anthropology's colonial encounter

8/6/2019 Anthropology's Colonial Encounter

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/anthropologys-colonial-encounter 1/14

Tala Asad (ed). Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter .

Keyword: colonialism; imperialism; history of anthropology; British functionalism; French

Structuralism; comparative analyes (or lack thereof); honest and integrity in ethnography;

In conversation with: a range of postcolonial ethnographers; Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, Levi-

Strauss, Leach, Taussig (for his way of dealing with the colonial encounter)

Useful for: understanding the history of anthropology, and gaining a better understanding for the

downfall of functionalism. The introductory chapter may be of use in teaching an undergraduate coursein anthropology...and is certainly an important text for understanding the relationship between

anthropology and colonialism and imperialism.

Summary Notes:

• Functional anthropology, in Britain, emerged as a field that emerged as a distinct discipline after

World War I, and assured academic status by universities after World War II• Shortly after, people began to have misgivings about the field...

• Edmund Leach, for instance, argued that the doctrine of functionalism ceased to carry

conviction.

• The self-evident strength of socio-cultural anthropology is no longer so strong

• Asad asks “What has happened to British anthropology?”

Social Anthropology:

• could, at one point, be defined as the study of 'primitive societies'

• In the 1960s and 70s, however the coherence of style is absent...

• Anthropologists study both 'simple' and 'complex' societies...they resort to participantobservation, statistical techniques, historical archives, and other literary sources;

anthropologists find themselves intellectually closer to economists and political scientists or

psychoanalysts or structural linguists or animal behaviourists than to other anthropologists....

Why, all of a sudden, do anthropologists see connections with economists and political scientists?

• Part of the reason is the fact that the world in which social anthropology is embedded has been

shifting since WWII

• These changes have highlighted the fact that anthropology doesn't simply apprehend the world,

but the world determines how anthropology will apprehend the world

Cam Note: why can't the world apprehend anthropology?

Colonial and Postcolonial:

“The attainment of political independence by colonial, especially African countries inthe late '50s and the early '60s accelerated the trend, apparent since the war, of socio-economic change, involving these countries in the planned development of nationalnetworks of communications, electrification and broadcasting; the promotion of education



and of rural improvement projects; the shift of political power from 'tribal' leaders to thenationalistic bourgeosie” (13).

• the growing criticism of functionalism was connected with a range of factors, not the least of which being anthropology's intimate connection with colonialism...and the anthropologist's

framework, and the increasing importance of indigenous history, anthropology's past was

brought to light....and anthropology had to face it's colonial past

• At the same time, there was growing criticism of functionalist theory and its relevance, or

accuracy, in ethnographic accounts

Critiques of Functionalism:

1. it never adequately clarified the distinction between a totalising method (in which the formation

of parts is explained with reference to a developing structure of determinations) andethnographic holism (in which the different 'institutions' of a society are all described and

linked one to another)

2. Since it had in general confused structural determination with simultaneity, concretedevelopments in the world outside pushed functional anthropology until it collapsed into micro-

sociology

Cam Note: you could never have a truly “functional” anthropology today, because thinkers and

ethnographers are attuned to the constant intersubjective becoming-withs of different places. The

boundaries are not so easily determined between individual societies or cultures. This is something one

learns from Haraway, Clifford, Latour, Tsing, and a range of postcolonial researchers. This is, however,not to say that local studies are not important, but they are always connected with a bigger, cross-

cultural picture in mind.

• Asad notes that anthropologists in his time were choosing to re-orient themselves in relation to

a 'multitude of fragmentary problems—political, economic, domestic, cultic, etc.--at much

smaller scales...

Anthropology's Colonial origins:

• It's not in dispute whether anthropology came into its own during the colonial era.....

• Yet, there is a strange reluctance on the part of anthropologists to take seriously the power

structure in which their discipline took shape

• Significantly, Asad calls for a nuanced approach to dealing with Anthropology's colonial

connections. He suggests that one should not make overly exaggerated statements on either

side....anthropology is neither able to shed its colonial heritage completely, nor is it little more

than the 'handmaiden of colonialism'

Asad's interesting take:

“The colonial power structure made the object of anthropological study accessible andsafe— because of it sustained physical proximity between the observing European and theliving non- European became a practical possibility” (17).



• asad writes about the asymmetry of the dialectic of world power....there is always a power

relation....also an asymmetrical (complementary in Bateson's terms) relationship....

• Asad's nuanced approach leads him to argue that he thinks it's a mistake to view social

anthropology as primarily an aid to colonial administration.

• Rather, he sees this as, at least partially, the result of the inherently contradictory nature of

bourgeois consciousness. He wants us to apprehend these contradictions, and to do so requiresunderstanding the relationship between the West and the Third World...

Asad's Thesis:

“For these contradictions to be adequately apprehended it is essential to turn to thehistorical power relationship between the West and the Third World and to examine theways in which it has been dialectically linked to the practical conditions, the workingassumptions and the intellectual product of all disciplines representing the Europeansunderstanding of non-European humanity” (19).

CHAPTER ONE: Peter Forster. “Empiricism and Imperialism: A Review of the New Left Critique of

Social Anthropology”

• Forster offers a critical analysis of the New Left's critique of anthropology, ultimately arguingthat many of the more polemical arguments are unfounded...

• He finds the origins of the new left critique in the 'dismemberment' of colonial

empires....empires that were previously the 'stamping' ground for anthropologists....

• At the same time, the critique stems from disenchantment with functionalism....

Some Versions of the critique:

• some, like Goddard, advocate a greater concern for the metaphysical elements of Durkheim's

thought....

• Functionalism naturalised only a portion of Durkheim's arguments, leaving out his attention tometaphysical details and speculation....

• Others, like Leach, suggest that anthropologists should have a greater appreciation for Levi-

Strauss' structuralism (a form of structuralism that allows for the study of myths, andcomparative, cross-cultural analyses)

• Another criticism suggests that anthropologists have either ignored, or not taken seriously

enough, the colonial situation...

Forster's three areas of concern:

1) the question of value-free social anthropology, and the role of the anthropologist in society2) the concept of relevance

3) the concept of commitment



CHAPTER FOUR: Talal Asad. “Two European Images of Non-European Rule”

• Asad looks at the epoch within which anthropology developed its distinct character....

Asad's definition of anthropology: Anthropology is a holistic discipline, nurtured by bourgeois

society, which studies non-European societies which have come under its economic, political and

intellectual domination....

• Asad wants to explore the “political conclusions” of functional anthropology, in order to see

how European historical experience of subordinate non-European peoples has shaped itsobjectification of the latter....

Functional Anthropology's view of political domination:

• in general, the structure of traditional African states is represented in terms of balance of

powers, reciprocal obligations and value consensus......

“This, then is the functional anthropological image of political domination in the so-called tribal world: an emphasis on the integrated character of the body politc, on thereciprocal rights and obligations between rulers and ruled, on the consensual basis of the ruler's political authority and administration, and on the inherent efficiency of thetraditional system of government in giving every legitimate interest its duerepresentation” (105).

• historical realities are more complicated than these views....

• This view ignores a basic political reality in Africa, that since the 19th C there was the pervasive

presence of colonial power....the conquest of European political and capitalist countries....

• Even when later anthropologists began to refer to the colonial presence as part of the localstructure they generally did so in such a way asd the obscure the systematic character of

colonial domination and to mask the fundamental contradictions of interest inherent in thesystem of Indirect Rule

• the functionalist equated empircal work with fieldwork, and tended to define their theoretical

foundations in terms of practical fieldwork...not questions of political economy....

Difference between the way Evolutionists and Functionalists Objectified Colonial Subjects:

“...unlike ninteenth century anthropology, the objectification of functionalanthropologists occurred within the context of routine colonialism, of an imperial structure of power already established rather than one in prcess of vigorous expansion in whichpolitical force and contradiction are only too obvious” (115).

Cam Note: part of the problem, and something implicit in Asad's account, is the fact that becausefunctionalism didn't dive into broader theoretical questions of political economy, and dynamic social

and economic factors, they ended up treating imperialism as a background, or ignoring it completely. It

became too much a part of the underground. This is, for me, one reason why “mundane” elements of daily life are so important in anthropological studies!



In conclusion:

“...by refusing to discuss the way in which bourgeois Europe had imposed its powerand its own conception of the just political order on African and Islamic peoples, bothdisciplines were basically reassuring to the colonial ruling classes” (118).

Johannes Fabian. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object



Keywords: time; natural history; evolution; functionalism; history of anthropology; (post-)colonial

theory; emergence; methology

In conversation with: Clifford, Asad, Charis Thompson (in terms of the multiple forms of time),Haraway, Rabinow, Bourdieu

Fabian provides a fascinating, and ultimately compelling, critique of anthropology's engagement withquestions and theoretizations of time. Though perhaps too polemical, Fabian traces striking connections

between the secularization of time in Judeao-Christian societies, the rise of capitalism, colonialism, and

evolutionary theories (both in the natural and social sciences) in the 19 th C, and anthropological theoriesin the era of late capitalism. Fabian suggests that the naturalized, standardized, linear notion of time

that led early evolutionary anthropologists to develop their progress narratives, and their 'stages' of

civilization, still serves as the foundation for anthropology's construction of it's object of study, the

Other. By relegating the Other to the categories of 'primitive', 'tribal', 'savage', anthropologists distancethemselves from their object in both space and time. Fabian calls for a direct engagement with, and

reworking of, anthropological conceptions of time, which he believes should lead to recognition of the

coevalness of intersubjective time experienced by both observers and those observed.

Fabian's Thesis:

“It is not the dispersal of human cultures in space that leads anthropology to'temporalize' (something that is maintained in the image of the 'philosophical traveler'whose roaming in space leads to the discovery of 'ages'); it is naturalized-spatialized Timewhich gives meaning (in fact a variety of specific meanings) to the distribution of humanityin space” (25).

Critique: Fabian's argument is convincing, but unlike Haraway, Thompson, he undertheorizes the

importance of both the anthropologist and their Other interacting, but from different conceptions of embodied temporality. Thompson, for instance, shows that even in one ART lab, ontological

choreography requires one to coordinate not just a range of bodies and technologies, but also a range of seemingly disparate temporal rhythms....

Summary Notes:

PREFACE:

• Fabian acknowledges that it is easy to show, for instance, that one speaks through time, but it is

very difficult to speak OF time

• For Fabian, time , like language or money, is a carrier of significance, a form through which we

define the content of relations between the Self and the Other.....

• this book is a collections of essays about anthropology through time...no anthropology of time...• Fabian examines past and present uses of Time as a way of construing the object of

anthropological discipline....

Cam Note: In connection with Charis Thompson, it's interesting that Fabian begins by describing the

fact that anthropologic objects, like parents and babies, and bodies (in Mol)...are

made...materialized...enacted....

• Fabian wants to study the 'we' and the 'other' dialectically...



Excellent justification for dialectical study:

“To consider the relation dialectically means to recognize its concrete temporal,historical, and political conditions. Existentially and politically, critique of anthropologystarts with the scandal of domination and exploitation of one part of mankind by another” (x)

• Fabian is concerned that anthropologists have constantly been forced to cover up a fundamentalcontradiction: on the one hand, anthropologists assert that their work rests on ethnographic

research involving personal, prolonged interaction with the other....on the other hand, they

pronounce upon the knowledge gained from such research a discourse of the Other in terms of distance, spatial and temporal....

• Fabian wants anthropologists to consider the ideological nature of temporal concepts which

inform theories and rhetoric.

• He also wants researchers to pay attention to Intersubjective Time....time which does not

measure but constitutes those practices of communication called fieldwork....

• Fabian finds much to like in Bourdieu's theory of Time and cultural practice....

CHAPER ONE: Time and the Emerging Other:

• knowledge is power...

• Anthropology's claim to power originated at its roots....

• there is no knowledge of the Other which is not also a temporal, historical, political act...

From Sacred to Secular Time – The Philosophical Traveler:

• in the Judeo-Christian tradition Time is conceived as the medium of a sacred history.

• Time was celebrated as a sequence of events that befall a chosen people....

•This was a linear conception of time...in contrast to pagan, cyclical views of time...includingviews of reincarnation, etc.

• faith in a covenant between Divinity and one people....trust in divine providence....make for

sacred conceptions of time....they stress the specificity of Tim....its realization I na given

cultural ecology....

• steps toward modern involve a succession of attempts to secularize Judeo-Christian Time by

universalizing and generalizing it....

• universal time was most likely established in the Renaissance.

Interesting connection between anthropology, the Enlightenment and the universalization of time:

“...there are good reasons to look for decisive developments, not in the moments of intellectual rupture achieved by Copernicus and Galileo nor, for that matter, by Newton andLocke, but in the century that elaborated the devices of discourse we now recognize as thefoundations of modern anthropology—the Age of Enlightenment”

• Fabian suggests that, as people begin to travel, sailing all over the work....people began to seethis travel as “traveling through time”....when one stops in “underdeveloped” societies, they are

struck by the fact that they made passage 'through time'...

• the idea of philosophical travel, the conception of travel as science, could leave the problem of

Time implicit....



• travel was important to the bourgeosie in Europe....this led to these conceptions o philosophical

time travel...

• Fabian argues that the idea of a knowledge of Time, which was prefigured in Christianity, but

which found its legs in the Enlightenment, is an integral part of anthropology's intellectualequipment...and baggage....

From History to Evolution:

• there remains much confusion in terms of people's understanding of evolutionary theory. For

instance, it is important to distinguish Darwin and Spencer

• the starting point for any attempt to understand evolutionary temporalizing will be the achieved

secularization of Time

• There were, of course, a range of biological thought before Darwin...

• When Darwin became popularized, people like Spencer, and other social theorists, incorporated

his work into their theories of social evolution.....

• And, don't forget the importance of Lyell's uniformatarianism and gradualism....

• The new naturalized time of evolutionary thought, unlike either the preceding sacred or secular

forms....allowed Time to no longer be a vehicle for a continuous, meaningful story...it was away to order an essentially discontinuous and fragmentary geological and paleontologicalrecord....

• social evolutionists accepted this naturalized time...some even took and never thought twice

about how they were conceptualizing time (Morgan, Spencer, Tylor are all included)

• these thinkers SPATIALIZED time....time was not a chain, but a tree....

Cam Note: the “tree” is an important metaphor in the biological sciences as well...the tree of life, for

instance...and D and G criticize the tree metaphor in the development of their rhizome....

• the tree is a simple way to construct classificatory schemes based on subsumption and

hierarchy...

• Ever since, anthropology's treatment of time has lead researchers to construct relations with the

Other by means of temporal devices that implied an affirmation of difference as

distance....rather than holding those difference together, in an intersubjective relationship intime...

Early Evolutionists and the persistence of Naturalized time:

“Tylor or Morgan are for many anthropologists still the uncontested founders of theirdiscipline and, while most of their 'artificial constructs' may now be rejected, thenaturalization of Time which was evolutionism's crucial epistemological stance remains

by and large unquestioned” (16).

• Fabian believes that the persistence of naturalized time is regressive...and has kept anthropology



from developing meaningful and respectful engagements with the Other

• Significantly, Fabian believes that this leads to a situation where people do not study the Other,

but in terms of the Other....

• Primitive is a temporal concept...it is a category not an object....which means it already serves tolimit analysis....

Diffusionists, Functionalists, Structuralists, Culturalists:

• all of the subsequent anthropological disciplines fared no better in terms of time...because they

either ignored or denied its significance...

• This is especially true because many of these disciplines emphasized synchronic analyses....de

Saussure, Mauss, Durkheim,....

• Even the cultural anthropologists in the states, like Mead, Boas, and Benedict didn't fare well...

• cultural relativism relatived cultural time, but left universal time an assumed fact of biological

evolution....

Some Uses of Time in Anthropological Discourse:

Scizogenic use of time: the anthropologist incorporates different conceptualizations of time in the field

than in their writing....

• Ultimately, Fabian wants to develop a critique of anthropological discourse that usesanthropology's conceptualization of time as its starting point...

Major Uses of Time:

1) Physical Time: parameter or vector in describing the sociocultural process. It appears in

evolutionary, prehistorical, reconstruction over vast spans but also in objective or neutral time

scales used to measure demographic or ecological changes. The assumption is that this kind of Time, while it is a paramter of culture process...is not subject of cultural variation

2) Mundane Time and Typological Time: Mundane time connotes to me a kind of world-wiserelation to Time, while resting assured of the workings of physical time in natural laws

governing the universe. Typological time signals a use of time which is measured, not as time

elapsed, but in terms of socioculturally meaningful events or, more precisely, intervals between

such events. Typological time underlies qualifications like preliterate vs literate, tribal vsfeudal, primitive vs industrial...

3) Intersubjective Time: emphasizes the communicative nature of human interaction. Time is a

constitutive dimension of social reality. No matter whether one studies synchronic or diachronic processes...they are all CHRONIC.

The importance of Intersubjective Time:



“Once Time is recognized as a dimension, not just a measure, of human activity, anyattempt to eliminate it from interpretive discourse can only result in distorted and largelymeaningless representations. The irony is that formal models, which are often presented asthe most 'scientific' form of anthropological discourse, try in fact to ignore the one problem,

Time, which has been recognized as the greatest challenge by modern natural science”(25).

• the naturalization of Time defines temporal relations as exclusive and expansive....the primitive

is not YET civilized....but through it's temporal unfolding...it will become civilized...

• Fabian suggests that his critique can be used in a richer critique of Anthropology's colonial past....because it uncovers a much deeper link between Enlightenment ideas, progress

narratives, evolutionary thought and anthropological fieldwork...VERY COOL!

CONCLUSION:

Issues for Debate:

• Fabian's goal is to dismantle certain assumptions, to make way for a more thorough critique of anthropological assumptions...

• Fabian isn't sure Marxist anthropology can solve the problem, because it too is stuck in an

allochronic worldview (re: Marx's distinction between primitive and capitalist markets....and hisown vague evolutionary ideas)

• Tradition and modernity are not opposed...nor in conflict..

• what are opposed are not the same society at different points in development...but different

societies occupying the same time...

The importance of Praxis...and the problems of holistic social science:

1) by insisting that culture is a system which 'informs' or 'regulates' actions...holistic social science

fails to provide a theory of praxis....it causes anthropologists to constantly conduct their

research from a distance...from outside...2) Failure to conceive a theory of praxis blocks the possibility to perceive anthropology as an

activity which is part of what it studies...

Cam Notes: these are powerful arguments....

THERE ARE WAYS TO MEET THE OTHER ON THE SAME GROUND, IN THE SAME TIME!

James Clifford. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art



Keywords: globalization; modernization; cultural studies; literary studies; history of anthropology;

postcolonialism;emergence; postmodern optimism; hybridity; ethnographic authority

In conversation with: Anna Tsing, Asad, Fabian, Haraway, Latour, Michael Fischer, Frankfurt School;

Krecauer

Introduction: The Pure Products Go Crazy:

• Clifford opens with an odd poem by William Carlos Williams, a surrealist artists, who wrote a

poem about a girl he called Elise....

• Something about this girl throws Williams off

• The girl seemed to represent where society and culture were headed....

• Williams poem is a rush of associations...

• Clifford uses this poem to serve as a pretext for his book....a way of starting in which a predicament...

• Williams poem sums up a concern raised by a number of people....about modernity ruiningsome pure authenticity...

Williams' poem is different because it marks a new turn:

“By the 1920s a truly global space of cultural connections and dissolutions has becomeimaginable: local authenticities meet and merge in transient urban and suburban settings—settings that will include the immigrant neighborhoods of New Jersey, multicultural sprawlslike Buenos Aires, the townships of Johannesburg” (4).

• the ethnographic modernist searches for the universal in the local, the whole in the part..

Mission Statement:

“This book proposes a different historical vision. It does not see the world as populatedby endangered authenticities—pure products always going crazy. Rather, it makes spacefor specific paths through modernity, a recognition anticipated by Williams' discrepantquestion: what is 'given off' by individual histories like Elsie's? Are the 'isolate flecks' dyingsparks? New Beginnings?” (5).

• Clifford argues that geopolitical questions have become very important...we must ask 'whosereality? Whose new world?

Colonialism:

• the invasion by an ambiguous person of questionable origin anticipates developments that

would become widely apparent only after the Second World War....

• Colonial relations would be contested....

• After 1950 peoples long spoken for by Western ethnographers, administrators, and missionaries

began to speak for themselves on a global stage...

• It was difficult to keep these people in their traditions (re: natural) places....of subordination....



Cam Note: Interesting, post-World War 2 was also the time of the rise of Big Science, the development

of genetics, etc....but it was also the last time that people were generally optimistic about

technoscience. Is there any connection between the post-colonial period and the pessimism towards

science....or is this just the postmodern conditions?

• Rather than homogenization, this period saw people asserting their differences in novel ways...

•

Why, for instance, must Elsie symbolize a dead-end for Williams?• Williams assertion that Elsie is a impure figure might be a gendered statement....the hybrid

female....impure women, prostitutes, impure cultural artifacts...

• As woman, clifford suggests that Elsie is either a symbol for failure, or a symbol for hybridsuccess...an alternative to sexist definitions of beauty.

• Rather than a dead end, Elsie is a symbol of emergent possibilities....

• Clifford claims that only one of Elsie's emergent possibilities is going to be explored in this book....her 'dash of Indian Blood'...

• Clifford's book is tracing a “postcolonial crisis of ethnographic authority (Latour's We Have

Never Been Modern)

• The book is about Western visions and practices....but also how these visions and practices are

responding to forces that challenge their authority...• It's about the overlay of traditions that characterizes the 20th century

• A modern ethnograpy of constantly moving conjunctures....

Modern Ethnography Vs. Western Anthropology:

“A modern 'ethnography' of conjunctures, constantly moving between cultures, doesnot, like its Western alter ego 'anthropology,' aspire to survey the rull range of humandiversity of development. It is perpetualy displaced, both regionally focused and broadlycomparative, a form both of dwelling and of travel in a world where the two experiencesare less and less distinct” (9).

Cam Note: this is an amazing quote....

• This book migrates between local and global perspectives (Tsing)

PART ONE: Focuses on strategies of writing and representation, stategies that change historically in

response to the general shift from high colonialism around 1900 to postcolonialism and neocolonialism

after the 1950s. In this section, Clifford tries to show that ethnographic texts are orchestrations of

multivocal exchanges occurring in politically charged situations. The subjectivities produced areconstructed domains of truth...serious fictions. Once this is recognize, the possibility for diverse

postcolonial ethnographic invention emerges....

PART TWO: portrays ethnography in alliance with avant-garde art and cultural criticism, activities

with which it shares modernist procedures of collage, juxtaposition, and estrangement. Clifford is

exploring the possibilities of a twentieth century “poetics of displacement”

PART THREE: turns to history of collecting, particularly the classicification and display of primitive

art and exotic cultures. His general aim is to displace any transcendent regime of authenticity, to argue

that all authoritative collections, whether made in the name of art of science, are historically contingentand subject to local reappropriation”



PART FOUR: Explores how non-Western historical experiences—those of orientals and tribal native

Americans—are hemmed in by concepts of continuous tradition and the unified self. Clifford argues

that identity, considered ethnographically, must always be mixed, relational, and inventive....

Major Arguments:

•

ethnography shares important connectiosn with surrealism...it is an artful, and contingentcultural practice....

• Clifford wants to open up the connection between art and science....between disciplinary

science and the avant-garde...

“I reopen the frontier, suggesting that the modern division of art and ethnography intodistinct institutions has restricted the former's analytic power and the latter's subversivevocation” (12).

• ethnography is a hybrid activity....it appears simultaneously as writing, as collecting, as

collage, as imperial power, as subversive critique.....

• Clifford's topic is a mode of travel....a way of understanding and getting around in a diverseworld thhat, since the sixteenth century, has become cartographically unified.

•

anthropology's colonial encounter

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