Autobiography, Anthropology

In the 1980s, the theme for a future ASA conference had to be personally proposed by a potential organiser at the conference two years earlier. The proposer had to personally convince attending participants, who decided by a visible vote of hands. This recollection on the theme ’‘Anthropology and Autobiography’’ traces the successful 1987 vote for the 1989 conference proposed by myself with Helen Callaway. Before the vote, there were many negative comments claiming our proposal was mere ‘navel -gazing’ and a ‘feminist plot’. Inspired by the problematisation of the use of ‘I’ in Clifford and Marcus’ ‘Writing Culture’, we wanted further confrontation of the gender, age and personality of the participant observer. This article includes references to Malinowski’s controversial Diary and the proposers’ struggles with earlier publishers. Comments are made about the photographs in the ensuing volume. Bizarrely, it is now taken for granted that the specificity of the fieldworker is crucial when it comes to the choice of subject and rapport with key individuals in the field.