Chapter 15: The Contemporary Anthropological Moment

© 2014 Mark Moberg

• Since the postmodern turn in the 1980s, many anthropologists have grown skeptical of claims of objectivity in understanding culture. This profound skepticism toward the claims of science figured heavily in the work of the European (mostly French) philosophers and social theorists that influenced postmodern anthropologists. Their arguments were also anticipated in the work of Clifford Geertz, who argued in

Works and Lives

that anthropological texts are constructed in ways that convey the author’s ethnographic authority and objectivity, notwithstanding the ethnographers ’ biases and partial knowledge of the cultures they set out to study. • Many postmodern social theorists have worked within the field of

hermeneutics

, the branch of philosophy that concerns itself with the interpretation of meaning. Rejecting the Enlightenment notion that reason and objectivity can guide our understanding of the world, German philosopher Martin Heidegger claimed that the individual’s knowledge of the world is

always

conditioned by his or her culture, identity and social position. Jacques Derrida, a follower of Heidegger, claimed that all cultures construct worlds of meaning that are impenetrable to outsiders. When anthropologists approach culture from an “ objective, ” science-based tradition, they force native meanings into essentially foreign conceptual categories that cannot capture their original intent.

© 2014 Mark Moberg

• Few postmodern philosophers have had as great an influence in anthropology as Michel Foucault, whose reformulation of the concept of power has had widespread influence among contemporary ethnographers. Unlike Marx, who conceived of power as differential control of economic resources and the coercive force wielded by the state, Foucault argued that power is also exercised through discourses of knowledge, specifically in terms of claims to “ truth.

” In contemporary society, this takes the form of a command of the language of science, which is deployed by corporations, institutions, and bureaucracies to control those who lack a command of the language of science or the requisite professional credentials. In

Madness and Civilization

, Foucault showed how asylums, hospitals, prisons, and other “ total “ expert ” ” institutions control and subjugate their residents through their ability to diagnose, “ treat, ” and “ rehabilitate ” those under their control, while punishing residents who resist the demands of bureaucracy. Because western institutions have typically been controlled by white males, their ability to deploy the language of science has tended to disempower minorities, women, and colonized people. In short, it is power, wealth, and privileged status, rather than “ evidence, ” that determines what is “ true.

” When carried into anthropology, these arguments are reflected in ethnographer Stephen Tyler’s claim that “ reason is simply the means by which we justify the lies we tell… ” © 2014 Mark Moberg

• There is no single “ postmodern ” school in anthropology, although it would be safe to say that all anthropologists who identify with this approach share a common skepticism toward claims of scientific objectivity. Most postmodernists would also agree that ethnographic accounts must evidence greater concern with how they represent the “ Other, ” the colonized people and minorities traditionally studied by anthropologists. As a start toward more sensitive rendering of anthropology’s traditional subjects, postmodern ethnographers emphatically reject any “ totalizing discourse ” or metanarrative that frames cultural practices in ways that are inconsistent with local knowledge. This means that every theoretical perspective adopted by past anthropologists, whether functionalism, cultural ecology, Marxism, French structuralism, or Freudian psychological anthropology, are seen as manifestations of privileged, western, scientific claims to knowledge.

© 2014 Mark Moberg

• A second priority of many postmodern anthropologists has been to reject the rhetorical strategies of past ethnographers who fashioned their writing to make them appear as objective observers. Because anthropologists cannot attain a complete understanding of a culture and every one of its members, they should avoid the generalizing tendencies of the past. Lila Abu-Lughod claims that ethnography should be about “ telling stories, ” the anthropologist has personally seen or heard. Similarly, postmodernists endorse a “ reflexive ” relating only those events that anthropology, foregrounding the experience and perspectives of the fieldworker so that the reader knows which biases he or she may encounter when reading the ethnographic account.

• Finally, postmodernists feel the need to confront the relationship between their discipline and colonial hierarchies of power. Different anthropologists have addressed this issue in different ways; indeed, this may be among the most contentious issue among postmodernists. If the anthropologist originates from a traditionally colonizing society (e.g. the US or UK), and they make the people of a formerly colonized society their “ subjects, ” are they recreating a colonial hierarchy? For such anthropologists, traditional ethnography is so fraught with colonialist implications that they reject it altogether. Others, such as Nancy Scheper-Hughes, contend that such beliefs prevent anthropologists from the important work of bearing witness to the oppression and social suffering that persist in such places.

© 2014 Mark Moberg

• The postmodern turn in anthropology has not been without its numerous critics, many of whom regard postmodern assumptions and “ solutions ” to the “ crisis of representation ” as ultimately nihilistic and damaging to anthropology’s reputation within the social sciences. • Roy D’Andrade offers a withering criticism of anthropologists who resist generalization in favor of process? “ telling stories.

” This tactic, he says, deceptively advances an argument and a generalization about a culture while denying that that is its purpose. Why, he asks, would we choose to tell one story in place of another if we did not feel that the anecdote reflects a broader social • Critics have also argued that postmodern assertions about the subjectivity of all knowledge are self-refuting: if all claims to knowledge are culturally constructed and science is but one of many discourses of knowledge, then why should we accept postmodernists’ claims as valid? Acknowledging that the anthropologist can attain only a partial knowledge of a culture, Marvin Harris argued that “ science is less skeptical than postmodernism only in its refusal to concede that one partial truth is as good as any other. Science…refuses to accept all partial truths as equally truthful.

” © 2014 Mark Moberg

• Marxist theorists David Harvey and Thomas Patterson raise concerns about the disciplinary and diversionary politics arising from what have become very divisive arguments among scholars. Harvey lauds the postmodern concern about representation as its most liberating quality. Yet he also notes that our relationships to the Other are mediated by colonial and capitalist forms of labor control, necessitating the kind of political economic analysis that postmodernists reject as a “ metanarrative.

” Similarly, Patterson faults postmodernism for growing factional divisions among anthropologists, who turn their critical gaze inward toward their colleagues and away from the momentous changes taking place in the global political economy in recent decades.

© 2014 Mark Moberg

• Finally, a number of scholars have pointed to the disturbingly amoral positions adopted by major figures in postmodern philosophy as evidence that when all “ voices ” are accorded equal respect, it necessarily implies that noxious and repressive arguments will also be given their due. Hence, Martin Heidegger, whose arguments were so influential in the field of hermeneutics, joined the Nazi party and oversaw the expulsion of Jewish faculty from his university. His rejection of science and reason led him to embrace “ the inner truth and greatness of Nazism.

” Another influential scholar, Paul De Man, not only broadcast anti-Semitic propaganda for the Nazis, but concealed his wartime past from US immigration authorities and his colleagues at Yale. It was the Italian fascist Benito Mussolini who best expressed why a position of epistemological relativism lends itself to those who embrace oppressive ideologies: “ From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, the modern relativist deduces that everybody is free to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to carry it out with all possible energy.

” © 2014 Mark Moberg

• In sum: postmodernism has raised some serious and important questions about the ways in which anthropologists go about their work. There is no question that it has had a huge impact on anthropological writing and the degree to which anthropologists are concerned about representing those whom they write about. Foucault’s arguments about knowledge also help illuminate the inner workings of bureaucracy and other institutions. Similarly, the concern of many postmodernists, such as Nancy Scheper Hughes, with highlighting social suffering and oppression raises important priorities that were all but impossible to discuss given the former “ objectivist ” approach in anthropology. Yet before we can have a moral impact on the world it is essential to have knowledge about it that is accurate and evidence-based. In this way, perhaps the scientific concerns of the past—with their attention to the careful and honest, if not objective, collection of evidence and the liberating promises of some aspects of postmodernism may find a fruitful merger in contemporary anthropology. © 2014 Mark Moberg