that such policies appear reasonable.
Addressing these issues may get at the heart of the meaning of tuberculosis as
we begin the twenty-first century. If tuberculosis could once be termed “the first
penalty that capitalistic society had to pay for the ruthless exploitation of labor,” 63
what does it mean now? Is it perpetually the lot of the poor to pay this penance?

NOTES
1. Stop TB Initiative, Tuberculosis and Sustainable Development.
2. “TB Returns with a Vengeance,” Washington Post.
3. Ott, Fevered Lives, p. 157.
4. Bloom and Murray, “Tuberculosis.”
5. Ryan, The Forgotten Plague, p. 8.
6. Rosenkrantz, “Preface,” in Dubos and Dubos, The White Plague, pp. xiv–xv, n. 1.
7. Ibid., p. xxi.
8. Feldberg, Disease and Class, p. 1.
9. Dubos and Dubos, The White Plague, p. 22.
10. See Farmer, Robin, et al., “Tuberculosis, Poverty, and ‘Compliance’ ”; also Spence et al.,
“Tuberculosis and Poverty.”
11. This work has been explored in a number of books and articles: Farmer, AIDS and Accusa-
tion; Farmer, Infections and Inequalities; Farmer, Bayona, Becerra, Furin, et al., “The Dilemma of
MDR-TB in the Global Era”; Farmer, Furin, and Shin, “Managing Multidrug-Resistant Tubercu-
246 Anthropology amid Epidemics

losis.” See also Becerra et al., “Using Treatment Failure under Effective Directly Observed Short-
Course Chemotherapy Programs to Identify Patients with Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis.”
12. On the antituberculosis efforts of Proje Veye Sante, see Farmer, Infections and Inequalities,
pp. 211–27 (also included in this volume as chapter 8).
13. For an in-depth exploration of the effects of fujishock on the health of Peru’s urban poor, see
Kim, Shakow, Bayona, et al., “Sickness amidst Recovery.”
14. Current standards would favor initiation of empiric treatment with four drugs to avoid the
development of resistant strains of M. tuberculosis.
15. World Health Organization Global Tuberculosis Programme, Groups at Risk.
16. “Excess cases” was the term used by the U.S. public health officials who calculated the differ-
ence between the number of cases predicted (if downward trends had persisted) and those actually
reported; see, for example, Grove and Hetzel, Vital Statistics Rates in the United States, 1940–1960.
17. McBride, From TB to AIDS.
18. Frieden et al., “Tuberculosis in New York City—Turning the Tide.”
19. Brudney and Dobkin, “Resurgent Tuberculosis in New York City.”
20. Frieden et al., “Tuberculosis in New York City—Turning the Tide,” p. 229.
21. Mahmoudi and Iseman, “Pitfalls in the Care of Patients with Tuberculosis.”
22. Horton, “Towards the Elimination of Tuberculosis.”
23. Cited in Feldberg, Disease and Class, p. 214.
24. “Whether as a result of changing definitions of disease, new methods of record-keeping, or
actual changes in mortality, the number of recorded deaths dropped by almost one-third between
1850 and 1890” (ibid., p. 13).
25. Ibid., pp. 11–12; emphasis added.
26. Ibid., p. 23. Georgina Feldberg further notes that many southern antebellum physicians
“believed that the physician could make no greater error than to treat ‘negroes’ as though they were
‘white men in black skins’ ” (pp. 24–25). For a more thorough review of this subject, see McBride,
From TB to AIDS.
27. Editorial cited in Feldberg, Disease and Class, p. 14.
28. Ibid., p. 26. Not all southern physicians shared the locally dominant explanatory models,
however. Feldberg notes that in 1873 one doctor from Richmond, Virginia, trenchantly observed that
“the most marked difference between the diseases of the two races is in the far greater prevalence
and mortality of tubercular diseases amongst the blacks” (p. 26).
29. For a review, see Rieder, “Tuberculosis among American Indians of the Contiguous United
States.”
30. Koch cited in Feldberg, Disease and Class, p. 439.
31. Henry Wiley cited in ibid., p. 30.
32. Dubos and Dubos, The White Plague, p. 210.
33. Cited in Feldberg, Disease and Class, p. 101.
34. Cited in ibid., p. 105.
35. Ibid., p. 4.
36. Rosenkrantz, “Preface,” p. xxii.
37. Huber cited in ibid., pp. xxv–xxvi.
38. Smillie and Augustine, “Vital Capacity of the Negro Race,” p. 2058.
39. Trudeau cited in Feldberg, Disease and Class, p. 48.
40. Kraut, Silent Travelers.
41. Cited in McBride, From TB to AIDS, p. 46.
42. On the relationship between xenophobia and tuberculosis, see Kraut, Silent Travelers.
43. Cited in McBride, From TB to AIDS, p. 61.
 The Consumption of the Poor 247

44. Ibid., p. 51.

45. Yerushalmy, “The Increase in Tuberculosis Proportionate Mortality among Non-White
Young Adults.”
46. McBride, From TB to AIDS, p. 126.
47. Cited in ibid., p. 129. Preferential attention to polio continued, as Feldberg notes: “In 1949, as
polio cases rose to the ‘epidemic’ rate of 30/100,000, the tuberculous case rate exceeded 90/100,000;
in 1951 alone, there were 119,000 new cases of tuberculosis. Tuberculous mortality also exceeded that
for polio almost threefold” (Disease and Class, p. 2).
48. McBride, From TB to AIDS, p. 151.
49. Michael and Michael, “Health Status of the Australian Aboriginal People and the Native
Americans—A Summary Comparison.”
50. Snider, Salinas, and Kelly, “Tuberculosis,” p. 647.
51. Chaulet, “Les nouveaux tuberculeux,” p. 7. The impact of neoliberal economic policies on the
health of the poor has been described in Kim, Millen, et al., Dying for Growth, which includes case
studies from Haiti, Peru, Mexico, Senegal, Cuba, Russia, and El Salvador. In each setting, a decline
in social spending has been associated with dramatic erosion in the health status of people living
in poverty.
52. Iseman, “Tailoring a Time-Bomb.”
53. Farmer, Robin, et al., “Tuberculosis, Poverty, and ‘Compliance.’ ”
54. Curry, “Neighborhood Clinics for More Effective Outpatient Treatment of Tuberculosis.”
55. Frieden et al., “Tuberculosis in New York City—Turning the Tide.”
56. Telzak et al., “Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis in Patients without HIV Infection.”
57. For a comprehensive review of the problem of tuberculosis and MDRTB in Russia, see
Farmer, Kononets, et al., “Recrudescent Tuberculosis in the Russian Federation”; Farmer, “Cruel and
Unusual” (included in this volume as chapter 9); Farmer, “Managerial Successes, Clinical Failures”;
and Farmer, “TB Superbugs.”
58. “No new antituberculous compounds have been developed by the pharmaceutical industry
since the 1970s” (Cole and Telenti, “Drug Resistance in Mycobacterium Tuberculosis,” p. 701S).
However, researchers have serendipitously found certain antibiotics that act against M. tuberculosis.
Lee Reichman sounds a pessimistic note: “Most of the drug companies that publicly announced a
quest for TB drugs at the time of the recent resurgence have been noticeably quiet. Few have even
shown interest in developing such drugs” (“Tuberculosis Elimination—What’s to Stop Us?” p. 7).
59. Feldberg, Disease and Class, p. 38.
60. Krause cited in ibid., p. 107.
61. The term “public health nihilism” was coined by Ron Bayer of Columbia University; this
concept in regard to tuberculosis is discussed in Farmer and Nardell, “Nihilism and Pragmatism in
Tuberculosis Control.”
62. Dubos and Dubos, The White Plague, p. 225.
63. Ibid., p. 207.
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VOL. 63, NO. 4, WINTER 2004 43 1

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432 HUMAN ORGANIZATION

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hea h, ha e ada ed he S he ad c - b Cha e Me e . A a h g f T ha a d
ba ed e ea ch, e ha g he a ce f e e e T g de ce , h c e a e de ed f h e e -
(I ea e a . 1994; M e 1997; Wa e e 1992). The e ce h he G aafa Na B h C b a. He
c e g e gc -ba ed a c a e ea ch e ha e he a ce f c ea de f g " he gh ,
(CBPR) e ha eac ab a ee ab e a e h e b e , a d b ga f he e ea ch a e a d
be ee e ea che a d c e be , c - ea g e ea che " a d c ea g a e ec f e ea ch e a h .
a d ca ac b d ga a f he e ea ch ce , he The e a e f e h c ha c de: 1) a
e e fa a e he d e a ce , a e g da g e a ed b e he he e ea che he
ba a ce be ee e ea ch a d ac ,a d g- e ce c , h ch he e ea che d be e a ed
a dc e (I ea e a . 2003). The e a h a ea df a acc da e he eed f he c ;
c g a f he be f def gac , dea g 2) ef g he e ea ch c a h he c ;
h e ea be ee e ea che a d he c - 3) c d c g e ea ch g ea c ed f c
a e ,a dc f g he fac ha he a d e be a d e - a ed e ea che ; a d 4) c -
edge ha e ad a bee he ha d f ed ca ed g ee g d c a d a a e he e ea ch e , h
e e , a he ha a e d g he e e ea d e f f hed e ea ch e , da a e , a d d c e ba f
ca e de . ec da e a e de ed h he c (Me e
S e a h g ha e g e f he ha he 2001:5-6).
edef g he ea h h e he d . A he A he ec Id c be gge , a h g
a e d f a c a e h e h ha e beg a e gaged a c a e ea ch (e he PAR CBPR)
a f a b g h a c g e bac ha e ed a a f e ea ch e h d a d ech e
e h g af e ea f e ea ch he e. A he he e d a e e c age a e h hc e .S e ec
h e h e ea h de e ed b he c ha e c ded f c g hc a c a
ga a e f. A a G eb a d Ph G aha a e ha e e be d ed, h e he ha e e ed
a e a e f he f ce . The e ed Be g c e ea che e e c ec fe h e
age he I C a d b e a e f he f c e be . S he e ea che ha e c e-
b Pa a e W d (G eb a d G aha 1994). The a ed c ac b a d c e ea ch. S e
acc e bedded he a g age f e a e f h - ec ha e b gh de ge he hc
a a he ha c ab a , b f d g a ec ha e be h gh e h a d e ce- ea g g a .
c e be a ed, he e gaged eg a F a , a fe a h g a d a chae g a e b -
h age eade ( h f e a ed ec f he g he e ea ch e a d b ca f e e b
d d a be ef ), age e , a d e de . The e d c b de c b h g hc e -
d c a a f e age a d e a a , b e be . I he ec ha f ,Ie a e h b ad a ge
a c cha , a d a e e e f he he (G eb a d f e h d g e a d he e e h ch a h g
G aha 1999). ha e b gh c e be he e ea ch
A e ec a g g e a e f he ec d ce , h ee a ea : d e f he e e , ba e ea ch, a d
he e he c e a c , ec ed b Jea e e ea ch hea h e .
S e , D ca Ea e, a d E abe h S (2004), a d
e a e ce- ea g g a he e de f C ab a g E e a I e
Wa e F e U e a d he U e f Te a -E Pa
a e ed Ch a a " e e" Za a a c e . Whe e e e a c ce e ec h ec c
I ead f b d g a ch , he de d c e ed he de e e , e ea che ha e f d fe e g d f
e e be he ea e , e d g e c ca g a d d f c ab a : e h ca ff c a c -
be g ed e e da ac e . A f he de ba ed ga a a d a he ha g e be d g

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 h ca eade e e de a dc e be f e a a c e a he he c a e dec
he e ea ch ce a d h e c e ea che a ab e e g a d a ag g he e e . A e ea ch
e e e a d da a a a . ea c d g b h c e ea che a d e
Ma K ch' hc ga a a d a h g a a e b ed. I e e g b h C ee
ad cac he F da E e g ade e f he f a e a a d E g h, he ca e ea che c d c ed 235 e -e ded
a ach. K ch' (2003) a a e ea ha a de e e a d 345 e . O he e f a e h d
f
ga a e he E e g ade Re a- e e ed ca e C ee a a e f a d ea h
Pa ,a d a f he ca ga a a e headed b h he e e . The e a a e e f cha ha
Af ca A e ca e . Th gh ca ga a f e a ed c e e , ch a ed c g ega-
de a d ,K ch' a a d ca e ha he a e f e e ac d fe ec e , e g c acce
b a ed a d e c ded.4 K ch be a de a d g he e ce , a d c ea g ec c e . The
ac e e f ce ha ha e ac he ca e e a d a e ea che a ed ec f c g a a d ac he
e g he e f ca e e ha e c de he e b ade e effec . Th a c a
a ga a , h e h c ab a e e a ce a he L e Red R e C ee a e he
e ed h b hed . c g a a d e a d ffe e ce a d e e
Je ca Ve e , a Ph.D. ca d da e a M ch ga S a e ec f c ac .
U e , a g h NGO , h ca e The e ec a a e f ch f ha he S he
A a , Me c , he e a a e- e e ec g ca de e - ad ha e : a e e h be ee e ea che a d
e a a d ced N e be 2004. A a ed c e be , ca ac b d g, a d edge f
e ab g eg a , e e g he a c ea e e e e . M a , c e ea che
A a ' a f 20,000 200,000 b 2025. S ce e e c ca ca g he e ea ch, e g a a a-
A a b ha f ab e de a a d a ha e , e e e , a d da a a a .
f e g ea e ,e e a NGO he eg a e
c e g he a b a g ec g ca , ca,a dc a U ba Re ea ch: U g O ga a
a g e aga .U gf c g ha b g ge he f C ab a
ff c a , NGO e e a ,a d ca h
h d ea he a ' de e e c ee, a c a C ab a e e ea ch ba e e f e
h e e he a ec f he a (c ed ba ed a ga a , a g g f a ge fede a b -
ec g ca da age, e b a a d ce ) a d b c e ea c ac e , e he Na a Pa Se ce, de e de
he e e e ( c ea ed a e , e ec c ) NGO , a c ec f fe a , c
ee b h he eed f he e de a d he eed f he c c . I he U ed S a e , a h g ha e f e f -
e da ge ed ec e (Je ca Ve e , e a c ca- c ed ef gee c e g , e he b
, J e 2004). c d c g e ea ch ab h ga a ca be e e e
Th e g h Na e A e ca c e he e a b g he ga a a a e e f
c d c e ea ch h he a a a d f he d e a g h e a d e a d c e f he e
f a eade h c e, b he f e c a e c - c e .
e ea che he ec a d c de e e ee I a d f
a e a d a e ghb f he Na-
h a e a f f a ga a a c ab a a Pa Se ce, B e W a ed a d e h g a h c
a he ha b ec . Cha e Me e ' (2004) d f a e e e e h e e ed A ac a Pa a d
ad a ec g ca edge a a f he F e f F C c e Pa Wa h g , D.C. F c
he F e ec ed ca ef eg a f f ed e h g a he a d e gh a h g de he ed a
c e a d h ed he ec ded edge c a ed he e ea ch, ga e e e , a d c d c f c g
e e , a e , e , a d a c e . J h Le , a h a de a ge f a e ( cce a e , b a e a d
e be f G aafa Na a d he ch ef eg a , a f he , fa e ga e , a d ad a ga de e ).
a c e ea che h Me e (Le 2004), a d he ec S ce e f he e f he d a a e he a
had h ee g a : a e ha G aa e a d gh ; e e e Af ca A e ca h a d c e,
a ed ca a c c a g G aafa e ce he e ea che ec e ded c e a g e-
e a d he e a h f ad a edge de c gh ac e a d he e e e ce f f eed a e .
We e c e ce; a d acade c a c e . I add g a e , he ec ga e , W -
A a a g a e e , Da d Na che a d C ff d a , a d he ea ed h he Na a Pa Se ce
Hc e (2002), f he S a ab e F e Ma age e e e he a . (B e W a , e a c ca-
Ne ba ed a he U e f A be a, ha e ed , J e 2004).
h he L e Red R e C ee Na de e a g a A he he e d f he c , J e He e
f c -ba ed e ce a age e . A c e ab hed a F e a - e a c a ea h h
e be beca e e d ded e he de ab f W e ' L gh (Zhe S e ), a a g f e ac-
be c g b gg g f , he ec de e ed a e a d fe R a, h ga e ec e R a

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 e ' h , e a e ' hea h, a d c e S a E ca cega a d he de a e ca g e-
ca e f e ed e .F ded 1991, he e a ea ch e a ce h gh E ace A ca, a g a
f e e a , W e ' L gh e ed " fe a a- f a NGO Ch cag , I , ca ed Hea a d A a ce
" ( .e., bec g a b ea c a ed ga a ha f H a Need a d H a R gh . E ace
f a c e de e de f d gf g a ,a a e g he Me ca h e a ca a d he d
he e ' g had d e). I c b g c ab a e f ca e e he a e. S de ha e de g ed
e ea ch a d ac , He e b gh he e ec e a e h E ace A e ca, c d c ed e e ,a d
f PAR he ec , h ch e ed he "ge de ed e - a a ed da a. The e be c ded e
e "c c ed b W e ' L gh a d e be ' (E ca cega e a . 2004).
e gc e " he NGO a " f e ' g Ja e Ba e ha a ed de he ec
a d he ac f e be a c e a d g ba a he ada a f ef gee fa e he g ea e Ha f d,
he a (He e .d.). C ec c , a ea. A be f a c e a e be g e
I be ee e ea che g h a ge b ea c a c he ec (Ba e a d A a a c .d., 2004).
ga a a d a e ,a e h e h ha e c ab-
a ed hc NGO , ed - ed ga a C ab a e Re ea ch a d Hea h
ade f ca e de a he ha fe a e ce
cc a . E c Ch , a g ad a e de a he U e Whe g hea h a d c a e ce , a h -
fS hF da, a ed ee c ec 40 a h e g f e e ha e fe a c ab a h hea h
f Af ca A e ca S . Pe e b g, F da, f he O e de c c aff. D a g he N he e ec-
B. McL Ne ghb h d Ce e . F he "B De " e, acade c a c e a e f e he a c e f ch
ec , Ch a d fac e be Ja S de e - c ab a . M ch f h - f e a e, Ph e
ed a ha db f a gc e be h B g ' e ea ch HIV a d he a C e e a d
c ec a h e (Ch a dS 1998). The d g (B g , P ce, a d M 2004; Wa e , B g ,
f ged e ech e , c d g "h e ed ," a d L a 2004) - e e ea ch c c h
e e g e e c ec e e e gc e de g a d c c a . O he he De a e f
e be , ea ca a ca f fa a A h g , H , a d S c a Med c e a he U e -
eg ega -e a gh c b. The ec ed a c f Ca f a, Sa F a c c , a d he S c a Med c e
ac b a d a ah da h ca e he ed a P g a a Ha a d, a e ac e e gaged a c -
h a ch e he ec de e ed. The e e a ded fe a c ab a . Re ea ch b Da d He a d
feedbac f a CD-ROM ha ha bee d b ed f ee S . h de Ma ga e W dde e a d a e a e
Pe e b g' c ce e , b c e ,a dc e h d f c f g ca ce ed c ab a h
b a e . O e f he a a ed e f he CD- e ac eade . The e ea ch a d e g b
ROM a d he Web e ha bee ge he e a e a ed e f he ac bec e a a e ad ca e a
he ca ch e a eache f f ga a e a a b a d (W dde a d He 1998), a d He ha
a da e each ab Af ca A e ca h .O e a ,b e c - e ed a c e , c d c ed ad e e ,
c b gc ab a e e ea ch h a e each a d e a e e f a d ec - a f d- a g ca a g
( he h da , he CD-ROM, a d he Web e), he ec (He 1999, 2002).
ha he e a a e g Af ca A e ca ' e e Th e g h d ge c e Ca ada,
h ,a c e be e e he a a e he U ed S a e , a d Me c a e e e ha e eg -
f he he age, a d he e e ghb h d ec c a ed he c e f he e ea ch a d ha e ed ca e-
de e e ( . e . f.ed / c ). ea che ha h e g e e he e. O e e a e c e
A be fa h g ha e c d c ed c ab- f a ec a ed b Ma ha Ya , de f d ec
a e e ea ch h g a a d ef gee c e . he De a e f H a Se ce f he Ya a a I d a
S e e h ha ed c g h g a - Na (Ch a e a . 1999). Re d g he e e f
ga a a d e e ha ea g h ba eade h e e c ce ed e ece dea h f
a NGO ha e e a ef gee g . Be h Ba e -C ae ce ca ca ce , Ya c ac ed J d h S c a d a d N e
(2004) c h Sa ad a h e a ca Ch a a he U e f Wa h g Sch f N g.
L A ge e a d NGO E Sa ad h he U.S. The f a ed a e ea ch ec de g ed c ea e he
Sa ad a c . The a e gc h e e f a ea , a d, a he a e e, b d ca ac
a da e e L A ge e . I E Sa ad , ea f f e ea ch a d g a de e e . The ba c c
ca e ea che a ec d c g e de a dc - a ed he ec , a d c e be a c a ed
eed a d e ce . W h he e e ,a ca h gh he hea h ce e ' ca ce c ee ha e e ed
ha e de g ed e" d c e" de e e ec he a a d ga e feedbac . Th gh he ec ,
de b a g a d de e a c e a e ed Ya a d Ch a e e a ed b he g a f c -
b e e E Sa ad affec ed b h gh a e f a c a a d e e e ha a beh d he
e g a ). S he ad .

VOL. 63, NO. 4, WINTER 2004 435

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 I e e c d c ed b a ed ca e e ea ed c e de he d ec f A Lee e ca a ed a h c
ha Ya a a e e e e c ce ed h ca ce ha e e ed b he c c ege, c e -
h fa , c , a d a e . A de g e de ce f a- - ba de e e da g f he
e ' e , a da f " a g c c e ," e e a 1840 he ea 1900 (Lee a d Le e 2003). A ec d
ca ce , a d a fea a d g ea a ded feedbac he e, he h e f D . Da d L g, a e 19 h ce
a c a a d a ge c . A fe a e Ya a a g a h ca a d b e a , ha a ed de a d -
a a a h ed d g he e age f he ec , a d e e ga e h ca ec d ha c a f a
ca Ya a a e de e ed a e e f h ab C e e a d' ea Af ca A e ca a d ac e
c b g hea h ed ca h ba c af . B he e d f f he gh f e . L g a d h e e ded fa -
he ec , he c c de e ed e c a e e e e e fg e b h f he e c a e e f
a f f g e f a ea e , a d c c he 1 830 . Acade c a d b c e e a f h
e e bega d c h c ea e a e ec g a Ca ah ga b gh a a a e he effec e e
a he e. Th ee Ya a a e beca e ed e - f a chae g f h ca c e ea ch a d ha
e e a d e e a he ga ed e e e ce e e g ed a e f he c c ege a chae g
e , g b ca , a d ea g e ea ch e g a .
e e a d g a de e e . Sa ah M e a d G He de , h he Ke c
I ha d f d he a h g beg g A chae g ca S e , c e a ca e he e e e a c e e
de e c ab a e ec hea h e ea ch h - d bed e ca b g c e be a a ec a-
d ge e e . L da G ee ece ed a Na a Sc e ce f ca h . Re de f C ab O cha d, Ke c ,
F da g a , e ed "The Wh e P ag e: A H ca c ac ed he e beca e he h gh ha a b a f de
E h g a h f T be c a g Y ' Pe e f a chae g ca e ca a f he f a fa ca h e
S h e e A a a," d he be c e de c a d h g d g e he fa g a e e e f
ha e e e ac ed Y ' e e be ee he 1 930 a d de. Af e d c e g ha he e had bee de ed he
he 1950 . The e a d e f e e' e c e h c c f a ch a d a h e c f e d , he a chae g
We e ed c e a d be c a e e a f e g ade he be f he a . A he behe f he de
h We e c a f de a d g e a d he ch c a , e ea che e a 14- ee
ha e f e ced b c hea h ce a d h he e c a a chae g ha d ced ch d e f e d ech e .
de ge a affec c e da . T ca The ha d - fed e e e ce c ded a e ,
Y ' be f e d e ea ch a a , a d a ca ad h e be, a d e ch e ca a . A b c da a ed
c c ee h he e ea ch ea e he c e f he de e e e de c ce g he h e a d
he ec . The ea a a a a e g h ca e h b ea g he c . Th gh ac e a ea g
f he ch d e a e e . he h e e e f d, de a d c e be
Wh e G ee e e ea ch A a a, Magda e a ga ed a ab e edge f a chae g a d ca h
H ad ha e 20 ea f e e e ce de e g c - (M e a d He de 2004).
ab a e ea h h he Ach , f e f age E c g e d c ab a a e a e e g g f
Pa ag a . B h he a d K H ha e ece f c ed Na e A e ca c e . S e a chae g e e
he a e he e g e f he Ach : a ead f g g c ec A e ca I d a g af-
b a g gh a f he ab g a e (H f a ed h a chae g ca e bef e a a eg a
a d H ad 2004) a d e e g he ece c de ce f de- e e ed. F e a e, d g he 1980 Ja e S ec
b a g d ea e ( be c , a a e , h ). H ad ' (1993) ed h he U e S c e e
ece e ea ch a a c a e he eff cac f he L e Ra d e. A he e a e a he c ab a-
c -ba ed a c a h a da d e e be ee he Rh de I a d H ca P e e a a d
c ce g hea h g a de g ed be e e a e He age C (RIHPC) a d he Na aga e I da
ac a a e (H ad 2004).5 T be 1982. Whe a ea h- g ach e c a 17 h
ce Na aga e b a g d, a chae g h he
The Sh f C ab a RIHPC a d he be ag eed a a e ca a e, d , a d
A chae g ca Re ea ch eb he e a (B a d R b 2004).
Re a h be ee Na e A e ca be he
A chae g e he a decade ha e bee eU - ed S a e a d a chae g e e a e ed he he
ed ha gh be e ed b c each a chae Nag ,e A e ca G a e P ec a d Re a a Ac
h ch e c ee a d de e ca (NAGPRA)
a a e ac ed 1990. The ac a da ed ha
a d d e a e he e f e ea ch h gh b ac chae
ac- g a d h ca a h g c h Na-
ce e , ec e , de , a d CD-ROM. The Ce e f e A e ca ab he ea e a d d f h a
C Re ea ch, aff a ed h Ca ah ga C e a ec e ed f a chae g ca e ( ee K a d
C ege C e e a d, Oh , a d d ec ed b Ma Le M f- 2000; M he ah 2000; Wa
e, 2000). Ra he ha
fe e f a e a e . He e, a ea f de a d eca g a chae g a a d c e ba ed We e

436 HUMAN ORGANIZATION

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 f c e ce , a chae g ha e c e a e Na- NAGPRA c a a c e a a d
e A e ca e f he h a d ha We e ed ca a , e ea ch, a d e - e a ed ec . T a e
e ea che ca a chae g ca e . e e a e, R cha d H (a a fe f A e ca
C a h ba g ha e bee g g de a S a e U e Ne Y a d e be f he
a d a ha e e ed he e a a f ac ed b ec T ca a Na ) d c e a e age c e ' d ega d f
(f e a e, he Z Wa G d Aha :da) a d he e- Ha de a ee (Pe e f he L gh e, I )
b a fh a e a f a chae g ca e (D g , e f he ac ed a e f he b a e a d ace he
A de de fe , a d D eh e 2000; Fe g ,A ,a d Ladd g gg e e a a e h a e a . Se e a cha e
2000). M e , c d g he S h a I , de c be e gg e be ee Na e A e ca be
c e e a a eh a e a f Na e A e ca a d e , a e a a e a d fede a age c e , e
be he e c a aff a ha bee de a ed. h c he a chae g f a e h a e a (e.g.,
I he a fe ea , Na e A e ca c a ad - B a d R b 2004). Th c ec , h ch c de
, de ,a d a ed a chae g ha e g e be d he e ec e f a Na e A e ca , d ca e a
NAGPRA e h gh a f he de d ch e e e f c ca .6
be ee he e ea che a d e ea ched, c e a d b ec .
O e ch e ed a chae g Ch C e - O each he P b c
Cha ha h h (Ce e f De e A chae g , T c ,
A a) a d T. J. Fe g (A h g ca Re ea ch, LLC, C e e g he e ha c ab a he
T c ,A a). I he Sa Ped E h h P ec , g ea e a e be g g e c ca g a h g-
ed b he Na a E d e f he H a e , ca gh c ca ca e he ge e a b c. We
he ed h he T h O' dha , H ,Z ,a d a e ga g e e e e ce, f e a e, g -ed
We e A ache he e h h f e e e a dc a ece a d e e g b c c e e . I 2004, he
e ac he Sa Ped Va e hea A a. Th B a d f he A e ca A h g ca A ca ed
e ha f a ed a e ba f c ab a ba ed he deba e a e- e a age a d a ed a e
" e e h c ," a e f a a ha e ha e c e
g P e de Ge ge W. B h' (2004) a e e ha
c e a e e , f e d e , ge e , a d h e . The e a age be ee a a a d a a a " e f he
a e f a ba f c c g ea h f a d f da e a , e d g f c a ." The
e ec , e e ha ed b Me e a d h c ab a b a d a g ed ead ha "a h g ca e ea ch
a e (C e -Cha ha h h a d Fe g 2004:19-20). he c c ha a a a a f fa e , c d g
L e Me e , C e -Cha ha h h a d Fe g fa e b a e- e a e h , ca c b e
f d ece a f ag ee he g a f he ec ab e a d h a e c e e " (AAA 2004a). The a e e
a d he a e e a a c a had e ea e f a b c ed he B G be (Feb a 29, 2004) a d
e . I a e e a b ha e be ee b e e he Sa F a c c Ch c e (Feb a 27, 2004). A c
a d b e ed, a d he H ad a d he e b Pe e S. Cah (2004), d b ed h gh Pac f c Ne
a d de a ed he a chae g a he ed. M e Se ce, a ea ed e e a e a e . D g he g
a a a e g h ge def e he ca eg e a d 2004 c f c Ha , Pa Fa e e a e e e
e ha ha e he ec . F e a e, a chae g Sec e a f S a e C P e g h e e e ce a d
e e e ed he fac ha ca eg e f a chae g ca e e e a a a h g ca a e he eed
c e (M g , A a a ) a e a dd h h g e ee Ha ' h a a d ed ca a g g a e .
he H h f he a ce . I add , S h e e The e a e a ce he a h g ca ed a -
be ha e b ec ed he e "aba d e ," ce e he e e a ce f edge e ha a e
c a he be ef ha e c e be hab ed b head e a d c ed ce ha c a ca ef
. A ce a age a e e ed ce e e e , ace ca c e ce e ea ch.

f f c a a d e g ea g (C e -Cha ha h h A a f he ec I ha e a ead a ed
a d Fe g 2004:14-16). A chae g ha e ea ed a d ca e, a h g a e a e gaged c ca g
g ea dea f e g Na e A e ca e a d ha e he e f he e ea ch h gh ed ca a g a ,
beg df h he h ab a chae g ca e . e e hb , a d g f acce b e b ca
Th a ach ffe a de f b d g a ed c ab a- ha a a e a h g ca e ea ch b ade a d e ce .
e ea h be ee a chae g a d c e M e ha e g bee e f he c ca f
he e he . a h g ca edge, b e hb a e be g a -
A e c ec f a ce C -C a C ab - f ed h gh d e a he W d W de Web. O e
a : Na e Pe e a d A chae g he N hea e e a e "G g Od S a h Ha e ," a 1992 e h b
U ed S a e (Ke be 2004) c de 20 cha e b 9 Na e f he M e f he C f Ne Y . M ch f J d h
A e ca a d 26 a chae g . Ma e a c e f 1 1 F e de be g' (2000) e ea ch f h e hb a a
hea e a e a d f he a e ce f a a e h b , "I de O /G g Od he U ed
f Ca ada a d e e e a de a e f ea h f S a e ," ha a d ced f he La V a Ga e , a

VOL. 63, NO. 4, WINTER 2004 437

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 ec f he S h a . The e h b fea ed c e a ch de , dd e-aged ad , a d de c e . Th
a d ea c e f La a/ e c e ,a g h he AAA' f a e each he b c ch
ed ca a ac e ha e gage de e e g a a e ed a , a d e e e a a ec
a dc d c gh ca e ea ch he e de he f e gag g h he d.
c e ( ee h :// a . .ed / a ga e /
G gO d/G gO d.h ). P b c P c
A ec d e a e he Ch cag F e d M e ' ec
e e a e a a ca ed "J e h gh Ca - A h g ca e ea ch he b c c a e a -
e ," h ch f c e dec g d a c e e h ee e : ge g a h g a ea a he c
he Ch cag a ea a d ea b I d a a. U de he d ec f ab e, c ab a g h he ca ce , a d g
a h g A a a Wa , e de g ad a e a d g ad a e ge a a c a c e ac ed. We a e a g g e
de a d e ea ch a a ca ed he e ea ch each f he e f , b g f e ea ch c
d g he e f 2001 a d 2002. The Web e - a g a d ff c e f a h g .
a e e f he ec a d e de , h ,a d Whe e he e e e e a ha a h g
e d ce he d ffe e c e a d he dea h a - ca e e c e e , a h g ha
a f f ac a d ga a a dc d ff c f d g a ea a he c ab e. The g e
a de e a e (F e d M e 2003). ha bab bee ade b ed ca a h g , h a e
I N e be 2001, he A e ca A h g ca A - bec g e be f a hea h ca e c a d
ca (AAA), h he he faF dF da g a , a d g c ee a a a a e e. I e e ec h
a ched a ec "U de a d g Race a d H a e a a g c ea ha a h g ha e e h g
Va a ." The g a c ea e a be e de a d g " ha c b e. A he ab e e h he ca
h eh a a a e, ' ace,' a he a a ec f a ce d ffe e h e
e h d ge a d e
e c ed,
e ,b ab g ca he he e ca a h g f e he e . The a
ad a ca d e e ha f c a c c " (AAA ce f he d c e a d e e ha a d ff c e
2004b). A h gh e d c a c e, he ec - be g hea d. H e e , he e f c a a d
e d a e b c e ce fa h g b a ga he ad a age f g ge he e h d a d a d -
c - ace a d ac - h ch f e h gh be c a e ea ch ha ca a e a c - e ed a g e
he ce f c g , ca c e ce, h ,a d ch ge .
h ca e h a h g ca e ea ch add e d e A h g a e f e e gaged a c a h
de a d g f h c ca ca e. The ec ca c d c e ea ch a d e e . Th e g
c fa a e g e e hb ;ac ehe e h ca c e , NGO , c a , a c a a
b c Web e; ed ca a a e a ; a d c fe e ce a d he a e a d ca e e . Ca he e L , f e a e, ha
e a ed ac e ( b d.). ed h A e ca F e d Se ce C ee (AFSC)
The AAA ha a ece ed f d g f he Na a a d e a e "Ma g S de he P b c
Sc e ce F da h he Sc e ce M e f Sch : A A a f he A JROTC C c " ha
M e a de e he e h b ace ha e fa ed he AFSC Web e. H gh c ca f he JROTC
2006. The g a f ea $3 f d d a a d c c a d g he ac f e de ce ca
e ac e ed a ha e e he h f he c c ha e e d a d d g ab e, he e ef
f ace, e a he d ffe e ce be ee h ca a ea a ce ca ch b a d a e g ha a e c de g
a d ge e c , a d h h he h ca cha ac e c fa JROTC g a (L a d Ba e 1995).
d d a a d a d c e ace. O he a W g a a e ca e e , D S a d h
f he e h b de a c -c a e ec e h -c eag e M chae B ad a , a c a ge g a he , ha e
g ha ace a e a b a he a c a c c c ed h a c e he U ed S a e a d
h ch a e ea g a d e e a a he
d he ac d. Ca ada
f ea a d a he
F a , he g a d c e e ce f ac ca h g, ch , a d ca e
a be ce (S 2004; S
e ed, a d e h b h h d c
a e a d B ad a 2004). A h gh he ea ' de c f he
d a e a d d de a h a d a g ega e effec f he ea a d d a e f e
a (AAA 2002:2-4). ec e, e ec a b b e f a e e a , e e a
A e e hb a e a d a c e ha e ed ca ag ha ha e e ed
e e a h g ca edge a a e f d ffe - a f a a be g c a ed, a d he ha e de e ed
e e e h gh he e f b ec , g a h c , e ac e cce f a ache ga . S ec h he
de , a d e . C ce bec e h ee-d e a a he ea ha ga ed b c a e a d he ed ha e he S e a
ha ea , a d ca ab b a d e ac h he C b' ca a g aga a a d a e c ea ed b
a e a a he ace, f c g he ea g e ha he d . Ye , he a g e ha ad cac e
be he . A e hb ca a a ea a ch de ha a g ee a fac a a e a e ,
a ha c ege de - ge ch d e , h gh e e e c a e .

438 HUMAN ORGANIZATION

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 M g be d d g f a ,a h g F e a e, a a fd e a a , ca d da e
e e bec e d ec ed hb d e g c d e he c ee ' a f c ab a (
e e a e d ega a da e . J a a Da- e ea ch de g , c be c e ed, a d a e -
d , h e ga g he D a G ea-B a , be a ed) h he c e ea ch b ec .
beca e ed ac ab a e eff de e a - The c d a e e g e feedbac he e
a e e h d a d e e a 1998 a d a . f he e ea ch bac he c e ea ch b ec ,
G e he bac g d D ac a a d e ea d b hd g he e ea ch e da d he he d e a
ad a ca c e, he a ab e e a e a ca e c e ed. F a , ca d da e gh a be e c aged
d a d a c a e e e a h ha e ca ed he ec f e ce ac e ha c d be ffe ed he e ea ch
a , de c bed he e e , a d hea d f ca a c- c . The e a c de g a g, a g
a ab a a ge f ca e , c d g a dd e e ea ch ,c e c ,E g h- a g age e -
(Da d 2002, 2003). , a a , e a a fac de . If
Af e c d c g d e a e ea ch he h e e de a e he e d fe ec a he d e a-
T c ,A a, T e a Va ad a e ec ed cha a ce a he a age, h add a feedbac
c ee c ea e a e - ea a e dh ee e he he de defe d he d e a , b h fac a d
he c . A he a f he e, "I a b g g h e- de ca a ,d c ,a de a a e h ch ac e
e e e' ce he a g a e a, c d g he be g e he de ' c a d he a e f he e ea ch
ec e da f h e e ce . Of c e, a .
h gh e e h e e e b e f ac a A ead f de a he U e f Ne
c ea g a d e e g c , I ha e a ea ed ab Me c ( f h c d c e ea ch he U ed S a e
he c a he face, a d h be ab e a e c La A e ca) a e e gag g e d f e ce
ec e da ha a e ea c" (Va ad , e a c - ac e he c e he d . The a e each g
ca , Ma 2004). c e h ca e , ee g a ca hea h ca e e-
Sa d a M ge ' e ea ch e fa e c O eg c c, gf ac ad a , he g
de a e ha be " a he c ab e," c - ca NGO c d c e ea ch. The e ac e a e e e a
d c e h d e ea ch h ec a d c g , ga e a d c ga a , b
a d ha e a c c e e ac b c c .M ge a d he de a a e b d g c ab a e e h d he
e ea ch ea c d c ed e a d e e e e h d e a e ea ch.
h e h ha e ef Te a A a ce f Need Fa e Me a Ha g e ( e a c ca , Ma 2004)
(TANF) f d h e fa e ef a affec g he a he U e f Te e ee c d c g e ea ch a g
ab a e b , ge ch d ca e f he ch d e , a d a e he G ah/Geechee f he S hea e Sea I a d , h a e
he a da d f g (Ac e a d M ge 2001). I add fac g he f fa a d h gh he de e e f
e e g he e he a e age c ha f ded he , ga ed c e a d . She g c e h
he ed he Web e, ade b ef "ca e " e he ch ef ac , ched g f c g a d e e
e eg a a d he e e ed e fa e ef , h b h he G ah a d e e . E D C cc
g he e de b c ed he e ,a d e f ed a ( e a c ca , Ma 2004) d g S h
eg a e hea g .M ge a e c ea ha ch A e ca g a A g , V g a, a d ha f ed
a" e h " eff ,b beca e e ea ch e a e he a "c g c ce "ea a c a e he e ea ch
h g ha ac a ge eg a e ac ed, cha ge c e ce a d g de he . I a e e e e f he e eff
h bb g eff , hf e d eg a ,a d bec e a a ed a f he d e a ce , a he
c ab a hc g . He each eff ad ha ea e he ac edged a d e c ec ed
ff, a d 2004 M ga ' ea he ed cha ge O eg a e feedbac a d ca ac b d g.
c ha e TANF ec e ca c ec da O each ca a be b a Ph.D. c c . The
ed ca a a f he e e e . U e f Ca f a, Be e e , A chae g P g a
e ha e f he a e e ec g de
B g gC ab a ,O each, a d P c e gage each. G ad a e de a chae g a e
G ad a e P g a e ec ed eg e f a e- c e b c a chae -
g e e a e . The e c de a ch ca ,
A he e a d he ec bec e ec he g h c e ca a ha a eache age, a -
a ga h g , e eed c a e he - g e e a f g ch g , a c a g
c e g ad a e a g g a eb ad . g ac e a Ca Da , he he ca e
C ab a , each, a d c - e ed a be he c . G ad a e de ha e ha ed he e e -
a ed be a f a a ed a g g a ,b e ce a a chae g a h e ded d ce
he eed be a f he g a a e . dd e ch g ca ee e a ed a h a d c e ce.
Th e f Ph.D. g a eed f d a f c - The g a a ha ga ed a eache ' h a he
ab a bec ea a a fd e a e ea ch. ece A che g ca I e f A e ca ee g he

VOL. 63, NO. 4, WINTER 2004 439

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a chae g f a e Ca f a, h e a , a c ec- C c
f e ce f eache , a d e e a b fac
a d de . Th gh h a c e I ha e d a e a e f
G ad a e de a ea h d each ece e ea ch b a ed ac c g a h g a d
g ch d e . F e a e, eache ha e c e UC, a h g h e gage ha bec g
Be e e , g e h h c c a e a b c a h g a d b c each a chae g . I
a a d dea h he d ffe e ea g e f 6 h g ad-
ha e a g ed ha he cha g g ea h e ea ch
e . A Ma ga e C e , h he ed de e he g a , b ec , c ea ed eff each a b c , a d
c e ed, "The e ha e bee e de f e ab a e e a e f e ce c a a " ea cha ge"
ec , ch a ha g he d a Ma L he K g he d c e. The e h ee a ec a e c e e a a d
M dd e Sch [ Be ee ] d he a chae g f he e e , b a a , e a g. Th e g
f a d ea he ch . Af e he e ca a a , A ce Wa e
e h h e ea ch c e f e e d g
[ f he e a a Che Pa e] ed h he
d ge he d e a b
a eg e ha feed bac e ea ch
he ga de . I a a h c e" (Ma ga e C e ,e ca c e a d de a d e ce ( h gh a
Be e e fe , e a c ca , Ma ch 2004).CD-ROM Web e, f e a e). L e e, c ab a e
A he g a ha ed g ad a e de each e ea ch ca c e ca ead a a a ha
a he "B g D g," a ee - g c e ca a ga edhe f h g f c cha ge . O he he ha d,
each ea be ee 2000-2002 f 6 h g ade a a dd e e each ac e , ch a e e hb , a
ch A a eda, Ca f a. S de e e e c ed - e a c ab a e e ea ch h c e ha e
c e a b da b ade a e c b, h ch he ca ef c ca . F a , a g d dea f c e ea ch,
ec ded, a ed, a d bagged, ea g a he a ca e ec a ba a ea , ba ed ad a e ea che -
a he a e e. If he e d f g a c d be a fb ec ea h .
g ad a e g a e e he e he U ed S a e , he e N a e a chae g, c a a h g ,
ge e a f a h g d ee each a a a ad d e ec a g a ed a d ac c g a -
a ce f he fe a a a h g , he he h g c d c g e ea ch c ca ca e
he a e a chae g , c a a h g , g c ha e hea h , he e e , ed ca a
a h g , b g ca a h g . e , ace , a d ca ce e a d
A he U e f Ne Me c , e ha e de e ed a he ce e , b e a e a c e g g e f he
b c c f c ha de a c e e a a
e ha f he ech
cha ge ea h he c -
a e ' g a . S de e ec a b ad b ec c e e d a d h he b ade b c. The e e d
e e a ce, ch a hea h, ed ca , he e e , ab a f e e e ha a ca e a h g h
a d he ace, g a , h a gh . I add -he e c a d he " e." A a e he e f
e ed c e , he a e h ee c e ( e a c eag e a e dec g he d f d c e,
de g ad a e c e ha ca g ad a e c ed ) ha he e a e g f c ea ed a d he e a f -
a he e e he c c a d ea c ea ed c
he ca ac bf e d a e f be e
c a c e ce e a e ha a ea. F a , he e a eg e f c ab a , each, a d ad cac . The e
a h ee-c ed c e h a fac e be h ch be d e, a c a a g
a c ga a , NGO, g e e age c ech e f c ab a , each, a d c e ea ch
a d c d c e e h g a h c e ea ch he c a a f g ad a e a g. Ne e he e , he c e ea
f c . I add e g he g ' c ce cha ge h he d c e gge ha a h g a d
f a c a ce he ac f h e c e , he c e bec e a e e ec ed, be e , a d
de ca c d c e ea ch f a ga a be f ed d c e.
ed ad cac eff . A he e d f he e e e ,
N e
de e a a e d c g he e h g a h c gh
h ce , c f a , c e e a
'I add g e a e f c eag e a he U e
a e e ce ed a d he c ec be ee a h g ca
f Ne Me c a d f h e h c d c e ea ch a ea f
e ea ch a d c .
e e , I e a ed a ce b hed he a ea f H a
The c f c he de ea h c af e - ga a
O de he ed h f D S . I a ed a
ca e ea ch ha e a e a c ca ca e e f a g ha I a g f e a e f c ab a , each, a d
h ce a e c e e e ed, a g acc c e e a he e e f he A e ca E h g ca
S ce (AES), he S c e f he A h g f N h A e ca
he ac ca a , he e e e ed b h e
(SANA), he Na a A ca f S de A h g (NASA),
a
, a d he a ge ca a d ec c e -
a d he S c e f U ba , Na a, a d T a a a /G ba A h -
e h ch c e a e ade a d e e ed. S de g (SUNTA). I ece ed a e e , e f c eag e I
a ha e a c ca e a a e c , de e a d he f de , ac e , a d acade c h fe
a e a e , a d h ca ga a e e he e ea ch f e e . Th a " ce f c" a e, b
he ca e I c e e e e he de a ge f a h g h a e
c cha ge.

440 HUMAN ORGANIZATION

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e gaged c ab a a d each, a c a a chae g Refe e ce C ed
a d c c a a h g . I ha e bee ab e e a
he e a e I ece ed a e- a , b I a ha e e e h Ac e , J a , a d Sa d a M ge
e ded e e . The a ga e e a e e fh de ead 200 1 O eg Fa e Wh Lef Te a A a ce f Need
he e e d a e. Fa e (TANF) F d S a : A S d f Ec c a d
Fa We -Be g f 1998 2000. E ge e: Ce e f he
2I ha e a a c de ed he ea e ea ch I ha e bee ed S d f W e S ce , U e f O eg .
h c a d e e a he ace, g a , a d Med ca d-
a aged ca e be c ee a . I ece ec , Ada , J h , a d K W. De ch e
g a b g a h f h ee Na a e e fa , ha e 1 970 The Pe e' Hea h: A h g a d Med c e a Na a
c ab a e he e e f g b ec ha g he e- C . Ne Y : A e -Ce -C f .
ea ch ce . I a , h e e , g he b ef ( h feedbac
f e e ee ). I h a c e, I a e ha g e ea ch ha Af O Ce e f I e c a S de
ha g e f he ha a e a c ab a , a e a - 2002 I a g a Re . Ab e e: De a e f A h g ,
a ce he e a h g ha e ade g ea e eff ha I ha e U e f Ne Me c .
a d c cha ge a he ha a g b , a ce ,
a d e f age c e . A e ca A h g ca A ca (AAA)
2002 U de a d g Race a d H a Va a : A P b c
3I he e decade he e e e e c ab a e ec . Pe ha Ed ca P g a . P a he Na a Sc e ce F da .
he be e a e he C e Med ca /I d a Hea h Se ce P ec A g , Va.: AAA.
a Ma Fa , Ne Me c , a c a ed b a h g J h 2004a S a e e Ma age a d he Fa f he A e ca
Ada a d C ff d Ba e (Ada a d De ch e 1970). The Ma A h g ca A ca . A g , Va.: AAA. URL:<h ://
Fa c c a d he ec e e a h ed b he Na a T ba .aaa e . g/ e / a_ _ a age.h > (Oc be 7,
C c . Na a hea h e e e a ed b he ed ca ea 2004).
a d Na a ed ca e e e e e ed h gh he ec , 2004b A h g ca A ca Rece e La ge G a
he a be g f d a ada We e ed c e Na a S P ec Race. P e Ad , Ma 4. A g , Va.:
c e. Th gh A g A e ca fe a a ha e d a ed AAA. URL:<h :// .aaa e . g/ e / _ fg a _ ace.h >
he ec , Na a e e a a c a a d had e a (Oc be 7, 2004).
c ce .
Ba e -C a e , Be h
4K ch' a ach c ab a h ga a- 2004 Sa ad a M g a S he Ca f a: Redef gE
b ffe g h e ce , ch a g a g. Th ha e ed He a Le a . Ga e e: U e P e fF da.
c ac h b h he eade a d e
be f he c e
a ga a de a e e
e e e . Hg c - Ba e , Ja e , a d Da e a Sa a ge A a a c
a ga ffe g he e a d , a . He b g .d. L ca S b ec : Ref gee a d D e Ed ca he
c eade e c a e a d c fe e ce a ca G ea e Ha f d A ea. U de e e .
e e h a e ad f he e a d c b . K ch ha
f d ha he cce f ga a a e c ed f ca Ba e , Ja e , a d Da e a Sa a ge A a a c, h e ea ch
e de a he ha e e e a e f a a ga a ; a a ce f Ma a Ca a , Ka e a Ye e e e a, Na P , a d
he a e de e b ea c ac e a d d a ce he e e f ca Sa R d g e
e be . 2004 "La Acce ": Ref gee C e Neg a e he
Ha f d B de a d . T be c ded a e f he Ne
5C ab a e ea h a d PAR de ha e a bec e I g a U ba Ne E g a d W h , ed b he
a f ed ca a e ea ch. F e a e, Ma e e J. Be g a d Jea Ce e f he S d f Race a d E h c A e ca, B
J. Sche (2004) e he e f h a c a ac U e , P de ce, R.I., A 16.
e ea ch he Ha f d, C ec c , b c ch . A h -
g f e e gage c ab a e e ea ch g e Be g, Ma e e J., a d Jea J. Sche , ed .
e h b . Ma L Sa ad ' ece e h b , The A f Be g K a , 2004 A ache C d c g Ac Re ea ch h Y h.
h a he U e f Ne Me c 2003-2004, ba ed P ac c g A h g 26(2):2-66.
a ea f c ab a be ee a h g a d he K a f
Pa a a. The e h b ed K a c a ec a a a ec B g , Ph e, B dge P ce, a d A d e M
f a g, a d K a e e e a e a c a ed he a g a 2004 The E e da V e ce f He a C a g Y g W e
e g a e a a e e f ec a b c g a he fa f Wh I ec D g Sa F a c c . H a O ga a 63:253-
2002 (A f O Ce e 2002). O he e a e f e c - 264.
ab a , a c a c c h each, a e d c ed
a a e ec f h a e . B , J h B. I , a d Pa A. R b
2004 The C d f A chae g ca D c e Na aga e
6A he c ec (Jac b , Th a , a d La g 1997) a - C . I C -C a C ab a : Na e Pe e a d
c a e a e ce a a h a d c e a he c A chae g he N hea e U ed S a e . J da E. Ke be ,
f h d-ge de T -S e (f e abe ed be dache). I ed. L c : U e f Neb a a P e . I e .
d ca e ha c a a h g ha e a bee c ab a -
g h Na e A e ca f a be f ea a d ha e bee B h, Ge ge W., P e de
g edef e ca eg e , e a e e ec e , a d 2004 S a e f he U Add e . U ed S a e Ca ,
a c a e h he b h g. A a chae g , c ab a- Wa h g , D.C., Ja a 20. URL:<h :// . h eh e.
ha f e bee f e ed h gh he c ea g be f Na e g / e / e ea e /2004/0 1/200401 20-7. h > (Oc be 7,
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