Against Ethnography Nicholas Thomas Austria National Universey {In March 1803 Lord Valentia was traveling through Awadh, a part of north India which, as he observed. fad not yet been liberated by the East india Company from Muslim oppression. At Lucknow he was surprised to find in the Nawab’ Palace an extensive collection of curiosities, including "several thousand English Prints framed and glazed .. . and innumerable other attcles of European man- tfacture. The dioncr was French, with plenty of wine . she Mussulmauns drank none, fa! ‘though the forbidenliquoe was served in abundance of th table. and the} hi two lasses of different sizes sunding before ther. The room was very well lip up, and xan oF music (which the Nawau had perchased from Colonel Mort} played “english tunes during the whole time, The scene was so singular anu se Condy 10 all my ideas of Asiatic manaers, that could aly perswate ype thatthe whole was nota masquerade [Walenta 1809 [13-(45) ‘This anstocratic colonial traveler's confusion could be taken to be emblem: atic of one of the predicaments of late 20th-century anthropology. The problem of interpretation arises not from an ethnocentric expectation that other peoples are the same, from 8 failure to predict the local singularity of their manners and cus toms, but from an assumption that others must be diferent, that their behavior Will be recognizable on the basis of what is known about another culture. The Visitor encounters nota stable array of Asiatic manners" but what appears tbe an unintelligible inauthenticity.. ‘This essay is concemed with anthropology’s enduring exoticism, and how Drocestes such as borrowing, ereolization, and the reilications of local culture through colonial contact are tobe reckoned wit. Can anthropology simply extend itself to tlk about transposition, syncretism, nationalism, an! oppositional fub- ‘ications of custom, as it may have been extended to cover history and getder. oF is there a sense in which the discipline's underlying coneepts need to be mutilated ‘or distorted, before we can deal satisfactorily with these areas thot were once ex cluded? ‘The current wave of collective autocritique within acthropology' fas a par- adoxical character in the sense that while reference is made to eriss, experimen {ation, and even radical transformation inthe discipline, one coneiusion of most efforts soems (0 be an affirmstion of what has always been central. Clifford, for 6AGAINST ETHNOGRAPHY 77 instance, affirms that “ethnographic Geldwork remains an unusually sensitive method” for eross-culuural representation (1988:23-24) and Borofsky"s relstiv~ ‘zing exploration of anthropological constructions of knowledge concludes with rather bland reflections on the importance of ethnography (1987:152-156).” In & very different geare. a recent guide t0 method in economic anthropology claims ‘thatthe “great future” ofthe subject arises from its “direct observation method of ethnographic analysis” (Gregory and Altman 1989:ix). There seems therefore to be one point about which we are all convinced, one stable term in a highly eclectic and contested discipline ‘The second feature of current debate relevant here is that while “writing and “wrting-up” have been increasingly problematized {in a manner which is essentially necessary and constructive), distinctions are constantly effaced be ‘tween fieldwork, ethnographic analysis, and the writing of ethnography. Gregory and Altman like many conflate methods of observation and analysis, and assume Presentation in the standard form of the monograph (cf Marcus and Fisher 1986:18-19). OF course. ifthe claims of cultural historians (c.g, Darnton 1984; Dening 1988) t0 write “ethnographic history” are recognized, it might need to beacknowledged that ethnography can be written in the absence of fieldwork (set- ‘ing aside the metaphorical extension of that term to encompass the archives}. ‘This article, in contrast, sustains a hard distinction between practices of e= search and the particular kinds of writing that we recognize as “ethnographic, ‘The purpose of such an assertion isnot, of course, to permit naive empiricist sep rations between observation and representation, since both research and siting are clearly politcal. discursive practices. While mcthods and research techniques ‘such as inquiry through conversution and sociological questionnaires may strongly in‘luedce the form in which information is presented. and the kinds of questions asked of it, the relationships between practical research technologies and forms of writing should be evoked in a notion of rutual entanglement, rather than some kind of determinism: it is obviously possible « generate similar ana- lytic discourses trom very different research procedures, and equally to use sim ilar esearch procedures toward divergent theoretical genres, The survey, for in- stance, may be mainly associated with positivistic enumeration and claims about ccorrefations. but Bourdieu’s Distincriom (1984) absorbs those styles to Tited ‘extent in a work of social critique’ that seems claver generically to an 1¥th- ‘century philosophical and empirical dissertation than iis to either the theory books or case studies of postwar sociology. My argument i thus that while ways of observing and ways of representing are often tangled up, and while methods admittedly constrain and influence forins of presentation. fieldwork and ethnog- ruphy are separable, and that at present it helps to situate the endusing problems ‘of anthropological vision i the constitution ofthe ethnographic genre, while feav- ing open the potential for another kind of writing energized by the experience of the field ‘While most comments on what has been variously called rellexive of post: ‘modernist anthropology have been reactive and negative (e-2., Spencer 1989), 1 take the overall perspective, if ot the specific arguments, of works such as Writ:‘CULTURAL ANTHROVOLOGY ing Culture (Clittord and Marcus 1986) and The Predicament of Cultare (Chiftoed 1988) for granted, This article however attempts to move beyond the current de- ‘ate by situating problematic features of anthropology, such as the tendency 10 ism, in the constitution of ethnographic discourse. One abstacte here is the commonsense epistemology of the diseipline—which ao doubt accords sith & ‘broader cultural model-—that understands knowledge primarily in quantitative terms. Defects are absences that can be rectified through the addition of further Information, abd more can be known about a particular topic by adding ather waye of perceiving it, “Bias” is thus associated with a lack and can be rectified or balanced out by the addition of further perspectives. My preferred metaphor would situate the causes of an array of moments of blindness and iasight in the ‘constitution of a discipline's analytic technology: particular kinds of overlooking arise from research methods, says of understanding concept, and genres of rep- resentation, This is essentially 4 model borrowed from feminist anthropology: as those critiques developed, it became apparent that the essentially linbalanced character of anthropological accounts of society could not be corrected without complex serutiny of methods and analysis, that “academic fields could got be cured by sexism simply by accretion” (C. Boxer quoted in Moore 1987:2-3). It is not clear, however, that the problems I discuss are analogous fo illnesses; the fabeication of alterity is not so much a blight or distortion to be excised or exor- ised, but a project central to ethaography's rendering ofthe proper stidy of man, ‘iat Although Edward Said’s work has aroused considerable interest in antro- ology. the response has often been qualified or critical (e.g, , Marcus and Fisher 21986:1-2; Cliflord (988:255-276). Iti sometimes asserted that because anthro- pologists have engaged in many studies of European or American societies. and ate concerned with universal humanity as welt ax cultura difference, the charge ‘of excticism i only party jusified. Without disputing cither that work carried out under the name of amthropotogy has been extraordinarily diverse, or that a mis- Ieading stereotype ofthe discipline has wie currency, most be sid that this ‘overlooks the fact that the presentation of other cultures retains canonical status within the discipline. That is. despite a plethora of topics and approaches, there ‘are sil strong prescriptions that certain anthropological projects (Suet as those dealing with tribal religion) are more anthropological than others. The arguments here deploy ths sereotypic construct, even thoughe tis party @ misunderstanding prevalent outside the discipline, and partly something thet practitioners continue {o:mpose upon themselves and most particularly ther graduate students. The ob- “ect of my critique is thas an “analytical fiction” in Marilyn Strathern’s sense (4988:10),? and this reitied idea of a diverse discipline ean only be unfair and vnrepresentative of a variety of innovative approaches. But if what is said bene applies only ina parts! way to work remote from eunonical types. the converse ‘also applies, and the critique is valid insofar as anthropological texts actually do take the form of ethnographic depictions of other cultures.