Anthropology as Cultural Critique

Marcus, George E.; Fischer, Michael M. J.; 王, 銘銘; 蓝, 达居

doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226229539.001.0001

Cited by 664 publications

(168 citation statements)

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“…Anthropologists themselves have from time to time come under heavy criticism for their lack of a sufficiently historical approach. For example, during anthropology's period of post-modern critical reflection in the 1980s, Marcus and Fischer (1986) questioned the tendency of anthropologists to focus on an ahistorical or exotic 'other' and instead argued for work on the ideas and institutions of anthropologists' own contexts, emphasizing the need to study power and history locally and globally. 3.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

International development and the ‘perpetual present’: Anthropological approaches to the re-historicization of policy

Lewis

2009

Eur J Dev Res

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Development agencies tend to focus more strongly on the promised delivery of change in the future than they do on analysing the historical contexts and origins of development ideas and practices. The histories of development ideas and agencies, as well as those of the people who work within them, are therefore important topics for anthropological attention. This paper sets out arguments for an anthropological approach that contributes a renewed sense of history to development policy and practice. There are two dimensions to this approach. The first is a need to place more stronger emphasis on the historical and political factors that help construct contexts in which development interventions occur. The second is to adopt a longer frame of historical reference in relation to development ideas, concepts and practices themselves, so that prevailing tendencies that focus attention predominantly on the present and the future can be challenged and counterbalanced. In order to illustrate these arguments, the paper explores issues in the history of ideas about non-governmental actors in development, and in the life histories of some of the individuals involved. Such an approach can be added to several other renewed forms of anthropological engagement that are helping move the anthropology of development away from an earlier impasse of ‘theoretical’ versus ‘applied’ tensions. A key role for a renewed and relevant anthropological engagement with development is one that brings a historical perspective on rapidly shifting fads and fashions that serve to over-simplify or erase the past to construct a ‘perpetual present’.Les agences de développement ont tendance à se concentrer sur le changement potentiel futur plutôt que d'analyser les contextes historiques et les origines des idées et des pratiques en matière de développement. L'historique des idées et des agences de développement, ainsi que celui des individus travaillant au sein de ces dernières, sont donc un objet important d'attention de la part des anthropologues. Cet article vise à établir les paramètres d'une approche anthropologique qui contribuerait à renouveler le sens de l'histoire des politiques et pratiques en matière de développement. Il y a deux dimensions à cette approche. La première correspond à un besoin de mieux mettre en valeur les facteurs historiques et politiques qui contribuent à l'émergence de contextes spécifiques donnant lieu à des interventions particulières. La deuxième consiste à adopter une vision historique plus longue par rapport aux idées, concepts, et pratique de développement, afin de contrer les tendances actuelles qui se concentrent principalement sur le présent et le futur. Afin d'illustrer ces arguments, cet article explore l'historique d'idées concernant les acteurs non gouvernementaux dans le développement, en se focalisant en particulier sur les histoires de vie d'individus spécifiques. Une telle approche fait partie d'une nouvelle panoplie d'outils conceptuels qui peuvent aider l'anthropologie du développement à transcender l'impa...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

International development and the ‘perpetual present’: Anthropological approaches to the re-historicization of policy

Lewis

2009

Eur J Dev Res

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“…Multi-sited ethnography of a discursive theme of comparison ought to be a companion of a globally engaged social science (cf. Marcus and Fischer 1986). Here we have to move beyond systemic comparisons and attend to complexities that lie in between and beyond.…”

Section: A Comparative Global Engagementmentioning

confidence: 93%

Creative Social Research: Rethinking Theories and Methods and the Calling of an Ontological Epistemology of Participation

Giri

2007

Dialect Anthropol

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Modern social research, as we know it now, emerged as a part of rise of modern social sciences in the context of transition to modernity. As an enterprise of modernity social research reflected some of the foundational assumptions of modernity. For example, the project of sociology was closely tied to the project of nation-state, embodying in its epistemology methodological nationalism. Social research also proceeded within the bounded logic of disciplines. But all these assumptions of modernity as well as their social manifestations have been subjected to fundamental criticisms and interrogations in the last decades. Both anti-systematic socio-cultural movements and critical discursive movements and new movements of ideas have challenged the modernist paradigms of pathology and normality as well as distinction between ontology and epistemology. In the background of critiques of modernity, social movements and processes of transformations the present essay submits some proposals for a creative and critical social research. It explores ways of moving beyond mere denunciations and critiques and embodying transformational theories and methods which would facilitate creative and critical research. The essay also calls for a new vocation of social research by pleading for a simultaneous engagement in activism and creative understanding, fieldwork and philosophical reflections, ontological self-cultivation and epistemic labour of learning.

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“…Since the late 1970s, anthropologists have examined ethnography as a form of textual production (Marcus and Cushman 1982;Clifford and Marcus 1986;Geertz 1988;Marcus and Fischer 1986) and as a politicised dialogue between ethnographer and 'other' (Crapanzano 1980;Dumont 1978;George 1995;Rabinow 1977). This literature suggests that ethnography is what you write and how you write it (Clifford 1986;Geertz 1973) but not a record of social realities (Marcus and Fischer 1986).…”

Section: Ethnographic Socialitymentioning

confidence: 96%

Holding the Story Forever: The Aesthetics of Ethnographic Labour

West¹

2005

Anthropological Forum

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Anthropology as Cultural Critique

Cited by 664 publications

References 0 publications

International development and the ‘perpetual present’: Anthropological approaches to the re-historicization of policy

International development and the ‘perpetual present’: Anthropological approaches to the re-historicization of policy

Creative Social Research: Rethinking Theories and Methods and the Calling of an Ontological Epistemology of Participation

Holding the Story Forever: The Aesthetics of Ethnographic Labour

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