CiiAPTEP.
12
Ethnography
Anthony Kwame Harrison
Abstract
Embracing the trope of ethnography as narrative, this chapter uses the mythic story of Bronislaw
Malinowski's early career and fieldwork as a vehicle through which to explore key aspects of
ethnography's history and development into a distinct form of qualitative research.The reputed "founding
father" of the ethnographic approach,Malinowski was a brilliant social scientist, dynamic writer, conceited
colonialist,and, above all else, pathetically human.Through a series of intervallic steps-in and out of
Malinowski's path from Poland to the "Cambridge School" and eventually to the western Pacific-I trace
the legacy of ethnography to its current position as a critical, historically informed,and unfailingly evolving
research endeavor.As a research methodology that has continually reflected on and revised its practices
and modes of presentation, ethnography is boundless.Yet minus its political, ethical, and historical
moorings, Iargue, the complexities of twenty-first-century society render its future uncertain.
Key Words: anthropology. colonialism,epistemology, the field, intersubjectivity, Malinowski,
methodology, writing culture
During my final weeks working on this chapter,
I happened to watch the documentary The Black
PowerMixtape 1967-1975-a contemporary collage
ofrarely seen Swedish television footage of the Black
Power cultural revolution ofthe 1960s and 1970s. In
the 1973 chapter of the DVD, there is a brief scene
from inside a Swedish tour bus traveling around
New York City. .fu the bus passes through Harlem,
the tour guide-speaking in Swedish but translated
as subtitles-describes the upper Manhattan neighborhood
as "undoubtedly the Black man's ghetto"
where "large amounts of narcotics are circulating";
he goes on to remind the tourists of how their
"welcome letter" had instructed them that the tour
company did "not want anyone to visit Harlem for
personalstudies... because [Harlem] is only for Black
people" (Olsson, 2011-emphasis added).
This human desire for personal studies, the traveler's
yearning to get off the tour bus, the curiosity
to move beyond the pretense of staged representations
oflife and to discover what it is really all about,
underlies the post-Enlightenment project of apprehending
the world though physical force, cognitive
classifications and containments, and, at times,
empathetic pretensions. The same impulses anticipated
among Swedes in 1970s New York inspired
a generation of European explorers to penetrate the
dark continent ofAfrica (Thornton, 1983) and continue
to compel turn of the (twenty-first) century
visitors to Chicago to sift and sort through a sliding
scale of authentic venues in search of "the real"
Chicago blues experience. But, as David Grazian
(2003) has effectively shown, even the most seemingly
authentic of these late modern cultural products
are fabricated commodifications, banking on
the city's global popularity as a blues destination.
Such realizations have implications for how we
think about the history, current state, and future of
ethnography. More than merely embracing Erving
Goffman's (1959) mid-twentieth-century declaration
that "all life is a stage"-though its connotation
are perhaps more profound r:han some
recognize-the sraging of the crhnograph.ic project
is acutely linked to an inva ive mix of privilege and
inquisition that sprouted io the garden ofWestern
modernity and spread throughout the colonial
hinterland. To make sense of thi · deep history one
must begin with qu rions like: what does it mean
to srudy rhe life ofsomeone else? Whac give anyone
the right to initiate research on another community
(even when rhey sincerely and passionat Ly believe
ir is for the communicy' berterrnent)? And, pressing
beyond the expected, pedestrian answers, what
larger goals are we working towards or working in
the service of when we undertake qualitative social
fieldwork?
I can imagine our Swedish tourist being just as
curious about the dealings of Wall Street investment
bankers (Ho, 2009) but less inclined to consider
going there, not necessarily out of a conscious
awareness ofWall Street's inaccessibility, but due to
a doxic (Bourdieu, 1977) inability to even acknowledge
it as a possibility. Then again, social researchers
and cultural commentators from W E. B. DuBois
(1903/ 1996) to Norman Mailer (1957) to Jon ｃｲｵｾ＠
( l999) have observed rhe racially loaded fascinations
rhar people of European descent have abouc
chose they (a) have had unproblematized access
ro and (b) view as most di tiller from chem elves,
either physically, culrurally, or both. Explanation
for chis range from the allure of rhe exotic and preumed
primal drives cowards straighrnway sari faction
and survival char govern tho e at the other
end of the civilization spectrum (here Mailer and
perhaps Malinowski) to empathy with the romanticized
innocence that such closeness to nature and
freedom from civilization's repressive shackles offers
(here Margarcc Mead and perhaps Malinowski).
Anthropology-the discipline to which ethnography
is most hi torically bound-came of age as
a legirimace academic field through rhese Western
impulses while simulcaneou ly fueliDg rheir popular
interest (Thornton, 1983).
Like the threat of Swedish tourists undertaking
personal studies, ethnography as a research
practice is, in many respects, renegade. That is, it
refuses to follow strict conventions and achieves
virtue and vitality through its lack of prescription.
Ethnography straddles structured research design
and improvised inquisitive adventure, constantly
moving betwixt and between theory, data, and
224 I ETHNOGRAPHY
analysis (O'Dell & Willim, 2011). Although it is
non-linear, it is profoundly narrative.
** *
This chapter introduces ethnography, as a specific
type of qualitative research methodology, through
an historically conscious narrative of its principal
and principled approaches. Much has changed in
ethnography since the classic era when researchers
such as Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown (I 922) and
E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1940/1969) traveled to faraway
places with names like the Andaman Islands
and Nuerland. Their charge was to plot the topography
of human cultural difference and to identify,
via conditions of isolation and theories of unified
wholes, the systems and processes through which
social life successfully functioned. Today, most
observers regard ethnography as fitting within a
more sophisticated project ofmaking sense ofsocial
life through the ways of knowing that are most
meaningful and potentially most consequential to
social actors themselves. Yet I caution against the
tendency for each coming-of-age generation to
selectively disconnect itself from those that came
before.1
Ethnographers trained in fields such as
anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, and folklore
recognize the importance-or have experienced
the rite-of-passage mandate-of knowing their history.
Still, mere knowledge ofpast right- and wrongdoings
combined with a critical disposition neither
empowers contemporary ethnographers to make
the most of their approach's unique virtues nor alleviates
them from its most primordial problematics.
Moreover, as ethnography has propagated into such
fields as organizational studies, planning, management,
and industrial engineering (to name just
three) concerns over research efficiency and tangible
outcomes tend to eclipse the historically informed
and critical perspectives that have defined its fundamental
modes of understanding. What is called for,
then, is an accounting of ethnography that situates
it contemporarily while simultaneously integrating
historical actors and the social forces they at times
conformed to and at others contended with.
One of the more damaging consequences of
ethnography's spreading popularity has been the
propensity to view it as a method rather than a meth-
odology.2
This difference is significant. A method
is simply a technique or tool used to collect data.
Ethnographers often utilize a variety of tools and
techniques during the course of their research,
including but not limited to: establishing rapport;
selecting informants; using a range of interview and
focus group forms; ｭ｡Ｎｫｩｮｾ＠ .observarions-bo.rh
ardcipacory and non-pamc1pacory-and wnrf
g field nores based on them; conducting surveys
ＱＱ
ｾ ＱＱ ｣｡ｬｯｧｩ･＠ , and domain analyses; mapping fields;
granscribing texts; and coding data.3 In conrrasc,
ｾ＠ 'rnechodology is a rheoretical, ethical, political,
and at rimes moral orientation co research, which
auidcs che decisions one makes including choices
=bout research methods. This distinction between
merhod and methodology ls crucial co my effort
co dlffurenciate ethnography from qualitative field
research more generally. Much of what is included
in this chapter will be useful to qualkarivc researchers
on the whole. However, my primary purpose is
co describe and delineate ethnography as a communally
engaged and historically informed early
rwenty-first-century research practice.
Much like culture, ethnography is one of those
social scientific abstractions that is readily deployed
co mark out what we-as anthropologists, sociologists,
and an increasing range of researchers in other
fields-do as unique, yet is difficult to capture in a
single precise and thoroughgoing definition.4
Part of
the difficulty is that the term refers to both a research
process and the written product of those research
activities. While not losing sight of the important
revisions to come out ofits "crisis of representation"
that have pushed scholars to acknowledge, and in
fact prioritize its ultimate textual character (Clifford
& Marcus, 1986; Marcus & Fischer, 1986), in this
chapter, I mostly treat ethnography as a processual
approach to doing a particular kind of qualitative
research.
To begin, I present a few basic definitions of
ethnography. Carol A. Bailey (2007) quite simply
explains it as "a type of field research that
requires longterm engagement in a natural setting"
(p. 206). In a more detailed description, Martyn
Hammersley and Paul Atkinson outline the ethnographic
project as:
participating, overtly or covertly in people's daily
lives for an extended period of time, watching
what happens, listening to what is said, asking
question ... [and] collecting whatever [other] data
are available to throw light on the issues that are the
focus of the research. [1995, p. 1]
Lastly, Clifford Geertz (1973), in his classic treatment,
defines ethnography as "an elaborate venture
in ... 'thick description'" (p. 6). Etymologically,
ethnography combines ethno, meaning "culture
(or race)," and graphy, meaning "to write, record,
and describe."5 Thus ethnography, which Barbara
Tedlock (2000) refers to as an "inscription practice"
(p. 455), can be thought of as the process and product
ofwriting, recording, and describing culture.
Building offofthese different understandings, my
treatment of ethnography is simultaneously broad
and narrow. During the late twentieth century and
now into the twenty-first, ethnography moved from
the confined ranges of anthropology and sociology
to a tremendous number of disciplines and fields,
including (in addition to those listed earlier) psychology,
geography, women's studies, history, criminology,
education, political science, communications,
leisure studies, counseling, nursing, psychiatry, medicine,
social work, and law (seeTedlock, 2000; Denzin
& Lincoln, 2008; Jones &Watt, 2010), just to name
a few. Attempts to put narrow disciplinary restraints
on ethnography are, in my view, shortsighted and
possibly even disciplinarily egocentric. Similarly,
the variety of practices involved with ethnography is
expansive and continually expanding. These include
several traditional qualitative research methods (such
as those listed earlier) as well as more recent innovations
that cross into visual and sensory studies (Pink,
2006, 2009), the arts (Leavy, 2009; Schneider &
Wright, 2010), action-oriented research (Kemmis
& McTaggart, 2000), autoethnography (Ellis, 2004;
S. H. Jones, 2008), and collaborative ethnography
(Lassiter, 2005). This is not the place to explicate the
multifaceted dimensions ofthese varied approaches,
but I want to be clear in stating that all cohere (or
have the potential to) with the understanding of
ethnography that I put forward.
At the same time, there has been a tendency
among some scholars to define almost any qualitative
research project-and particularly projects
involving traveling to a field site-as ethnographic.
On this matter I am more stringent in explaining
that ethnography involves more than just going
somewhere to conduct research on or within a community.
It involves a certain frame of mind, or,
I will even say, historically aware sensibiliry that is
very much its own. Ethnography is often equated
with the practice of (or practices surrounding)
participant observation. I agree to the extent that
ethnography fits within a participant-observation
framework, yet to highlight what I see as a key difference,
let me return to the definition from Geertz,
which is premised on his notion of thick description.
In his classic illustration ofthick description, Geertz
(1973) discusses Gilbert Ryle's (1971) distinction
between the involuntary contracting of the eyelid
associated with a twitch and winking. While as a
physical description of action the two are the same,
HARRISON
properly contextualized-in the case of the wink,
involving such things as impetus, intention, and
success in communication-they are drastically different.
Ethnography, as I am defining it (as a methodology),
involves degrees of impetus, intention,
and conviction that are different from simply having
a participant-observatory perspective and standpoint.
Although many of its characteristics have
changed since the days when Margaret Mead first
traveled to Samoa, like the origins of ethnography
itself, these changes have been as much a gradual,
reflective, and historically mediated evolution as a
radical shift. Thus, a solid grounding in the history
of ethnography is important to understanding how
current ethnographic research differs from what we
might broadly call qualitative field research.
My approach involves reviving, interrogating,
and embarking on a narrative journey via ethnography's
most pervasive origin story. That is the chronicle
of Bronislaw Malinowski's pioneering field
research in the Trobriand Islands, which, within the
core fields listed earlier, is commonly held up as the
ethnographic archetype (Strathern, 1987). In doing
this, I attend to the multiple trajectories of development
and enlightenment that follow from these
mythic origins. This is complex terrain since, as
most researchers now recognize, ethnography was
birthed out of colonialist impetuses that included
"territorial expansion, the pursuit ofmilitary power,
commercial greed ... the need to find raw materials
and investment opportunities for accumulated
capital, [as well as] an emerging 'media industry'
in search of stories to sell" (Fabian, 2000, p. 4;
see also Thornton, 1983). Retrospectively, the history
of ethnography is comprised of hardly heroic
heroes (see Sontag, 1966/1978). While I do not shy
away from the intellectual temptation of unpacking
the possible fictions surrounding Malinowski
as a mythic figure, I ultimately treat representations
as real-meaning, they are products of contested
political processes that have real consequences
(Hall, 1996). Thus these historical trajectories are
shaped as much by what is represented and remembered,
which is never fixed, as by what actually
might have been.
Building on the trope of ethnography-asnarrative-journey,
this chapter uses the narratives
of Malinowski's early life and career as vehicles
through which to present important aspects of
and issues facing contemporary ethnography. This
involves a series of intervallic, temporal steps our
of the early twentieth century into broader historical
and present-day contexts. I begin by discussing
ETHNOGRAPHY
Malinowski's mythic status in relation to some of
his ideas regarding the social functioning of myths
I next review his early life experiences and ･､ｵ｣｡ｴｩｯｾ＠
in Poland and Germany as a means to introduce key
paradigmatic and epistemological underpinnings of
the ethnographic enterprise. Malinowski's travels
to England and association with the Cambridge
School provide an opportunity to present the tran_
sition in social research practices during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which the
myth of his methodological revolution belies. Bis
initial research experiences on the island of Mailu
illustrate the colonial legacy of the ethnographic
project as well as the interpersonal dynamics of its
research practices, and his transition from Mailu to
the Trobriand Islands offers an opportunity to contemplate
the changing notion of the ethnographic
"field." The 1922 publication of Argonauts of the
Western Pacific marks a watershed moment in the
history of ethnography and Malinowski's career.
It was here where he first presented his "modern
sociological method of fieldwork" (Stocking,
1983b, p. 111). My reflections on the impact of
this book segue into some important considerations
surrounding what has been referred to as (among
other things) ethnography's "literary turn." Finally,
a consideration of Malinowski's reputation gives
rise to some conclusionary remarks regarding ethnography's
historical legacy and fucure. Journeying
through the life of the man whose idealized image,
more than anyone else, came to epitomize ethnography
and whose divulged human frailties contributed
to its reorientation highlights a degree ofsophistication
that is frequently omitted in deference to (too
often self-congratulatory) how-far-we-have-come
framings of histmy.
Malinowski's Myth
The history ofethnography is replete with its own
myths, superstitions, and survivals. As the countless
ethnographers who have studied these topics over
the last century-plus have taught us, such aspects of
culture should not be dismissed lightly but rather
interrogated for the important purposes, both
functional and symbolic, they serve. In ethnography's
most prominent origin story, Polish-born,
British-educated6
Bronislaw Malinowski is cast
as its progenitor. Though the "Malinowski myth"
has been discussed in several anthropology-specific
treatments of methods, theory, and the history of
the field,7 as ethnographic research has diffused into
other areas, Malinowski the man, the myth, and rhe
heuristic value of both have become dispensable.
1hi chapce ·-as much for a non-anthropological
readership as fo.r a distinctly anthropological oneiiit11S
ro correct rhis.
Viewed through the lens of some of his own
cheorecical findings, Malinowski's early life and
career, char is, his circuicous journey co "inventing"
rite edinographic method, becomes an in cruccive
hagiography- part cravelogue, part founding fable.
Jn developing his own version of (psychological)
funcdonalism MaUnow ki did groundbreaking
work on chc to(JiCS of myth, magic, and uperstidon.
Contrasting early views rhar incerpreted myrhs
as "idle rhapsody" or "aimless outpourings of vain
imaginings" (Malinowski, 1926/1948 p. 97). he
forcefully pur forward the position char myrhs
actively affect the conduct of members ofa community
by exercising "a living reality, believed to have
once happened in primeval times, and continuing
ever since to influence the world and human destinies"
(p. 100). Through myths individual reputations
are made and sustained and important lessons
and understandings of cultural practices are carried
over time.
According to Malinowski's myth, the young Pole
first became fascinated with cross-cultural study
when, during a period of illness, his mother read
him sections ofSir James Frazier's The Golden Bough
(1900). After receiving his doctorate in physics and
mathematics in Poland, Malinowski, as the story
goes, traveled to England in pursuit of education
and romance. Once there, he converted to the budding
science of anthropology and in 1914 set off to
do field research in the southwest Pacific where, as
a consequence of the outbreak of war in Europe,8
he found himself stranded for several years. During
this time-after realizing the importance of the
anthropologist getting "off the verandah" (Singer
& Dakowski, 1986b) and, instead, living among
the natives-he established what he claimed was
"an entirely new academic discipline" (Leach,
1957/2000b, p. 49), now known as ethnography.
Foundations ofa Man and
His Methodology
Like an onion, the layers of Malinowski's myth
can be peeled back to reveal numerous inconsistencies,
resulting from selective embellishments, missing
details, lacks of contextualization, and perhaps
just plain concoctions. Adopting a weighty ethnographic
tag popularized by James Clifford (1986),
the various versions ofMalinowski's story are at best
Partial truths. Although divining the correct version
of this story is not my goal, interrogating some of
its factual bases opens a didactic narrative pathway
along which to contextualize the famed "father of
fieldwork" (Thornton, 1985, p. 8).
Both Malinowski's class background and the
role of his mother in introducing him to the work
of Frazier have been scrutinized.9
The question of
class is notable if for no other reason because early
ethnography-with its demands of traveling to
faraway places and associated reprieve from everyday
economic necessities-was thought to be an
elite profession (Nash & Wintrob, 1972; Tedlock,
2000). By the early years ofhis post-secondary education,
Malinowski was undoubtedly familiar with
The Golden Bough. The book's focus on the worship
of Diana at Nerni in southern Italy in all likelihood
resonated with Malinowski, who as a sickly
youngster, upon the orders of his doctors, had traveled
throughout the Mediterranean with his mother
(Wayne, 1985);10
and reading Frazier's cross-cultural
comparisons with "exotic" customs from around
the worfd most certainly nourished the exceedingly
ambitious Malinowski's desire to conduct his own
personal studies.
Malinowski's journey to England was preceded
by two years at Leipzig University in Germany
where he was directed toward Volkerpsychologie
through the work of the university rector and
future "father of experimental psychology," (Kess,
1981, p. 126) Wilhelm Wundt. As with his earlier
path to Jagiellonian University in Poland-where
his father was "a renowned professor of Slavic
philology... [with] a lively interest in Polish ethnography
and folklore" (Pulman, 2004/5, p. 126)Malinowski's
decision to study at Leipzig was quite
literally following paternal footsteps. While at Leipzig
in the 1860s, Lucjan Malinowski had "broke[n] new
ground in methodology" with his doctoral dissertation
in Silesian dialectics (M. W Young, 2004,
p. 12). Yet the younger Malinowski, who by all
reports was never close to his father (Kubica, 1988,
p. 89; Wayne, 1985, p. 529), apparently also chose
Leipzig because of its reputable program in thermodynamics
(M. W Young, p. 128).
The decision to travel to England was indeed
motivated by romantic interests. Shortly after
arriving in Leipzig, Malinowski met the widowed
South African pianist Annie Brunton-described
by his daughter as a woman "considerably older
than him" (Wayne, 1985, p. 531)-and the two
began a stormy affair. In December 1909, when
Brunton moved to London, Malinowski soon followed.
He once said that "if [he] hadn't met Mrs.
Brunton [he] would never have taken up sociology"
HARRISON
(Wayne, p. 532). Though likely an example of
his characteristic hyperbole and flare for the dramatic,
Brunton undoubtedly influenced the much
younger "Bronius's" intellectual growth in at least
two ways. First, by pulling him from Leipzig-an
institution that "represented the best of German
science" (M. W Young, 2004, p. 130) where he
had the opportunity to work with a venerable master
in the field11
-to Britain, which by 1910 was
a hotbed for ethnology and home to prominent
figures like Edward Burnett Tylor, William H. R.
Rivers, Charles Seligman, and Malinowski's old
friend Frazier. The second influence came through
Brunton's role in (re-)exposing Malinowski to
music, and, by extension, to the arts in general.
One oft-cited tension in Malinowski's psyche
was the opposition between the scientist and the
artist, reason and intuition, rationality and emotion
(Thornton, 1985; M. W Young, 2004). The productive
off-play of these two temperaments would
serve him well-in terms of both methodological
process and written product-as an ethnographer.12
Upon arriving in Leipzig, with the intention to
study the thermodynamics of liquids and gasses
at "the renowned centre in Europe" for such study
(M. W Young, p. 128), one could surmise that
Malinowski's pendulum had swung sharply towards
science. Annie Brunton's greatest influence on the
aspiring young scholar may have been to bring him
back into balance-as turbulent as a Malinowskian
balance would have been-and to open his eyes to
the possibilities beyond the "best of science" that
had so intrigued him years before.13
Ethnographic Science,
BtlmtJgmphic Httmanity
Ethnography can rake many forms and guises.
De ·pire some commonalides in practices and
politics, ethnographers adhere to multiple epistemologies
and paradigmatic understandings of
what constitutes good research. This creates a
troublesome tension: whereas different researchers
and research activities may appear the same,
and may be guided by similar politics and sensibilities,
they nevertheless may be foundationally
grounded in different philosophies of knowledge.
Malinowski, fittingly perhaps, straddled ethnography's
prime epistemic divide. Anthropology has
been referred to as the social science that is closest
to the humanities (Redfield, 1953; Aunger,
1995). Ethnography, as its chief mode of research,
is firmly situated at these crossroads. Yet this position
is never fixed.
228 I ETHNOGRAPHY
As ethnographic practices have spread into ｯｾ｣ｲ＠
disciplines, the potential outcomes and misundcr.
randing resulting from epistemological differ.
ence , although nor always discussed, have becolll.c
more pronounced. When people undertake erhno.
graphic research in the fields of, for instance, archi.
tecture, marketing, and/or women's studies, what
are their goals and what are considered legitimate
means of attaining these goals? Thomas Schwandt
(2000) highlights three areas of concern surround.
ing qualitative inquiry, which are instructive for a
discussion of ethnography in particular. I adapt
them here:
1. Cognitive concerns surrounding how
to define, justify, and legitimize claims to
understanding, which might or definitively might
not include questions ofvalidity, transferability,
and generalizability.
2. Social concerns regarding (in this case) the
goals ofethnography: should they be emancipatory
and transformative? Should ethnographers seek
solutions/answers to problems/questions that are of
direct interest to their own academic communities
and/or to the communities they study? Or should
they seek to understand the situations in which,
and the social processes through which, human
actions take place in the ultimate interest of
working towards a better understanding of sociality
in general as well as in the particular? Questions
such as these are neither all encompassing nor
mutually exclusive but they do point towards
potentially stark divergences in the ethnographic
enterprise.
3. Moral concerns as to how to "envision and
occupy the ethical space" between ethnographers
and those they research in responsible, obligatorily
aware, and status conscious ways. (see Schwandt,
2000, p. 200)
The first of the three areas-specifically ethnographers'
epistemological embeddedness and paradigmatic
adhesions-is of mo t immediate concern
here. Nonetheless, for rhe ethnographer, cognitive
concerns are not neacly eparared from social and
moral. ones. Although r save discussion of social
responsibility and ethics until later in the chapter,
an awareness ofboth their impact on, and how they
are impacted by, foundations of knowledge and
understandings oflegitimate research are important.
Before briefly outlining the guiding paradigms
surrounding ethnography, I offer a few additional
caveats.Whereas defining and labeling these various
epistemological and methodological frameworks
. useful, it would be a mistake ro give too much
d . fi ·u1 hctention to trymg to r a paruc ar researc r or
3
ven an insrance of ethnographic research neatly
JntO 0 ne category. Ethnographic experience is pererually
ephemeral, meaning char at rimes ethnogｾｰｨ･ｲｳ＠
are prone to move, transform, and shape
shlfr between different paradigmatic classifications.
j\cternpts to categorize also tend to highlight differences
over time and disciplinary space. While differences
do exist, the need to place individuals or
projects in particular boxes closes down the possibility
ofalso seeing commonalities and furthermore
belies the nuanced nature of ethnographic inquiry.
Nonetheless, in what follows, I label some of the
traditions that ethnographers might move between
and draw on variably as paradigmatic resources.
I begin, quite straightforwardly, by separating
inclinations towards science and inclinations towards
the arts and humanities. This can, by and large, be
cast as a binary between positivism and what I will
broadly call interpretivism. Although few ifany contemporary
ethnographers would define themselves
as strict positivists, it is nonetheless necessary to discuss
positivism as foundational to any social scientific
enterprise. To some extent, outlining the tenets
of strict positivism may be useful in explaining
what most ethnographers are not. However, before
dismissing it too quickly, I should point out that,
particularly with regard to the mandates of certain
gatekeepers ofcredible research reporting, ethnography
is not as fur removed &om its positivist principles
as some of i.ts practitioners would like to think.
Furthermore, there is an important post-positivist
paradigm that continues to carry weight.
POSITIVISM
Positivism is premised on a belief in what is
referred to as nai've realism-that is, the notion that
there is a real.icy "out there" that can be grasped
through sensory perception. As such, it holds empirical
data-that which is produced though direct
observations-as definitive evidence through which
to construct claims to truth. In doing so, positivism
prioritizes objectivity, assuming that it is possible
for a researcher to detach his or herself from values,
interests, or the clouding contamination ofbias and
prejudice. Following this formula, good research is
achieved through conventional rigor-that Is, dutifiilly
following a prescribed, systematic, series of
steps surrounding data accumulation and analysis.
With this being the most scientific frame of reference
that ethnography potentially occupies, standards
ofhypothesis testing and deductive reasoning
are principal to its practices. In that positivism recognizes
a fundamental (capital "T") Truth, which
it is believed researchers can apprehend, ethnographers
anchored in this tradition are more prone to
concern themselves with questions oftransferability
(i.e., can the findings from one setting be applied
to another?) and generalizability (i.e., can the findings
from a particular context be generalized on
to the whole?) on the assumption that such Truth
has potential relevance for a broad range of social
circumstances and cultural contexts. Today all ethnographic
researchers recognize the role of culture
and socialization in shaping social realities; thus,
strict positivism has fallen out of favor. However,
post-positivist orientations towards valuing empirical
evidence, making efforts toward detached objectivism,
and deductive reason continue, even if
researchers are less confident about the conclusions.
INTERPRETIVISM
If the positivist epistemological branch, with its
post-positivist paradigmatic inclinations, supports
Malinowski the scientist, Malinowski the artist is
perched on the interpretivist (or constructionist)
alternative. This position, which issues from an
acknowledgement of the constructed nature of all
social reality, recognizes no single all-encompassing
Truth, but rather multiple (small "t") truths that
are the products of human subjectivities. As such,
cultural and contextual specifics are critical to
undemanding, and inductive reasoning becomes
the privileged path to making ense of unwieldy
ocial realities. ReaUty, which i haped by experience,
thus becomes something to be interpreted.
uch interpretivism sees human action as inherently
meaningful with meanings being processual, temporal,
and historically unfinished. 14
The subjectivity ofthe ethnographer is quite consequential
here. Under any form of incetpretivism,
the outcomes of researcher bias are acknowledged .
Sometimes efforts are made co mitigate researchers'
subjectivities. Such techniques might involve
reflexive journaling, inventorying subjectivities, and
other attemprs co manage and crack bias (Schwandt,
2000, p. 207 n. 11). Yet increasingly interpretivist
approaches accept that within ethnography the
human is the research instrument and as such, cultural,
social, and personal frames of reference are
inescapable.
***
To repeat myself, I do not think particular
researchers or specific research projects should
HARRISON
necessarily being categorized along the broad epistemological
strokes that I am painting. Although
I acknowledge that many are, I think it is important
to appreciate how both positivist and interpretivist
foundations impact all ethnography. Indeed,
I would question if a researcher with inclinations
and sensibilities fully saturated in post-positivism
would even fit into my rather scrupulous definition
of ethnography-a confirmatory approach to
assessing one's hypothesis via the accumulation of
empirical data through long-term fieldwork living
as a member of a community strikes me more as a
non-ethnographic form of participant observation.
Nonetheless, it would be limiting to not recognize
how the significance ofpositivist and post-positivist
tenets impact ethnography.
Since Malinowski's early-twentieth-century
articulation of ethnography as a proper research
method, there have been two general movements,
which have overshadowed an assortment ofcountercurrents
and inter/intra-disciplinary variations. The
earlier of the two, which dominated anthropology
up until the Second World War, was the movement
towards legitimizing ethnography as a rigorous scientific
method on par with those practiced in the
supposed "harder" natural sciences. The latter part
ofthe twentieth century witnessed the rise ofa more
humanistic acceptance of ethnographic research.
Dennison Nash and Ronald Wintrob (1972) have
suggested this may have more to do with what is
institutionally accepted as legitimate research and
how that shapes what aspects ofthe research process
the researcher is willing to disclose than with what
researchers themselves believe. As evidenced in his
early ethnographic writings and actualized through
the posthumous publishing of his field diaries (see
"Malinowski's literary (re)turn"), Malinowski,
although very much a researcher of this earlier era,
personified this crucial ethnographic binary.
In concluding what has been outlined,
I think it is useful to highlight two pervading
(non-exclusive) sets of questions that are at the
core of these paradigmatic tensions: one surrounds
the basis of truth, and the second is concerned
with the positioning of the researcher in respect to
the research endeavor.
1. Is truth something that exists independently
to be discovered by researchers? Are truths the
products of subjectively authored realities to be
grasped by researchers? Or are these subjective
"truthful realities" to be engaged with the
researcher as part of the truth-making process?
ETHNOGRAPHY
2. Ethnography is defined in part by its
participant-ob ervation mandate of researcher
involvement. Yer hould chi conscirure taking
up an inside/involved standpoint from which to
make detached observations? Should it be based
on a deeply engaged experiential understanding?
Or should researchers understand themselves as
active participants in shaping the social world the
conduct research in? y
The answers to such questions may look very
different depending on the disciplinary, institu.
tiona.l, and personal groundings of the researcher·
the standards of the outlets where they are seekin '
to publish, publicize, or apply their work; ｡ｮ､Ｏｯｾ＠
the specific uses to which the findings of a particu.
lar project will be put. For example, commercial
ethnographers working under the dual pressures of
time and a need to communicate applicable find.
ings, both customary in the business world (Ehn &
Lofgren, 2009), will feel compelled to adopt a more
scientifically precise mode of inquiry and reporting
that steers clear of the theoretical complexities and
deliberations commonly found within academia.
Malinowski Encounters the
Cambridge School
In addition to his pursuit of Annie Brunton,
Malinowski had a second romantic interest in
England. Since a childhood visit with his mother,
young Bronius had cultivated an intense attachment
to anything having to do with Britain. While
crossing the English Channel by ferry, he wrote an
essay-letter to a Polish &icnd in which he confessed
to having "a highly developed Anglomania" and
"an almost mystic cult of British culture" (Wayne,
1985, p. 532).
It appears that his interests in anthropology
were firmly set while making this journey,
for once in England, he wasted little time traveling
to Cambridge and introducing himself to
Rivers and Alfred Cort Haddon-two men who
had brought ethnological acclaim to the school
by way of rheir 1898 Expedition to the Torre
Straits (see Kuper, l996; Stocking, 1983b; Urry.
1972). Either through rhese men or his own ini·
riarive, Malinowski soon goc to know the ocher
members of England's leading cirde of ethnolo·
ｧｩｳｴｳ Ｑ
ｾ＠ who collectively came ro be called the
"Cambridge School."16 He arrived in March 1910
and by that ummcr, presumably on Haddon's
advice (M. W. Young, 2004, p. 68), Malinowski
wa register d for classes at the London School of
Economics. There he would study under Charles
5eligman, who became both mentor and something
of a supportive older brother to him (M.
<\fl. Young, p. 160).
The first two decades of the twentieth century
have been described as a period of re-orientation
away from "the Tylorian domination of anthropology,"
with its focus on culture and custom,17
and towards a serious investment in ways of
going about collecting and using data (Urry,
1972, p. 48). This was a time when, on both
sides of the Atlantic, the field of social/cultural
anthropology formally crystallized around specific
sets of prescribed methods and the conferring
of degrees. Malinowski entered the world of
British anthropology soon after embarking on his
Pacific islands research, at precisely the moment
when the decades-long clamorings for a definitive
method were reaching a cusp. In a 1909 meeting
of the principals from Oxford, Cambridge, and
the London School of Economics, it had been
decided that "ethnography" would be the term
used for "descriptive accounts of non-literate
peoples"-as distinct from the historical and
comparative-based ethnology (Radcliffe-Brown,
1952, p. 276; see also note 15).
The cutting-edge movements of the day were
toward "intensive work," which had been outlined
thoroughly (against the older standard of survey
work) by Rivers in 1913:
A typical piece of intensive work is one in which the
worker lives for a year or more among a community
of perhaps four or five hundred people and studies
every detail of their life and culture; in which he
comes to know every member ofthe community
personally; in which he is not content with
generalized information, but studies every feature of
life and custom in concrete derail and by means of
the vernacular language. Ir is only by such work that
one can realize the immense extent of the knowledge
which is now awaiting the inquirer, even in places
where the culture has already suffered much change.
It is only by such work that it is possible to discover
rhe incomplete and even misleading character of
much of the vast mass ofsurvey work which forms
the existing material ofanthropology. (quoted in
Kuper, 1996, p. 7]
This passage is significant in demonstrating the
extent to which Malinowski's "research revolution"
Was already in the thoughrs and minds-ifnor practices-of
many of the Cambridge School scholars
who mentored him (see Urry, 1972; Langham,
1981). Since returning from the Torres Straits expedition
in 1899, Haddon had "busily propagandized"
the need for "fresh investigations in the field"
conducted by trained anthropologists (Stocking,
1983b, p. 80; see also Haddon, 1903).
Writing in 1912, Robert Marett had stressed that
a "conscious method" was needed in anthropology
and sociology. Described by Adam Kuper (1996)
as "one of the last of the armchair anthropologists"
(p. 7), even Marett recognized the merits of intensive
work and intimate research. Indeed, Marett
could have been dictating to his future "secretary
Malinowski" (see the following section), just weeks
before the latter embarked on his own field research,
when he wrote:
[It is] most important at the present juncture
that some anthropologist should undertake the
supplementary work ofshowing how, even where
the regime of custom is most absolute, the individual
constantly adapts himself to its injunctions, or
rather adapts these to his own purpose, with more
or less conscious and intelligent discrimination.
The immobility of custom, I believe, is largely the
effect ofdistance. Look more closely and you will see
perpetual modification in process. (quoted in Wallis,
1957, p. 790-emphasis added]
As with many myths, Malinowski's serves the
euhemeristic function of deification (see Stocking,
1983b), whereas a thorough examination of the
intellectual environment in which he came of age
strongly suggests that his pioneering work was more
straightforwardly a produce of the social forces and
prevailing ideas on how to best research, document,
and understand (and in many instances ultimately
manage) human difference. This minimization of
his agency and foresight gets magnified through the
facts of how he came to New Guinea and eventually
the Trobriand Islands, yet in surprisingly different
ways from how the well-rehearsed myth of
ethnography's origins represents it. What is perhaps
most telling is the extent to which, although he may
have strived to, Malinowski was never successful in
separating himself from the colonial impulses that
characterized his upbringing and training.
Malinowski's Journey to the
Western Pacific
Even at its most scientific, ethnography is resolutely
a human science conducted in a real-world
laboratory. As such, the ethnographic enterprise is
saturated with circumstances, situations, and personalities
that are less anticipated and controllable
HARRISON
than its research reporting typically presents. Tedlock
elaborates:
No matter how much care the ethnographer devotes
to the project, its success depends upon more than
individual effort. It is tied to outside forces, including
local, national, and sometimes even international
relationships that make research possible as well as ro
a readership that accepts the endeavor as meaningful.
(2000, p. 466]
Often the messiness involved when one (or
more) human beings commits to long-term
research living among a community of human
beings, who ideally and inevitably are continuing
along the unforeseeable journeys that are
their lives, is either managed through a series
of entertaining, at times instructive, but usually
incidental anecdotes or kept completely out of the
research report. Again, this probably has more to
do with accepted conventions of academic legitimacy
than it does with parricular ethnographers'
lack of sophistication in recognizing the variability
of their research subjects' live . everthcless,
conceived of in thl way: the ethnographic project
with its unwieldiness and unanticipated turns,
has some notable parallels to the tradition of
nineteenth-century travelogue reporting that the
Cambridge School had been so interested in moving
away from. One of the first great episodes
along this adventure involves the miscellaneous
twists and turns that lead ethnographers to their
chosen field sites. 18
In many respects, Malinowski would play the
role of "bemused bystander" (M. W. Young, 2004,
p. 245) in the sequence of events that led to the
start of his 1914 western Pacific fieldwork. He had
expressed to Seligman that he was willing to spend
up to two years in the field, and, perhaps more
diplomatically than intellectually, seemed content
to let his various academic patrons-among them
Haddon, Rivers, Seligman, and Marett-wrangle
over his ultimate destination. It appears that
Seligman, with the backing of Haddon, did the legwork
of securing two years' worth of funding. The
combination of Haddon's inRuence and Seligman's
initiative held sway, and Malinowski's fieldwork
was designed as a follow-up study of Seligman's
earlier expedition to British New Guinea. Marett
is widely credited with securing Malinowski's passage
to the Pacific by enlisting him as secretary to
the anthropology section of the British Association
for the Advancement of Science meeting, which
took place in Melbourne that year (Kuper, 1996,
232 I ETHNOGRAPHY
pp. 11-12)-a position that brought with it travel
funding.1,
Stocking (1992, p. 242) has outlined the pre.
carious position that Malinowski found himself iit
following the ou.tbreak of war in Europe. Whereas
the Malinowski myth focu cs on hi "enemy alien•
status as a citizen ofAustria-Hungary, the most con.
sequential outcome of the Great War's outbreak for
Malinowski appears to have been a lack of access to
personal funds back in Poland, which placed hil1J.
at the mercy of!ocal officials and made him dependent
on the good will of members of the Australian
scientific community.20
The myth of being stranded
appears to be a fabrication, for Kuper (1996) con.
tends that "all enemy scientists ... were allowed to
return to Europe" (p. 12).
Getting Offthe Veranda
Malinowski's celebrated epiphany that
the anthropologist must relinquish his [sic]
comfortable position in the long chair on the veranda
ofthe missionary compound, Government station,
or planter's bungalow, where armed with pencil and
notebook and at times with a whisky and soda, he
ha<i been accustomed to collect statements from
informants, write down stories, and fill out sheets
of paper with savage texts [Malinowski, 1926/1948,
pp. 146--147]
appears to have been inspired by both scholarly
ambition21
and an interest in preserving indigenous
customs that he quite literally saw as threatened
by the civilizing mission. The early sections of
Malinowski's published Diary (1967/1989) illustrate
his growing distaste for the missionaries he
lived among during his initial field stay on Mailu:
These people destroy the natives' joy in life; they
destroy the psychological raison d'etre. And what they
give in return is completely beyond the savages.22
They
struggle consistently and ruthlessly against everything
old and create new needs, both material and moral.
No question but that they do harm. [p. 41]
Malinowski's ire was chieRy directed towards
Reverend William J. Saville, with whom he lived
as a paying guest.23
Saville, who with his wife had
served on Mailu since 1900, at one point wrote
Haddon with his own impressions ofMalinowski:
You a<ik me about Malinowsky (I forget how you
write his name)... I must candidly confess that I hope
we shall never have to entertain that gentleman
again ... I admire his enthusiasm for his work, but he
spoiled that altogether by not being intelligibly able
co understand that other people also might have a
right to inrerescs in which they are much justllied and
just as Likely to be quire endu1 ia tic as he was about
his... Dr. Malinowsky seemed tmfonunarcly to dunk
that our time and that of our people should be given
LIP to him. He very likely did not mean this, but his
eii:perience with men seemed to be of the smallest
and he was pretty much like a child with a new toy.
The problems he was ttying to work out were of the
keenest interest to me, but the minds of some of
us muse have relaxations from one subject, by the
cackling of others. Had he been a man, who would
enter into theposition and minds ofanother, whether
native or white, he could have got twice as much
information in one twelfth of the time. A native is
not a class room student, and a native likes a bit of
fun and a game, Dr. M. seems to understand neither,
nor could he understand anybody who did.
[M. W. Young, 2004, pp. 357-358--emphasis added]24
lhe described intensity and implied ambition
are certainly in line with what we know about
Malinowski's personality. Although Saville's account
likely contains some embellishments, this early
documentation of an observer observed (Stocking,
1983a) is enormously illuminating and offers
important lessons for any young, zealous ethnographer.
As a beginning researcher, "Malinowsky"
made several flawed assumptions. Even prior to
the decision to "camp ... right in their villages"
(Malinowski, 1922/1966, p. 6), his ethnographic
fervor would have motivated him to "push research
beyond its previous limits in depth, in width, or in
both" (p. xvii).
Throughout his early research, Malinowski was
regularly reading Notes and Queries in Anthropology
as well as works directly authored by Rivers (see
Malinowski, 1967/1989, p. 30, 64). Notes and
Queries was the classic Royal Anthropological
Institute field guide, by then in its fourth edition,
designed to promote "far greater accuracy of
detail ... in the description of the social institutions
of savages and barbarous races" in order to
"enable those who are not anthropologists themselves
to supply the information which is wanted
for the scientific study of anthropology at home"
(Urry, 1972, p. 46, 47). It had been produced
largely under the direction of Edward Burnett
Tylor-the monumental figure of nineteenth century
British anthropology-and, in the words of
1'edlock, was "filled with ethnocentric ideas and
leading questions" (2000, p. 456). Early editions of
the handbook were primarily intended for travelers,
merchants, colonial officials, and missionaries, but
by the start the twentieth century, as Rivers and
others were advocating for an end to "armchair"
theorizing and the need for trained investigators
conducting long-term field stays Q. L. Myers,
1923), Notes and Queries was in increasing demand
within academic circles. The 1912 edition, the one
that Malinowski brought to the field with him, had
been the first to include a general chapter on methods.
Thus "Malinowsky," being both ambitious and
new to field research and making the critical mistake
of thinking that natives represented "walking
data," might have earnestly followed the direction
of this research guide and, as Saville's note suggests,
immediately sought to question the Magi (people of
Mailu) on anything and everything possible.25
Rivers, who introduced many of the methodological
innovations into the 1912 edition of Notes
and Qµeries, was progressive enough in his thinking
to advocate the importance ofnarrative inquires
that allowed interviewees "to talk freely on subjects
or independently to volunteer information" as
opposed to direct questions and answers (Urry, 1972,
p. 51).26
Yet there was a conspicuous gap between
Rivers' ideas regarding best research practices and
what he actually did in the field. For example,
Rivers' most recognized contribution to anthropology,
then and now, is a highly structured genealogical
method-used by Malinowski (see 1922/1966,
p.14)-which most certainly encouraged direct
questioning and answering (Stocking, 1983b).
Furthermore, many key tenets of Rivers' "intensive
study," for instance the importance of studying
native customs "by means of the vernacular language"
(see "Malinowski encounters the Cambridge
School"), were practices he did not follow himself.
Rivers also very much stayed on the verandah. For
example, in his celebrated "several months" (M.
W. Young, 2004, p. 162) offield research among the
Todas of Southern India, which Stocking (1983b)
regards as his only research attempt that verged on
"intensive study" (p. 89), Rivers stayed in the resort
station house, which "catered to the needs and past
times of colonials" (Singer & Dakowski, 1986a).
One can imagine the "Rider Haggard ofanthropology"-as
Malinowski referred to Rivers (Stocking,
1998, p. 268)-sipping whisky and soda as he went
about filling his many sheets of paper with "savage
texts."
Rivers' failure to act upon his own ethnographic
innovations, in my reading of this history,
justifies his secondary status. Marilyn Strathern
(1987) warns us that ideas alone can be deceptively
HARRISON 233
ambiguous; what matters is practice, or the "effectiveness
of the vision [and] the manner in which
an idea [is) implemented" (p. 253). This insight is
no less crue roday than ic was a hundred years ago.
You could even, ciuice easily l believe, make the case
char, with che expan ion of higher education and
most particularly academic publishing, the pressure
ro present a new idea to say omething different
from what has come before, has increased
exponentially. Thus the need-every five years it
seems-to announce a new "historical moment"
along the qualitative research timeline (Denzin &
Lincoln, 2008; see also note I). Without neglecting
or condoning the now wcll-documenced and
discussed wrongs of ethnography's past,27
th mo r
novel of ｰｲ｡｣ｴｩ｣･ｾ＠ for moving forward may involve
che reinve rmenc in and cholarly extrapolation of
the merits of the pioneers.
At the start of his time in Mailu, Malinowski
would have likely been situated somewhere between
the ideals his mentor preached and the actualities
that he practiced. The novice researcher's colonial
temperature can be gauged from the inventory
of supplies he purchased prior to leaving Europe,
which (among the expected medicines, fu t-ald and
camping supplies) included tins of sliced bacon
jugged hare, roast turkey, kippered herring, lobster,
oyscers, wiss cheese, Durch beans, Spanish olive ,
Suchards vanilla chocolare, Pecer's milk chocolace,
six different jams, dried fruit, biscuits, and morning
tea, two bottles ofFrench brandy, an "oil-cotton coat
with special collar and sou'wc ter," a uCawnpore
sunhelmec complete wirh oilskin cov r," two pairs
of "light-coloured puttees," two pair of "colonial
boors," cwo Norfolk jackets and breeches, two-dozen
"custom-made" notebooks, nine writing pads,
three-bottles of ink, six dozen wax cylinder records,
a quarter-plate Klimax camera, and a single toothbrush
(M. W. Young, 2004, pp. 264-267).28
One
should cake care to consider this list in its proper
historical context-that is, early-twentieth-century
England-and certainly Malinowski's mentors had
a hand in advising him on what to take. The point is
that coming from a context that represented the pinnacle
of coloniality, despite his dislike for missionaries
and misgivings about the colonial enterprise, it
would have been impossible for Malinowski co be
anything but colonial.29
Ethnography's ColanialImpetuses
Malinowski's list of fieldwork necessities gives
us pause to consider what tools and luxuries ethnographers
take with them to the field. More than
234 I ETHNOGRAPHY
a delineation of s'pecific items-although certainly
the technologies of research demand some consid.
eration of these-this issue is more productively
explored by reflecting on the relationship between
researcher and research communities, and how what
ethnographers choose to take comes to define theni.
In Malinoswki's time, ethnography was unmistakably
a colonial project with the quality and distribution
ofethnographic knowledge conforming to
the borders of empires (Thornton, 1983). Its continuities
with European expansion are unmistakable.
According co C. Loring Brace (2005), perceptions of
categorical difierences berwcen groups of people--.
which we can consider in terms ofboth physical and
cultural differences-emerged with advancements
in nautical technology and navigational capabilities
starting in the fifteenth century. Where prior
travel, whether by land or coast-hugging ships,
occurred in increments of twenty-five miles or less,
developments in maritime machinery and knowledge
enabled travelers to set out from a port in one
location and arrive in destinations where people
and lifeways looked drastically different. Magnified
through Age-of-Exploration demands for increased
trade to support Europe's growing populations and
industries as well as Enlightenment emphases on
rationality and scientific understanding (Robinson,
1983/2000), accounting for human difference
became an important vocation.
This effort to understand and explain differences
in how people looked and lived is very much at the
heart ofwhat was thought ofas anthropology during
the eighteenth and most ofthe nineteenth century. By
the close ofthe latter, with the project ofcolonial conquest
reaching its apex in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific,
the endeavor to document the lifeways of different
social groups wasseen as erving the multiple purposes
of mapping human ocial evollttion-primarily as a
means of rationalizing imperial dominion-recording
rapidly changing cultures, ru1d figuring our how
to better adminisrer colonial subjects. Through the
efforts of members of the Cambridge School and
cross-Atlantic counterparts associated with the Bureau
of American Ethnology in the United States Oudd,
1967), travel and voyages were scientifidzed as expeditions,
and explorer , once the inmuments of dara
collection about supposed "savage" way of life, were
replaced by ethnologiscs, ethnographers, and other
types of anchropologic fieldworker . Likewise rhc
travelogue gave way to the ethnographic manuscript
(Urry, 1972; Thornton, 1983).
The fact that in many cases-Malinowski's
certainly being one-there were enough colonial
ents already present in a remoce field site to ca.c
t1g cl h fa ·1· (' · I I ·osr e rnograp crs as m1 1ar 1.e., a typ1ca w ure
ｾｲｳｯｮＩＬ＠ and only circumstantially as oddiries, is a
ｾ ･ ｬｬｩｮｧ＠ comment on the lack of field work isolation
even during this early period.
Indeed Robert Lowie gives an amusing account
of once being accosted by a young Crow Indian
about his business on their reservation. When
Lowie, attempting to explain the business of
anthropology with childlike simplicity, said, "I am
here to talk with your old men to find out how
rhey used to hunt and play and dance," the young
rnan-who apparently had never been off the reservation-replied,
"Oh, I see, you are an ethnologist"
(Lowie, 1959, p. 60).30
This can be contrasted
against situations in which community members
have no understanding of what an ethnographer is
or does and therefore make sense of a researcher's
presence through their own cultural frames of reference
(Pouwer, 1973; McLaren, 1991). Although
Lowie's work on the Crow reservation took place
long after the (idealized) first-contact situation, it
speaks to the extent that ethnographic researchers
were in many cases fixtures of a larger imperial
apparatus.
The emphasis on studying small-scale "nonWestern"
societies-either in the interest of documentingwhatwere
erroneously thought to be rapidly
disappearing cultures (Hallowell, 1960/2002) or as
a means ofoffering profitable cross-cultural comparisons
through presentations of values and practices
that were sufficiently distinct from the researcher's
own-curtailed ethnographers' interest in fitting in.
For such societies were usually located on the frontier
of imperial expansion: for nineteenth-century
America, they were communities of native peoples
in the manifest destinations of the territories to the
west; for Europeans (most notably the British), they
were in Africa, India, and the islands of the Pacific.
Reflecting on the rational standpoint that, at the
time, was considered essential to these cross cultural
investigations, Johannes Fabian (2000, p. 7) remarks
on the varying amounts of "protective equipment"
that aided pseudo-scientific travelers in maintaining
physical and intellectual distance. Certainly the
"necessities" that researchers take with them into
the field and the decisions they make about how
to present themselves should be considered legacies
of this endeavor. Malinowski's list shows an obvious
lack of concern with integrating and perhaps
the intention of presenting his colonialist superiority,
possibly even to the other Westerners who
Were already there. He might not be blamed since
the level of integration-or more precisely the level
of isolation from the contaminating influence and
company of white men-he ultimately aspired to
was unprecedented within the Cambridge School.31
Malinowski was not interested in presenting himself
as a native. He was interested in "wak[ing] up
every morning to a day, presenting itself to [him]
more or less as it does to a native" (Malinowski,
1922/1966, p. 7). He had no desire to become a
Trobriander but rather an intense desire to take on a
native standpoint. What he appears to have understated
is any consideration for the extent to which
his self-presentations hindered his efforts to cease
being "a disturbing element in the tribal life" (p. 8).
This is in stark contrast to later ethnographies,
particularly in the postcolonial era, where researchers
and the communities they study do not look,
and in fact might not be, all that different. Today we
see more conscious efforts on the part of researchers
to present themselves in fashions that facilitate
their fitting in, and, one may presume, to conceal
those aspects of their personalities or those day-today
"necessities" that most strikingly mark them as
different. For example, in his research among Arab
professionals in turn-of-the-twenty-first-century
Brazil, John Tofik Karam (2007) took several intentional
steps to polish his appearance in the interest
ofmeeting the expectations ofthe people he worked
among, these included upgrading his wardrobe
and cutting his dreadlocked hair.32 Comparatively,
in my own research among underground hip hop
musicians (Harrison, 2009), I very consciously
wore my hair in dreadlocks and purchased a book
bag displaying a fashionable hip hop label, which
helped mark me as someone involved in the scene.
An lntersubjective Science
As research practitioners, ethnographers intrinsically
operate in the physical, social, and psychological
spaces of the in-between. This position is
reflected in ethnography's guiding vantage point,
participant observation, which is regularly (although
erroneously) equated with the methodology itself
Ideally; the classic ethnographer was at once a participant
and an observer. Such liminality extends from
personal situatedness to the realm ofsocietal belonging.
Although ethnographic writings frequently
celebrate instances of researchers being accepted by,
and thus belonging to, the communities they study;
these relationships are in most cases conditional.
In fact, in classic ethnographic discourse it was just
as common for a community to be represented as
belonging to rhe researcher (i.e., "my village" or
HARRISON
I 235
"my people") or for there to be suspicions surrounding
an ethnographer "going (too far) native." Even
in instances where researchers choose to study the
communities they belong to-referred to as native
ethnography33 -the acts of conducting research can
serve to extract the researcher from their community
in meaningful and potentially consequential ways
(see Brayboy & Deyhle, 2000). Furthermore, there
is a popular anthropological wisdom, which I believe
has more than a shred of truth to it, suggesting that
those most drawn to the discipline have difficulty fitting
in within their own societies.
I mention all this to shed greater contextual light
on the interpersonal negotiations that ethnographers
must persistently grapple with. The everyday
practice of ethnographic participation, observation,
inquiry, and engagement marks another zone of
in-betweenness where relationships, understandings,
and methodological scripts are never settled. In
this regard, the ethnographer is a perpetual improviser
and social bricoleur, both "adept at performing
a large number of diverse tasks" (Levi-Strauss,
1962, p. 17) and cobbling together a social role out
ofwhatever unexpected rapids the stream of ethnographic
experience holds. As such a strict set of prescribed
methods simply does not suffice.
Ethnographic research is dialogic, intersubjective,
and intrinsically incomplete (Kondo, 1986). Its
multiplex methods start from an act of intervention
into the fabric of daily life in which the researchertheir
presence and behavior-is continuously being
interpreted by the fashioners of the social world they
wish to examine (Williams, 1996). At times this
negotiation of observation and presentation compels
researchers to subordinate certain aspects of their
identities (Tsuda, 1998) or to embrace the idea that
the research process can be transformative for both
ethnographers and members ofthe communities they
work within (D'Amico-Samuels, 1991/1997). Peter
McLaren insists that contemporary field researchers
must consider the conditions and ends to which they
"enter into relations of cooperation, mutuality and
reciprocity with those whom [they] research" (1991,
p. 150). Questions of who the ethnographer is and
what their business is within the community are part
and parcel to this process. This can lead to specific
inquiries regarding sources of funding and institutional
affiliations, which have the potential to betray
ethnography's more benign characteristics.
Technologi.cal Rapport
Another kind of "protective equipment" frequently
deployed by ethnographers in the field is
ETHNOGRAPHY
the technologies f recording char they rake wj ｾ＠
them inro research. In Malinowski' case, we ee tit
instruments ofwriting field notes, namely ink ....Ｇｾ＠I lYflt
ing pads and notebooks, as well as wax cylinders f, •
making field recordings.3
'i For both rheir ｭ｡ｴ･ ｲｾｲ＠
presence and role in daca collection and analysts 11
;
1
to mention their u e in maintaining ｣ｯｭｭｵｮｩｾｾ＠
tion with the world beyond "the field," these instru.
ments can . ignificandy affect the depth and textur
of ethnographic relations. Even the activity of ｦｩ･Ｈｾ＠
11ote writing (typically) marks participant r earch.
ers a different from members of the community
where research is conducted. That is, alchough the
researcher might take part in all the same activities
as "natives " at the end of the day-when "natives"
retire to do whatever it is they do-the ethnographer
goes home to write about culture (Clifford
1986; Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995). '
Over recent decades this process of documentation
has evolved to include possibly more conspicuous
technologies (depending on the setting).
Malinowski's Klimax camera was certainly one of
his heftier purchases. The introduction of new technological
machinery-for instance iPads or do-it-all
smart phones-has the potential to disrupt the everyday
life today's ethnographers seek to observe. Erica
Brady (1999) explains how, just as the ethnographer
of the early twentieth century became a common
part ofthe typically observed community landscape,
these technologies of recording should be understood
as things that ethnographic subjects respond
to and form relationships with, often as a means of
serving their own interest (see Menon, 2010). The
miniaturization and global proliferation of technologies
(Appadurai, 1990) over the course of the
twentieth century has made them increasingly more
familiar in all "fields." Even so, their notable introduction
into everyday social settings in which one
would not typically find them tends to highlight
the researcher-subject dichotomy and extraction-ofdata
agenda in ways that many contemporary ethnographers
would rather minimize. In this interest,
various strategies are employed. These range from
using jottings as a technique ofclandestine field note
writing to efforts towards familiarizing research subjects
with a piece ofrecording technology by making
it available to them for non-research purposes-for
example, allowing children to play on one's laptop
computer prior to using it to record an interview or
using a camera to take family photos in addition to
more intentionally ethnographic ones.35
In an effort to prioritize equitable social relationships
overextractiveresearch ones, some ethnographers
choose to participate more and record less. This is
done with the awareness that experiences of recording
(for instance witnessing an event through a
video camera lens) are distinct and atypical forms
of participation with potentially distorting effects.
Indeed, even Malinowski recommended that:
ic is good for the Ethnographer sometimes to put
aside that camera, note book and pencil, and to join
in himself [sic] in what is going on...Out ofsuch
plunges into the life of the native ... I have carried
away a distinct feeling that their behavior, their
manner ofbeing, in all sorts of tribal transactions,
became more transparent and easily understandable
than it had before. (192211966, pp. 21-22]
Of course, this dichotomy gets collapsed
within paradigmatic outlooks that recognize the
researcher as having a role in actively constructing
the social environment they study (see the earlier
discussion).
At the same time, many sites of contemporary
ethnography are increasingly saturated with technologies
of recording-such as smart phones that
allow for photography, video, and sound recording
all at one time-making the activity of recording
and the introduction of a technology nothing particularly
out of the ordinary. On the surface this
ubiquity of recordings may be viewed as benefiting
the project of documenting native life without
having the documentation process or technologies
disturb its rhythms and fabric. However, this
simultaneously introduces new sets of issues. These
particularly concern the minimization oftraditional
ethnographic authority, the extent to which ethnographic
research and researchers have become surveillable,
and possible conflicts and contradictions
surrounding who must (and who must not) adhere
to institutional regulations. Ultimately, such developments
have the potential to augment, jeopardize,
and transform the ethnographic project, perhaps all
at once.
At the height of anthropology's "crisis of representation"
(see "Malinowski's literary (re)turn"),
Geertz astutely commented that, traditionally:
[t]he ability of [ethnographers] to get us to take what
they say seriously has less to do with either a factual
look or an air ofconceptual elegance than it has
with their capacity to convince us that what they say
is a result oftheir having actually penetrated (or, if
you prefer, been penetrated by) another form oflife,
ofhaving, one way or another, truly "been there."
(1988, 4-5]
An historical arc can be drawn starting from
an era when ethnographic accounts, by names like
Malinowski and Mead, were seldom challenged
on the basis that, quite simply, no other trained
researcher had been there to a period of ethnographic
proliferation where multiple researchers had
worked within the same societies. Even accounting
for the half century between their studies and the
shifts in styles of ethnographic reporting, Annette
Weiner's (1976) Trobriand Islands ethnography is
notably different from Malinowski's Golly, 1992).
A few years later, Derek Freeman (1983) was attacking
Mead's work in Samoa (1928/1961) on the basis
of both her methods and findings.36
In addition, during the post-World War II
decades, members of what for lack of a better term
might be called "traditionally studied communities"
began having a greater presence in anthropology.l7
Though there had been a long disciplinary hi tory
ofnarive community members working closely with
ethnographers, and in ome cases being encouraged
co publish chcir own work and/or enter rhe discipline
(Lassiter, 2005), initially such key informants
were regarded primarily as tools who through their
organic insider-ness could get "the inside scoop"
(Narayan, 1993, p. 672). In contrast, the native
anthropologist who came of age during that latter
half of the twentieth century brought with them
"a set of theories based on non-Western precepts
and assumptions" (D. Jones, 1970, p. 251) with
the critical politics of post-colonialism to support
them. Even outside these trained professionals, the
one-time omniscient voice ofthe lone ethnographer
who had "been there" was additionally challenged
by community members who were often Western
educated and had both access to the research that
had been conducted on them and avenues for
talking back.
These late-twentieth-century challenges to ethnographic
authority are magnified in the early
twenty-first century context of widespread social
and data-based documentation, social networking,
and what Andrea Fontana and James H. Frey
(2000, p. 647) refer to as "interview society."
Social media-for instance, a YouTube video of
an event that has been posted and commented
on for months prior to the time necessary for a
peer-reviewed publication-makes it possible for
virtually anyone to feel as if they have been there.36
As John L. Jackson (2012) has recently pointed out,
under many of today's ethnographic conditions it is
quite easy to follow a researcher's backstage activities.
Furthermore, from biogs to online (customer)
HARRISON
I 237
_.....
reviews of ethnographic texts, the possibilities for
public comment have enabled research subjects,
as well as everyday people, to engage in public
dialogues about research. In short, modes of ethnographic
inquity and reporting are no longer the
exclusive province of trained academics (Holmes &
Marcus, 2008), with both the process of research
and the scrutiny ofresearch reporting open to wider
circles of participants.
Jackson describes the "internet as a mechanism
for humbling ethnographic voyeurism" (2012,
p. 495). Indeed, the emergence of these new modes
ofdialogue may mark the future ofethnography, but
the multitude of voices and the potential for rhetoric
(particularly among those with little to no social
research background) to trump careful reflection and
grounded analysis within the public domain may
signal the amplification ofwhat some already regard
as an unproductive methodological quagmire.
That academic ethnographers, on the basis of
their craining, disciplinary identities, and institutional
affiliations are required to follow not only
important ethical principles but also institutional
regulations-most notably in the form of institutional
review board (IRB) compliance-which
often appear to be more interested in protecting the
institution from lawsuits than in protecting human
subjects (Lincoln & Tierney, 2004), creates further
complications in an age when the conducting and
broadcasting of personal studies is so pervasive.
Following the 1970s "Belmont Report" (1979),
IRBs were set up to "ensure freedom from harm
for human subjects, to establish the likelihood of
beneficence for a larger group (of similar research
participants), and to ensure that subjects' consent
to participate in research is fully and authentically
informed" (Lincoln, 2005, p. 174). Where human
subjects' protections were initially directed towards
research in health, they were soon applied to all
interactive research on people. Among qualitative
researchers there have always been question regarding
IRB regulations' applicability to studies as benign
as oral histories or as unpredictable (i.e., difficult to
outline in an IRB protocol) as ethnography,39
as well
as concerns about the ability of IRB membersmost
ofwhom come from the "harder sciences"-to
understand and appreciate what ethnographers do.
One constant case for comparison, which perhaps
most effectively brings to light many of the grievances
of contemporary ethnographers operating in
environments of ubiquitous social documentations
and media, is with journalists who in many ways
operate similarly to qualitative researchers but are
238 I ETHNOGRAPHY
not bound to the same ethnical principals or, more
importantly, regulatory constraints.
Malinowski "Checks Out" the Trobriands
Malinowski's regulatory constraints seem to have
been few. He appears to have arrived at his ultimate
ethnographic destination-the Trobriand Island
of Kiriwina-somewhat serendipitously. What
started as a one-month stop along the way to New
Guinea's northern coast-"to get an idea of what
was going on [in the Trobriands)," he reported to
Seligman (who presumably wanted him to go elsewhere),
assuring him that the stay was only temporary
(Stocking, 1992, p. 249)-resulted in "about
two years" (Malinowski, 1922/1966, p. xvi) of field
research. Yet this escape from colonially infested
Mailu to the uncontaminated Trobriands was not
as isolated as the "off the verandah" legend and
Malinowski himself portray it. Early in Argonauts'
famous first chapter, Malinowski outlines the proper
conditionsfor ethnographic work:
It must be far enough away [from the company of
other white men] not to become a permanent milieu
in which you live and from which you emerge at
fixed hours only to "do the village." It should not
even be near enough to fly to at any moment for
recreation. Fol' the native is not the naturalcompanion
to a white man, and a&er you have worked with him
[sic] for several hours ... you will naturally hanker
a&er the company of your own kind. But ifyou are
alone in a village beyond reach of chis, you go for
a solitary walk for an hour or so, return again and
then quite naturally seek out the natives' society, this
time as a relief from loneliness, just as you would any
other companionship. [pp. 6-7-emphasis added]
Stocking (1992) refers to Malinowski's "aloneness"
among the Trobrianders as "relative rather
than 'absolute'" (p. 251). Should he have had a
hankering, Malinowski could seek the company of
his "own kind" just a few miles away. At the time
Malinowski arrived on Kiriwina looking to pitch
his tent, the largest Trobriand Island had both
a hospital and jail; moreover, its resident magistrate
had recently "persuaded" the Kiriwinians to
line cbe path of the island with 120,000 coconur
rrces by "lmposing stiff penalties for failure w do
so" (Srocking, 1992, p. 249). Seligman bad already
conducted some preliminary fieldwork there and.
as Michael W. Young explains, the Trobriands
had developed quire a rcpumtion among colonial
observers for its unique virtues-nor the leasr of
which surrounded the burgeoning popular image
of ics "chiefly ariscocracies and exotic dancer " a
''pare noble savage[s]. pa.rt licentious sybarite[s]"40
(quored in Srocking, 1992, p. 249). One of the e
arlY observers was travel writer Beatrice Grimshaw,e .
｜ｾｨｯ＠ nominated Kiriwina as "among the mosr civilized"
places In British Papua New Guinea (M.
W. Young, 2004, p. 380). MaUnow ki has been
credited for shifting the anthropological lens from
searching for and trying to represent pure cultural
forms to understanding societies in the context
of colonially induced change (Kluckholn, 1943;
pardon, 1990). Yet from his impetus to get away
from missionaries to the appeal of"Trobriand beauties,"
Malinowski's efforts to extol the virtues of his
new methodology appear to be lodged in the allure,
albeit a fabricated one, of the pure and untouched
exotic.
Alternative ''Fields"
Traditionally the ethnographic "field" has been
conceived of as remote, non-Western, and to some
degree exotic. This was largely a remnant of evolutionary
anthropology's emphasis on comparative
(cross-cultural) analysis through holistic examinations
of small-scale societies that differed significantly
from the West. Yet there are important
ethnographic traditions, mostly coming out of
sociology, that were notably closer to home. W. E.
B. DuBois's late nineteenth century resident study
of Black life in Philadelphia, published as The
Philadelphia Negro (1899/1973), should be considered
one of the earliest examples of urban ethnographic
study.41
Though much of DuBois's research
consisted of detailed questionnaires to residents of
Philadelphia's Seventh Ward, his taking up residence
"in the heart of the community to be studied"
(Aptheker, 1973, p. 6), his regular house to
house visits to virtually all the homes in the ward,
and his propensity to align with the Black people
of Philadelphia and, at times, stand in militaristic
opposition to what was at best a stance of paternalistic
benevolence held by the project's sponsors,
retrospectively marks the Philadelphia study as profoundly
ethnographic. DuBois would go on to do
similar field research throughout the South while at
Atlanta University (1898; 1903/1996).
Far and away the most celebrated ethnographic
traditions practiced outside of anthropology
came from a collection of researchers associated
With the University of Chicago department of
sociology. The "Chicago School,"42
in a general
sense, formed around the combined influences of
Malinowskian fieldwork methodologies and German
phenomenological theory (J. S. Jones, 2010).
Through their conceptualization of urban life as an
assemblage of "natural areas" or "little communities,"
researchers affiliated with the Chicago School,
under the direction and/or influence ofscholars like
Robert E. Park, W. I. Thomas, E. W. Burgess, and
later Everett Hughes and Herbert Blumer (Becker,
1999; Vidich & Lyman, 2000) imagined the city as
a social laboratory through which to examine secular
differences-primarily oriented around ethnicity
and various forms of "civic otherness." Between
the 1920s and the early 1960s, the Chicago School
released a series of ethnographic studies of specific
aspects of urban life. Among the most notable were
Nels Anderson's (1923/1961) sympathetic account
of the life of the hobo, Frederick Thrasher's (1927)
pioneering work on the urban geography of gangs,
Louis Wirth's (1928) historically informed study of
the social isolation ofghetto life amongJewish immigrants,
several important studies of Black urban life
by E. Franklin Frazier (1932; 1939; 1957) and St.
Claire Drake & Horace Clayton (1945/1993), and
William Foot Whyte's "participant observation"
among Italian American youth residing in Boston's
North End (1943/1981). Despite their more proximate
ethnographic settings, most of these works
conformed to the anthropological tradition of otherizing
by focusing on "urban groups whose ways of
life were below or outside the purview ofthe respectable
middle class" (Vidich & Lyman, 2000, p. 49).43
Indeed, when Howard Becker described the virtues
of the "Chicago way" as having "all the romance of
anthropology but [you] could sleep in your own bed
and eat decent food" (1999, p. 8), we can imagine
a romance different from Malinowski's with Annie
Brunton and all things British, and rather resembling
the intrigues which drew him to Kiriwina or,
for that matter, might draw a Swedish tourist to
attempt personal studies in 1970s Harlem.
Other notable studies that employed "the
approach of the cultural anthropologist" to what
could be described as closer-to-home communities
in more than just a geographic sense include Helen
and Robert Lynd's (1929/1956) study of a compact,
homogenous, representative American city"Middletown,"
also known as Muncie, Indiana (see
also Lynd & Lynd, 1937); August B. Hollingshead's
"typical midwestern commumty, "Elmtown"
(1949/1975); and W. Loyd Warner's Yankee City
Series (see Warner, 1963). Despite the classic place
ofthese middle-of-the-road American ethnographic
studies in sociological history (Gillin, 1957), both
the Lynds' study of Muncie and Warner's "Yankee
HARRISON
City,"-which was known to be Newburyport,
Massachusetts-received considerable criticism.44
One of the more remarkable critiques of
the Middletown studies came from Dr. Hillyer
Hawthorne Straton, minister of the First Baptist
Church ofMuncie and a neighbor ofone ofthe families
that was prominently featured in the Lynds' study.
Straton's ten-page, typewritten manuscript, written in
1937 and eventually published by Robert S. La Forte
and Richard Himmel (1983), I believe, is consistent
with many of the later "native criticisms" of anthropology.
Straton chides Robert Lynd for "fa.il[ingJ
to live up to ... [rhe] standard of '[t]he social scientist,'"
citing a local columnist comment that "[The
Lynds] came here wirh a preconceived notion ofwhat
Middletown should be.... Blind to everyrhing else"
(La Forte & Himmel, 1983, p. 255). He is particularly
critical of the Lynds "propensity for anything
that is radical, 'new-dealish,' or liberal" (p. 261) and
in one telling passage questions the credentials of a
critic who hailed the book for its sociological accuracy,
arguing "How he knows is a puzzle for he has never
been here" (p. 255-emphasis added). The critical lens
brought to many ofthese early-to-mid twentieth century
ethnographic studies of middle America anticipated
the critiques from abroad that emerged as more
"traditional" ethnographic subjects gained knowledge
ofhow they were being represented and had the platforms
and impetuses to say somerhing about it.45
Disappearing "Fields"
Several ofthe previously outlined historical developments
that impacted relationships between ethnographers
and members of the communities they
study also worked to collapse the once comfortable
division between "home" and "the field." Time and
space compressions (Harvey, 1991), accelerated by
heretofore unconceivable levels of global interconnectness
and telecommunications ubiquity exposed
the lines separating the field, the academy, and
everyday life as artificially imposed classifications
(Wilk, 2011). Whereas previous ethnographic conventions
foregrounded the significance of placeespecially
when activated through the classic "arrival
story"-as essential to establishing the identity and
authority of ethnographer as having "been there,"
which had to be somewhere,46 by rhe close ofthe last
century, innovations in how ethnography was being
conceptualized, particularly within anthropology,
sought to dislocate and deconstruct the traditional
notion of a discreet ethnographic "field" (Gupta &
Ferguson, 1997). George Marcus (1995; 1998), for
example, advocated mobile, multi-site ethnography
ETHNOGRAPHY
as a way of both rethinking methods and theories
within globalized contexts and accounting for life
ways that were fundamentally embedded within
global systems (see also Appadurai, 1990; Stoller
1997; Hannerz, 1998). In doing so, Marcus wa;
particularly attentive to the strides that had been
made within interdisciplinary fields like media studies,
cultural studies, science and technology studies
and migration/diaspora studies.47 '
Certa.inlythe notion ofa traditional, fixed "field"itself
a product of a colonial worldview--obscured
many ofrhe realities ofcontemporary fieldwork. Thus
many scholars (including several cited earlier) ｡ｲｧｵｾ＠
that dinging to such spatialized understandings is not
only limiting but potentially nonproductive (Caputo,
2000, p. 29). Politically, the notion of a traditional
"field" produces and sustains the role ofacademia and
other at-home institutions as the "exclusive site[s] of
shaping, directing, and informing the research agenda"
(Rogers & Swadener, 1999, p. 437); the "out there"
field remains as the place where those directives get
carried out. In challenging this history, Akhil Gupta
and James Ferguson assert that ethnography's once
well-established sense of location "becomes a liability
when notions of 'here' and 'elsewhere' are assumed to
be features of geography, rather than sites constructed
in fields ofunequal power relations" (1997, p. 35).
A decade into the twenty-first century, we see not
only a blurring ofdistinctions between home and the
field but, for many researchers, corresponding collapses
between research and everyday life. Whereas
quite recently these disappearing physical and mental
spaces were thought to engender a schizophrenic
existence (Hoodfar, 1994; see also Caputo, 2000),
many ethnographers today, schooled in the vocabulary
and conception of multitasking, would agree
with Richard Wilk's assertion that ethnography
"takes the unruly business of life through a series of
operations which produce an orderly narrative":
It is nor so much a stage as a process, and in
reality it is always going on, because we are never
simply recording what we see like cameras or voice
recorders. We are interpretive instruments, and we
are engaging with ethnography when we move any
experience from our senses to our pen or keyboard.
[Wille, 2011, p. 24]
An Ethnographer ofEthnographic
Practice
In 1922 when Argonauts ofthe Wt-stern Pacific was
published, it was hailed by none other than Frazier
himself as a "remarkable record of anthropological
sellrch" by someone who had "liv d as a narivc
re ong che oarives" G.G. Frazier, 192211966, p. vU).
rar his pare, Malinowski was exceedingly delibcrce
in foregrounding his merhodological "innova:10115.
Despirc mixed reviews, mosr notably some
11
favorable on coming our of England (Lead1,
ｾ Ｙ ＶＵＯＲＰＰＰ ｡ＩＬ＠ che myth of Malinow ki-as the first
field researcher co volunrarily remove him elf from
colonial quarters, (essentially) cur off all tie wirh
"civili1.acion," and immerse himself in the world of
savages as a merhodological imperative for underscanding
both their world and worldview- soon
rook legs. His oft-quoced ummarion, found on the
penultimate paragraph of Argonttuts' first chapter,
rated chat the u!rimare goal of rhe ethnographer was
"to grasp the native's point of view, his [sic] relation
to life, to realize his vision ofhis world" (Malinowski,
1922/1966, p. 25). The prescriptive methods for
doing this included long-term residence by a trained
researcher, learning the local language rather than
relying on interpreters, collecting as much dara as
possible on as wide a range ofactivities as possiblefrom
the spectacular and ceremonial to rhe everyday
and mundane-and taking copious field notes,
and, when possible, partaking in social activities as a
"participant-observer." From all that I have outlined
already, it should be apparent that Malinowski's
status as the "inventor" of these practices is disputable
if not improbable. But more than anyone in
England at the time, he took up the challenge of
theorizing them through practice and was, furthermore,
immodest in broadcasting his achievements.
Together Malinowski's prescriptions amounted to a
methodological manifesto (Strathern, 1987, p. 258;
see also Stocking, 1992, p. 62) that championed
contextualization, holism,48
and the distinction
between ideal and actual behavior as signaling the
capacity for agency within social structures.
In this respect, Malinowski's tide as the progenitor
of ethnography is in some ways legitimate.
Where scholars like Rivers and Marett were
forthright in producing ideas regarding the correct
methods for conducting qualitative research
across cultures (see "Malinowski encounters the
Cambridge Schoo!"), Malinowski more so than any
Cambridge School scholar before him formulated
his ideas through involving himself in activities of
participant observation. In other words, his understandings
ofproper ethnography were experientially
informed in the same way that ethnography as a
methodology requires experiential realizations.
***
In the early pages of Al;gonauts-dedicated
to "Subject, Method, and Scope"-Malinowski
(1922/1966) made several prescient dictates that
re-emerged during the late-twentieth-century
ascendance of postmodern, poststructural ethnographic
practices and orientations. These included:
• Methodological transparency: "an ethnographer,
who wishes to be trusted, must show dearly
and concisely... which are his [sic] own direct
observations, and which the indirect information
that form the bases ofhis account."49
(p. 15)
• Researcher subjectivity and (his solution) the
importance ofkeeping a diary: "As to rhe actual
method of observing and recording in fieldwork
these imponderabilia ofactual life and oftypical
behavior, there is no doubt that the personal
equation of the observer comes in here more
prominently, than in the collection of crystalised
ethnographic data ...An ethnographic diary,
carried on systematically throughout the course
ofone's work in a district would be an ideal
instrument for this sort ofstudy." (pp. 20-21emphasis
original)
• Embodied knowledge cultivated through
engaging the rhythm ofresearch: In order to
"get ... the hang of tribal life" (p. 5), "I had to learn
how to behave and to a certain extent, I acquired
'the feeling' for native good and bad manners.
With this, and with the capacity ofenjoying their
company and sharing some of their games and
amusements, I began to feel that I was indeed in
touch with the natives, and this is certainly the
preliminary condition of being able to carry on
successful field work." (p. 8)
Aside from the unintended publication of his
Diary (1967/1989), which made previously veiled
aspects of his field experiences transparent, I hesitate
to champion Malinowski as a researcher who
practiced all that he preached. Nevertheless, students
of ethnography would be wise to note that
these important aspects of how ethnography has
been conceived of and conducted were articulated
by Malinowski only after his informative experience
conducting fieldwork.
Malinowski's Literary (Re)tucn
Richard Pardon notes how following a periodwhich
he dates to the 1970s-when emerging
trends in critical and radical ethnography treated
Malinowski as "definitively superseded or encompassed"
(1990, p. 573), a new wave of scholarship,
much of it coming out of the United States,
HARRISON
resurrected his significance. For this next generation
of ethnographers Malinow ki' value, or
more precisely the value of his "charter myth" (M.
W. Young, 1988, p.l), lay in rhe braided iaherirances
of the MaUnowskian method of research,
theory of culture, and style of ethnographic reporting
(Pardon, p. 574). The most recognized of these
"Malinowskian children" (Geertz, 1988) were collectively
casr under the label "posanodem ethnographers"
with their craft deemed, alternately, "the new
ethnography," "reflexive ethnography," "critical ethnography,"
or simply "postmodern ethnography."50
Though the postmodern label, which has been
criticized for obscuring more than ir ays (Pool,
1991), was not always embraced by those who felt it
imposed on them, these scholars generally shared a
number of orientations to their ethnographic practice,
including an incerest in deconstrucring, decenrering,
and juxtaposing the coherence ofestabli hcd
way of knowing (Fardon, 1992, p. 25); a reflexive
ourlook on the position of the re earcher relative
to the community of study; concern for the constructed
nature of ethnographic authority (Clifford,
1983); and attention to language, texture, and form
in modes (primarily literary) ofethnographic representation
(Clifford, 1986).
These paradigmatic shifts, which ignificantly
impacted how ethnography roday is thought of and
pra ticed, have been credited ro variou lare-twemierh-cenrury
"momencs" including the publicacion
of Malinowski's field diaries (1967/1989), important
interventions from feminists and indigenous
researchers (Mascia-Lees, Sharpe, and Cohen, 1989;
Wolf, 1996; Harrison, 1997),51 as well as the arrival
of seminal works such as Dell Hymes' Reinventing
Anthropology (1972) and Geertz's The Interpretation
ofCultures (1973). In contrast to this revolutionary
moment model, Nash and Wintrob (1972) document
how, as early as the 1950s, within anthropology
an ethnographic self-consciousness emerged
that challenged the discipline's naively empirical
aspirations towards attaining "full-fledged scientific
status." Several significant works-such
as Claude Levi-Strauss's autobiographical Tristes
Tropiques (1955/1992) and later Gerald Berriman's
Behind many Masks (1962)-reflected the integration
of symbolic interactionist thinking imo conceptions
of research as process. They credit these
shifts to: (a) global forces rhar resulted in the
crumbling of chc colonial regime's char anrhrnpology
had come of age under and the cteation of
globally-informed and posc-colonially-crirical (rradirional)
erhnographic ubjecc ; and (b) changes
ETHNOGRAPHY
within the discipline of anthropology, includin
multiple rudles of the same culrure and a grearet
f 1 d u U " b trange o peop c an · persona ry types ecomin
ethnographer (p. 530). &
The ascension of rhe posonodern-whicb
reached irs zenith in 1986 around the publication
of Marcus and Michael Fischer's Anthropology ll$
Cultural Critique (1986) and Clifford and Marcus's
edited volume Writing Culture (1986)-coalesced
around a political stance concerned with questioning
the terms ofWestern hegemony, an appreciation
for the (inter)performative nature of ethnographic
research and the (inter)subjective nature of ethn0 _
graphic analysis, and a focus on ethnographies as
texts (Marcus & Cushman, 1982).
LiteralPostmodern Politics
Responding to what Mascia-Lees et al. (1989,
p. 8) describe as "the need to claim a politics in
order to appeal to an anthropological audience," the
harbingers of postmodernism adopted (or appropriated)
critical stances previously propagated by
feminist, (to some extent, native52 ) and indigenous
ethnographers. Their insufficiency in crediting these
positioned influences was striking given that so
many of the key scholars associated with postmodernism
were white males. This critique was most
poignantly raised by feminist scholars who observed
that "(l]ike European explorers discovering the
New World, [postmodernists] perceive a new and
uninhabited space where, in fact, feminists have
long worked" (Mascia-Lees et al., p. 14). Indeed,
where women and native ethnographers have always
occupied marked positions along the axes of gender
and ethnicity/race, white male researchers, as
unmarked, have historically enjoyed the privilege
ofclaiming objectivity and, quite notably, had their
claims accepted by rheir audiences (Alsup, 2004).
Postmodern skepticism about the constructed
nature of truth claims coincided with a recognition
of researcher subjectivity and research serendipity
that was, for lack of a better way of putting it,
"old news" within feminist and native ethnographic
traditions. Both traditions had long questioned
the assumption of political allegiance on the basis
of common identity ascriptions (see Kondo, 1986;
Narayan, 1993), thus compelling their adherents
to critically examine die politics and experiences of
fieldwork. Far from detached scholars, feminist and
native ethnographers recognized their role in shaping
the social worlds they participant-observed and
described (Geertz, 1988). Such revelatoty acknowledgements-not
from the margins of ethnographic
r,1ocice bur, with the rise of postmodernism, cornｾ＠
g from its mainstream-supplied the platform for
111
0
re collaborative, participatory accion-based, and
ｾ＠ .
arcs-based approad1es that were co follow (Las ner,
2005; Efaley, 2005; Leavy, 2009).
ifriting in the Postmodern
ftfotnentum
'The most distinguishing aspect of this new ethnography-or
the topic that has received the most
attention-is the emphasis on the rhetorical processes
involved with ethnographic production and,
ll[tirnately, the view of ethnographies as writerly
projects. This literary turn was not without precedent.53
Malinowski certainly thought ofhimself as
a writer. Writing just after the "founding father" of
ethnography's death, Clyde Kluckholn speculated
that Malinowski's "capacity for expression" would
be one of the key things upon which his reputation
would rest (1943, p. 209).54 Indeed Clifford (1986)
in arguing the partial and constructed nature of
truth claims, and advancing the artistic dimensions
of ethnography as a project profoundly situated
between systems of meaning making, invoked
Malinowski on the very first page of his seminal
text. Even though the once-dominant aspirations
for "hard science" status-marked by formalized
methods leading to timeless truths-had been waning
for decades, this nod to the humanities and the
constructed and interpretive nature of all research
was viewed by many as a "crisis" in the field.
Ethnography constructs culture through texts of
contexts, which to a certain degree are valued based
on their effective presentations. Arguing for what
she called an anthropology of "persuasive fictions,"
Marilyn Strathern suggested that ethnographers
impact imaginations through relationships internal
to the text: "the kind of relationship that is set up
between writer and reader and writer and subject
matter" (1987, p. 256). Stephen Tylor expressed it
somewhat differently in asserting that "the critical
function of ethnography derives from the fact that
it makes its own contextualization part of the question"
(1986, p. 139). Inspired by this wisdom, my
conviction for some time now has been that ethnography,
both as research and representational practice,
Operates in an adverbial mode (see Hammersley,
2008). 1r concexrualizes cransmurnble and transposable
social processes through cranscripcions of the
dynamic social interacrions ofcommuniry members
and researchers. As such, the experiences of ethnographic
fieldwork are (re)constructed through the
Process of writing first field notes (Emerson et al.,
1995) and later ethnographic monographs. Such
recognition, of the mediated expressions of social
processes and meanings, through acts of composition
(literal and otherwise), has sprouted into a
tremendous range of experimental ethnographic
forms and new political possibilities-thus leaving
ethnography's horizons promising and bright.
His(torical) Legacies
Constructing a complete picture ofMalinowskithe
man, the field researcher, and the scholar-presents
special difficulties, not the least because he
was a creative intellectual with "an open and lively
mind" (Flis, 1988, p. 123) whose scholarly career
can be characterized as much by evolution as by
stasis (Murdock, 1943). He furthermore had a penchant
for flamboyance in both representing himself
and the world around him. Part of this involved
embracing the great storytellers' wisdom that the
context of a telling dictates the text of the tale. In
this vein, it would not be too much to characterize
Malinowski as having a loose interpretation of the
"facts" regarding his own personal history, which he
would strategically adjust to delight or in some other
way influence his audience (M. W Young, 2004).
He was a master of the sketchy, revisionist memoir,
which, combined with an erratic temperament that
made even his journal entries and personal correspondences
knavishly unreliable (Rapport, 1997),
resulted in an enigmatic and elusive biography fitting
of mythic status.
Malinowski was obviously aware of the pioneeringnature
ofhiswork-or at the very least the potential
to frame it that way-and quite concerned with
his legacy. He was in essence what sociologist Gary
Fine (1996) would refer to as a self-entrepreneur
of his own reputation. Fine's notion of reputation
entrepreneurs-that is, "self-interested custodians"
of someone's historical reputation (p. 1162)-is
useful for contextualizing Malinowski's historical
import and for making sense of how and why the
myths surrounding him have been so enduring.
As an analytic concept, reputation entrepreneurism
is premised on a constructionist model of history
that frames it as the outcome of sociopolitical
struggles over power, prestige, and resources (Fine,
2001, p. 8). Fine specifically investigates the role of
social agents in shaping the collective memory and
settling discourses that surround historical figures.
This can involve recognition within one's field-in
Malinowski's case, anthropology and other scholarly
fields that position ethnography at or near their
core-and renown outside of it.
HARRISON
I 243
In addition to his achievements and how he
represenced them, Malinowski also laid the groundwork
for future custodians ofhis reputation despite
his untimely death from a heart attack at age
fifty-eight.ss For example, his propensity to keep
journals provided the source materials for future
biographers-although it is widely believed that his
Diary (I 967/1989) was never intended for publication.
Young (2004) recounts how during his days
in Leipzig, Malinowski exhorted himself to "Keep a
diary!"; adding, "Everything that passes through me
must leave a lasting trace" (p. 131). His published
Diary similarly includes statements to this effect.
In 1926 Malinowski wrote that myths "record singularly
great achievements... redound to the credit
ofsome individual and his [sic] descendants or of a
whole community; and hence they are kept alive by
the ambition of those whose ancestry they glorify"
(1926/1948, p. 106). The extent to which this was
true for a lot of Malinowski's student-descendants
was evident by their support of him following the
controversial publication of his diaries in l 967.s6
Had Frank Hamilton Cushing had better reputation
entrepreneurs, or been more organized (Brady
1999) and less prone to making enemies (Kolianos
& Weisman, 2005), he might hold a status comparable
with Malinowski's. In the United States,
where the objects of anthropological study-minimally
defined byWilliam S. Willis Jr. as "dominated
colored peoples . .. living outside the boundaries of
modern white societies" (1972, p. 123)-were closer
at hand, research expeditions along the order of
Torres had a longer history. Thirty-five years before
Malinowski, Cushing had "developed" his own
"reciprocal method" of field research (Mark, 1980,
p. 123), when he decided to forsake his position
as the Smithsonian Institute representative on the
1879 Bureau of (American) Ethnology's first-ever
southwestern expedition, in order to take up residence
with the Zuni Indians. Apparently, after
becoming frustrated "at how little he could learn as
an outsider" camping outside the pueblo, he "soon
abandoned the tents of his colleagues and ... moved
in with the Indians" (Green, 1979, p. 5). Cushing
lived among the Zuni for four and half years, during
which time he dressed like a Zuni, was given a
Zuni name, became proficient in the language, took
an active part in both ceremonial events and daily
life, was adopted into the Dogwood clan, became a
member ofthe tribal council, and was initiated into
the Priesthood of the Bow (Pandey, 1972; Hinsley,
1983). Dubbing him the "original participant
observer," Jesse Green adds:
ETHNOGRAPHY
Cushing was the first amlu:opologist co have aqu.
lived with his subjecrs over an exrcnded period ally
the only man in history cnrided to sign ｨｩｩｮ ｳ ･｛ｾ ｾ ｣ｬ＠
as he once did at the end ofan official letter, '
"1st War Chief of Zuni, U.S. Asst. Ethnologist."
(1979, p. 5-6)
Thi list of Legendary fears may look so
what differenr if subject co rhe same ｳ｣ｲｵｴｩｮｾｾ ﾭ
Malinowski's.s7 Yee clearly Cushing was ｩｮｶｯｬｶｾ､＠ ｾ＠
a project that in many rcspeccs- duration of ficln
tay, wardrobe ( ee any ofrJ1e handful ofclassic Ph ｾ＠
cos of Malinowski in rhe field.), formal rccognirioo
of community roles, and even acculmracion, sin n
ir has been suggested rhac Cushing "fclc moi·c Cc
1 h Z •· h h. atnomc among r e um r an among 1s own people•
(Pandey 1972, p. 322; cf. Malinowski 1967/89)-...
outpaced ethnography's recognized founder.SB
What is perhaps most special about ethnog.
raphy as a research tradition is its propensity to
perpetually and critically assess, and at times reinvent,
its methodological, theoretical, and epistemological
foundations. More than anything else,
what marks the ethnographer as distinct frorn
researchers who engage in (seemingly) identical
methods and activities of qualitative field research
(or participant-observations) are the sensibilities
that led them to research, inform them during its
unanticipatable courses of experiences, and, ultimately,
sustain meaningful legacies thereafter.
Conclusion
Today's ethnographers inherit the burdens of
Malinowskian methodological precepts but are
privileged in their ability to construct their own
projects in strategic juxtaposition to those that came
before them. In Malinowski's example, both legendary
and personal, the metaphors of travel and narratives
of revision enact and sustain discourses that
are crucial to understanding ethnography's journey
through a century of practice over epistemological,
cheoretical, and methodological grounds.
Among the several functions char Malinowski
amibuced to myths and legends, his claim rbar
they open up historical vi ras (1926/1948, p. I07)
is perhaps d1e most ape point to do e on. Mythic
narratives "reaect the circumstances and perspectives
of their narrators" and provide context for
contemporary commentary (Fardon, 1990, p. 570).
Malinowski then, through his status as ethnography's
"most mythicized" figure (Geertz, 1988,
p. 75), serves as a beacon for whatever future turns
ethnography's journey into irs second century as a
c..cejonalized practice takes. His legend upplies
PrOI"""
0
w(edge of where modern ethnography emerged
ｾＺｏｲｮＬ＠ highlighting borh its enduring value and what
thankfuJly been left ro the pasr, and simulranenas
. th d c .. 1· .
S
ly uisp1res e nee cor constanr crltlca 1ty, rev1-
ot1
•
11
and above all else, conrexrual awareness ofhow
510 I
f.ir chis ethnographic field has yet to go.
future Directions
•What can historical methodological
document reach us about the developmenr and
evolution of ethnography (and about the attitudes,
poHtical views, and u.nderlying epistemological
assumpcions of researchers dui'ing a parricuJar
period)?
• What are the limitations of field notes and
other forms of on-the-spot ethnographic record
keeping? As with tape recorders or video cameras,
in some instances, might field note documentarion
be viewed as negatively impacting ethnographic
relationships? Can ethnography exist without field
notes? What recent technological innovations or
modes of ethnographic inquiry and analysis could
potentially substitute for them?
• Should ethnographers, on the whole or within
specific disciplines, have a collective position
on institutional review board compliance? Is it
fundamental to what ethnographers do, or is it
an unnecessary encumbrance that the increasing
numbers of ethnographers outside the academy
(and "everyday" ethnographers) do not have to
deal with?
• In a context of ubiquitous media
interconnectedness, viral news streams, and big
data, how must ethnography adjust to issues of
timely publishing, accountability, and the erosion
of ethnographic authority in a highly mediated,
data-based "interview society?"
• As the lines between ethnography and
everyday life become increasingly fuzzy, what
new modes of ethnographic understanding and
representation should be acknowledged and
embraced?
• In ethnography's post-postmodern
reformulations and trajectories, how should
ethnographers map the boundaries of the field
(epistemologically and in rerms of the various
interests which ethnographic study can serve)?
• Ethnography's foundations are in writing
culture, yet historically ethnographers are deeply
implicated in the project of literatizing non-literate
societies. Given this paradox, what non-literal
forms of ethnographic representations might a
contemporary, critical, and historically informed
ethnographic project take? How can we move
beyond writing culture?
Notes
I. For instance, Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln
identify "at least eight historical moments" in qualitative
research history; writing in 2008 (p. 3), they list these as: the
traditional (1900-1950), the modernist (1950-1970),
blurred genres (1970-1986), the crisis of representation
(1986-1990), the postmodern (1990--1995), the postexperimental
(1995-2000), the methodologically contested present
(2000-2004), and the fractured future (2005-). While
I see value in their effort to assign broad themes to various
time periods, I am less comfortable with the accelerated
momentum oftheir model. To define the four year period of
2000-2004 as an "historical moment" on par with the first
fifty years of the twentieth century strikes me as peculiarsomething
like a historiographic version ofthe old social evolutionist
claims that non-literate peoples had been living the
same way for the last thousand years. More to the point, to
place six "historical moments" between qualitative research
as practiced in 1948 and that practiced in 2008, from where
I sit, misleadingly magnifies the impression of how far it
has come.
2. ArthurJ. Vidich and Stanford M. Lyman view this conflation
as unwise and unserviceable, arguing that the ethnographic
"data gathering process can never be described in its totality
because ... [it is] part of an ongoing social process that in
its minute-by-minute and day-to-day experience defies recapitulation"
(2000, p. 38).
3. Several very good overviews ofethnographic qualitative field
research methods exist, including Hammersley & Atkinson
(1995), Bernard (1995), Bailey (2007), and Emerson et al.
(1995).
4. The classic definition-of-culture example comes from Alfred
L. Kroeberand Clyde Kluckhohn (1952), who compiled 162
different definitions of the term.
5. Ethno is derived from the Greek ethnos, which refers to
"people, nation, class, caste, tribe; a number of people accustomed
to live together;" andgraphy is derived from the Greek
graphia, meaning "description of." These etymological definitions
came from the Online Etymology Dictionary: hrtp:f/
www.etymonline.com/ (Retrieved July 16, 2012). Similar
breakdowns can be found in Jones (20 I0).
6. Ofcourse, Malinowski had already received a doctorate from
Jagiellonian University in Cracow before he went ro England
(Ellen, Gellner, Kubica, & Mucha, 1988), but because that
degree is typically listed as in physics and mathematics, it is
regarded as incidental to his later work.
7. See for example Stocking (1983a), M. W Young (1988),
Geertz (1988), and Kuper (1996).
8. By one popular account, Malinowski's status as an "enemy
alien" (Wayne, 1985, p. 533) prevented him from returning
to Europe (see Kuper, 1996; J. S. Jones, 2010). By
another-first relayed to me as an undergraduateMalinowski's
journey to the southwest Pacific was engineered
in part to dodge the outbreak of war in Europe. To
the extent that this alleges an avoidance of military service,
it seems untrue since owing to his health troubles, most
notably issues with his eyesight, Malinowski was deemed
unfit to serve (M. W Young, 2004, p. 38).
HARRISON
9. Regarding class, Malinowski's daughter Helena Wayne
(1985) writes that both of her paternal grandparents
belonged to a class that to her knowledge had "no exact
equivalent" in Europe-"between landed gentry and nobility,
but certainly not aristocracy" (p. 529). The story of
young Malinowski being read The Golden Bough-which
is contradicted by at least one testimony from Malinowski
himself regarding his first "read[ing} [emphasis added] this
great work" (Leach, 1965/2000a, p. 26)-can be traced to
a 1923 letter written to Frazier (cited in Stocking, 1983b,
p. 93). It is clear that J6zefa Malinowska read a good deal
to her son during his secondary-school years and beyond
when trouble with his eyesight forced him out of school
and to spend significant time with "his eyes bandaged"
(Wayne, p. 530). By one account, she even forbade him to
read, opting instead to "read everything to him herself" (M.
W Young, 2004, p. 38).
10. Stocking (1992) also cites these "preadolescent experiences
at the cultural margins of Europe" as inspiring young
Malinowski's "romantic fascination with the culturally
exotic;" adding that his father's interest in folklore (see
below) and Malinowski's perspective of having grown up in
a "subjugated nation" may have also contributed to his turn
towards anthropology (p. 241).
11. Young (2004) has suggested that Malinowski's opportunities
to work with Wundt might have been truncated by the
latter's age and career stage, not to mention his responsibilities
as university rector.
12. Robert Redfield writes in his introduction to Malinowski's
Magic, Science, and Religion, "Malinowski's gift was double:
it consisted both in the genius given usually to artists
and in the scientist's power to see and to declare the universal
in the particular" (1948, p. 9).
13. By some accounts of the Malinowski myth, it was his
sickness that caLtSed him to break from his path to science
(Kuper, 1996, p. 9). To the extent that this may be
partially true-and both his extracurricular readings and
Mediterranean travels could be construed as a product of
illness-it might be extended to also include love-sickness.
14. Ofcourse, this is a highly simplified explanation. For a thorough
discussion of the various paradigms and epistemologies
surrounding qualitative inquiry, see Lincoln & Guba
(2000) and Schwandt (2000).
15. I use "ethnology" to reference the more theoretically
informed, historically speculative, and comparative form
of researching (mostly) non-literate societies that dominated
the emerging field of anthropology dming the late
nineteenth century and first decades of the twentieth (see
Radcliffe-Brown, 1952). Ethnology was "less intensive"
than ethnography and often involved "armchair" theorists
who adhered to evolutionist models of understanding
human diversity. Initially Malinowski called his work ethnology
(Firth, 1988). However, by the 1922 publication of
Argonauts ofthe Western Pacific, he was clearly referring to it
as "ethnography."
16. Prior to leaving Leipzig, Malinowski had already begun
writing several ethnological projects including what would
become his first book, 1he Family among the Australian
Abo1·igines (see Barnes, 1963). In addition to his enthusiasm
and notable intellect, these works enabled Malinowski to
make an immediate impression on his eventual mentors.
17. Edward Burnett Tylor's (1871) classic definition of culture
as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief,
ETHNOGRAPHY
art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and h
· · d [ ·] b f · " ab..us acqwre my man sic as a mem er o society (p. l) .
still widely used and taught today. Is
J8. There nrc coumlcs:. stories of arbitrary, sercndipitoUs
qnd
unforeseen drcumsmnccs that led ethnographers to P:i.rr
ular fieldwork copies and desrinarions. Two of the more
Ｑ
ｾ＠
cbrnrcd within American nnchropology nre: (l) ｍ｡ｲｧ｡ｾ＠ Mead's
path to studying , dolcscence in American amtci
which resulted from a negotiation bccween her ､ｾｾ｡ Ｌ＠
ＧＭ＾ｉｾ＠
to study culture change in rhe Tuamotu ｉｳｬ｡ｮ､ｾ＠ and h
advisor Franz Boa 's desire co have her rudy adolcscerier
among American Lidi:tns (see Mead, 1972); and (2) Ｑｾ＠
story of Lewis Henry Morgan, who 01me to work ｗｩｴｾ＠
Iroquois leaders after a chance meeting wirh a Youn
Seneca, Ely Parker, in an Albany New York bookstore Ｈｾ＠
Lassiter, 2005).
19. There is also evidence suggesting that Haddon may have
secured a travel grant for Malinowski (M. W. Young, 2004
p. 245). ,
20. Much of Papua New Guinea, including the Trobriand
Islands, was under Australian control. The rest of it was
controlled by Germany. Stocking (1992, p. 242) hints at
the possibility that, with the outbreak of war, Malinowski
also had to negotiate this evolving imperial scramble.
21. Malinowski had one of his most fruitful periods of early
research during a time when the missionary couple he
stayed with, the Savilles, left Mailu for an extended period
of time. In 1915 he wrote that he found this experience
working among the natives "incomparably more intensive
than work done from white men's settlements" (quoted in
Stocking, 1992, p. 246); and again in 1922 he wrote, "it
was not until I was alone in the district that I began to make
some headway" (Malinowski, 192211966, p. 6).
22. Malinowski's continued use of "savage" throughout
his career has been, at times, presented as evidence of
deep-seated racism. During this time, however, the term was
a common descriptor for non-Western peoples. Its association
to cultural evolutionism could certainly be used to help
make the cases thar Malinowski was a career long evolutionist
(see Kuper, 1996, p. 8).
23. Shortly after arriving in Mailu, Saville sent a letter to his
brother in England in which he listed his ten "laws in dealing
with Mailu-speaking natives" (or what Stocking [1992]
refers to as his "ten commandments" [p. 246]); they went
as follows: "(1) Never play the fool with a native; (2) Never
speak to a native for the sake of speaking to him [sic];
(3) Swear at a native when he is alone; (4) Never call a
native, send someone for him or go inadvertently to him;
(5) Never touch a native, unless to shake hands or thrash
him; (6) Always let a native see you mean what you say;
(7) Never let a native see you believe his word right away,
he never speaks the truth; (8) Rarely argue with a native
and then only when he is alone; (9) Warn once, afterwards
proceed to action; (10) Don't try to be funny, a native can
never see a joke. He possesses one joke and that is beastly
talk" (M. W Young, 1988, p. 44).
24. The note, found among Haddon's papers, was typed and,
intriguingly, neither signed nor dated-Young (2004,
p. 357) is nonetheless "almost certain" that it was written by
Saville.
25. Indeed, in the opening pages of Argonauts of the Western
Pacific-the major publication introducing his New Guinea/
Trobriand fieldwork and announcing his revolutionar)'
ierhod-!Vialinowski describes the beginnings of his field
ｾ･｡ｲ｣ｨ＠ on Muilu as "making (hi. J firsr cncry into the vilJujlC·..ln
·the company of his white cicerone" (presumably
s.-iville) nnd larer returning. where after a few exchanges of
,
0
mplimcntS In pidgin- English'' and "some tobacco chang·
iJlg hands" he "tried rhen rn procculIJJ b11si11m" (1922/1966,
P· 4-5-emphasis added). Young (2004) confirms that
f.some work" was done during rhis "first week" on the island
(p. 332).
In fact, J. L. Myers describes Rivers' contributions co
26· rhe 1912 edition of Notes and Queries as "a revelation to
all but an inner circle of colleagues" and "setting a standard
of workmanship in the field" (1923, p. 15). Would
Malinowski, who went on to be the recognized setter of the
neXt new standard, have been among chat inner circle ofcolleagues?
Stocking, for one, definitively names Malinowski
as the last member of the "Cambridge School" to get into
che field (1983b, p. 82). Ifby 1912 Malinowski was not a
member of Rivers' inner circle, he would have beyond any
doubt been only one degree removed.
2
7. See for instance Deloria (1969/1988), Willis (1972), Asad
(1973), Owusu (1978), Magubane & Faris (1985), R.
Rosaldo (1989), Smith (1999/2012), A. A. Young (2008).
28. This is only a smattering of what was included. For the
complete list and a discussion of its significance, see M.
W. Young (2004, pp. 264-267).
29. In a fascinating discussion, James Urry (1972) outlines
how Notes and Queries on Anthropology was specifically
marketed to colonialists to help mitigate the consequences
of cross-cultural disagreements and misunderstandings.
He concludes that, at the dawn of the twentieth century,
"political and economic motives for the collection ofethnographic
materials were becoming as important as the scientific"
(p. 49).
30. Lowie supplies an exclamation point to the story by
recounting how, the following year, a New York City election
official stood "completely nonplussed" after being told
that Lowie's occupation was ethnology; "(h]e evidently
lacked the educational advantages of the Crow reservation,"
Lowe concluded (1959, p. 60).
31. Several North American researchers, most notably Frank
Hamilton Cushing (Pandey, 1972; Green, 1979) and
Boas (Cole, 1983), had previously achieved this level of
integration.
32. See Karam (2007, p. 18-19); some of the details of this
account were also confirmed through personal email correspondence
(August 20, 2012).
33. Sec D. Jones (1970), Nakhlch (1979), Hau'ofu (L982),
Ohnuki-Tic:rncy (l984), and Narayan (I 993).
34. Cllrio11sly In rhc list time M. W. Young (2004) prcsencs
there is no mention of a phonograph recorder. W.u cylinders
did not work well in chc tropics and, as Young notes,
onlysix cyllndcrs (ofsix d01.en sh.ipped) ofsound recordｩｮｾ＠
survived.
35. ｔＱＱＺＱｮｬｾ＠ co Lnkshmi ｊ｡ｹｾｭｭ＠ and Ali Colleen Nefffor pointing
om ｲｨｾ･＠ specific pmcricc:s co me.
36. ａｬｾｯ＠ compare S:Jmc-culturc smdies conducted by Redfield
0930) again5c Lewis (195 l). Dollard (l937) against
Powdermaker (1939). as well as Mead (1935) against
Fortune (1939).
37. Nash & Wincroh (1972. p. 531) crc:dir the "assertions of
i11dcpendcnce by native people" in a geneml sense--ooutsidc
of nntivc anthropology in p:mlcular-wlth unsenling the
self-assuredness ofthe Western colonial view ofnon-Western
people.
38. I caution that all modes of recording-including video
camera-have certain biases of perspective and limitations.
Nevertheless, for many a11dicnces-.1nd particularly
Western audiences conditioned to privilege vision over
other sensory input (M. Jackson, 1989, p. 6)-seeing is
believing.
39. This is by no means a one-way debate. Although many ethnographers
would be more than happy to not have to deal
with IRBs, some feel that by not requiring !RB approval,
ethnographers would be further marginalized as unscientific
and/or not real research (Lincoln, 2005).
40. Young (2004) elaborates on Malinowski's preoccupation
with the "salacious details" of Trobriand sex life including
what was likely a rather unnerving correspondence with
Annie Brunton regarding the "sensual temptations" of
Kiriwinian young women (pp. 402-405).
41. In fact, one could quite straightforwardly make the 'ase
for the "Sage of Great Barrington" (as DuBois came to be
known) as the inventor of modern ethnography.
42. Howard Becker is critical of this designation, arguing that
"'Chicago' was never the unified chapel ... [or] unified
school of thought" that many believe it to have been (1999,
p. 10).
43. This can also be seen in the ethnographies conducted
by white sociologists of African American communities
during the integrationist period of the 1960s
(A. A. Young, 2008).
44. On the basis of their distortions and lack of scientific rigor
(Mills, 1942; Pfauts & Duncan, 1950; Madge, 1962;
Colson, 1976; Frank, 1977), oversights (Thernstrom, 1964;
Lissher ct al., 2004), and their presentation of ideal types
of community members as opposed to portraying genuine
personalities (Goldschmidt, 1950; Ingersoll, 1997). Ifsuch
critical reception followed the publication Hollingshead's
studies of Elmtown Youth (1949), it seems to have been
less publicized, most likely owing to the fact that, unlike
Middletown and Yankee City, Elmtown's true identity
remained hidden.
45. More recently some urban ethnographers have focused their
attention of elite institutions-Le., "studying up"; examples
of this research include Latour (1987), Cassell (1991),
Karam (2007), Fosher (2009), and Ho (2009).
46. Even if, customarily, the researcher-as-person would
then disappear into "scientific omniscience" (Coleman &
Collins, 2006, p. 1).
47. See Clifford (1994), Friedland & Boden (1994), Downey
& Dumit (1995), and Marcus (1996). For some very
good recent examples of transnational ethnographies, see
Pribilsky (2007) and Zheng (2010).
48. Malinowski (1922/1966) specifically said that "[o]ne of
the first conditions of acceptable ethnographic work certainly
is that it should deal with the totality of all social,
cultural, and psychological aspects of a community, for
they are so interwoven that not one can be understood
without taking into consideration all the others" (p. xvi).
This idea of anthropology as a holistic science continues
to be reiterated in the introductory chapters of most discipline
textbooks.
49. Such transparency might seem rather pedestrian by today's
standards, but, in its historical context, insisting on these
types of divulgences was a noteworthy gesrure.
HARRISON
50. Represenmtivc examples of this work Include Rnbinow
(1977), Myerhoff(l978), Crapanzano ( l980), M. Ros:ildo
(1980), ｔ｡ｵｳＮｾｬｧ＠ (19110), and Friedrich (1987).
5L. For examples of such work from tnc feminist tradition
sec Rosaldo & Lamphecc (1974), Reiter (1975), and
Daniels (I 983); from the indigenous or native ethnography
trad.idon, see Jones (1970), Owusu (1978), and
Nakhleh (1979).
52. Inspired by Namyan's (1993) insighrs, I distinguish between
native and indigenous ethnographers on the basis ofthe former
being an ascribed idcndty and the Inner being a political
stance.
53. In his Introduction to Writing Culture, Clifford (1986)
lists Geertz, Victor Turner, Mary Douglas, Levi-Strauss,
Leach, Mead (1928/1961), Ruth Benedict, as well as
Malinowski as forerunners of this ethnographic tradition.
l would resolutely add Zora Neale Hurston (193511990;
1942/1991).
54. His publications were nodccable and memorable for d1cir
poetics. 1J1e rides of his monographs alone make the case,
!nduding rhe dignified splendor of Argo11m1ts ofthe \\r.!sum
Pt1c-Jfic-, the crude promocional-ism of The Se:o.11at lift ef
avagl!S and Sex and Repression i11 Savag1t Society. which
Stephen Hugh-Jones and James Laidlaw (2000) describe as
"fairly low gimmick.1" (p. 17); and rhe rny ticnl inirlguc of
Coral Gardem and Their Magic.
55. Fine (1996) cites institutional placement as one of the key
factors in enabling rcpuration building and susC1.inmcnc.
Beyond his position ac the: London chool of Economics
and hi pammount role i11 csrablishing it a the leading
cenrer for anthropology in Europe, rhrough his oursrnnding
lecrurcs and excellent mcncorsltip (Kluckholn, 194.3)
Malinowski culcivaced a generation ofschohrs-:1mong his
academic progeny were some of the biggest names in twentieth
century anthropology-who would continue to sing
his praises for years to come.
56. For a good discussion of this, see Firth's (1989) "Second
Introduction 1988" to the republication ofMalinowski's Diary.
57. And very much like Malinowski, Cushing was not beyond
strategically constructing his own legend (see Green, 1979,
p. 25 n. 5; Koiauos & Weisman, 2005).
58. Other promincm cnndldmcs for "original participant
observer" include Malinowski's American anthropological
counterpart, Franz Boas (see Rohner, 1969; Cole, 1983);
Alice Cunningham Fletcher, who first traveled to Nebraska
in 1881 in the interest ofstudying the life ofOmaha women
and ended up "traveling with the Omahas for weeks at a
time, learning their customs and listening to their fears"
about being taken advantage of by the American government
(Mark, 1980, p. 67); Nikolai Mikouho-Maclay,
the Russian fieldworker who in 1871 found himself "virtually
alone among previously unconrncrcd and corally
'untouched' groups" on rhc norrhcrn coast of New Guinea
(Stocldng. 1992, p. 222); and Lewis Henry Morgan, whose
ｬｾ｡ｧｵ･＠ IJ/ｴｨｾ＠ Hu-d!-110-1mv-11ee (1851) h:is been tcferred co
:\S "the firsr 'true ethnography'• (Lassiter, 2005, p. 30).
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