Reading: Clifford, "Introduction: Partial Truths" from Writing Culture
Pratt, "Fieldwork in Common Places" from Writing Culture
Abu-Lughod, "Introduction," Writing Women's Worlds

1. Based on these readings, what do you consider ethnography is or should be? What do anthropologists need to consider in writing ethnography? What role do subjectivity or literary production play in ethnography? What are the advantages and disadvantages to the textual strategies discussed in these readings?

2. In a frequently-cited passage from Clifford's introduction to Writing Culture, he writes, "If 'culture' is not an object to be described, neither is it a unified corpus of symbols and meanings that can be definitively interpreted. Culture is contested, temporal, and emergent. Representation and explanation -- both by insiders and outsiders -- is implicated in this emergence" (19). What does he mean by this? Do you agree with his claim that anthropologists need to develop "rigorous partiality" (25)? What would this "rigorous partiality" look like?

3. According to Pratt, why has personal narrative been both a conventional and a problematic feature of anthropological writing? What does exploring personal narrative suggest about the role of objectivity and subjectivity in ethnographic research and writing?

4. What does Abu-Lughod mean by "writing against culture" and why does she seek to do this? How does focusing on narrative help her to combat the generalizations inherent in the concept of culture that she finds problematic?

 

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