{"title":"A Mutual Parody of Meaning in Circus Clown and Ethnographic Discourse","authors":"K. Little","doi":"10.7202/1084476ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1084476ar","url":null,"abstract":"This article traces some of the conversations between a European circus clown named Pipo and myself in order to draw out the characteristics of intertextuality that I argue are key features of the ethnographic endeavour. Central to our conversations was a concern with our mutual productions of identity as clown artist and ethnographer. I explore how ambiguous, parodic, and subversive such productions can be. Along the way Pipo taught me a few good jokes and something of how to tell them and I try them out on modernist anthropology in an effort to make this “body” of knowledge/power parodic.","PeriodicalId":84519,"journal":{"name":"Culture (Canadian Ethnology Society)","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86877607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sense and Non-Sense in Contemporary Ethno/Graphic Practice and Theory","authors":"D. Howes","doi":"10.7202/1084475ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1084475ar","url":null,"abstract":"This essay presents an overview and critique of the “textual revolution” in anthropological theory and practice. The author argues that this revolution, which commenced with Geertz′s suggestion that cultures be treated “as texts” and culminated in Writing Culture, has precipitated a flight from theory to style. It is further argued that anthropologists should abandon “the model of the text” and re-learn how to use their senses. Various examples are given of how a more in-depth understanding of cultures can be achieved by sensing them than reading/writing them.","PeriodicalId":84519,"journal":{"name":"Culture (Canadian Ethnology Society)","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82143182","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cultural Truth and Ethnographic Consequences","authors":"M. Levin","doi":"10.7202/1084477ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1084477ar","url":null,"abstract":"Fieldwork in an increasingly literate world presents new dilemmas for anthropologists. The information recorded in ethnographies may have consequences in the cultures and for the people with whom the ethnographer has worked. The political system of the peoples′ nation may be able to use ethnographic information and the politics of the local community can be affected by the permanent record an ethnography creates. This paper uses an old baseball story as a metaphor for the decisive powers of the ethnographer, and illustrates the issues with four instances calling for decisions from fieldwork in southeastern Nigeria.","PeriodicalId":84519,"journal":{"name":"Culture (Canadian Ethnology Society)","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82770842","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"High in Fiber, Low in Content: Reflections on Postmodern Anthropology","authors":"P. Stoller","doi":"10.7202/1084478ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1084478ar","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is a critical reflection of the important debate on postmodernism in Anthropology. In the paper, the discourse and counterdiscourses on postmodernism are outlined and assessed. In the end the author (1) worries about plethora of obfuscating criticism and the dearth of revelatory ethnography in the postmodern debate and (2) suggests three paths to a future anthropology beyond the postmodern: sensorial anthropology, ethnographic film, and narrative ethnography.","PeriodicalId":84519,"journal":{"name":"Culture (Canadian Ethnology Society)","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73609010","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beyond Modernity′s Meanings: Engaging the Postmodern in Cultural Anthropology","authors":"Rosemary J. Coombe","doi":"10.7202/1084479ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1084479ar","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing upon literature in cultural studies, the author argues that the concept of the postmodern challenges the discipline of cultural anthropology in a number of ways. Interpretive anthropology is a modernist enterprise — one with untenable premises and limitations that are increasingly evident in the condition of postmodernity. Exploring the intersections between culture and power in local contexts, cultural anthropologists engage the postmodern by investigating the cultural politics of everyday life.","PeriodicalId":84519,"journal":{"name":"Culture (Canadian Ethnology Society)","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91375045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Shapes of Modernity: On the Philosophical Roots of Anthropological Doctrines","authors":"J. Leavitt","doi":"10.7202/1084472ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1084472ar","url":null,"abstract":"While more and more anthropologists are conducting research on and/or in contemporary Western societies, little attempt has been made to characterize modern Western culture as such. The philosophies of Descartes and Leibniz, in particular, may be read as articulating ways of organizing experience that are typical of modernity. These “thought-forms” are still powerful both in everyday experience and in the social sciences, including anthropology. An example is drawn from the anthropology of the emotions; an alternative is suggested based on the heterodox philosophy of Spinoza.","PeriodicalId":84519,"journal":{"name":"Culture (Canadian Ethnology Society)","volume":"07 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83355024","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Is There Authoritative Voice in Ewok Talk?: On Postmodernism, Fieldwork, and the Recovery of Unintended Meanings","authors":"Marcia S. Calkowski","doi":"10.7202/1084474ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1084474ar","url":null,"abstract":"Postmodernism emphasizes perspectivism, celebrates indeterminacy, and abjures the authoritative voice. Understanding is to be gained dialogically and achieved through participation and performance, activities often synonymous with anthropological fieldwork. However, fieldwork entails the recovery of unintended as well as intended meanings which are, in turn, invariably situated in a hermeneutical hierarchy. This paper points up the inevitability of constructing such a hierarchy by addressing the problem of voice and meaning in the electronically mediated communication that is Ewok speech. Ewoks are fantasy creatures whose heroic manoeuvres figure significantly in the film Return of the Jedi and who are accidental speakers of Tibetan.","PeriodicalId":84519,"journal":{"name":"Culture (Canadian Ethnology Society)","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82753836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Anthropology, Feminism and the Postmodern Context","authors":"Janice Boddy","doi":"10.7202/1084480ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1084480ar","url":null,"abstract":"In a recent article, Marylin Strathern (1987) suggested that feminism and anthropology exist in fundamental tension, stemming from the different ways they constitute their subject matter as “other,” and from their divergent conceptualizations of experience. Whereas anthropology attempts, if incompletely, to bridge the gap between self and other, the authority of feminism resides in the maintenance of that gap – here, between women and men. However I argue that not all feminist writing can be seen in this light. In the postmodern situation feminism and anthropology clearly intersect, for both employ forms of deconstructive practice to expose and possibly critique the contexts in which “others” (including the writers themselves) are embedded.","PeriodicalId":84519,"journal":{"name":"Culture (Canadian Ethnology Society)","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85392952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"L’activation des mécanismes endogènes\u0000d’auto-guérison dans les traitements\u0000rituels des Angbandi","authors":"G. Bibeau","doi":"10.7202/1084157ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1084157ar","url":null,"abstract":"Ce texte examine comment les mécanismes de production\u0000de la guérison fonctionnent dans le cas des thérapies\u0000rituelles et propose d’expliquer la guérison par l’activation\u0000intentionnelle de la part du guérisseur de certains mécanismes\u0000endogènes d’auto-guérison présents chez le malade.\u0000L’auteur commence par situer sa réflexion théorique sur\u0000l’efficacité de telles thérapies dans le contexte des études\u0000neurobiologiques et endocrinologiques qui mettent en\u0000relation les situations sociales, les états psychologiques et\u0000les modifications physiologiques. Le fonctionnement même\u0000de l’efficacité symbolique est ensuite discuté sur le plan\u0000concret, quoique général, par rapport à trois caractéristiques\u0000de la culture des Angbandi : la prévalence chez eux\u0000d’une pensée iconique et métaphorique, la façon dont ils\u0000somatisent et psychologisent leurs affects, et enfin la distinction\u0000qu’ils opèrent entre les différents niveaux de\u0000causes. De façon plus précise, le texte démontre finalement\u0000comment les rituels thérapeutiques se décomposent en\u0000modalités thérapeutiques, chacune de ces modalités venant\u0000activer, sur les plans biologique, psychologique et sociologique,\u0000certains mécanismes d’auto-guérison mis en oeuvre\u0000par la personne avant même l’intervention du guérisseur.","PeriodicalId":84519,"journal":{"name":"Culture (Canadian Ethnology Society)","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87351445","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}