Anthropology At The Crossroads:

From The A4ge Of Ethnoglraphy To The Age OfWorld Systems' @f

Richard B. LeeDepartment ofAnthropologyUniversity of Toronto

As we approach· the millenniumn the discipline of anthropology occupies ahiighly contested terrain, a battle-ground on which scientistic, humanistic,political-economic, anld postmodern agendas are puttinlg forth confictingclaimns anid vying for hegemony (Lee 1992).,Onie readinig of anithropology isthat it is a part of the discredited canon conlstructed by dead white males,architects and apologists for capitalismn and imiperialism. But despite thevogue fo'r anthropology-bashing ·in some circles, I believe that quite differenltr·eadigs are possibl: and I would like to present onie here. Anthropology'sbr·ief history as a discipline has beenl marked by both successes and failures.It is commiionplace to say it is a discipline in crisis; but on·e could argue thiatthiis has beenl true of its enltire history. Whiat I would like to do is give you apersonal view of some of its strenigth~s and weaknesses; wher·e the discipliniehas come fromT and where it is goinlg. If I have anything to add to the usualrumninations on this subject it is thiat I feel that anthropology's politics are asmuchi a part of its histo'ry and future as is its bodies of method, theory, anldknowledge. The paper will draw examples from anthropology generally butthe ma7in line of marchi is to use a broad overview of th~e crisis andtranisformnation in anthropology as a point of departure to examine aspects ofSouth· African society in the first post-Apartheid years.

Regarding the disciplinie as a whole mny thesis is this: anthropology isun·dergoing a tranlsformnation that is pregniant with possibilities, but toparaphrase Gramnsci: whenever the old order is dyinlg anid the new struggling

social dynamlics 24. 1 (1998): 34-65

anth~ropnology at the crossroads j 3

to be born~, morbid symptoms may appear. I will argue that the pr·esent stateof anthiropology bears out Gramnsci's epigram.

I will speak about th~e state of anlthropology inl the U.S. aInd Canlada whlereI was tr·ained and whlere I work. I can appreciate that South Afr·ica is mnorewithin the British spher·e of influence but perhlaps South Afri-canl readers willfmnd refreshing an paper that doesni't take as a startinig point Malinowski andRadcliffe-Brown. Of course anthropology as a discipline has becomne globalini scope. The cutting edge is as likely to be foun·d outside the mnetropolis aswithin it, and I will ar·gue that South Africa offers somre of thie mnost tellingillustrations of the major trends in anithropological inquiiry inl thie 1990s.

But first what about those dead white males? Here is how I would attemnptto position anthr·opology with.inr the larger intellectual project of capitalistmodernlity. The complex changes that accompanied thie rise of capitalism asa world system and of modernity, its cultural counterpart, have affected thieentire planet. Together they have literally been a world creator anld worlddestroyer. Anthropology carved out for itself an interesting niche in thiedivisionl of labour of 20th century intellectual life. While anl entire set ofdisciplinies ·- economics, political scienice, sociology anld psychology - sprungup to study anld mnanage ,thie capitalist system in~ the Metropolis,anthropology's role was to be a differenlt onle.

In its simnplest termns, to use a phrase of one of mny mnentor·s, the lateK(athileen, Gough, anlthropology emerged as ai child of imper·ialismn (1968;1993). The imlperitil project nleeded a better understandinlg of the bowilderinlgvariety of human societies in the conlquered lanrds and thiis role anithr-opologyfilled admnirably, classifying, orderinlg, describing, the languages, mraterialcultures, kinship systems, and beli~ef systems; the whole panloply of whlat wenow like to call, somewhat pretentiously, The Othier.

However, anthropology did not fulfil its promise. Inlitially recruited togrease the wheels of imperialismi, in fact, the anthropologists, to their credit,quickly became more a thorni in the side of imnperialism thim a hiandmaidenl.Economists and political scientists, as the social science disciplines with thestrongest organic links to the power elites of thie western estaiblishmnent,purveyed th·e prevailinig wisdom of the day: racial differences were a given,and Social Darwinism provided a thin~ly disguised justification fordispossession anid subjugationl of indigenous peoples. Evenl the mor·eenllightened winig of thie imperial project -- ini dealinlg with the Non-European

36( social d'ynamic·s

raices - put for.ward the self-serving argumenit that since thie West wassuiperior inl all mnatter·s, by getting thie natives to wor·k for low wages andlb>ecomie docile subjects of thie crown, thie imiperiailists wer·e actually doingthiem a favour! As emipirically wrong and as self-ser-ving as we know it to betoday, thiis was the prevailing wisdom.2

But anthropologists, by-and-large, did not buy into it. Anlthropologistswer'e rarely so close to the' centres of power: because threy worked at thegrass r-oots, in a face-to-face r·elationiship withi thec ranik-anid-file and thieireveryday life, thley saw whiat thie mnore or·ganiically-liniked intellectuals of

implerialismn could not see or. denied: the essentia Il umranlity of The Other· anidthe wYisdom1 of alternlative ways of life 'Thus Anthiropologists becamne, if niotantli-imper-ialists, at least advocates for thie downtiroddenl, pleadingB theiri casein thie corridors of power (and uisually bemgi ignored), and generallybecominig whiat I would call part of thle left-wing: of the imnperial projectdur·ing thie period 1900-1960.3

Social science at the tur.n of the 20th century was saturated with racistassumiptions anid theories. Perhaps anithropology's mnost useful contributioni,at least ini North Amnerica, was thie adoptIion of ani anlti-r·acist politicalprograth. This started as a couniter· to the suffocating othinocenitrismi of theday. Laler it would grow into a mnovement that inivolved comnbating racismin iall its forms. Thie most powerful legacy of FranIz Boas, founlder ofanithropology at ColumTbia University, was the doctr·ine of cuiltur·al relativismianid the argumnent that race, laniguage and culture, varied inidepenidently, aspresented in1 his 1911 book of the samne nam~ie. Therie were nio simple cuiltur·esor simple languages; eachi cultuire was valid in its own termi·s; each hiad thiecapacity to mieet the needs of its memnber-s; some perh-aps did this eveni betterthian the cultures of thie West. Boas' method was br·oadly"scientific". He hadbeen trained as a geographier, and taughit hiis stuidenits thie Iimportanlce of`careful data collectioni, informned by testable hypothieses.4 Thie ethinographicmnethod - stuidy at thie grounid-level - became thie hiallmark of aiithropologicalr-esear·ch anid set thlis work apart fromn the numnber-crunchinig of sociologIistsanid the top-down inistitutional analyses of political scientists and econiomists.

At its best, thie anthropology of thie first two thirids of thie twenitieth·century has been acutely aware of the hiistorical con!junictur·e, bearing witnessto the teremendous diversity of culture, thie vast tr'easures of human

experience that lay outside (as well as inside) the orbit of Eulrope; ~wh·at

anthrop~lology at the cr.ossroadjs 37i

Claurde Levi-Str·auss called "the ingeniousnecss, divo>sity anid imagiiinationi ofouir species - qlualities of whichi evidence wouild soon be lost for c\ever"(1968:349).

Ini the 1960Os anid 70s, anithropology depar·tments inl the U.S. led thec fightlagainist the Vietniamr war. The Teachi-In Movciement, whijch led to miass;miobilisation on college and uniiversity campuses, wa·,s founded by thecD)epartmnent of Anthropology at the University of Michigani. Year after yearthie Amrer·ican Anithropological Association at it aninual mneetinigs tirclasslywaged po(ltical battles againist the war, and one of thie key tuirning posails inithle ideological fight ag:ainlst the: legitimnacy of thie wyar was a famouis paper-wriltten by 1Crtic Wolf andl Joe Jorgensen exposing comnplicity of schiolars inlthre dir-ty war ini Thiailanid (1970).

Oni a per·sonal niote, it was this outspokeni aniti-racismn and the openiadvocacy of the cause of humannity thiat drew mie into anthropology ini the1960s. I was strongly drawn to thie possibilities of observinig the wonider ofthe infinite varieties of thie humnan spirit, and thie Kalahari desert of thienB3echuanlaland was about as far foro Wall Street and thie centres of state

power as onie could possibly get (or so I thiought). I was pr·ivileged to workwith the Jul'hoanisi of' the Dobe ar·ca for thiree yearis between 196(3 andl 1969;<anid tried to bear witness to thie richneiss of thecir lumiiting andr gatheringiilifewaiys (Lee 1979, 1993, etc.).

Sinice thien I have watchied thieir rapid inicorporationi into thie [Botswaniastaite anid the regional political econiomry. The Ju/'biounsi as well as thec rest ofuis have lived thrioughi an extraordiniary per·iod of human hi istory H-istor-y hasaccelerated withi uniprecedentecd speed anid the world ii ma~niy ways hasçbecomne a mnuchi more tighitly initegrated space. Whiile I will r·eturn·i to thieJu/l'hoanisi in a momnent, I would like to focus now on7 the imnpact of recent~hiistory oni the disciplinle of anthriopology.

Thiroughout the cenitury, social anld cultuiral anlthropology displayed acertainl cohierenice, but one could discern withini it two divergenlt wings ortenidenlcies that could be conivenltionally labelled the scienolfic and thehumnanistic, following thie lead of C.P. Sniow's famous essay on "Th'le TwoCultuires" (1959). Thie first mnodelled itself after' the natural scienlces anldconsciously sought to build better theory on mor0ie and mnore preciseobservations.s The later's initellectual affmitiies were more particular-istic anldiniterpretative, withi ties to thie historical, liniguistic, anid literary disciplinies

389 social dylnamics

T`he coher·ence camre from the fact thlat botbi wings shar-ed a commion coreof miethod and theory: the world consisted of r-elatively discrete uniit cultures,ea:ch wyith its particular conlstellationi of miater·ial mneans, organiisationlal formnsandit systemus of meanling. Thie miethiod of ethniography - br-oadly definied - wasthc mneanis by which anithropologists mnade sensec of thiese culturec. A secondareca of un~der·staniding was gener·ated by anthropology's initial r-ole ini theintelllectuial division of labour;,antir·opologists tenided to tak<e as thieir subjectmnatter the nion-mnetropol itani, nlon-westerni, nion-industrial anid noni-statesocieties of thie wrorld. Thlis becamie anthriiopology's peculiar· provinice ofsturdy because, as Alfr-ed L. K(roeber· once observed withi his famned senise ofir-ony, nio onie else wouild taike thiemi seriously (I<948). Anthriopologists tookthiemi very ser-iously indeed, pr-oducing detailed m7oniographis on single"cultures". If thie early ethniogr·apher·s couild be faulted, it wourld be f'or· theirtenidency to zer.o in opi thie cultural details at thec expenise of unlder·stanldingthie broader historical and regionial cont~exts ini whiich the uniit cuiltur-eS weresituated. But by approaching thiese uniit cuiltuires from7 a basic stanlce ofrespect an~d even admirationi, anithiropologists worked to valorise thiesecultures and established thleir legitimiacy as mnemibers of thie humnan famnily

Iin th'e 1980s anid 90s a sea change hias overtakeni the disciplinie anid hasthriown inito quiestioni thiese commiion uinderstandings. Whiile the spectre ofpostmoder·nismn haunts thie academny, postmodernisim is onily onle part of thiesca-chanige. Less hieralded bîut of equal imipor·t has been the move to politicalecoinomy initiated by Er·ic Wolf's imp~ortanit book.Eulropec andl the Peopleswitihout H-istory (1982).

Whiile r-etaining anthiropology s basic attitude of respect for non-westerncultures, Wolf's book and the school thiat has grown up around hiis approach'challenige the nlotioni thiat thle subject mnatter of anithropology is thie discr~eteunit-cultures of thle world. Political economiy undermninies thie assumlptioni oft-he integrity of unit cultures; ini its place Wolf and othiers seeinterconniectednes's as the watchword: thiey see the imnpact of tributaryformnationls, mercantilismn, and imnperialism on the world's cultures as muchlearlier and mnuch mnore profound than has been ackniowledged. Whiereas anolder genierationi of anithropologists built thieir knowledge of thie"othier"> ondetailed ethnographies of socipties assumned to be more or less autonomous,thie work of thie political economnists tended to portray these sam·ie societies asparticipan·ts in comnplex regional and initernationial economiic anld social

anthrlopology at the cros.sroads 39'

systemns anid power blocs.R In a rapidly emerginig world order whiere all workf'or wages anld w'atchi the same TV programs, who can be considered ioni-inidustrial or nion-state?

Political economy hias mnade imnportanit conitributionis to thecanlthropological study of society anid is inidispenrsable in comning to grips withthe iapidly globalizinig wor·ld of thle present. But it has led to somne excessesanid distortions. lin assessinig thie imnpact ofEuror~pe anld thel Peop~le witihoutrH-istory,, Marshlall Sahliniis has recentlly written:

E.ric Wall is compelcled to arrgue thatl attention muiist be paid to (coloniised and<"lc·periphraf'" peÇopice)· tht they are mr fanct histor.ical b>eings, somnchody mnore thani'victims andli< silenit witnecsses' of their own sul>igaiion> Wolf was miovedl to say so

becau~se ini thc heandicr da;ys of Wrild System theoriy it had< seemecd thiat these was~niothmig left lin aniniopology to doa but thie g]lobal ethinogr·aphiy of capitabismi . Yetwhiy is it that~ ini WollPs ma;gisterial book thec sameii kindr of thing han]ppens? One<scaiches herie ini vaini foi a sustaniedt anailysis of how local peopics attempt to oiganiis·cw·hat is aff~licting themin thiIrcir own cultural termis Wolf inivites uis to see theMuindurutcu and thec Meo as histor·ic agentls, but whiat he actuailly shiows is hiow thecy'were diawn into thie larger systemr to suffer its imnpact and becomie av agenits'

(19)94.414-15, Sahhnris' emiph~asis).

On Kalahari Revisionism

Onie southierni Africani examnple drawni fr·omn my own wor-k will illustrate whatis at issue. In thie K(alahari I had documnented thie huntinig and gathierinig wayof life of thie Dobe Ju/'hoanisi, a people whio, though by iva mieans isolated,lived largely inidependently oni their wild food resources inito thie 1960Os(1979). E. Wilmisen (1989) disagreed withi thiis view and pult forwar-d thieargumnent thiat their status as hiunter-gathierers was an illusion. Instead heportrayed themn as dlevolved pastoralists, long domninated pre-colonially byregional African centries of power. The impact of mierchiant capital, heargued, was early anid devastating, fuirthier transforininig the lu/l'hoansi, whiohiaving lost their cattle becamne hunter-gathierers only in th·e 1890s. Thisrevisionist view struck a chord in th·e emerginig postmodern initellectualclimiate, and became inifluential, despite hlaving little emnpirIcal evidenlce tosuipport it and strong evidence against it." Recent archaeological anld archivalresearchi has tended to support the Jul hoansi s strongly articulated senise ofthieir own pre-coloniial autonomny (Lee 1997a, Smirth & Lee 1997, Guenthier1993, 1996; Sadr 1997).

40l social dy~namics

IF r·evisionist views rest oni such dubious evidenice ini wh~at lies thieiraittr-action to a generaitioni of schiolars? The emnergence of r·evisioniist views ofcculltues like the Jui/'hoanisi nieeds to be unlderstood against thie backgrounid ofthec timeis. It is not a coincidenice thiat at the very miomnent thiat this view ofcuilture was comingnl to prominiience, the traditionial suibject mratter of

ntriiliopology - peoples like thie Ju/'hoansi - were disappearing withl thiespeedl of lighit into the farms, fields, and factor·ies of thie New World Order,wYhile the numerically larger and alreaidy mnore integrated peoples like theIkcmba, thie K(ikuyul, thie Miniankabîau, were rapidly forging national (ratherthaon tl ibal) idlentities anid becomiing economiic player·s withini their r·espectivewalioni-states. Giiveni the rapidity of thecse changes anid the apparenlttrmniilpresence of thie World Systemn it is iar·d to imnagine thie possibility ofnotioniomouis socIetIes.

Accomnpanyinig these developmentls has beeni the impact of the

po!stmrodern tur.n onl thie broad front of thie social scienlces. Postmiodernjism isniot a uniitary phenomenoni. It is an amnalgami of Frenchi post-structuralism anid

conuistructioni, literary cri·ticismn, conitinenltal phiilosophies like

pheniomienology and a lot of hiome-grown Amnericani midd;e-class inltellectuial

anigst (JIimesonl 1984; Dews 1987; Palmler 1990).Thie foundingE chiarter of anlthrop~ological postmloderniismn s Foucault's

radically sceptical view thiat there is no0 truth, onlly regimnes of truth andlpower, and that al) scholarshiip (inlcluding anthiropological schiolarship) ispowYerfuilly shiaped by the culturlal constr-uctions of thec observer ('1976a).Thuis ethniogr·aphiic wr·itinig hias mnore ini comm~-on withi the hiistor-ical novel andothier works of fictionl thian it hias withi a scientlific treatise (Sperber 1985,Wagner 1981). Kalahiari revisionism for· example ar·gues thiat the Ju/'hioansiwere portrayed as hunlter-gathierers, nlot becausçe they wecre such, but becausethiis portrayal served somne ideological agenda.

A mor·e mnoderate version of postmnodernisml· can be discerned in theinfluenitial argum·ient fromn phenomenology that knowledge is sociallyconstructed (Berger 1980). Thie social constructivists argue thait knowledge:is shaped by ideological forces affectinig the observer: anl important idea.Thie constructivists enjojin us critically to reflect onl the writer as author andthie social context inl whiich s/he writes. They also acknlowledge thatethnographies ar·e nlarratives an·d this quality affects the way ethniographicwriting is recei·:ed. All of these are commendab>le. But constructivism hias a

antlhropolog~y at the croissroadls 41

downside: thec tendency to shiift thie locus of iniquiry from the observed to thieobserver and her/his biases and inifluences. The social reality beinig portr-ayedbecomes seconidary, thus obviating thie nieed to evaluate the truth claimisbeing: put forwar·d (Lee inl press b).

If you accept either thle strong or thie weaik foirm of this general argumnent,the task of ethniographiy becomes imm~easurably mnore problemnatic; truth is atbest p'art~ial, flawed, obscur·ed, and above all relative.lo This argumnent hlasradical implications for miethodology. The productioni of kniowledge hias leitthec realmn of emipirical inivestigationl anld analytical mnethiods of the past canno longer be relied upon. Boas' method lies in ruinis, and thie idea that whiatw~e are doinig is science becomes unifashionable, if not heretIcal.

Muich of the curr·ent popuilarity of postmoderniismi in miy view cani betraced to two sources: first, thie historical conjunictuire· the appear-ance anid

spread of a global hiomrogenising capitalist cultuire thlat Iimposed sami-eness onidlifference (H-arvey 1985) and, seconid, ai major· ideological offenlsive by i ightwing intallectuials appealinig to thec disillusionied anid featurinig critiques of'Mar·xism·i andt thie faiilur~es of thie Soviet system. In its extremie formi it has ledto granidiose talk aboutl thie triumlphi of capitalismi · and "th~e enid of H-istory"(Fulkuiyamna andi otheti s; see Ocws 198)7).'

Political Economy and PostmodemnismNow we come to an intlerestinig paradox. The political economiic schiool ofthe followers of Erici Wolf expresses a total lack of sympathiy for-postmiodernism, and thec pages of thec journials at e filled withi debatles betwceenthie two (e.g. Polier- and Roseberry 19953). Yet ther~e is ani interestingbconivergenlce between· thie polit-ical economiists anid postmnodernists. For verydifferent~ reasons, both argue thie extraor-diniary pr·oposition thiat noni-westernip>eople are not what they aippear to be; bothl put inito question thie assumirptionithiat anthr-opology whatever it may be, studies the "Othier">.

The political economists argue that the so-called "natives" are to allinitents like Euroamericans, because relationls of domninationi anld/or merchantcapital have spanlned the globe anid therefore tributary or mer·canitilist or·capitalist relationls of' production have tranisformned the "other" into peoplelike ourselves, as parts of larger systemrs with hierarchies, comnmodities,exploitation and other inlequities. Postmnoder-nists take the view that becauiseanithiropologists (like everyonie else) are prisoniers of thieir ownl ideology, as a

42 social dyn7amics

conisequience they can see in the "Other" onlly a? flawed perception ofthemnselves. Thus inl either scenario, the "othier" is declaired a nton-category.

Political economiists anld postmnodernists mnay mnake strange bedfellows,but if their shared position mierits serious conlsideration (1 thiink it does) thienyet another major tenet of anlthropology from Franz Boas forwitrd - thatanthiropology is thie study of difference - b>ecomes unitenable. Or if"difference" is to be preserved as anl anthropological problematic, thlena7nthropology becomnes the study of difference mnutuially constructed bypowerfuil masters; anld power·less subalterns withini a sinigle world-system, inSahilins' termns "a global ethnography of capitalism."

Looking at contemporary scholarship it seemns at timnes that there is anluns~cemnly scramble to show just hlow shallow, conitrived or spurious this orthat culture's claims to authenticity really are. It seemns as if nio one will gobroke appealing to thie cynicismn and disillusioinmenit of initellectuals ini theer·a of lat-e capitalism (Sloterdijk 1987).

The tr·agedy of this deeply flawed positioni, is thiat it starts fromn verylegitimnate premises. Let mne illustrate the poinit with a few examples.

In Th~e Invention of Tradition (1983) the Marxist hiistorians Eric1-lobsba'wmn and Teren-ce Ranger shiow hiow allegedlly hiallowed customnshanided :lown fromn the past are jin fact the product of recent hiistory. In hiismiethiod of Deconstruiction, Jacquies Derrida, who also claims affinities toMarx, has arguied that hiistory is akin to a literary text and like all texts isiltimrately unkniowable (1976i, 1978). It seemns a shiort step to transposinlg a

a itical andl debulnking discourse to all antlhropological subjects. But alonigthie way there has beeni a slippage. Thie tools of deconstruiction, developed todlebunik and call inito questionl the highi and mnighty, are niow beinlg applied to

thie power·less. Whiere the invention of traditionl per·spective was initiallydeployed to deconstruct thie public rituails of the 19th cenitury BritishMonarchy or pomp and circumstance ini coloniial India, it was now beinlggeneralised to qluestion the claims to authenticity of smiall peoples.12

In his inlfluential work The Predicament of Culture James Clifford shiowshow th·e Mashpee Indians of Massachchusetts conlstruct thieir idenitity denovo in order to meet the exigencies of a court case (Clifford 1988). Similal

argumnents (but with less sympathy for the subalternls) hlave been'made forthe Maori by Hanson (1989) and for the ancienit H-awailans by Bergendorff.

anthroapology at the clorossroad, 43

H-asager, and H-enriques (19)88; see also the reply by Sahilins 1989. an~d thebook by Obeseykeree 1993).

Foucault's famnous dlictum (1976a, 1976b) thiat ther-e is no tr·uth, onllyregimes of truth anid power·, was originally inltenlded as a cr-itiqule of aribitrary·~power· by aggranidising states anid their minionis, but by showing thbe fr·agilitylof all truth-claimns it hias hlad the effect of uindermininiig the legitimacy as well

of oppositional mnovemnents for justice againist these same powiers (-Taylor1984, Habermas 1987).

Of couirse there is a kerniel of truthi to thie idlea that all societies ini theworld ar-e produc.ts, of initeraction with other societies andl world societyModern ethnography is a pr·oduct of thec Enlightenmenit anid is a formii ofpr·actice in which mnembers of our academic suibcultur·e obser·ve the othierand, as menltionled at thie outset, K(athileeni Gough r-eminided us ofanlthropology's roots as a chIild of imnperialism.

Neverthleless to succumnb to the enticements of trhe postm~oderniists/revisionists wouild be a disaster-, not the least onl thie political fr·ont. Whiere Ipart comipanly withi themn is thieir view thiat ouir kniowledge of the othier - beinigfiltered through perceptions, laniguage, anld culture - is so suspect that

subjects cani only be pr·ovisionally and arbitrarily conlstructed. Mascia-Lees,Sharpe and Cohten in a now classic paper· (1989) hlave insightfully arguiedthat it is striking hiow thie largely mnale, whitle, and Westerni postmnodenrnissare proclaiminig the dethct of the subject, precisely at the momnirt whecnalternative voices - wromnen, peopic oF colour, Thiild Wo;rldl and abor·igiinalpeoples - aie str·uggling to consgtitutc thiemselves as subjects of hiistor y, ais tiemiakers of their· owni h istory.'l I will retlurni to this point below.

F;or the momnent let mre say this: I do niot believe that anlthr-opologists ar-eniearly so powerless before thie awesomne task of represeniing the othier'sreality, or that thie ethinographiy of the 1960s or 70s was so flaw,\ed that it hasto be discar·ded. Adami Kuper·, in ai recenlt critiquie of postmnodernismn (199'3),poInts out thiat the miethodologies of thie 1960s wer·e niot so very diffe·enitfromi those of thle presenit, anid that their· results were subjected to thle critIcalscrutiny of peer review and comnpar·ative evidenice. K(uper arguies, andItwould agree, thiat thie view that ethnlographic writing is mior-e aktin to fictionthan it is to scienice, does not accord wiith the history of the disciplinie If thecetlinographers of thlat not-so-distant era had passed off th-eir fiction asscience their readershiip anid th.eir peers would not hiave stood for· it. (For

44 social dynam2ics

othecr cr-itiques of "'postmnodernismn" whlich attempt to r-econlstruct the"realist"founidations of social science epistemologies see Wylie 1992a, 1992b, inpress; Rothi 1989; Sangr~en 1988; Gellner 1988; Lovibond 1989; Soper 1991;13bashikar· 1979, 19)86. See also O'Meara 1989).

The Acceleration of HistoryIbelieve thiat there is a deeper priniciple at work hiere, fuelling both

postmnodernismn and somne of' thie work of thle political economists: thieacceleration of history. We are living throughi a period in which hiistorical

time itself is changing; as thie mnodern systemn continiues to gr·ow, things aremioving fasteranid faster. Events anld prcesses thiat unfoldled over centuriesarie comnpressed inito decades or years, and whiat tranlspired oni a scale of

years no«w unlfolds in thie space of mionths or· weeks (H-arvey 1985:6>-35). Weneced to puit the r.evisioniist debate and lthe state of anthropology today in thecon~text of' this r-ecenlt hiistory.

Not everyone with-in social anlthr·opology hias paused to reflect on thietitaniic forces that are transforming thie world before our· eyes. The era of late

caipitalismi is witnessing thle accuimulationi of capital onl an uinprecedenitedsc;ile, tlie domninanlce of the mTultiniational corporationl, anld the phenomenal

growth :If the state andl media as apparatuises for shiapinig anid controllinghuimani behanviour (Chomnsky 1989; Eweni 1976). In addition- one muist try tocomprehend thie accelerating and expandinig networks of inlformnation transferoni a wor·ld scale. Through televisionl, e-mail, mnodemns, cellular phones, faxandl otheri technologies it is possible to touich any par-t of the world ini·;econdts, anid thiroughi thiese same media we can dispose of all the world's

aiccumi-ulated knowledge anld imanges with the pushi of a buttoni; wh-at Frederic.Iamieson has called "a decentred global nietwork of- microcircuits andblinlking lights" (see also Lyotard 1984).

~i is niot su;prising! that this power of intstantlaneous commrunication,crombinied withi thie vast output of thie cultuire induistries, and the centralisinigpow"er of the State, leads to fantasies of omniiscience and omnipotenlce forthie small minority of thie world's populationl whichi has acçess to such tools

(13ciaman 1983). Late capitalism conisumnes thie past withi amnazinlg rapidity,spewys it outI1 with such dizzyinig speedl that it hias the ef`fect of obliteratinlg thepast, inicludin~g the past of even 20 years ago. All these processes tenld to

anthropolo~gy at the cr·ossr·oads 45

endow thie force of capitalismi with a mnystiqule of enormous r-eachi andtotalizinig power .5

Externially, the spread of world-wide capitalism, sporadic andt locatlised inthe 18th centuiry, a floodl in thie 19thi and early 20thi centulry, hias becomec anveritable avalaniche ini the last third of the 20th centuiry. As John Bodlley,Shelton Davis, and othiers have pointed out, thle world's so-called tribalpeoples are sittinig directly inl thec path of the wor-ld's largest muiltiniationialcorporatijons (Bodley 1982, 19)88; Davis 1977; see also Jorgeniseni 1990).The scale of thiis penetration h·as inicreaised ini many cases by orders ofmagnitude in tenl at twenty years. To take an examplle, when I first arrived inMauin, Botswana ini 1963 therec wa7s a sinigle tour· operator· takinig tourists intothte Oka7vanlgo Swam·ps. Today thiere are over eightly operator·s; many of thiemoffer to take clienits to mieet thec last of the Rivei Bushimen, a mian who niow

gets "discovered" f'orty or fIft`y timecs a year. T'he Dobe area ini 1963-4 wasevenl mor-e isolated thian thie Okavango Swamips. In that era it receivedl oniemotor vehicle visit every 4 to 6 weeks, for· a total of 9 to 13 vehicles peryear. In 1987 1 counted a vehicle every four· to six hoursv for an anniual total1400 to 2 100, a. one-to-two hulndred fokil increaise.

Sjimilar· examnples could be drawn fiorom vir·tually aniy part of thie F;iist,Second, or Third Worlds. Ever-ywhere inidigenous peoples ar-e being rapidllyabsorbed inito thie farmns and slumns of the New Wlorld Order. Thiis is thecontext of accelcr-ating& and manssive chanige in whiichi social anthriopology issituated anid this is thie source of the crisis of repr·esentartion thiat thie field isunldergoing&.

Thie point I wan~t to emnphasIse is that field wYorkers who arr-ived for-examnple, in thec Kalahiari ini thie 1980s aind 90s andl observedf socialbreakdown and appallinig con-ditions, found it unibclievable that 30, 20, or·even 10 years earlier', observer·s could harve found a society like theJu/'hoansi with band structure, kinshiip, andl subsistence ,a~tterns stillfuimetioninlg. Instead of reflecting on thie mnagnitude of thie changes inl that 10Oor· 20 year period, r-evisionlists immnediately assume that the ear·lier· studieswere wronlg and they go oni to blithely project thie conitemiporary patternis ofdestr-uction~ and/or outside dominiiation back into the paist.

A r·ecent study of thie Kagga Kaiimma Bushmeni by Hyltoni White (19)95)documents thie comnplex history of a people whio, dlisplaced from thieir homecsiin the Kalahiari by thie Giroup Areas Act anid other- indtignities, niow sur-vive by

46i social dyrnamicsr

performin~g for tourists inl a Bushmnan themne paik near· Ceres, in thieCedarburg mnountains. White's other·wise excellenit stuidy suffers fromn theimplied assumptio n thiat all conltempor·ar·y Bushmieni have exper·ienced th~esam~e tortuious hiistor·y of exploitation anld exile as thie Kagga K(ammia people.What is a mninor· flaw ini White's work becomnes miagnifiied in Wilmnsen'sbook, Landfilled with F/lies (1989); both seemn to mne to be examrples of thiecr·ror of uniiversalisinig the present, the obverse of the equally flawed historywhiichi postuilates pristine huniter-gathierers roaminig the veld the year befor·ethie anthropologist arrives. While the latter view hias correctly come ini for· awYave of criticismn, it could be arguied that thie revisioniists' willinigness toproject the present on to the past indicates an enichantmnent with thie power ofcapital that is at base, nio less romuantic and uncritical as the much-criticisedenchiantmient with the pristine/ primitive other.

Thie danger of the revisionist position if generally adopted is thiat it woulderase fromn anithropology the richiness anld diversity expressed by thie vastkaleidoscope of world cultures, and replace it withi a uniiformi shade of grey,the coloulr of universal oppressioni of the capitalist world systemn.

What is to be done?

Whiat is the remiedy for the presenit mailaise in anthiropology? It is deeplyunifor~tuniate thiat somne anthropologists hiave repudiated both anthropology'semipir-ical roots anid is hiistoric mission of bearing witness to the richiness anddliversity of the noni-western~ "othier". Th~is is an honourable part ofan~thropology's past and should not be sloughed off lightly. It is true thiat

capitalism's impact hias been power~ful, but it is nlot that powerful, and it hasaffected par·ts of thie world at different times in vastly different waiys.Sahliniis, for example, devotes a conisiderable part of hiis essay quoted aboveto show that for several centuries the West's~ term~s of trade ~with· Chinadistinictly favoured the latter, thie source of enlormnous drain on the silveraccounits of the European financial establishment. On~ly by fomenting thieOpiumi Wars of 1839-40 were the Londoni bankers finially able to gain accessto the closely guarded and extremely lucrative Chiniese mnarkets (1994).

Thie Kalahari offers more miodest examples but the processes are similar.'The Kagga KammiTa story is one of displacemnent and destruction, but theD)obe .k/'hloansi 1000 km. to the north successfully escaped the worst effects

ant~ropologyfi at thc cors~ossrads 4C7

of colonisationi at least uintil thie late 1960s The Dobe area Jui/'Iioanlsi andcother San groups hield thie colonial wor·ld at bay unitil thie late 19th centul y.Matthias Guenither anld I have presented hiistor·ical accouints by coloniialobservers whiichi cor·robor·ate the Ju/'hoansi's owni str-ongly-articulated senseof their past autoionomy as hunter-gatherers, niot pastor-absts (Lee andlGuienither 1993, 1995; Lee ini pr·ess a).

Thie more genieral poinlt here is that coninectedniess should be treated as avariable not a constant. Not all forms of contact are formns of dominlationOnie must under-stanid thiis clearly or' lose the oppor'tunity of makinig sense ofcultures past, pr·esent and futuire. If thie ethn"ography of thie so-calledl"primnitive" was anthropology's stock-ini-trade, anid the "primantive" is nolonger, then let us at least preserve ethinographly as a r·eseaiçch melbodl,redefine thie concept of unIt culturec, and re-deploy bothi concept and mnethiodto nlew pur·poses.'

Can antlhropology emnbrace thie niew withiout repudiating its past? Thienature of our- uniderstandings of ethnicity anid idenitity, the construlctionis ofcultural mIeaniings, anld the relations of all of thiese to econiomic forces arechaniginig in ways thiat we are only niow beginining to coipiliehend Thieseniew uniderstanidin-gs cani be founld in anith·ropological scholarship that in-steadof trashinrg previouis work is building oni it, and instead of aban~doninganithropology's political mnandate is mnodifying and enilarging it.

Anthropology's Brave New WorldAs I have beeni ailgingi, the crisis ini huiman hiistory hias precipilated ai crisisini social anthropology; but thie presentl conjunicturie has offered n~ot on~lyperils and "mnorbid symnptomis" but also chialleniges and ;,pportunities. Th~elarger part of thie dIsciplIine hias responided to thie crisis nlot by closing uipshop anid r·epudiating its past, but by reinlventinig itself ini excitinig ways anidenlarging its manidate ini all directions.

Ini miy teaching I like to miake a distinictioni betweeni classic anid expandedlanthr·opology. Whiile textbooks still (correctly) dwell oni thie Nuer, Nayar,Tallenisi and Murnigin, sinice thie 1960s thie.disciplinie has set newy agendas,shiiftinig its gaze fr·om thie shrinikinig areas of tribal life, to thie cities, thieclinics, th~e hiousinig projects anid thie factor'ies, as well as the ruiral villageswhiere the vast majority of hiumanlity niow mlakes its life; the anthiropological

48Y social dylnamics

gaze hias eveni enltered on occasion thie boar·d roomis of the oppressors (Nader

1972).Anthropology hias comne to the metropole, in·vading thie turf lonig occupied

by sociology, keeping thle ethnlographic method and miaking race, class and·gender· its centi al conicerns. A discipline thlat used to stuidy old ethlnicities anldmourn their passing, is nlow emibracing the new and chroniicling thie ways inwhichi new ethnicities, new identities, and new cultures are being forged. Ifwe are still bearinlg witness, it is to some of the horrors visited uponi theworld's peoples, but also to some of their resilience in creatively resistinganid accommiodating these for~ces, anld ini preserving anid reconlstructinlg theirculturecs (Scott 1985).

A few examlples will suggest thie r-ange of ourren~t resear·ch.Aiwa Onig (Uniiveisity of Californlia, Berkeley) stuidied emotional

disordeis of womenl workers in a Malaysian electronics factory (1987) andfounid their r-oots in tr-aditionlal Malay belief systemis attempting to cope withmnassive chanige. Nanlcy Scheper-Hughies' stuidied infant and child mortalityamonig the poor-est of thie poor in Brazil ini her book Death withoutl Weeping(1992), and in A Bed Called Homne Mamnpbela Ramlpbele has writteni apower-ful accounlt of the men, womnen, and childre:n inl the mnigran·t labourhiostels of Cape Town (1993). Thiese ethniogr-aphic works rank< withi somne ofthe best social criticismn written inl the last two decades.

Anothier branich of expanded anthiropology looks at thie forms of cultuire inlthe industriab mietriopolis. Rayna Rapp (New School) and Fays Ginlsburg(NYU) work in the growing field of"science as culture", specifically thieimplact on doctors, patients, and technicians of the new reproductivetechnologies (Ginsburg and Rapp 1 995). Simnilar is thle wor·k of Emily Martinlwho studied the use of laniguage and genider stereotyping inl textbooks inobstetrics and gynlaecology (Martin 1987).

Theni there is the wor·k closest to mny own initerests: the culture andeconomries of indigenous peoples and their enlcapsulation in industrial anldpost-in·dustrial states. David Aniderson of the University of Alberta studiesthe impact of mining and industrial pollution on Evenk r·eindeer her-ders inpost-Sjoviet Siberia (1991). Dalvid Triigger (1992) has written on anAbor·iginail community in westerni Queenslanld and included thie fuill range ofwhite power-holdei s and service providlers in hiis field of v iew.

anthkroplology at the cro.w cadrs 4

Elsewhiere ini the mnetropolis other ethniographiers arie stuidying sktilciinh d,,rock grouips, gay mnen of colour, leathier bars, fascists, gr·eenis, blue-colinsiworkers, anid even white Angçlicani ladies' clubs and orgjaniisations.

A nuimber· of othier have tatckled miore traddiionial anthriiopologica l sirl!lcmiatter givinig it niew twists. T'he South Afr~icani antlhropologists trranlsplantedlto the U.S., John anid Jean Comarioff, haRve mnade imnpor-tant studies of thecTswana-speakinlg Rolong r·eligioni, world-view and political economywithiout denyinig or ignloring& their history rooted mn"traditionial" cuilture. TheComnoroffs specifically distanice themnsel ves fr-om "postmuoderni sm"

prefer·ring to call themselves "neomrodecrn"( (99)2).Thie older anthropology antd the niew comec together ini explonogif thec

emergenice of nlew ethniicaties. As I noted at thie outset capitalist mioderitiiyhias beeni both a world creator anid a world destr oyer. It cer-tainly cani be seenias a forcinig grouind for the geniesis of new ethinicities anld the regenieration ofold onies. Nowhere is th.is truer thani in thie study of some of the nlewethinicities brought inito beinig by the mnovemen!t of peoples and the clash ofculltur·es. Thie process of"ml·estisage" is a strikinig phenomienion of modlermilySidney Minltz calls the Caribbean thie first truily "miodern" region, an earlyexamnple of thie creation of a new culture by briniging together of African anid

Europeani and Asiani peoples on a terriain occupiedl by aboriginalAmnerinidians (Mintz anld Price 1992).

Somne of the best recenlt work oni this area has been don-e by Ger-ald Sidleroni the Lumbce of North Carolina (1993), ai people who at various timecs inthieir history have been iegarded by the wider wor-ld as A.mer·indian, White,anid Black<. The comnplex walys in which thie Lumbee hiave constructed andreconstructed their identities in thie 20th century has r-esonance for abor·iginalAustralian and for· Metis anid Creole pop>ulations elsewhere who aregrapplinlg with- similar pr·oblemis.

From Khoi to Coloured ... and Back?

Ini Th~e Weapon of Theoiy (1974) Amilcar- Cabral wr·ote that the task befor·ethie Afr·ican people was niot onlly achieving indepenldence but also r'ecapturinghistlory, a history takenl froml the African peoples by the coloniialists

Recapturing history hias becomne a miajor mnovemnent in literature, history andanithropology: the stuidy of colonlial discourse and thie attemnpts by subalternipeoples to liberate their consciousness From it.

50 social dyn7amics

Post-ApartLheid South Africa offers the observer· striking examples of

mnestisage, and of the Cabralian· recapturing of history. It goes without sayingthat the hiistory of th~e so-called "nion-whites" of South Africa is niot a unitaryonie. Diverse historical streamns ar-e r-epresented within it, but in the western

part of thie counitry, thie largest streamn includes those who trace their ancestryback to thie Khoi herders and San forager·s. Up to two million "Coloured"Southi Africanis would identify themnselves thiis way, with added streams of

Euriopean, Malay, Asian and other African anicestries; but unitil recently theopportun~ity for these peoples to explor-e thieir roots hias beenl comnpromisedandt distorted by cenituiies of racial discriminiiationi (Marais 1957) and thie

hieavy hiand of thie Apartheid systemn.Previous r$presentations of the Khoisani peoples were saturated wYithi

iacist colonial discourse. Thie doctrine of progress ranked peoples onltechnical achiievemnents and Khoi anld Sanl were ofteni presented as exemplarsof the bottom1 of the ladder, as the cast-offs of creation. This perniiciousdoctr-ine was used blatanitly to justify oppr·ession and dispossession~ (GordonI992; Skotnles 1996).

yowever· fromn the 1970s oni, Southi Africa witnessed a new assertionl of

power: anid consciousness oni the part of the Afr·ican mnajor~ity throughi thleBlack Consciousniess mI·ovemTent (Biko 1978, 1979). It is of anthropologicalmoment anid of particular initerest to me to explore hlow people of Khoisanheritage have espoused Black Consciousness and r·e-idenitified thiemselveswithi thieir putlative anicestor-s and with thie mnillions of thieIr countrywom·enand men whio were figh·ting oppressioni (P>ityanai et.al. 1992).

Khoi and San: A Complex HistoryOf course whierever we explore ethniicity anid idenitity politics niew

comnplexities emerge. "Coloured" politics ini Souith Afr·ica has liiany diversecurren-ts including Islamnic fundamentalism, suppor-t for the niow"reformed"National Party, anid various left, right, anid cultuiral nationalist tepdencies.

Even thiough a prom-inent coloured political figure of Trotskyist persuasionlrecenltly hlad his namne legally chanlged fromn Benlny Alexanlder to Khoisanl X,thie "Khioisani roots" question is only one of a number of difficult cross-currienits affectinig idenltity politics today.

Many aspîects of thie Khoisan revival raise fascinatinlg historical issues.Let me mnention a few. First is the question~ of the relationship between thie

antlhropoglogy al the crossroads~ 5/

historic "Khoi" pastoralists and the "San" buniiter-gathierers. Were they swvoiienemies as several authiorities claimn, or were thiere periods andi places wherei-the relationls iere amnicable? And will this hisçtory uindergo r·evision for thesake of a larger uniity?

And a prior question: were thiey eveni separate peoples? Were the San Iinthe Cape merely impoverish·ed Khioi, who hiad lost th~eir cattle and sheep?Anid similarly could San people adopt cattle hiusbandry andic immnediately"raise" thiemselves up? Richard Elphiick mnade thiis argumenit of thie fluidityand inter·changeability between Khioi and San inl the Cape ar·ea, and it hiasbeen influential (1977). The archlaeological evidenice is complex, but bothwithinl anid outside the Cape thiere were cor·lainly many other Buishmiienwithout a history of hierdinig in thieir past (Smithi 1992).

Another issue, addressed above, is whether the Sanl outside the Cape wereauton-omous societies pre-colonially or were domninated for a mnillenniumii bypowerful outsiders. In othier words will those whio are seekinig to th~row offthe shlackles of colonial ideology to find their· Khoisan roots, discover onily ahiistory of mnore domination by different power hiolders str-etchinig inito thepast?

Wilmsen (1989) anid Wilmnseni and Denbow (1990) hiave argued thie casethat thie San have been domninated for centuries, first by pre-colonlial Bantui-

speaking chiefdomsç and second by 100-300 years of European mnercantilecapitalismn. Thiis view also adds that the Bushmieni wer-e not even huntiel-gatherer·s in the past, but rather pastoralists, hierding for other Africanpeoples of the Early Ironi-Age.

This view hias been vigorously contested. Thie ar-chaeological evidenicefor conztact betweenl Ironi-Adge anld Stonie Age peoples is good, but nutLchiwveaker when~ onle tries to show domninationl of Later- Stonle Age by Ironi Agepeoples. Currenlt research comnbining archaeology and oral history attests thantcoexistence might be a better word (Smith and Lee 1997, Lee in press a?).Second, the revisionists tend to uniderestimate the sheer diversity ofhistorical circumstances of the Khoisan peoples in the 19th century andearlier. There were wr·etched San peoples living ini abject poverty; there werealso independent cattle-holding San peoples, and a number of verysuccessful San people who lived by the hunt and who maintained a proudinidependence.

52Z social dyrlnaics

E.G. Frieda-Nela Williams (1991), amronig othiers, has written of therelationis between thle Bushmnen and the 18th and 19th centui·y Ovamlbo

kinigdomns of n·orthern Namnibia as equitable anld frienidly. They traded on thiebasis of equality, not as mnasters and servants. 1In at least two kingdomns,tr·aditions hiave it that thle royal linle was founided by mnarriages betweenOvamnbo mnen- anid hunter-gathierer womnen. Thie Germnan geographer Passargewrote in detail of the "Buschmian7nreich·" of thie Ghanzi San who from the1840s to 70s, lived exclusively b-y huniting anid gathe~rinig, and who undertheir· param-ount leader, thie mnighty Dukurri, kept all comners at bay andjealous ly gu arded thieir turf( (1907).

In South Afri·ca itself thiere is John Wright's famnous Itudy ofBushmarnRaiders of thle Drakenlsberg (1971) showinlg how resilient the Sani peoplehad been- in thie face of inicreasinig priessure by bothi European anid othierA~frican for-ces on thie Natail frontier fromn the 1840s to 70s. Anid ShiulaMar·ks' classic paper "Khoisan Resistance to the Dutch" (1972) documentedthe mnilitary resistance by thie San peoples to Boer expansion. All thesestudies shlow the resilience and pragmatism, the ability to project power andthe desir·e to survive of thie Khoisan peoples in the face of overwhelmningodds. Th~ese stories could form the bases of a popular history of the Khoisan

peoples.

Problems for an Expanded AnthropologyThie existenice of this hiidden histor·y, hitherto suippressed by colonialdiscourse and apar-theid ideology, suggests a numiber of new' directions' foranthropologists to explore in Southi Afri-ca. Elsewhere, expandedan·thropology, by celebrating th7e birth of niew ethinicities and not justmour-ning the passinig of thie old, emnbraces new possibilities for researchi onthie politics of; identity.

For examnple in North America, perhaps thie most signiificant developmentof the last two decades is inldigenlous peoples speaking to us in thieir ow/nvoices. e.g. the Canadian Innu, Lubicon, Terne-Augama anid others(Richiardsoni 1989). The Gitksan and Wet'suret'en peop~le of British Columbiaare good examples of former and are continuinig hunters and gathierers,inidigenous peoples not unlike the San or Australian aborigines, who haveaddressed the larger· public directly in a variety of voices including the courts(Sterritt 1989; Gisday Wa and Delgum Uukw 1989) and in the cultural

anlthr.opolo gy' at the cr·ossro adsJ '

sphere (People of 'Ksani 1980). Inicreasinigly inidigenous peoples are miakmgipolitical alliances withl envir·onmientalists, feminiists, youth grouips, andc

peoples of colour.Clearly thie cultuiral recnaissançe uniderway, in a numiiber· of nnave

commiiunities hias genieratled considerable initerest in 'traditional' ethios andtworld-view, governanice, suibsistenice, arts, cra~fts, ethino-botanly, anid hieangib,for these and othier spheres of knowledge, the elders anld anithropologicailtexts are the mainl sources of iniformnation.

Obviously th.e post-Aparthieid er·a has ushered in a necw politics of

indigenlism in Souith.Africa; witness the spate of nlew exhiibits, conf~eren~ces,and grass roots mnobilisationi on or by peoples callinig themnselves Khioisanianid/or Bushmieni. This fermnent opens up exciting possibilities for collectingthie oral traditions of the old people. Thiis constiturtes thie livIng hiistory of ai

segmnent of thec South Afr-icanl nation; ani extr·emiely well-established br-anchiof reseairch for examnple in Australia, but barely beguin in South Afr·ica. Theeis a need for scholars to walk over the lanid withi rural elders, for- studies of'

place niames; accounits of sacr-ed sites, battles, and other hiistorical eventsnleed to be mnemorialised. Studies are nieeded of K(hoi anid San words that

have remainied ini the laniguage, thieir meaninigs anid sjignificanice; anid ther·e isstill much· to bie mnined from existing archiivail sources suchi as thie Bleek< anld

Lloyd collection (1911; see Deacon 1997).

Conclusion

Thiis paper has dclinicalted the crisis of r-epresentaitionl in anithropology aindhias attempt~ed to comipr·ehend its uniderlyinig epistemnological anid ideologicalroots. The field of anthriopology hias been unidergoinig a series of`trans~formnations and thie originial raison d'ê[tre has r·equired reassessmentYet despite thie funidamaental ch·alleniges of thie 'revisionists' anld

postmoderniists it can be argued that a core of relevance to both schiolarlyand political agenidas remnains; that anithropology as a whole is responiding tothis challenge is indicated by thle shijft awaiy fr-om simplistic evolutionaryarguinents towards mnore niuanced, hiistorically sensitised, and criticalunderstandinigs.

Despite the currenit vogue for ambiguity anid hyper-relativism, I hope itwill soon becomne apparenit to even the mnost ardent constructivist, thiatevidence does count. Somne form of scienltific method - a mneans of muaking

54 social dynamlics

senise of the world by weighijng eviden-ce - will be indispensable to thienoithiropology of the future. I would see scienice, hiumanism anid criticalieflecioni not as muLtually antagonistic but all as inltegral parts ofnothriiopologica ltool kit. Thle reccent wor·k of thie Canadlian philosopher ofs;cienice Alison Wylie, offers anl eloquent and cogent defence of "realist~"epistemiologies for archaeology and anthr·opology that is still reflexive,critical anid femTinist (1992a, 1992b, in press).

Recovering history is now a world-wide social miovemnent amonlgencapsulated peoples, not onlly in Souith Africa, Canarda, anid Australia, but iniNew Zealand, Russia, and elsewher·e. Anld it is not just an issue for one

people or one niationl: cultural diversity old and niew is part of the heritage ofall humianlity. UTltimaitely the composition of the discipline shouild r-eflect thecultural diver-sity of the wor·ld. In July 1996 the first Ju/'hoani student tostudy ar·chaeology completed his firsçt year of traininig at thie NamiibianNational Museum ini Windhoek.

Thiere is onle final poinlt I would like to make that brinigs us back to ourstarting poinit: thte value of studyIng uniit cultures by mneans of a fine-grainedethniograiphic mTethod. It is of critical imnportance thiat anthropology preservethie kd~owledge of the non-capitalist, nion-bureaucratic, small-scale societies,and niot allow them to written out of humankinld's past. With the collapse of"actually existing socialismn" anld other setbacks for thie world's progressiveforces, we ar·e living int ani age of sharply diminishied expectations. This hiasb-een accompanied by a severe curtailmnent of thie political imlaginationi.Overtaken bry tunnel visioni, it is harder and harder in th·e current clim·iate toimagine alternlatives to global capitalism Thie ethinographic corpuis socarefully assembled therefore has a crucial role to play, not only bearingwitness to thie diversity and creativity of our species, but also to the fact thatin the notf very distant past other ways of being, other ways of living-in th~eworld, yet outside thie "systemn" were and are possible.'

anth~ropology at the cr·ossroadsi 55

Notes

SThiis paper was wr.itten originially for· presenitationi at a semiiinar at thie Universityof the Western Cape, May 1995, developinig ideas pr·eviouslq appearmng ini my"Ar-t,Scienice or· Politics: Thie Cr'isis ini Hulnter-gathecrer Stuidies 1:1992)." SubsequLentlyexpanded versions wer~e given at thie Unliversity of Wester-n Australia, Perth,, anid thecAustralian National Uniiversity, Caniber-ia. I wishi to thiankl the facuilty and sltudents of~these inistitutionis for thieii thioughitfuil cr·iticismis. 1In adldition thianks go to HeniryBledckamnp, David Bunn11, Kwesi Prahi, and Toniy H-umiphicys of U.W.C. andt AndrrewSmithi and John Sharp of thie University of Cape Townvi. Ini Australia I wvishi to thiankDavid Trigger, Rober·t Tokiniisoni, Sandy Toussaint, Basil Sanisomn, andt GarethiGrifiîthls of U.W A.; andt Nic Petersoni, Davidl Martin,. lohni 'Tayloi, andr RichariidDavis of A.N.U Also thainks to Joanina Cascy and Biuce Bermnan, Caintdianicolleaigues visitinig at A N.U. durinig miy stay therie. Theli finiancial suipportl from thecAustraliani Nationial Uniiversity anid thie Uniiversity of Toionto is g·ateFillyàcknowledged.

SOf course there was a significant mTinority of political econiomiists whio sti onglyopposed thiese views. Anid coniversely, thieie unidoubtedly wer·e anithropologists whioendorsed thIe Imperial project without r·eservation.

3 That thiere was a "left wing" of the Imlperial Pioject cannot be doubted. It canibe tiaced back to thie wr.itinigs of F;ray Barthlelemy de lais Cisas, andl appeared inisouthern Afr-ica the idealism of Britishi missionar~ies and civ;l ser·vanits fromi JohnPhiillip to Moffat anid Livinigstone. To take just onec other example, Robelt Shenton ofQueen's Uniiversity, Canada is studying thie considerable influence of the Englishiradical Hentry George on Britishi colonial officer.s Iin the per iod 1900-1930 (BruceBeirman pers. commi.)`

SFor more onl Boas anid hiis tim·es, see Stocking ed. 1987; Baker· 1996.

SJulian Steward (1936, 1955) was one of thie ear·ly advocates of a mioreconscio~usly "scienitific" approach; mnajor spokespersons today include Marvin Harris(1979) and Lew Biniford (1982).

" Ruthi Benedict (1934) and A. L. Kroeber (1948) wer-e pr·ecursors of thistenidency, whose recent advocates include Claude Levi-Strauss (1963) and MairyDouglas (1966). Clifford Geer-tz (1973) has beeni the mnost inifluenltial theorist of thiecurrent genieratIon of humnanists.

56i so~cial dynamics

SSee Roseberry 1989, anid Schneider anid Rapp 1995. A somewhiat divergentMarxsist traditionl that could be labelled cultural Marxismn or Marxist Huinanismi canbc tiraced in the wor·ks of thie late Eleanor' Leacock (1982) and Stanlley Diamonid

(19)74). Sidney Mintlz's aipproach {e.g. 1985) falls somewhiere ini betweeni the mioiehiumaniist and thie mor·e political-economnic Marxisms.

" A parallel pr·ocess, thiough niot dir·ectly related to Wolf, has been the tendenlcyto r-ecast those hon-state societies formerly regarded as cgalitarian, as fundamnentallyh~ierariichical, thuls thirowing into question whiethiei societies anywhere cani beclassified as egalilar·iani (e.g. Flanlagani 1989; Legios 1985). But see Paynter (1989)andit Price anid Brow·n (1985) for more balanced viewvs, and D3. Trigger (1990) for a·comnpellinig empirical argumlent for the reality of egalitariani societies.

' Key texts in~ the "Great Kalahlari Debate" miclude ini additioni to Lee 1979 anidWVilmscoi 1989, Solway anld Lee 1990, Wilmnsen anid Denibow 1990P, Lee anidCiuenlther 1991, 1993, 1995. See also Barniard's anniotated bibliography of thie debate(1992).

FO or a laite conveisionl to r.elativismn see Leachi 1989; on the fallacy of "hyper-ielatlivismn" see Bruce Trigger 1989.

']It mnust be acknowledged thiat Anlthropological postmnodernism claims itsaffinit'es to thel left rather thian the righit (Mvarcus anid F;ischer 1986, Clifford 1983,Clifford and Mar·cus 1986) but this political positioniing has beeni coiitested (seeMascla-Lees et. al. 1989; Polier and Roseberry 1993).

E21. Wilmnsenl, for example, uses the Hobsbawmi anid Raniger thesis to the samneeffect in a section of hiis book entitled"Ther hwe,·11non of 'Bushmnlal"' (19)89:24-26).The frequent and facile use of the invention trope ini cont~empor'ary schiolarshipraises disturbing ontological qluestions whrich are rarely addressed.

'" Par-ker in tuirn (1995) hias offered ani interesting critique of Obeseyesekere'sbook anid the latter hias replied (1995). And Sahilins has written his own book-lengthreply (1995).

'4see also Spivak 19)88. Another point worth niotinig by Mascia-Lees et al. is thatmnuchi of the cr-itical reflexive miethodology proclaimned by postmodernists had beenin use within femninist anthropologies for over a decade, but had beeni largely ignlored.See Haraway 1989; Di Leonardo 1991; Gero and Conkey 1991.

15 The feeling of omniscience and inistant global communication is nowhere

mnore clearly exoressed than in the television coverage of events hike the Gulf War or

anthropologyv at the, crossroads 57

the Oklahoma City bombing whiere miajor developments are flashied aiounid the worldas they occur. But this is a very recent phenomenon.

'"The term "primiitive"' of course has been highlly pr·oblemnatic. My usage herefollows thiat of Stanley Diamonid who ini his book"f n Scarch of the Primitive" (1 974)argued against thie term~'s pejorative meaniniigs. Hel saiw thie termi as a key par-t ofanthiropology's political agenda, it's critique of "civilisationi", in thie bioader sen~se of"primitive" as basic, original, and fundamental.

'7 To return to a thiemle presented earlier; I wonder hiow miuch of the mnalaise inianthropology can be traced to the perceived failur·e of Marxismi to delIver- the goodlsBut it is worthi adding that thec world may look very dif'fer-ent fromi Souith Afr~icanivanitage pointc where cmpowennienit anid engagemntci is expanding r·athei than~contractinig Thie work of schiolar activists at plaices Iikc thie Maylbuyei)l Cenlci atI the

Uniiversity of thie Western Cape shiows us that good thecory can only comei outi ofgood practice· thle imnportance for scholars enigage ini pziaxs, to be pas t of` a poliicailpiogrami· for progressive social changc

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