Anthropology Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society Michael Herzfeld I] BLACl<WELL Publishe,·s mmm~ Copyright© UNESCO 2001 This work is grounded in a collective endeavor. First published 2001 The other contributors to the project that generated it are: 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 Marc Abeles, Nurit Bird-David, John Borneman, Blackwell Publishers Inc. Constance Classen, David Coplan, Veena Das, Sara Dickey, 350 Main Street Arturo Escobar, Malden, Massachusetts 02148 Nestor Garcia Canclini, Don Handelman, USA Ulf Hannerz, Vaclav Hubinger, Kay Milton, Juan Ossio, Blackwell Publishers Ltd Michael Roberts, 108 Cowley Road Don Robotham, David Scott, Oxford OX4 1JF and Nicholas Thomas. UK Their original formulations may be found in UNESCO's All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or International Social Science Journal, issues 153 (September 1997) transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, and 154 (December 1997). recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Herzfeld, Michael, 1947- Anthropology : theoretical practice in culture and society / Michael Herzfeld p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 0-631-20658-2 (alk. paper)-ISBN 0-631-20659-0 (pb. : alk. paper) 1. Ethnology-Philosophy. 2. Ethnology-Methodology. I. Title GN345.H47 2001 301-dc21 00-057915 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. GN345 .H47 2001 Herzfeld, Michael, 1947- Anthropology : theoretical practice in culture and society 1 Typeset in 10 / 2 on 12 pt Sabon by Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall This book is printed on acid-free paper. xvi PREFACE for me was a very new kind of authorship: Marc Abeles, Nurit Bird-David, John 1 Borneman, Constance Classen, David Coplan, Veena Das, Sara Dickey, Arturo Escobar, Nestor Garda Canclini, Don Handelman, Ulf Hannerz, Vaclav Hub­ inger, Kay Milton, Juan Ossio, Michael Roberts, Don Robotham, David Scott, and Nicholas Thomas. This was an adventure that their good-natured tolerance Orientations: Anthropology as a and intellectual forthrightness made both possible and enjoyable. Some of them Practice of Theory continued to argue and to offer often provocative and always helpful sugges­ tions almost up to the final completion of the manuscript; I could not have asked for better stimulation. I strongly urge readers to consult these colleagues' orig­ inal essays, published in issue 153 (September 1997) and 154 (December 1997) of International Social Science Journal, in order to appreciate more directly the remarkable synergy involved in the overall production of the ideas represented here. In the preparation of the manuscript, I relied heavily on the tactful effi­ ciency and intellectual engagement of Yu-son Jung, and I am also deeply Anthropology: A critique of common sense indebted to Thomas Malaby and Saipin Suputtamongkol for their editorial and substantive input. At UNESCO, Nadia Auriat and David Makinson, ably Social and cultural anthropology is "the study of common sense." Yet co­ assisted by Glynis Thomas, were a source of inspiring support during the journal mmon sense is, anthropologically speaking, seriously mis-named: it is neither phase, while at Blackwell Publishers I not only delightedly found myself once common to all cultures, nor is any version of it particularly sensible from again working with my old comrade-in-arms from American Ethnologist days, the perspective of anyone outside its particular cultural context. It is the Jane F. Huber - a special pleasure indeed - but also rapidly came to appreciate socially acceptable rendition of culture, and is thus as variable as are both the professional thoroughness as well as the compassion and friendship of Tony cultural forms and social rules - those twin axes that define the formal objects Grahame and the steady support of Simon Eckley: few authors can have been of anthropological theory. Whether viewed as "self-evidence" (Douglas 1975: the beneficiaries of such a fortunate convergence! 276-318) or as "obviousness," common sense - the everyday understanding of how the world works - turns out to be extraordinarily diverse, maddeningly inconsistent, and highly resistant to skepticism of any kind. It is embedded in both sensory experience and practical politics - powerful realities that constrain and shape access to knowledge. How do we know that human beings have really landed on the moon? We are (usually) convinced of it - but how do we know that our conviction does not rest on some misplaced confidence in the sources of our information? If we have reason to doubt that others are entirely successful in making sense of the world, how do we know - given that we cannot easily step outside our own frame of reference - that we are doing any better? To be sure, this challenge to what we might call scientific and rational credulity was not what the earliest anthropologists (in any professionally rec­ ognizable sense) had in mind. To the contrary, they were convinced of their own­ cultural superiority to the people they studied, and would have reacted with astonishment to any suggestion that science could be studied in the same way as "magic." They did not see that distinction as itself symbolic; they thought it was rational, literal, and real. But their thinking was no less mired in the struc­ tures and circumstances of colonial domination than were those of the colo­ nized peoples they studied, although their angle of perspective was necessarily different - so that it is hardly surprising that they reached different conclusions, whether or not these had any empirical validity. In recognizing this embarrass­ ing ancestry for our field, I want to suggest more than an intellectual exercise ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY 3 2 ORIENTATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AS A PRACTICE OF THEORY to suggest that Yet the task becomes correspondingly more difficult as the politics and in imagination or atonement for collective past sins. I want centers of effec­ as much - by atten­ worldview under study move closer not only to home but to the anthropology has learned as much - and can therefore teach that lie tion to its mistakes as by the celebration of its achievements. That is, after all, tive power. Anthropology entails the unveiling of intimate practices behind rhetorical protestations of eternal truth, ranging from "that's always what we urge students of anthropology to do in the field - so much so that the by responses to solecisms and poor judgement can often be more informative than been our custom", in almost every village and tribal society studied the anthropologists of the past, to the evocation of science and logic by every responses to the most carefully crafted interview protocol. The achievements are We should largely matters of factual recording (and even these are often in dispute); but modern political elite (see, e.g., Balshem 1993; Zabusky 1995). the social character of the most abstract theory has begun to be much more not be surprised if those whose authority may be compromised by such re­ do- not take too kindly to becoming the subjects of anthropologi apparent to us, and, paradoxically, this awareness of entailment has allowed us velations to be much more rigorously comparative than ever before - to see our own cal research. Calling themselves modern, they have claimed above all to worldview, with anthropology its instrument and its expression, in the same have achieved a rationality capable of transcending cultural boundaries (see terms as we view those distant others on whom we have for so long fixed our Tambiah 1990). They have characterized other societies as pre-modern, and have attributed to these a lack of specialization in domains requiring mental gaze. So why not study science as an ethnographic object? Much recent anthropological work has indeed inspected the claims of modern activity. Thus, the political was held to be inextricably embedded in kinship and of medical anthro­ more generally in the social fabric of such societies. In the same way, art was technology, politics, and science. Notably, the entire field life was sus­ pology (see especially Kleinman 1995) has challenged the claims of a crass not distinguished from craft or from ritual production; economic scientism that - as Nicholas Thomas observes in a somewhat different con­ tained by social reciprocities and belief systems; and science could not emerge as an autonomous field because human beings had not yet found efficient ways text - has failed to keep pace with developments in science itself .. There has as this clearly been an enormous expansion of the discipline's topical range since the of disentangling the practical from the religious ( or the superstitious, expan­ domain was sometimes called, presupposing a besetting incapacity to separate Victorians' preoccupation