TEN

Spatial Practices: Fieldwork, Travel, and the Disciplining

of Anthropology James Clifford

For George Slocking

The day after the Los Angeles earthquake of 1994, I \'latched a TV inter-vie\vwith an earth scientist. He said he had been "in the field" that morning looking for new fault lines. It was only after a minute or so of talk that I re-alized he had been flying around in a helicopter the whole tin1e. c:ould this be fieldwork? I was intrigued by his invocation of the field, and so1nchow unsatisfied.

My dictionary begins its long list of definitions for "field" with one about open spaces and another that specifics cleared space. The eye is 11ni1npcded, free to roam. In anthropology Marcel (;riaule pioneered the use of aerial photography, a method continued, now and again, by others. But if o\crvie\v, real or imagined, has long been part of fieldwork, there still see1ned In he an oxymoronic bump in the earth scientist's airborne "field." P

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pirical data. A satellite photo could provide that. What ma~e tl~is field:-ork \VitS rhe act of physically going out into a c/,eared place of work. Going out preM suppos("S a spatial distinction between a ho1ne base and an exterior p~ace of discovery. A clea1ed space of work assunies that one can keep out d1stract-iuv, influences. A ftcld, hy definition, is not overgrown. The earth scientist 1ould 1101 have done his helicopter "fieldwork" on a foggy clay. An archae-ologist t:annot excavate a site properly if it is inhabited or built over. An an-1111 opolog-ist 1nay frel it necessary to clear his or her field, at least concep-rnallY of tourists, 1nissionaries, or govcrn1nent troops. Going out into a 4-1 1;11'.;.d J>l

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an increasingly) constiluted by struggles over the term's proper range of 1neanings. This cu1nplication is present, to some extent, in all community-ust criteria for 111caning, especially when "essentially-contested concepts" (< ~ic-the translation of ongoing experi-ence and entangled relationship into something distanced and rcprcsc11t;1hlc (Clifford 1990). How did Brown negotiate this 1ransla1ion in

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Muhilocale ethnography (Marcus and Fischer 1986) is increasingly fa-niiliar; 1nullilocale fieldwork is an oxy1noron. I-low many sites can be studied inlt'nsively betOre criteria of "depth" are compromised?~ Roger Rouse's field-work in l\VO linked sites retains the notion of a single, albeit mobile, com-111unily (Rouse 1991 ). Karen McCarthy Brown stays within the "world" of an individulogy.'' (;ivc11 a lin1ited number of weeks, how important is it that novice an1hropologisls read Radcliffe-Brown? Robert Lowie? Would it be better tu include Mever Fortes or Kenneth Burke? Levi-Strauss, surely ... but why not also Sinu;nc de Beauvoir? Franz Boas, of course ... and Frantz Fanon? Margaret Mead or Marx ... or E. P. Thompson, or Zora Neale I-lurston, or Michel Foucault? Melville Herskovits perhaps ... and W. E. B. DuBois? St. c:Jair Drake? \o\'ork on photography and media? Kinship, once a disciplfnary core, is now actively forgotten in some departn1ents. Anthropological linguistics, s1ill invoked as one of the canonical '"four fields, n is very unevenly covered. In so1ne pro-grams, one is more likely to read literary theory, colonial history, or cogni tive science .... Synthetic notions of 'nan, the "culture-bearing ani1nal, .. that once slitched together a discipline now see1n ;u11iq11ated or perverse. c:an the disciplinary center hold? In the introductory syllabus, hylnid selection will eventually be made, attuned to local lrculitions and c11rrtn1 dC"rnands, with recognizably "anthropological" authors at the re11tcr. (Sonn1in1es tla .. pure" disciplinary lineage will be cordoned off in a history of anthropol-ogy course, required or not.) Anthropolohry reproduces itself while .'.;electively engaging with relevant interlocutors: fro1n social hislory, frorn cuhural stud-

Hj2 JAMES ClJFI-' 1nai11-tain a clear separation when the disciplinary Othcr-li1crary-rhttoric.al theory or textualist semiotics-has no fieldwork con1ponent and at htst an anecdotal, .. ethnographic" approach to cultural phcnorncna. "C:ultural stud-ies," in its Birmingham tradition as well as in so111c of its soci11logical veins, possesses a developed ethnographic tradition n111ch closer to anthropolog-ical fieldwork. The distinction "\Ve do fieldwork, they do cliscour~e analrsis" is more difficult to sustain. Some anthropologists h;ne turned lo cultur;1l ~l\ulies ethnography for inspiration (Lave ct al. 199~), and inclccd there is n1uch to learn from its increasingly coniplcx articulalions of class, gcnclC'r, race, and sexuality. Moreover, what Paul Willis did with the worki11g-cl

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like hint is very 1nuch her concern-her "field." Indeed, she is interested not pri1narily in a spatially defined conununity but in what she calls the "dis-rourse" of the new funda1nentalis1ns. 11 She is concerned with rv programs, sennons, novels, 1ncdia of all kinds, as well as with conversations and every-cl

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;1 special research practice and understanding of human culture") or nega-tive (''we are not inissionaries, colonial officers, or travel writers"). Rather, I assu1ne that these definitions must be actively produced, negotiated, and

n~negotiated through changing historical relationships. It is often easier to say clearly what one is nol than what one is. In the early years of modern an-thropology, while the discipline was still establishing its distinctive research tradition and authoritative cxen1plars, negative definitions were critical. And in tin1es of uncertain identity (such as the present), definition may be lf>gisls had been rnl1cl1 more clearly set apart. No longer scientific travelers or explortrs, anl11ro-pologists were defined as fieldworkers, a change shared with other sciences (see chapter 2). The field was a distinctive cluster of acadcn1ic research prac-tices, traditions, and representational rules. But while cornpc1ing pr-..1ctices and rhetorics were actively held at bay in the process, the ne\vly cleared dis-ciplinary space could never be entirely free of con1an1ination. Its borders would have to be rebuilt, shifted, and reworked. Indeed, one w;iy to under-stand the current "experimentalisn1" of clhnographic \vriting is as a rene-gotiation of the boundary with "travel writing," which was agonis1ic;1lly dt-fined in the late nineteenth century.

"Literariness," held at a distance in the fig111:c of the travel writer, has n_-turned to ethnography in the fonn of strong clainis ;.1bo111 the prefigura-tion and rhetorical com1nunication of "data." 'fhc facts do not speak f(>r themselves; they are em plotted rather than collected, produced in worldly relationships rather than observed in controlled en\iron1nents. 1" 'fhis grow-ing awareness of the poetical and political contingency of ficlchvork-an awareness forced on anthropologists by postwar anticolonial challenges 10 Euro-American centrality-is reflected in a rnore concrete tcxlual sense of the ethnographer's location. Ele1nents of the .. literary" tr

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national/transnational context; technologies of transport (getting there as wc.11 as being there); and interactions with named, idiosyncratic individuals, ralhtr than otnunyrnous, representative inforn1ants.

In an earlier discussion, I have worked to decenter the field as a natural-i1ed practice of duJeJling by proposing a crosscutting metaphor-fieldwork as lratlf{ encuunlers (C:lifford 1992). To decenter or interrupt fieldwork-as-dwclling is not to reject or refute it. Fieldwork has always been a mix of in-.... 1i1utionalized pr.tcticesof dwelling anrl traveling. But in the disciplinaryide-;1\i1ation of .. the field," spatial practices of 1noving to and from, in and out, J>assing through, have tended to be subsurned by those of dwelling (rapport, initioition, fa1niliarity). This is changing. Ironically, now that much anthro-pologitween conrernporary fieldwork and travel (or journalistic) work. rhert are i111por1ant generic and institutional distinctions. The injunction 10 dv1ot>ll intensively, to learn local languages, to produce a "deep" interpre-1atio11 is a difference that rnakes a difference. But the border between the 1wo nl;11ivc.ly rc.cent 1raditio11s of literary travel and aca

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course, speaking broadly of disciplinary nor1ns and textual figures, not of 1l1e actual historical experiences of field anthropologists. In varying degrees, 1hcse diverged fron1 the nonns while being constrained by thern.

E111otinns, a necessary part of the controlled e111pathy of participant ob-ser\'alion, were not accorded pri1nary expression. They could not be the chief soutTe of public judgrnents about the co1nnu1nities under study. This was partic_ularly true of negative assess111ents. The 1noraljudgn1ents and curses of the tr.1.vel writer, based on soci;.1! frustrations, physical discon1forts, and prl'judices, as well as on principled criticisn1, were excluded or downplayed. An understanding rapport and 111easured affection were favored. Expressions of ovj>rary

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close. Participant observation, a delicate management of distance and prox-in1ity, should not include entanglements in which the ability to maintain per-spc

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since the adoption of a geisha "habitus" (in Dcfert's older sense-a mode of being, manifested through clothes, gesture, and appearance) is a central issue in her participant observation and written ethnography. Yet the pho-tographs of Dalby looking ahnost exactly like a "real" geisha break with es-tablished ethnographic conventions.

At another pole are the photographs published by Malinowski (in Coral (;ardrns and "f'JieJr ftrfagic [ 193_~]) of hi1nself in the field. He is dressed entirely in white, surrounded by black bodies, sharply distinguished by posture and

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REROUTING THE FIELD

I havt' 1ricd to identify so111e of the sedi1ne11ted practices lhrough and against which newly diverse ethnographic project~ struggle fo1 recognition within an1hropology. Established practices co1ne under pressure as the range of sites that can he 1rcatecl ethnographically multiplies (the acadernic border with "tultural studies") and as differently positioned, politically invested scholars entrr the field (the: challenge of a "postcolonial anthropology"). The latter df identification, not discrete identities.

Kirin Narayo.111 (1~193} questions the opposition of native and nonnative, insider ;incl outsider anlhropologists. This binary, she argues, stems from a discredited, hierarchical colonial structure. Drawing on her own ethnogra-phy in different part-; of India, where she feels varying degrees of affiliation and disrance, Nar;;1yan shows how "native" researchers are con1plexly and 111ultiply lo(le1nent, ancl trouble each other. "Native" ;;tnthropologists-like all

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Anthropoloh'Y potenlially includes a ca~t of diverse dwellers and travelers \:hose cli~pllate" and the non-Wtstern an-thropologist, both Talal Asad (19!-h~) and A~j1111 Appad11n-1i (19KKa) have sug gested that to undennine the asynunetry in anthropological praclirt 1nany 1nore such anthropologisL'i should study Wcsl(rn socictirs. This, 10 be sure, is a step in the right direction inasn1uch as it suhvC'l'IS thr perv

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,,, JAMES Cl.IFFl>RD

or ethnohistorical interpretations of non-university authorities are seldom recognized as fully scholarly discourse; rather, they tend to be seen as local, arnateurish knowledge. In anthropology, the research that produces such k110\vledgc, howt~ver intensive and interactive, is not fieldwork.

rhe disciplin.1ry "Other"who perhaps most epito1nizes the border at is-!'illt' here is the figure of the Local historian. This supposedly partisan chroni-cler and keeper of 1he co1n1n11nity's records is even harder to integrate with conventional fieldwork than the e1nerging figures of the diasporic post-colonial, the oppositional n1inority scholar, or even the traveling native. r.1i111ed hy a prcloi11111ed inunobiliry ancl by assu111ptions of a1natcurisrn and hoo.'ittrisin, lhe local historian, like the ;1ctivist or culture-worker, lacks the required professional .. distance." As \Ve have seen, this distance has been nat-11ralized in spatial practices of lhe "field," a circu1nscribed place one enters and lcilVCs. Movc1ncnt in and out has been considered essential to the in-ttrprcti\c procc~. the 1nanagen1ent of depth and discretion, absorption and "'tht view fron1 afar" (LCvi-Strauss 198_r,).

rhe disciplinary border that keeps locally based authorities in the posi-tion of inforn1an1s is, however, being renegotiated. Where and ho\V the boundary is redrawn-which spatial practices will be accornmodated by the ('\olving 1n.1dition of anthropological fieldwork and which will be excluded-1Tn1ains to be seen, But in this context it ntay be useful to ask how the legacy ol"I itldwork-a.s-tr.tvel helps to account lr an issue raised during recent prcs-idt'ntial sessions on diversity at the A111erican Anthropological Association: lhc fact that North A1nerican 111inorities are entering the field in relatively s111all nu1nber.s. Anthropology has difficulty reconciling goals of analytic dis-l

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and embodied practices, an injunction to listen are all elements of the field-work tradition they v.ilue and hope to preserve. Moreover, Gupta and Fer-guson's nolion of shifting locations suggests that even when the ethnog-rapher is positioned as an insider, a .. native" in her or his community, some taking of distances and translating differences will be part of the research, analysis, and writing. No one can be an insider to all sectors of a commu-nity. I-low the shifting locations are rnanaged, how affiliation, discretion, and critical perspective are sustained, have been and will remain matters of t

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\'Vestern travel practices. I have suggested, too, that othe1 travel traditions and diasporic routes can help renovate methodologies of displacement, l

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and Wellman (1995), all of which expliciliy address anthropological debates about t1hnographic authority. Anthrupology has until relatively recently been distinguished fnun sociology by a research object (the pritnitive, the tribal, the rural, the subaltern-tspecially non-Western and premodern). Michele Duchet (1984) has traced the en1ergence of anthropology's special object to eighteenth-century anthropology-sociology, which divided up the globe according to a series of familiar dichotomies: \\;th/without history, archaic/modern, literate/nonliterate, distant/nearby. Each op-position has, by now, been empirically blurred, politically challenged, and theoreti-cally rleconstructed.

K. My comments here are based on conversations with Susan Harding. Indeed, her hybrid research practice was my starting point for reconsidering the "field" in anthro-poloKY. Puhlica1ions fron1 her work in progres.'> include Harding 1987, 1990, and 1993.

q. As J send this chapter to press, I sadly note the death of my colleague David Sc-J~neider, who never tired of re1ninding me that fieldwork was not the sine qua non 0 anthropology. 1 lis general position, a critique of my work among others, has just appeared in Schneider on Schneider (1995: esp. chapter 10), a mordant, hi-larious, intemperate hook of in1erviews. Schneider argues that famous anthropol-ogists are distinguished by ideas and theoretical innovations rather than by good licldwork. Ethnography, as he sees it, is a process of generating reliable facts that h'IHI 10 confirm preconceived ideas or are irrelevant to the work's final conclusions. Fieldwork is 1he e1npirical alibi for a questionable positivism. He dismisses claims 1l1

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22. In her gently reflexive ethnography Storytelltrs, Saints, and Scoundrels (1989), Kirin Narayan provides a photo of herself in the field. The focus of her research was the apartment of Swarniji, a Guru storyteller in India, and the photo shows several wo1nen seated on the aparunent lloor. None of them is Narayan, though were she .~tated anong thern, she would not with her sari and "Indian" features be easily dis-tinguished from the other South Asian wo1ne11. The caption reads: "Listening at-1enlively from the women's side of the room. The bag and camera cover mark my presence. "The accoutrements of her trade occupy the ethnographer's discrete place. Indeed, throughout the book, Narayan 's tape recorder is an explicit topic of discus-sion for Swamiji and his followers.

2:\- Appearances are powerful. Dorrine Kondo {1986: 74) begins her important txplt1ration of the processes of dissolution and reconstitution of the self in fieldwork tnnn111terswith a disturbingglin1pse of her own image, reflected in a Tokyo butcher's display case as she shops for her Japanese "family." For an instant she is indistin-KUishahle in every particular-clothes, body, gesture-from a typical young house-wife, "a wo1nan walking with a characteristically Japanese bend in the knees and slid-ing of the feet. Suddenly I clutched the handle of the stroller to steady myself as a wa\'t" of dizziness washed over me .... Fear that perhaps I would never emerge from this world into which I was immersed inserted itself into my mind and stubbornly re-ft1sC"d 10 leave, until I resolved to ntove into a new apartment, to distance myselrfrom rnyJapanese home and nyJapanese existence." In the border-crossings of fieldwork, ,. holistic .. experience'" is mobilized, and at risk. Kondo argues that this etnbodied rxpe1ience needs to be brought into explicit ethnographic representation.

2,1. On 1he nonidentical. imbricated, relationship of indigenous, diasporic, and J)