Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T19:13:15.027Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Anthropologists and their informants: marginality reconsidered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Moshe Shokeid
Get access

Extract

There has of late been an increasing tendency to challenge the authority of ethnographic texts by criticizing the anthropologist's enterprise during the various stages of his performance—both the collection of data in the field, and the interpretation and presentation of his field notes at home. A better understanding of the process of gathering ethnographic data, and the characteristics of the participants in fieldwork may remove some of its mystique, and contribute to the credibility of the anthropological endeavor. It is often assumed that the anthropologist and in particular his informants are ‘marginal men’ in their respective societies. I intend to examine the applicability of this definition as regards both partners in the implementation of fieldwork, and suggest an alternative characterization.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , May 1988 , pp. 31 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Agar, M.H., 1980. The Professional Stranger: an informal introduction to ethnography (New York, Academic Press).Google Scholar
Barley, N., 1983. The Innocent Anthropologist (London, British Museum Publications Ltd).Google Scholar
Berreman, G.D., 1962. Behind Many Masks: ethnography and impression management in a Himalayan village (Ithaca, N.Y., Society for Applied Anthropology, Monograph No. 4).Google Scholar
Bohannan, L. (pseud. Elenore Smith Bowen), 1954. Return to Laughter: an anthropological novel (New York, Harper and Row, 1954; New York, Doubleday, 1964).Google Scholar
Briggs, J.L., 1970. Never in Anger: portrait of an Eskimo family (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Casagrande, J.B. (ed.), 1960. In the Company of Man: twenty portraits by anthropologists (New York, Harper and Row).Google Scholar
Clifford, J., 1983. On ethnographic authority, Representations, I, 118–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crapanzano, V., 1980. Tuhami: portrait of a Moroccan (Chicago, University of Chicago Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickie-Clark, H.F., 1966. The Marginal Situation (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul).Google Scholar
Dumont, J.-P., 1978. The Headman and I: ambiguity and ambivalence in the fieldworking experience (Austin, University of Texas Press).Google Scholar
Eickelman, D.F., 1985. Knowledge and Power in Morocco: the education of a twentieth-century notable (Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellen, R.F., 1984. Ethnographic Research: a guide to general conduct (London and Orlando, Academic Press).Google Scholar
Evans-Pritchard, E.E., 1940. The Nuer (Oxford, Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
Freilich, M. (ed.), 1970. Marginal Natives: anthropologists at work (New York, Harper and Row).Google Scholar
Gans, H.J., 1968. The participant-observer as a human being, in Becker, H., Geer, B., Riesman, D. and Weiss, R. (eds), Institution and the Person (Chicago, Aldine).Google Scholar
Geertz, C., 1968. Thinking as a moral act: ethical dimensions of anthropological field-work in new states, Antioch Review, XXVIII, 139–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, G., 1981. New Immigrants and Ethnicity: a preliminary research report on immigrants in Queens (Ethnic Studies Project, Queens Colllege [cuny], mimeo.).Google Scholar
Gulick, J., 1970. Village and city field-work in Lebanon, in Freilich, M. (ed), Marginal Natives: anthropologists at work (New York, Harper and Row), pp. 123–152.Google Scholar
Henry, F. and Saberwal, S. (eds), 1969. Stress and Responses in Fieldwork (New York, Holt, Reinhart and Winston).Google Scholar
Kennedy, J.G., 1977. Struggle for Change in a Nubian Community: an individual in society and history (Palo Alto, Mayfield Publishing Company).Google Scholar
Lewis, I., 1973. The Anthropologist's Muse (an inaugural lecture) (London, The London School of Economics and Political Science).Google Scholar
Lewis, O., 1965. La Vida: a Puerto Rican family in the culture of poverty—San Juan and New York (London, Secker and Warburg).Google Scholar
Malinowski, B., 1967. A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York, Harcourt, Brace and World).Google Scholar
Maranhao, T., 1986. The hermeneutics of participant observation, Dialectical Anthropology X, 291–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marcus, G.E. and Cushman, P., 1982. Ethnographies as texts, Annual Review of Anthropology, XI, 25–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mintz, S.W., 1960. Worker in the Cane: a Puerto Rican life history (New Haven, Yale University Press).Google Scholar
Nash, D., 1963. The ethnologist as stranger: an essay in the sociology of knowledge, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, XIX, 149–167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newton, E., 1979 (first published 1972). Mother Camp: female impersonators in America (Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Park, R.E., 1950. Race and Culture, Collected Papers, Vol. I (edited by Hughes, E.C. et al. ) (New York, The Free Press of Glencoe).Google Scholar
Pelto, P.J., 1970. Research in individualistic societies, in Freilich, op. cit. pp. 252–292.Google Scholar
Powdermaker, H., 1966. Stranger and Friend: the way of an anthropologist (New York, W.W. Norton).Google Scholar
Rabinow, P., 1977. Reflections on Field-work in Morocco (Berkeley, University of California Press).Google Scholar
Read, K.E., 1966. The High Valley (London, George Allen and Unwin).Google Scholar
Rose, D., 1982. Occasions and forms of anthropological experience, in Ruby, J. (ed.) [see below], pp. 219–273.Google Scholar
Ruby, J. (ed.), 1982. A Crack in the Mirror: reflexive perspectives in anthropology (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shils, E., 1972. The Intellectuals and the Powers and other Essays (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Shokeid, M., 1971 a. Fieldwork as predicament rather than spectacle, Archives européennes de sociologie, XII, 111–122.Google Scholar
Shokeid, M., 1971 b. The Dual Heritage: immigrants from the Atlas mountains in an Israeli village (Manchester, Manchester University Press; augmented edition: 1985. Brunswick, N.J., Transaction Books).Google Scholar
Shokeid, M., 1974. The emergence of supernatural explanations for male barrenness among Moroccan immigrants, in Deshen, S. and Shokeid, M., The Predicament of Homecoming: cultural and social life of North African immigrants in Israel (Ithaca, Cornell University Press), pp. 122–150.Google Scholar
Shokeid, M., 1988. Children of Circumstances: Israeli emigrants in New York (Ithaca, Cornell University Press).Google Scholar
Shokeid, M. and Deshen, S., 1982. Distant Relations: ethnicity and politics among Arabs and North African Jews in Israel (New York, Praeger and J.F. Bergin).Google Scholar
Simmel, G., 1950. The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Translated, edited and with an introduction by Wolff, Kurt H. (New York, The Free Press).Google Scholar
Stonequist, E.V., 1937. The Marginal Man (New York, Scribner).Google Scholar
Turnbull, C., 1972. The Mountain People (New York, Simon and Schuster).Google Scholar
Turner, V.W., 1957. Schism and Continuity in an African Society (Manchester, Manchester University Press).Google Scholar
Turner, V.W., 1967. Muchona the Hornet, interpreter of religion, in Turner, V. (ed.), Forest of Symbols (Ithaca, Cornell University Press), pp. 131–150. First published in Casagrande (1960), op. cit.Google Scholar
Turner, V.W., 1969. The Ritual Process (Ithaca, Cornell University Press).Google Scholar
Velsen, J. Van, 1967. The extended-case method and situational analysis, in Epstein, A.L. (ed.), The Craft of Social Anthropology (London, Tavistock, 1967), pp. 129–149.Google Scholar
Wax, R.H., 1971. Doing Fieldwork: warnings and advice (Chicago, University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Whyte, W.F., 1970. 1st ed. 1943. Street Corner Society (Chicago, University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Wilson, P.J., 1974. Oscar: an inquiry into the nature of sanity (New York, Vintage Books).Google Scholar