Objects and Objections of EthnographyThe essays in this volume, in all their astonishing richness and diversity, focus on the question of the "other." Brimming with whole flotillas of new ideas, they delineate subtle and various ways in which that question can be made the basis of an ethnographic project. In them, the author responds to the invitations extended by a specific location rather than pursuing a codified method. And they examine many different socialities in many different locations--among them the Cornell University campus in the late seventies, the former Mus e de l'Homme and the Quai Branly Museum in Paris, the Regrettably, these days anthropologists have a tendency to look for similarities rather than differences, to show how one phenomenon is "just like" another. This book stands determinedly against this trend, both in its ethnographic examinations and in how it takes up such figures as Kant, Derrida, Bataille, Simmel, and Leiris so as to illuminate not only the objects of ethnography but also differences among the perspectives This book will put the methods and objects of anthropology in an entirely new light. In addition, it will speak to the concerns of historians, political scientists, and scholars of area studies, literature, and art. |
Contents
I | 21 |
3 | 30 |
4 | 44 |
Atjeh 1901 | 76 |
The Hypnotist | 97 |
6 | 105 |
Tout autre est tout autre | 116 |
Acknowledgments | 155 |