147981951 Strathern Out of Context

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Out of Context: The Persuasive Fictions of Anthropology [and Comments and Reply]

Author(s): Marilyn Strathern, M. R. Crick, Richard Fardon, Elvin Hatch, I. C. Jarvie, RixPinxten, Paul Rabinow, Elizabeth Tonkin, Stephen A. Tyler and George E. MarcusReviewed work(s):Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Jun., 1987), pp. 251-281Published by: The University of Chicago Presson behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for AnthropologicalResearchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2743236.

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CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 28, Number 3, June 987? I987 byThe Wenner-Gren oundation forAnthropologicalResearch. All rights eservedOOII-3204/87/2803-0002$2.5O

Out ofContextThe PersuasiveFictionsofAnthropologylbyMarilyn trathernThehistoryfBritish ocialanthropologyndicates dramaticgulf etween razerndMalinowski. heway nwhich hat ulfis constructeds illuminatedy nalysis f subsequent ulf e-tween o-calledmodernistndpostmodernpochsnanthropolog-icalwriting. achgenerationreates ts ownsenseofhistory,ndthus tsdisjunctions: odernistsegard razer s failingodealwith he echnical roblem f lucidatinglienconcepts yput-ting hem nto heir ocialcontext; ostmodernsecover romhepastdiverseroniesnthewritingsf nthropologists,ncludingFrazer,timulatedytheir wnplaywith ontexts.argue hatFrazers out of ontextn both ases,onthe echnical-literarygrounds f hekinds fbookshe wrote.He didnotorganise istexts n a modernist ay,butneither idhispastiche evelop utof hose ontextualisingxercises fMalinowskiannthropologywhich ostmodernsttempt oovercome. resent-dayoncernwith ictionnanthropologyddresses ewproblemsnthewriter/reader/subjectelationshiphichhighlightssuestodowith ommunication.ostmodems ave to ive theparadox fself-representation.nattempts madetoseparate ut the nten-tions fpastiche nd uxtapositionrom he mages f umble ndconfusion,skingwhat ocialworld s fantasisedy hosemagesandwhether ereallywouldwishtoreturno Frazer.MARILYN STRATHERN iS ProfessorfSocialAnthropologyttheUniversityfManchesterManchester i 3 9PL,England). ornin 94I, shewaseducated tCambridge niversityB.A., 963;Ph.D., 968).Shehas been ssistant uratorntheMuseum fArchaeologyndEthnology,ambridgei966-68), andhasbeenfellow fGirton ollege I976-83) andTrinity ollege i984-85)of hat niversity.he has alsobeen researchellowntheNewGuineaResearch nit,Australian ationalUniversityI970-72,I974-75), a seniorresearchfellow at AustralianNational Uni-versity,nd a visiting rofessorttheUniversityfCalifornia,Berkeley. erresearchnterestsrethe thnographyfMelanesia,legal nthropology,he nthropologyfBritain,nd, rosscuttingthese, enderelations ndfeministheory. erpublicationsn-cludeWomen nBetweenLondon:Academic ress,972); Kin-ship t theCore:AnAnthropologyfElmdon, ssex Cambridge:Cambridge niversityress,981); withA. Strathern,elf-Decoration nMt.Hagen London: uckworth,97I); andtheedited olumesDealingwith nequalityCambridge:ambridgeUniversityress,npress) nd,withC. MacCormack, ature,Culture,ndGenderCambridge: ambridge niversityress,ig80). Thepresent aperwas submittednfinal orm 6 x 86.

This is the confession f omeone brought p to view SirJames razer n a particularwaywho has discovered hatthe contextfor hat view has shifted. wish to conveysome sense of thatshift.To talk about a scholar s also to talk about his or herideas. But there s a puzzle in the history f deas. Ideasseemtohave thecapacity o appear at all sortsof timesandplaces,to sucha degree hatwe can consider hem sbeingbefore heir ime or out ofdate. One ofthethingslearned about Frazer was that his ideas were old-fashionedbeforehe wrote themdown. But at the sametimetherewere somedecidedlymoderndeas infashion.In fact, heexperience f turning ack toFrazer nd hislate igth-centuryontemporariess torealise how mod-erntheyalso seem. Yet I am disconcerted y the factthat I simultaneously know that post-Frazerian n-thropologys utterly nlike what wentbefore t. Therewas a quite decisive shift n the subject some 60-70years gowhose result, mong others,was a generationofsocial anthropologistsike myselfbrought p to re-gardFrazer s unreadable.2The presenceor absence ofparticular deas does notseem enoughto accountfor uchmovement.Theycol-lapse a sense ofhistorynto a sense ofdejacvu. This isparticularly isconcerting orthe anthropologist lsobroughtup to imagine that cultural notions "fit to-gether" nd thatwhatpeople think s a "reflection" ftheir times. Consider,forinstance, two examples ofideas about ethnocentrism.oth ddress he conundrumhow to describe heapparently bsurdcustoms of otherpeoplesin such a wayas to make themplausibleto thereader.One refers o theancient sraelites, he other omodernsavages, topics which Frazer was to bringto-gethernhisFolk-loren theOld Testament i9i8).The first s a work publishedin i68i by the Abb6Fleury, he Mannersofthe sraelites.Anexpanded 805versionwas producedbya Manchester leric,Clarke, nresponseto public demand following arlier editions.The opening ustification f thebook is of nterest. t isbecause the customs of God's chosenpeople are so dif-ferent romours thattheyoffend s and thatthe OldTestamenthas been neglected; "upon comparing hemannersof the Israelites with those of the Romans,Greeks,Egyptians, nd otherpeople of theformerges... theseprejudices oon vanish.... theIsraeliteshadeverythinghatwas valuable in the customs of theircontemporaries, ithoutmanyof the defects" Clarkei8o5:i5). Clarke's ntentions to maketheBibleread-able,torid theOld Testamentof ts strangeness,o thathisreaders anconceive ofGod's being mong he srael-ites.He desires p. i6)

thereader odivesthimself fall prejudice, hathemay udgeofthese customs by good sense and rightI. This is a version f theFrazer ecture or 986, given t theUniversityf Liverpool. he annual ecture, n honour ccordedSirJames eorge razern his ifetime,irculatesmong our ni-versities: iverpool,Glasgow,Cambridge,nd Oxford. he firstgivenn Liverpoolwas byBronislawMalinowski,hemostrecentbeforehepresent yMarshall ahlins. am very ratefuloJohnPeel and to LiverpoolUniversityor heir nvitation, hichper-suadedme toreadFrazer gain; thispaper s for . E.

2. It will be clear hat write rom heperspectivefBritishocialanthropology,nd notfromnother erspective hichwould eektoexplain his pecies f nthropologyo others. hatAmerican swell as British riters ecome ignificantnthe ater iscussion fcontemporaryssuesreflectstherhifts hathaveoccurrednthisperspective.

2 5 I


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2521 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume28, Number 3,June 987reason alone; to discard he deas that re peculiartohis own age and country, nd consider he sraelitesin the circumstances f time and placewherein heylived; to compare hemwith theirnearestneigh-bours, nd by thatmeans to enter nto their piritand maxims.These ideas have an uncannily contemporarying-even to the point of the writer's ayingthathe aspiresnot to a panegyric ut to "a veryplain account" ofthepeoplehe is describing. ut then o, nsome respects, othewordsofSir John ubbockspokenat Hulme TownHall, Manchester, n I874. Like Clarke's rendering fFleury, hey re addressed o a largepopular udience: alectureon modern avagesin a series,Science Lecturesforthe People, whose opening address had attracted3,700 people. (The subsequent ttendance s recorded tan averageof 675). Lubbock i875b:238) startswiththe

factofdifference:The wholementalcondition fthe savage s, indeed,so dissimilar rom urs that t is often erydifficultfor s to followwhat s passing nhismind.... Manythings ppearnatural, nd almost self-evidentohim,which produce verydifferentffectnus.... Thus,though avages alwayshave a reason, uch as it is, forwhattheydo and whatthey hink, hese reasons of-ten seem to us irrelevant r absurd.But by comparing iverse accounts ofpeoples from llover heworld, t s possibleto show howwidelydistrib-uted are those deas and customs which"seem to us atfirst nexplicable nd fantastic"p. 239). Whatwe-andhe means himself nd his audience-take as "naturaland obvious" will turnout not to be so. Lubbock'sspe-cial case is a desire to give"a correct dea of man as heexisted in ancient times, and of the stages throughwhichour civilisationhas been evolved" (p. 237).Like Fleury/Clarke,e argues hatto understand eo-ple verydifferentromourselves t is necessaryto beaware oftheirparticular remises nd values. Lubbockmakes his point by substantiating hat difference,n-troducing is witnesses to a disparaterangeof reasonsand customs,examples theywould be unlikely o havecome across if he had not regaledthem with the evi-dence.The evidence ncludes such items as belief nthereality fdreams, ondness or rnaments,ndmarriageceremonies uchas thosewhich reducewomento slavesvalued for theirservices. He sees in this last circum-stancean explanation ormarriage y capture-still, hesays, n someregions ruderealitywhile elsewhere hemimicry f force lone remains i875b:242).3Yet there was also a vast difference etween thesewriters. he Manchester leric whopromoted leurynthe i8oos held a cyclicalmodel oftheworld, n whichnationsrose and fell as they passed through tagesof

prosperity nd decline. Fleury nd Clarke bewailed thecorruptionof their contemporarieswhich preventedthemfrom ppreciatingheancientvirtues fthe srael-ites. It is not to be supposed, they argued, hat thefur-ther ne looks intoantiquity, he "morestupid nd gno-rant"mankind will appear (i805:i8). On the contrary,"Nations have their eriods fduration,ike men."Con-sequentlywe must earn to distinguishwhat we do notlike,upon account of the distance oftimes and places,though tbe in itself ndifferent,rom hatwhich,beinggood in itself,displeases us for no otherreason, thanbecause we arecorruptn ourmanners" i8o5:i5). Thiscould not be further romLubbock and his I870s im-plementation fthe dea thatmodern avageswere to beunderstoodbecause they gave an insight nto formertimes: theirwretched tatemeasuredthe distancethatcivilisationhad come. He livednot in a cyclical worldbut n an evolving ne. His efforts eredirected o sub-stituting ne linear view ofmankind'sprogression oranother, oingbattle with thosewho saw modern av-ages as thedegenerate escendants fcivilisedpeoples;to see them s examplesofa stage sincesuperseded avehope ofprogress.As soon as one set of deas is put intothe contextofothers, heyno longer eem similar t all. Infact, heseparticular xamplescouldbe assigned oradically iffer-entparadigms Stocking 984).4One couldgo on.When more than40 years fter ub-bock's lecture Frazer came to describethemannersoftheancient sraelites, t was hiswide-rangingesearchesinto "the earlyhistory f man" which rendered hemthoroughly lausible.His aim was to show that the Is-raeliteswere no exception o thegeneral aw, thattheircivilisation ike others had passed through stage ofbarbarism nd savageryI9I8, vol. i:Preface). fthiswasa viewsimilar oLubbock's,however,tprovided verydifferentontext fromthe ideas about ethnocentrismwhich Malinowskipublished4 years ater. nhis famousopeningto the workwhich introduced he TrobriandIslanders of Melanesia, Malinowski (i922:25) arguesthat n "each culture, he values are slightly ifferent;people aspire afterdifferentims, follow differentm-pulses," and that withoutan understandingf the sub-jectivedesiresbywhich people realise theiraims, thestudy of institutions, odes, and customs would beempty.5The same aim, to understandotherpeople'svalues, s differentlyonceived;forMalinowskithegoalis "to grasp henative'spointof view." The Trobriand-ers have become "savage" in a playful ense. Or one

3. And proceeds o discover similarcustoms" nd "traces"ofthemn both lassical ndmodem urope, emarkingn how"per-sistent re all customs nd ceremoniesonnectedwithmarriage"(i875b:242).

4. Stockingi984:I36) referso the arly istoryf nthropologysalternating etweentwo dominant aradigms, oth diachronic.Lubbock'swriting vinces he progressive-developmentaradigmand Fleury/Clarke diffusionaryaradigm eriving rom iblicalassumptions bout the genealogy f nations. invoke thisdi-chotomy ot o parodyhemany tyles nd trands f houghthatcontributedo thepremises n whichLubbock and aterFrazer)proceeded r to pretendo a history utmerely s a sign hat herewas a history.S. A pointupon whichMarett ad also published n his unfortu-nately hosen erminologyf "psychology"e.g.,Marett920).


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could ump to Geertz's deas expressednthe I98os. Hisassertion hat nthropologys thefirst o nsist"thattheworld does not divide nto the pious and superstitious"seems a familiar tand. Yet when he adds that "we seethe lives of others through enses of our own grindingand . . . they ook back on ours through nes of theirown" (i984:275), this version of a two-way regard nturn makes his meanings a significant eparture romMalinowski's.For a non-historian,hedisconcerting oint s this: fone looks hard enough one can find deas anticipatedlong before heir ime, or one can trace their imilaritythrough ime. Yet, when one looks again, and considersother deas, the sense of similarity anishes. A model ofan evolvingworldcannot possibly produce the "same"ideas as one in which nationspass throughife-cycles.nthe same way, Geertz's two-way egard annot possiblylead to the same kinds of understandings s Malinow-ski's confidence bout grasping he Trobriander's er-sion ofthe world. n conveying he conceptof ethnocen-trism, one ofthesewriters ppears to intendquite thesame thing. This makes it impossible to explain theprevalence of certain ideas simply with reference oother deas. On what basis is one to foregroundome,relegateothers to background ontext?Do we write ahistory f the idea of ethnocentrism, r a history f tsdifferent remises? Or are we not dealing with the''same" idea at all?These are puzzles intrinsic o cross-cultural ompari-son.Theyarefamiliar nthropologicalonundrums. hequestion is, then,what an anthropologist's esolutionmight ook like. The problem s simply hat know thatthese sets of deas are different,hat the gulf eparatingGeertz and Malinowski, say, is as wide as the gulfseparatingMalinowski fromFrazer or Frazer and Lub-bock fromClarke and Fleury.But how am I to persuademyself hat know? fthe sequence of deas is always soambiguous, romwheredoesour dramatic enseof hiftsandgulfs ome? t mustcomefrom heplace those deashave in our practices. Thus we should look not atwhether hisorthat personcould conceive of other ul-tures nthis or thatway-whether the dea ofethnocen-trism xistedornot-but at the effectiveness fthe vi-sion, the manner n which an idea was implemented.That is why I mentioned Fleury's popularity nd thehuge audience forLubbock's lectures. The pointleadsinto theastonishing henomenonof Frazer'scelebrity.The phrase s Leach's (i966). Attributing uchto theshowmanship f Frazer'swife,2o years ago Leach des-patchedthe dea that thiscelebrity orrespondedo anysecure academic reputation, n Frazer's own time,among anthropologistst least. If I return o the samequestion now, it is because of what has happenedtosocial anthropologyn the yearssince Leach presentedhis views. I suspend udgement nd proceedas if whatreally s at issue is thegripFrazerhad onpeople's imagi-nations. This will turnout to be germane o therecenthistory fanthropological ractice, or ny survey f thepracticesofanthropology as to acknowledge heforceofGeertz'sobservationquotedby Boon i982:9): "What

does the ethnographer o? -he writes." If we look topractice,we could do worse than ook toanthropologicalwriting. spend some time on the writings f Frazerhimself, or he gulfbetween him and the anthropologywhich came after ellsus much about how we come toimagine that there re gulfs t all, and thus abouthowwe persuade ourselvesthat therehas been a history.

SirJamesFrazerFrazerswidelyheld to have had a profoundffectn themindsof his contemporaries. ownie (I970:64) repeatsJaneHarrison'sfamous tory f policemanwho said toher, "I used to believe everythingheytold me, but,thank God, I read The Golden Bough,and I've been afreethinker ver since." From its first ppearance inI890, remarks ownie, the endeavourwas treated ener-allywithrespect, nd he quotes Malinowski's observa-tion that The Golden Bough was "a work known toevery cultured man, a work which has exercisedparamount nfluence verseveralbranches f earning"(P. 57).6 Indeed,Frazer'sFolk-lore n theOld Testament,published n I9 8,met withready cclaim ntheologicalas well as literaryournals.His worknotonly ppears ohave spoken forhis times but has exercised a lastingpower.Above all, he promoted nthropology.ormanynon-anthropologists,o one,not evenMalinowski,hasquite displacedhim. Yet what is astonishing bout theeffectfhiswritings astonishing o anthropologists,rrather s astonishing bout them,forFrazerhas not formanyyears-some would say never-held a respectableplace in thehistory f the discipline. On the contrary,modern Britishanthropology nows itself as not justnon-Frazerianutquite positively nti-Frazerian. ocialanthropologistsabitually coff tFrazer, old himup toridicule, nd regard is folklore s long superseded.7What,then,was thegripFrazerhad onmanypeople'simaginations?And just what was created n turnbythosewhofoundedmodern nthropology?use the word"modem" advisedly, n a context n which we are in-formed rom ll sides that we live in a postmodern ge.As will become apparent, his atter-day epresentation6. Malinowski i962) effusivelyraises he book as "in many e-spects hegreatestchievement f nthropology."utofcourse tis by juxtaposition hat he also places himself n relation oFrazer-welcoming heabridgeddition f TheGoldenBough sconveniento take nto thefieldAnthropologistsngeneral adtheir eservations. arett's eview f he hird ditionreprintednMarett g2o) stronglybjectsto Frazer'sparallelisms; urvivalsshould etreated ot s fossils ut n a psychologicali.e., ociocul-tural) ontext. ome literaryeviews fthe time were also cool(Leach 966).7. Leach presents matter-of-factxposition or non-anthro-pological udience: Frazer's resent enownslargelyndeserved.Most ofwhathehimselfontributedothe tudy f nthropologyandcomparativeeligion asprovedworthless"i983:I3). I shouldmake t clear that do not ntend revision f Leach'sviews nparticularI read each 966 afterhe ulk f his aperwaswritten).


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254 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume28, Number 3,June 987allows a contemporarylace forFrazer hatwas barelyconceivable2o years go. Thismostrecent hift uggeststhat anthropologistsmight fter ll findpartsof Frazermore readable thantheythought.The interesting uestion is how modern nthropolo-gists came to constructFrazer as demonstrably ot oftheir time, and how indeed the writingwhich for somany otherswas eminently eadablefor hem was ren-dered quite unreadable.8My account will inevitablyplace too much weight for a historian's ikingon thesignificance fthisfigure, s thoughhe reallywerecen-tral to the shiftwhich took place in the subject. t ig-nores others,both those who also became unreadableandthose towhom anthropologists eturn rom imetotimeas precursors.t is rare to return o Frazer n thisway: this most literary f figures ecame ofall of themthemost completelyunreadable.Frazerwas made vis-ible as a victim ofthe shift.

In a bitter ttack,recently enewed, n modern ocialanthropology,arvieI964, i984) deliberatelyromotesFrazer as victim.9He borrows the metaphor of thepriest's verthrow: the first attle-cryfthe revolutionwas 'kill the chief-priest."' athermoreprosaic,how-ever, s his complaint hat "endless doses of the facts ffieldworkre so boring"i984:15). Certainly rompostwarperspective, he new anthropologys it devel-oped nthe 9.2S and 930S appearedn directompeti-tion with Frazer's, nd on the very ssue of fieldwork.Lookingback, Evans-Pritchardommented n how iter-ary ourceshad hadperforceo stand n for direct bser-vation" (i95i:Io).1O It was above all through hefieldwork ossibilities f direct bservation hat iterarysourcescould be supplanted nd thatMalinowski alongwith Radcliffe-Brown)ssassinated Frazer the mageisJarvie'si964:1]).Jarvie lso promotesMalinowski as the instigator fthe revolution,dated to about i920. In his allegory,"Malinowskiplotted nd directed he revolutionn so-cial anthropology-aiming o overthrowhe establish-mentofFrazer ndTylorand their deas; butmainly twasagainst razer"i 964: I 73). As he sees t,the evolu-tionhad three ims: i) toreplace rmchairnthropology

with fieldexperience; 2) in thedomainofreligion ndmagic, to replace Frazer'sattention o beliefswith thestudyof social action (therite); and (3) to replacefalseevolutionary equences with an understandingf con-temporary ociety.Jarvie s farfrom lone in thisview.The received wisdom is that fieldwork observationmeant that people's practices ould be recordedn theirimmediate ocial context.This shifted he kindsofex-planationsforwhich anthropologists ought.Malinow-ski (likeRadcliffe-Brown)nsisted hatpracticesweretobe related oother ractices-that exchanges ffood ndvaluables at marriage eremonies, or nstance,were n-telligible n the lightof local rules of inheritanceorlandtenure.To accountfor uch ceremonies n the Tro-briands,Malinowski tumed not to practicesfound notherculturesbut to other spects ofthis one culture.The rest s well known-that this ed to a view of ndi-vidual societies as entities obe interpretedntheir wnterms, so that both practices and beliefs were to beanalysedas intrinsic o a specificsocial context;thatsocieties so identified ere seen as organicwholes, ateras systems nd structures;nd thatthecomparative n-terprisewhich modern anthropologistset themselvesthusbecame thecomparison fdistinct ystems.Indeed, his view of cross-cultural omparisonhas be-come so ingrainedwithin thedisciplinethat t is quiteodd to read Frazer's own claim that his was "the com-parativemethod" (i9I8, vol. i:viii). Frazermeant notthecomparison fsocial systemsbut thecollecting o-gether fdiverse ustoms n order o throw ight n oneparticular et. Light can be shone from ny direction-beliefs and practicesfrom nywhere n the world willilluminatethose under study, howingpossibleantece-dents or a tendency orpeople everywhereo think nthe sameway. Frazer's omparative roceduresncludedboththeproposition hat n any piece ofbehaviour newill find races ofpriorhabits whichhelp explaincur-rentforms nd the proposition hat practices re to beunderstood s reflections fbeliefs.Thus it was possibleto explain widespread practices by widespreadbeliefs.The revolutionwas successful o thepointthatFrazer'scomparativemethod ame toseem notsimply rroneousbut absurd. The new task was the comparisonof soci-eties as such. And it required hepainstaking ttentionto those detailswhichmakeparticularocietiesdistinc-tive and which Jarvie inds o tedious.Yet Frazerwasnothingfnotattentive o details.Aswe shall see, twasabouttheir rrangementhatJarviemust have beenpro-testing.Although here s still some debateover Frazer's wnarguments,s frequentlys notthey re condemnedbyhis style.Rather han addressing he issue ofhistoricalresiduesorthecomparabilityfbeliefs, he modem an-thropologistendsto object to Frazer'snarrative truc-ture. His work is criticisedforbeingtoo literary.t isalso criticised fortreating vents, behaviour, dogma,rites out ofcontext. Frazerian nthropology"s a syn-onymfor ndisciplined aidson ethnographicatawith-out respectfor heir nternal ntegrity,or heway theyfit ogethers partsofa system r havemeaningfor he

8. Swept longwithFrazerwere lsohis contemporaryritics uchas Marett; swath f nthropologicalriting as renderednread-able. Frazer'swork tself ame toappear uitedull,notthe glori-ous and thrillingeading" hatJarvieI964:33) finds t.9. Jarvie eans his iterally. hosewho do not credit razerwithmuch stature ake t metaphorically-theeal victims re to befound lsewhere.Malinowski's wn targetsncluded, or nstance,thesurvey nthropologyf Rivers nd Seligman Langham98I)and the diffusionismf ElliotSmith Leach 966). As a commenton the creation fvictims, ee Urry'si983) review fLangham'saccount.Langham s principally oncerned ot with Frazer ndMalinowski ut withRivers nd Radcliffe-Brown.rry oints utthatLangham ccuses Radcliffe-Brownof practicallyverythingshort f murder"n eclipsingRivers's ontributiono British n-thropologyp.401).io. Obscured n the dichotomyetweendirect bservationndliteraryources s the fact hatFrazer's iteraryourcesweretoalarge xtent eports n observations rom thnologists homheencouragedo correspond ithhim.The dichotomyhus bscuresthe iterarytatus freportagetself.


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actors. n fact, t is very ppropriatehat t shouldbe hisstyle hatupsets the modern nthropologist,orwhat sabove all at issue is thekind of bookhe wrote.I take as my example Frazer's Folk-lore n the OldTestament,which broughtogether classical text nd atradition of biblical historical exegesis with the ac-cumulated esults fhis comparativemethod, vastcol-lectionofcustomswhich threw ight n ancientHebrewlife.'1The diversity fhis examples s staggering.2 First,he goes through ariousepisodes of Old Testamenthis-tory: he creationofman, the fallof man, themark ofCain, thegreat lood, he towerof Babel, the convenantof Abraham, the heirshipof Jacobor ultimogeniture,Jacob nd the kidskins, tc. Second,these are the occa-sion for disquisitions on originmyths, treatment fhomicides,myths boutthe flood,varieties f sacrifice,inheritance ules,polygamy,tc., each topic treated ikea narrativepisode. Third, hese episodesare made evenmoreepisodic bytheaccompanying iscussions.Jacob'smarriage s the occasion for a treatise (the term isMarett's) i8 sections and nearly 300 pages long: Jacoband his twowives; the marriage fcousins; themarriageofcousins in India, n America, n Africa,n the Indianarchipelago,n New Guinea and the Torres Straits s-lands, in Melanesia; why marriage f cross-cousins sfavoured,marriage fortho-cousinsorbidden,ncludinga detailed argumenton various theories about cross-cousin marriage; and so on. Finally,the sections arethemselves composite: that on marriage n Africa n-cludes references o Herero, Bantu,Nyanja, Awamba,Wagogo,Wahehe,Baganda,Banyoro, asoga,and others.Everynstance s placed.Frazer aithfullyscribespar-ticular ustomstoparticular eople.There s respect orthesespecific rigins, s therewould be in establishingthe differentuthorshipof classical or biblical manu-scripts.But the effect fpiling example upon exampleachieves theopposite.One has longsince ostanysenseof specificity bout the Israelites, let alone distinc-tiveness about the Torres Straitsor Melanesia. In fact,there s a counter-specificityn his demonstration fsimilarity. razersays himself I9I8, vol. 2:97), "Thestory fJacob'smarriage,whether trictly istoricalornot,reflects he customswhichhave been observed tmarriageby many more or less primitivepeoples inmanypartsof theworld;and accordinglywe may fairly

suppose that at an early stage of their history imilarcustoms were practisedby the Israelites." The demon-stration of similarityestablishes the authenticity fthose biblical records as plausible descriptions f realbehaviour.One can see the powerofthis against back-ground of scholarlywork concernedwith how true arecord t mightbe. Using (say)Melanesian practices omake Israeliteones seem less strangemeans, of course,that here anbe no sustained nternal ontrast etweenIsraelite and Melanesian practices.But the strategy sdeliberate. razer solates three lements n Jacob's ir-cumstances: cousin marriage,marriage f a man withtwo sisters n their ifetime, nd bride ervice:

All three ustoms propose o illustrate y examplesand afterwardso enquire nto their rigin ndmean-ing. Althoughndoing o we shall wanderfar romour mmediate ubject,which s the folk-lore f an-cient srael,the excursionmaybepardonedf t shedssober ighton theexquisitepictures fthe patriarchalageinGenesis,andthereby elps to reveal the depthandsolidity f thehumanbackground gainstwhichthe figures f the patriarchs re painted.His 280 pages of examples "suffice o prove that mar-riages ike thatof Jacobhave been and still are practisedinmany differentartsof the world.... [T]he patriarchconformed o customswhich are fullyrecognised ndstrictlybservedymany aces" I9I8, vol. :37I). Thebiblical account is no "mere fancypicture"butdepictssocial arrangementsdrawnfrom ife."Yet were the customs everregardeds merefancy?Heis ambiguous bout exactlyhow his account contributesto debates over the historicity f the Old Testament.Frazer's trategy ould make sense in an atmosphere fdisbelief bout Israelitemannersor simplyan attitudethatregardedmanyminorfeatures nd incidents s nar-rative embellishments, here for no other reason.His"comparative sociology"would show that within thecontext fworld cultures, he sraelite xperiences notso strange.Yet was this really how people of his timeregarded he Old Testament? Surelyforsome of theminds he influencedthe Old Testamentwould haveseemed veryfamiliar, ts many events an intrinsic artofa storyoften old. In fact, here s almost a SundaySchool ringto the episodes he lists. We cannotreallycreditFrazerwithFleury'sproblemofovercoming eo-ple's antipathyothe ancient sraelites s an exampleofa less polite societythan theirown. It was muchmorelikely hat t would be theethnographicxampleswhichstrained redulity.In setting he Israelites side by side withAfrican rMelanesiancultures, owever, razer s not ust makingthe Israelites credible. He states thatone can assumethat the ancientHebrews, ike anyone else, had passedthrougha stageofbarbarism nd evenofsavagery; ndthisprobability, ased on the analogyof otherraces, sconfirmedyan examinationof their iterature, hichcontainsmanyreferences o beliefsand practicesthatcan hardlybe explainedexcepton the supposition hatthey rerudimentaryurvivalsfrom far ower evel of

i . Thiswork,writtenn the veof heMalinowskianevolution,is indirect ontinuation ith heposition hatFrazer ad reachedby he hird dition fThe GoldenBough: hathewished contextin which to set forthhe nformatione had beenamassing nprimitivehoughtnd culture.ndeed, heformer ayberead s adisquisition n religion, ower, nd politics cf.Feeley-Hamiki985), the atter n kinship,marriage,nd-with its passages ninheritancendpropertyelations-economics.i2. Whereas is predecessornthe field, obertson mith,n TheReligion f theSemites I956 [i894]),had confined is study o agroup fkindred ations broadlyategoriseds theywereto in-cludeArabs,Hebrews, ndPhoenicians, ramaeans, abylonians,and Assyrians),razer llowshimself o roam ll over heworld.For a comparisonetween hiswork nd TheGoldenBough, eeJonesi984). Smithwas specificallynterestedn a contrast e-tween emitic nd Aryan eligionnd thus couldnot simply s-similate hebeliefs ndpractices fthe oneto those ftheother.


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256 1CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume28, Number3, fune 987culture" I9I8, vol. i:vii). He continues: "The instru-ment for he detectionofsavagery nder civilisation sthe comparativemethod,which,applied to thehumanmind,enablesus to trace man's intellectual nd moralevolution" p. viii).Was it this abelling fcontemporarypracticesas survivalswhich constitutedmuch of thefascinationwhich Frazer had in his time? Would hisreaders have applied "the detectionof savageryundercivilisation"to themselves?And if Malinowski really did overthrow his priest,was it because he overthrewthis central doctrine?Malinowski and his colleagues put forward he sameproposition ut in reverse: hedetectionofcivilisationunder avagery. erhapsthe visibility fMalinowskiinmodern nthropologyartly ies here,forhe providedparticularly ersuasivecontextfor this propositionbythe wayhe wrote. followBoon's observation: razeriananthropology as superseded bove all bya new kindofbook; Malinowski made Frazer's styleobsolete (Booni982:I3, i8).It has become very tylish o scrutinise nthropolog-ical narratives or heir ffects, specially n the case ofMalinowski, self-conscious riterwith philosophicalbackgroundwhich informed is approachto the art ofrepresentationnd the concept of a text e.g.,ThorntonI 98 5). do not touch onthenowextensive ritical itera-ture.Rather, takeup a narrow uestion,of the writer'simpacton the imaginationfrom heperspective f thekindofrelationship hat is set up between writer ndreader ndbetweenwriter ndsubjectmatter. hese aremediatedthrough elationshipsnternal o the text, nthe way the writer rrangeshis ideas. In Malinowski'sworks appear new juxtapositions, ew disjunctions fakindwhich enabledthecomparativemethod oproceedin a quite different ay. Indeed,to set the scene forcomparison etweenFrazer's trategiesas evincedespe-cially n Folk-lore) nd those of modemanthropology,require neutralground,which s why emphasise heirworksas literary roducts. n laying hisground, shallalso attendto the first fthetwo criticisms requentlythrown t Frazer'swriting,hat t is too literary.Persuasive FictionsMarking uta piece ofwritings "literary"s like mark-ingout a person s having personality."Obviously, n-sofar s anypiece ofwriting ims for certain ffect,tmust be a literary roduction.Difficulties risewhen the apparent acts f a case arealtered or distorted orthe sake of a particular ffect.Frazer s certainly uilty fthischarge;he didnotstrivefor a "plain account." Thus he has been accused notsimplyofcreating n atmosphere f romantic avagerybut of ampering ithhis sourcematerial o do so (LeachI966:564). However,anthropologists ave a particularproblemof iterary roduction n theirhands,and it isthisproblemwhich makes Frazer s much an anthropol-ogistas Malinowski.The problemis a technical one: how to create an

awareness of differentocial worldswhen all at one'sdisposal is termswhichbelong to one's own.'3 I meanmorethan simplygetting vertheflavour f a particularatmosphere-Frazer and Malinowski both createdevocativedescriptions,olouredby a senseof ocality.'4I also meanmore than thefacility o translate rom neworld view to another.When faced with deas and con-cepts from cultureconceived as other, heanthopolo-gist s facedwith the task of renderinghem withinaconceptualuniverse hathas spacefor hem, nd thus ofcreating hat universe. f I observe of bridewealth x-changeswhich accompanya Melanesian marriage hatthe bride'sparents re being paid fortheirfeelings o-wardsher, am juxtaposingdeas which n the anguageam using are normally ntithetical.Emotion is not acommodity.Although might ry o wriggle ut of theword"paid," it remains clearthat am describing s atransactionwhat is also an expression f relatedness-one we would normally nterprets a flow of emotionsbetween persons,not something o be transferredo athirdparty. pace must be cleared before can conveythe unityof an action which an English-language e-scription enders s a compositeofdisjunct lements.This is part f general roblem fcommunication,o"bridge hedivide between the reader's xperiences ndthe experiencesof the people whom the researcherwishes o describeohim" Runciman983:249). Theeffect f a gooddescription s to enlarge hereader's x-perience.But those veryexperiencesof the readerarethemselves problem-what guarantees there hat hedescriptionwill not feed prejudice,will not, far fromenlarging,merely ugment a narrowperspective?'5Wetypically hinkofanthropologistss creating evices bywhichto understandwhatother eoplethink r believe.Simultaneously,of course, they are engagedin con-structing evices bywhich to affect hat their udiencethinks and believes. Preparing descriptionrequiresI3. In part, s I show ater, his s a modemist onstructiontheholistic dea of culture o which verythingelongs). am gratefulto David Lowenthalpersonal ommunication)or he point hatthepreservationf anguage llowstheothemess f ermsforeign,anachronistic)ome ifeoftheir wn. But n part heres anotherissue, one whichprovides he frameworkorBoon's ccount: hefact hat here s noplace outside culture except n other ul-tures r ntheir ragmentsndpotentialities"i982 :ix). One couldregard his s a technical problem"whosetheoreticalrameworkwas provided y the perceptionf a social fact: he presence fsocial othersn the world. t led to the kindsofesoteric uzzle-solving echniques hat Langham i98i:i9) insists ndicate hepresence f mature cience.I4. The writer ses the mpressions hich heplacemadeon himorher o relaynformationbout hat lace to thereader.Whatt slike for European o live n a tent n theTrobriandslands husconveysa pictureof a kind about the Trobriands. hornton(i985:9) puts his trivingor heconcretemage nthecontextfMalinowski's heories ftheroleof magination,founded n apositivisticonception fthereal psychologicalxistence f m-ages .. in themind hatpermittedhe pprehensionfreality otakeplace."I 5. Goodenough (I970:I05) writesthat the problemof ethnographyis howto produce descriptionhat atisfactorilyepresentswhatone needs oknow o play hegame cceptably y he tandardsfthosewho lready nowhowto play t." This mplies n enormouswillingnessnthepart fthereader o comparetandards.


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specific iterary trategies,he construction f a persua-sive fiction: monographmustbe laid out n such a waythat t can conveynovel compositionsof deas.'6 Thisbecomes a questionof ts own internal omposition, fthe organisation fanalysis,the sequence in whichthereader s introduced o concepts, he waycategories rejuxtaposed or dualismsreversed.To confronthe prob-lem is to confronthe arrangement f text.So whetherwriter hooses (say) a "scientific" tyleor a "literary"one signalsthe kind offiction t is; there cannotbe achoice to eschew fiction ltogether.I use the term fiction" o echo Beer's I983:3) obser-vation that theory s at its most fictivewhen it is firstadvanced.She is referringo Charles Darwin's narrative:"The awkwardness ffit etweenthe naturalworld s itis currently erceived nd as it is hypotheticallymag-ined holds the theory tselffor timewithin a provi-sional scope akinto thatoffiction." he issue is theneworganisation fknowledge.Darwin, she suggests, wastelling a new story, gainst the grainof the languageavailableto tell it in" (p. 5). How does one "imagine"anaturalworld not onlyin a vocabularybut in a syntaxcreatedby a social world? ts success is measured n theextent owhichthe new narrative ecomes determining.The question s not simplyhow to bring ertain cenesto life but how to bring ifeto ideas.Some tropicrelease is affordedhroughmagery. ar-win drewon themetaphor fkinship, mong others seeBeer I986), on the idea of theweb of nterrelationse-tweenkin,togiveconcrete orm o the conceptofevolu-tionary ffinity. n imageofproximity as extended othe entire ivingworld with specific ntent-not justthat ll the world's creatures ouldbe imagined s underthe tutelage fa single aw (or deity) utthatthereweredemonstrabledegreesof affinity etween them. Beersuggests hatthis demonstrationwas achieved throughmore than thepromotion fapt images.The idea of anorganicwholewith diversepartswas conveyed hroughtheorganisation f the text tself Beer 983:97):'7

Forhis theory o work,Darwin needsthe sense offree lay.... Inhis epistemology rgumentmustemerge ut of a plethora f nstancesbecause,of tsnature,his textmust at all costs avoidaligningtselfwith theprocedures fartificial election.... It isessentialforDarwin's theory hatthe multitudinous-

ness and variety f the naturalworld houldfloodthrough is language.His theory econstructs nyformulation hich nterpretshe naturalworld scommensuratewith man's understandingf t. t out-goeshispowersofobservation ndis notco-extensivewith his reasoning. et in the use ofmetaphor ndanalogyhe found means ofrestoringquivalencewithoutfalse delimitation.IfFrazer lso wrotedetermining iction, hat has to beexplainedin his case is its astonishingly eady accep-tance at large.One reason, suspect, s that the contextforhis writingwas amply provided y the assumptionsofthe audience he addressed.Against a background fclassical and Hebrew cholarships, hose presence fnotthe details his readerswouldhave taken forgranted, esimply ntroduced hemto a third ange f material, heprimitiveworld fromwhich he drew his comparisons.

Here was the organising orce fhis accounts.The effec-tiveness of this juxtaposition ay in the comparableminutiaeofthe case he presented.He did not have tocreate the context n whichhis ideas could take shapeand thuspromote s anorganising evice an image suchas Darwin's metaphorofkinship among livingthings)drawnfrom ome other domain.Indeed, by the I9OOS,manyof Frazer's deaswere unremarkable. inding es-tigesof the past in the present, reating he Old Tes-tament s an archive, stablishing ontemporaryaral-lels to former ractices did not of themselvesrequirenew conceptualisation.Frazer ealtwithplurality nddiversityasBeerargueswas central o Darwin's conceptionof theprofusion fthe naturalworld),buthe didnotrepresent hisprofu-sion in termsofa novel set of nterrelationships.deasabout theevolutionof humanthought rom avagery ocivilisation had been thoroughly ired. Moreover,farfrom oing gainst he grain fhis anguage, e gloriednthe anguagetohand-the prefaces o both TheGoldenBoughI900 [i890]) andFolk-loren theOld Testamentexpresshis literary inshipwiththe ancients.The airymusiche heard n spirit tNemi was at one withhis earforthe psalmists, prophets, nd historiansof the OldTestament who lit up the darker ide of the ancientstory, iterary lories"that will live to delight nd in-spiremankind" i 9I8, vol i :xi). Perhaps,as with thenon-existentells atNemi,he could take the iberties edid because his language was so secure. One sourceofFrazer's mpacton his generalreaders, hen,must havebeen thefamiliarity,otthenovelty, fhislanguage ndthemes.And the sense ofnoveltywithwhich we mustalso credit him came, as we shall see, from hisverycloseness to hisreaders, romwhat he sharedwiththem,and not, as was to be the case with the anthropologywhichfollowed, deliberatedistancing rom hem.8

i6. We may look back on Frazer's rgumentsbout magicandritual nd about theorigins f totemism s clearing conceptualspace (in a fieldotherwise ominated y a dichotomy etweenreligionnd science)for, mongothers, pencer nd Gillen'sac-count of Australian ncrease ceremonies.Thomton i985:io)speaksofFrazer's andMach's) nfluencenMalinowski s creat-ing a newdiscursivepacefor thnographicrgument."n ethno-graphicpace n general, ee Marcus nd Cushman i982:42).I7. Darwin was not ust using "well-understoodealities"withwhich he ll-understoodnes "couldbebroughtnto hecircle fthe known" (Geertz i983:22). He was alteringthe sense of well-understoodealitieshemselves.hus Beer uggests hathe playedhavocwith ontemporarylassassumptionsmbeddedn the ris-tocratic onnotationsfgenealogicalrees; hehistoryfman be-camea difficultnd extensive amily etwork,lways ware f tslowly riginsi983:63).

i 8. Frazerndhis predecessorsad a clear dea where hey tood smodems n an age whichregardedtself s modem.But one doesrather etthe mpression hatthe savagestheypresentn theirpages would, f theycould, agreewith this arrangementf theworld.A differentind f elf-consciousnessas tofollow, hichdid noteven hint t such an agreement.his created new dis-tancebetween heethnographernd his/hereaders.


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258 1CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume28, Number3,June 987I want to suggest hatself-consciousnessbout creat-ing a distancebetweenwriter nd reader, nd thus aboutcreating context or deas that re themselves ovel,re-emergednanthropologys a "modernist" henomenon.It required hat the writer tand n a specific elation o

his or herwriting.By implication,the observermuststand n a particular elation otheobserved, ramingfftheintellectual xerciseas an endeavour f a particularkind.The books thathavebecome orthodox verthe ast 6oyears are modernist n this sense. Recently, fcourse,therehas been muchquestioning f the authorial tatusoftheanthropologist.fwe are to followArdenerI985),this questioningheralds the end ofmodernism, or tmakes explicitthe implicitreflexivityftheentire n-thropological xercise ofthat6o years, herelationshipbetween the anthropologist nd the otherconstrued san object of study e.g., Crick i982:i5). The divisionbetween observer and observed was always a self-conscious one. What typified he modernismof an-thropology as the adoption f hisdivision s a theoret-ical exercise hrough he phenomenon ffieldwork. heanthropologistwho "entered" another culture carriedthat self-consciousness f the other with him or her.This was what was invented by the fieldworkers fMalinowski'sday. Whatever he nature ftheir ield x-periences, t was visibly reinventedn theway mono-graphs ame to be organised.PuttingThings n ContextModernism an mean as much or as little s one wishes.I do not ntend definition f the dea but wouldsimplypointto its current ppropriationn the definition faspecificanthropological poch.'9 Ardener s carefultodelineate a particular haracterformodernism n an-thropology hich s notalwaysin time with modernistformsn otherfields.He does, however, ssociate Mali-nowski with ts creation.Malinowski"completely ear-ranged ocial anthropology"p. 50), giving t a manifestowhich above all rested on a perceivedchangeof tech-nique. Fieldworkwas the new strategy y which theanthropologistould intervene, s Ardenerputs it, atcertainpoints in time and space "in which he or shebehaved ike an ideal metering evice" (p. 57). Histori-cismwas rejected n favour fthe discovery f holismand synchrony. he new anthropologyendered revi-ous ways ofdealingwithculturaldiversity uite obso-lete,andknewitself s so doing.20Such a genesisformodernismccordswiththe notion

thatMalinowski instigated herevolutionwhich over-threw razer.At the same time, t is thoroughlyongue-in-cheek o talk ofa Malinowskian revolution t all, asthough it were an event and as thoughMalinowski(whateverhe claimedhimself) ingle-handedlymaster-minded t. Whatwe have to explainis how thisfigurecame to stand for he dea thattherehad been a revolu-tion, shift, n thediscipline.It is important o spell this out,because it is easy toshow that what was true of Frazerwas also true ofMalinowski: his deaswere notparticularlyovel.Thus,he promotedfunctionalism, ut if functionalist rgu-ments can be traced o Frazer'sownwork cf.LienhardtI966, Boon i982) there re morecontinuitieshere thanthe dea of a revolutionwill allow. It is possibleto recallMarett,who in I9I2 was pressing or functionalistn-terpretation f "the social life as a whole" (Langhami98i:xix-xx; Kuper I973:31),21 or to note that"Jarviemakes it sound as thoughMalinowski,with no helpfrom nyoneelse, was reacting irectlygainst heworkofFrazer. n fact,Rivers and his colleagues,A. C. Had-don andC. G. Seligman,were decisive nbringingboutthe change-overfromnineteenth-century-styleocialevolutionism to twentieth-century-styletructural-functionalism"Langham98I:59). Or onemightreferto centraliseRadcliffe-Browns theprincipal nstigatorofthe breakthroughn the oscillation ofpreviousdia-chronicparadigms Stocking 984) or to pointout theexaggerationn subsequent stimations fFrazer's nter-est in beliefsrather than rites (Boon i982: i). Mostironicof all have been theexaggerated laims made forMalinowski'spromotion ffieldworknd the detractionthat he didnotreally nventfieldwork fter ll.Firth I985) points to a traditionof fieldworkwellunderway beforeMalinowski'sapotheosisof t.He sug-geststhatMalinowski'snovelty ay rathernhis elevat-ing hemethodoa theorycf. each 95 7: 20). Stocking(I983:93) has dugup Rivers'sprescriptions or ieldwork,which, n I9I3, spelledout theprogrammeMalinowskienacted:Theworker hould ive for yearor more nthefield, n a communitywhere he comes to know every-one, and, not contentwith generalised nformation,study veryfeature f ife n concretedetail. "Longbe-foreMalinowski's influencewas felt,Riverswas hailedas theapostleof the new approach o fieldwork"Lang-ham 98I:50). Was thedifferencehen hatMalinowskidid t,hisfieldworktyle matter f"placingoneself na situationwhereonemighthave a certain ype fexpe-rience" (Stocking 983:II2)? Surveying he severalan-thropologists ho leftEnglishuniversities or hefieldat about that time and notingthe intensivenatureoftheirstudies,Stocking s forced o argue: "Somethingmore than delayedor institutionallymarginal careerswould seem to be involved . . . in the lapsed remem-g. Hencemy referencesomodemism andpostmodemism)remediated hrough he writingsf a small handful fanthropolo-gists ndare weighted owards he commentatorsnratherhantheexponents fthegenres.2o. This knowing s important. ence Ardener's laim thattheigthcentury as trulymodem," he2othmodem nly s genreand thus appropriatelymodemist."Within nthropology,hemodemist hase embodied displacementfhistoricism ithdeliberatetress n the contemporary.

2i. From he 9i2 edition fNotes and Queries nAnthropology.Marett ecommendsn exhaustive nd ntensivenvestigationfsocialorganisation,otonly taticallycf. tructure)utdynami-cally cf. rocess).Moreover,eargues hat heonly chemewhichhasscientificaluemustbe framed y heobserverimself o suitthesocial conditions f thespecific ribe eing tudied.


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brance ofthese other academic ethnographers f Mali-nowski's generation .. [to wit] their arlymonographsdid notpresent hem as self-conscious thnographicn-novators" p. 84).22 IfMalinowski did not really nventholism, synchrony,ntensivefieldwork, nd the rest,thenwas thereno invention t all? I have prefigured yanswer, hat t lay in how he wrote, nd specificallynthe organisation f text.This implemented hekinds ofrelationships etweenwriter, eader, nd subjectmatterthatwere to dominate nthropology,ritish ndbeyond,for he next 6o years.By contrast,his descriptive tyle as such is retro-spective. ndeed, it is forthis aspect of his stylethatMalinowski s oftenheld mostcloselyto imitateFrazer.Leach I957:II9) refers o his "Frazerian tyle f finewriting," irth o Malinowski's romanticmode as op-posed to the classical mode of Radcliffe-Brown,ndKaberryI957:87) argues that t was the acceptance notofMalinowski'sbutofRadcliffe-Brown'sonceptualdis-tinctionswhich led to a widespread style of ethno-graphicwriting mphasisingdefinitional recision andplain anguage.What mustbe laid atMalinowski'sdoor,rather, s the proclamationof the kinds of spaces thathad to be made to conveythe "new" analytical deas. Itwas because this contextualisationwas novel that theideas themselves came to appear novel and that otherscholarswho mighthave beenregarded s formerxpo-nents of them wererendered nvisible. tspowerfor n-thropologistsayin the parallelbetweentheframeworkofthemonographndtheframeworkfthefield xperi-ence.Fieldworkmadea new kindofpersuasive iction ossi-ble. But wouldfollowCliffordI986) in suggesting hatthis should be considered the otherway around: thefieldwork xperiencewas reconstructed n the mono-graphs n such a wayas to become an organising eviceforthe monograph s such.23Malinowski was able tocreate context or new" ideas (such as theperceptionofsocietyas a functioningwhole) by makingmuch ofthe social and cultural context in which indigenousideas were found. This indeed was the subject of hisFrazer ectureon myth Malinowski 932 [i925]), a dis-quisitionon the mportance f eeingmythsntheir ife-context, hat s, the societyand culturewhichthe eth-nographer describes. Trobriand ideas had functionswhich could notbe grasped therwise.He acknowledgeshis debt to Frazer'sown insistenceon the connectionbetweenbelief and rite and betweentradition,magic,andsocial power.Yet the mportance f etting hingsntheir ocial context ame tobeuniversally nderlined n

anthropology t large by the disparagement f Frazer'sdisregard or ontext, or he new ideas in question hadacquired a double identity: the organising nalyticalideas of the anthropologistswere themselves contex-tualised by putting nto their ocial context he indige-nous ideas throughwhich people organised heir xperi-ences. Contexts could be compared. This instigatedpersuasive iterary evice n the arrangementf he textsthroughwhich societies and cultures were to be de-scribed.It was all verywell forMalinowski to expound thatTrobriandmythswere part and parcel of people's prag-maticexperience.How was the distinctive ature fthatexperience conveyed to a non-Trobriand udience? Ajuxtapositionwas engineered hrough escribing he ex-perience f the central igure fthe fieldworkernteringa culture cf. Clifford986:I62-63).24 Trobriand deasthereby uxtaposed were contrastedwith those of theculturefrom which the fieldworker ame. Thus theOther Fabian I983:xi; Marcus and Cushman i982:49)was constructed.And however the divide between selfand otherwas constructed n the colonial encounter,ntheprejudices f the fieldworker,n the assumptions fhis or her audience, it structured he resultantmono-graphs o great reative ffect.25The new kind ofbook which Malinowski wrotewasnot ust the holistic monograph entered n a particularpeople or the elucidation f he distinctivenessfuniquesocieties that was to be the foundation f subsequentcomparativeociology. each I957:I20) points o thesignificant heoretical ssumption hatthe totalfield fdata underobservationmust "fittogether" nd "makesense": "No data outside the immediate subjective-objectivepresentneed to be considered."The newkindofbook, then,was also premisedon a disjunctionbe-tween observer subject) ndobserved object), disjunc-tion thatmade the observer ware oftechnique nd ledsubsequently o the conceptualisation f anthropolog-ical practiceas model building.Analyticalframeworksbecame countenancedas deliberate artifice.The con-trastbetweenthismodernism nd Frazer'shistoricismwas embodiedin a new version ofprimitivenesS26version hat ncorporated newrelationship. he differ-ence between"us" and "them" was conceivednotas adifferenttagein evolutionary rogression ut as a dif-

22. See also Leach I957:I20); interestingly,tockingi983:79)claimsa precursorn Spencer nd Gillen's TheNative Tribes fCentralAustralia, "recognisablymodem' in its ethnographicstyle.... given focus by a totalizing culturalperformance." tssubsequent status was compromised, tocking suggests,bySpencer's ailure o eavesignificantcademic rogeny.23. Cliffordi986:i62): "ethnographicomprehensiona coherentposition f ympathynd hermeneuticngagement)s better eenas a creationf thnographicritinghan s a consistentuality fethnographicxperience."

24. Clifford uggests hat the insights f fieldwork ere con-structedess in the field whereMalinowski, n his own words,lacked real character)han n the process fwriting rgonauts,wherehe established imself s fieldworker-anthropologist.25. It was not ust the myth fMalinowski s fieldworkerhichdefinedmodem nthropology-theieldworkeras a symbolic e-hiclefor newkind f iteraryroduction. hereforeo amount fdemythologisingill affecthefact hatwhatever ieldwork entonbefore,nd however atchy t reallywas afterwards,he ymbolof hefieldworkerada new powernpost-Malinowskianriting.This and a number f otherpoints emphasise re anticipatedbyBoon e.g., The author s fieldworker as always mplicitlypresent; he author as author was always implicitly bsent"[i983:I38]). See Beer i986:226-27) on CharlesDarwin'spresenta-tion s thefieldworker.26. Capturedn Ardener's uip thatMalinowski reatedmodemprimitivismormodempeople i985:59).


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2601 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume28, Number3, June 987ferenceof perspective. They" did not use the sameframes s "we" do throughwhich tovisualisetheworld.Simply s ethnocentricismhatwas no discovery t all.Rather, thnocentricism as invented othas a theoret-ical principle nd as an organising ramework orwrit-ing. And it was displayed n the arrangementnd rela-tionshipof ideas internal o themonograph.A radicalway of presenting the anthropological subject wasopenedup; its two elements wereboth creativefor hediscipline.The first as the iterarymplementationfethnocen-trismwhich has characterised he modernist periodthroughout: herealisation hatframes re onlyframes,thatconceptsare culture-bound,hat analyticaltermsare themselves buried in premises and assumptions.Fromthe start he modern thnographersought o dis-lodgethetaken-for-grantedtatusofWestern oncepts-the development fa technical terminology roceededhand nhand with elf-scrutiny.herewas always muchmore to the definitions f terms uch as law or familythan culturalrelativism.The secondwas the discovery fthe ordinaryn thebizarre, ivilisationundersavagery. he rulingmodeofethnographic resentation ecame exactlywhat JarvieparodiesI984: I 5,my mphasis):

What the fieldworknvolves s going oan exotic so-ciety ndsucceedingnmakinggood sense to theoutsider f ts customsand institutions. o eachmonographn effectays, "Look here Pretty izarre,eh.Justwhatyouexpectedofbenighted,rrational,anarchicprimitives. ut now look closer.What doyousee?They ive an ordered, easonable, erhapsevenadmirable ocial life."

"Making sense" was, at least initially, question ofmaking commonsense"Leach 982:28-29). Extrava-gantas he was in his atmosphericwriting,Malinowskialso insistedon the need to coverseriously nd soberlyall aspectsoftribal ulture.Whatforhimwas an injunc-tion not to pick out the sensational and singular, omake no differenceetween the commonplaceand theout-of-the-wayI922: II), becamesubsequently maximabout ordinariness tself.Thus Jarvie wells on Evans-Pritchard's emark hatpost-Frazeriannthropology asnot searching fter trangeor colourful ppeals to ro-mantic interestsbut endorsedmatter-of-factnquiriesabout ocial nstitutionsI964:4, I3, 2I4). Leachhasre-cently estated hepoint: "It is always highlydesirablethat the fieldworker hould ridhimself of the notionthat there s something ltogether xtraordinaryboutthe ituatione s observing"i982:29). Andhowmanyanthropological oursesbegin with the adage that theanthropologist'sob is to make sense ofwhat is firstpresented s strange, o render eliefs nd acts in termsof theirtaken-for-grantedtatusin the context ofpeo-ple's lives. Jarvie's omplaint s that after he first rsecond exposureto this revelation, he repetitionbe-comesboring.Forthediscipline, othmoves werehighly roductive.They ed to thedevelopment fvariousframes y which

other ocieties and cultures ouldbe analysed, nd theyput theanthropologistn the positionof elucidating hebizarre, hus revealing he logic and order n otherpeo-ple's lives. Malinowski himself s sometimes creditedwith imposingrationality n his subjects. His sense ofthe ordinariness f Trobriand ulture certainly penedup the conceptual space forfuture nvestigations ntoprimitive ogic and reasoning.27 t the same time hisholism created the context forenquiries nto systems,thoughhe didnot take thisfarhimself.In the end it was inevitable that anthropologistsshould be criticised or reatinghepeople they tudy s"objects" cf.Fabian 983). Butthatobjectification as aproduct of a positioningof the anthropologist's wnideas (theanalyticalframes) gainst those attributedohis other subjects. This remained a structuring rame-work for the writingof monographs ong afterMali-nowski's functionalismwas considered of theoreticalinterest-the holism thatfirst ompelled hesubjective-objectiverelationwas no longer equired or he endlessinvestigation fthat crucial relationship tself.The ef-fectof the observer/observed ichotomyhad been tocreate sense of aliennessorotherness, ntroducinghereader o the bizarre nd simultaneously vercomingtby locatingwhat "we" see as bizarrewithin a contextwhere for "them" it is familiar nd ordinary. he or-dinarinesswas in this sense a technical ordinariness,that s, a product faccounting or deas or behaviourntermsofthe context to which they properly elonged.Foregroundedn the new anthropology cf. CliffordI986), "society" or "culture" domesticallyenclosedsuch ideas. Strangeness ad to lie outside thisboundaryandwas identifiable nly n context-crossing.28he su-preme context-crossing as betweenobserver nd ob-served.Thus was created he central roblem fmodern-ist anthropologyn whose terms couchedmy originalquestion: how tomanipulatefamiliar deas and conceptsto conveyalien ones.The concentrationfthe new ethnographiesn singlecultures penedup thepossibility fexploitinghedual-ism of he relation etweenobserver nd observed, singone's own language n reversingrturning psidedownone's own categories e.g.,we regardpayment s anti-thetical to kin relations, they regardkin relationsasbased on transactions). oncepts paired n theobserver'sculturecould be split apart e.g.,we have a commodity27. Stockingi984:I78) citeswith musement regory ateson'sdespair tbeing nable o find single nstance f heword logic"in thewholeofCoralGardens nd TheirMagic.Butfunctionalismassumed hat heanthropologistcould find eason venwhere thad never n factpresentedtself o the individual avage con-sciousness"p. 83).28. One might ecallfunctionalistxaminations fwitchcraftndsorcery eliefs ere:whatwas classified s strange rexotic ad tobe seen to cross omesocialboundary rother. would rgue hattheanthropologyfclassificationnd boundaries o prevalentnthe 950S and 96os spoke o an implicit pistemologyhichdo-mesticated ehaviour it all "made sense") as theattribute faparticularulture rsociety nd thereforeed toa specialproblemin accounting or eople'sown concepts fthe bizarre nd exoticfromwithin hose ultures r societies.


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STRATHERN Out of Context I 26I

economy, heyhave a gift conomy).Because the otherwas framed ff,t became possible to use termswithinthe frameformeanings differentrom hose they heldoutside t (kinship o them s not what we mean by theterm).And so on.29 n these ways, manipulating ne'sown concepts o conceptualiseones constructed s alienestablisheddistances between writer, eader, nd thesubject of study.30Jarvie eratesmodem(ist) anthropologistsor trivingto showthat here s nothing xceptional bout the ivesthey describe.The analytical technique, deriving rompostulates about the integrity f society and culture, sembedded n literary echnique. The imaginative eapbecomes between what "we" find ordinary nd what"they" findordinary.Hence the significance f Mali-nowski's perpetual nsistence that "they" were morethanprojections fWestern heories.The burden f hisFrazer ecturewas that Trobrianders id not treat heirmyths as armchair theorists speculated they would.Their deas had to be appreciated n their wn terms, otleast for hereason that mythscould not be treated ssome"primitiventellectual rmchair ccupation" I 9 32[I9251:82). There were no armchair theorists on theTrobriands Thus it was necessary to jar his readers/hearers nto acceptingthe distinctiveness f Trobriandpassions before xpounding n their itting lacewithinthe pragmatics f ocal life. The audience had to acceptthe naturalness of Trobriand deas in their context-once that contexthad been created n the separation f

thecultureof those to whom he was speakingfrom heculture fthoseaboutwhom hewas speaking.The audi-ence was requiredto connive in its distance from heanthropologist's ubject matter. Meanwhile the an-thropologistmovedbetweenthetwo. His proximity othe culture he was studying ecame his distance fromthe one he was addressing, nd vice versa. This, toutcourt, s how themodern(ist) ieldworker as imaginedhim-or herself ver since.3'Out ofContextWe are now in a better osition o appreciate hepersua-sion of Frazer's fictions-and his reputationamongmodernist nthropologistswho foundthem not at allpersuasive.Once the new frameworksfor comparison werecreated-the distinctiveness fdifferent inds of soci-etiesprovided basis forwhat became nessence a com-parison of contexts-Frazer's comparative sociologylooked ludicrous. Hence the most common chargeagainsthim, thathe torethingsout oftheircontext.32His episodic treatment f the Old Testamentand thesimilarities he shows between Hebrew customs andthosefromMelanesia, Africa, rwherever eem to entailthe worstkind of indiscriminate orrowings, ith noregard orhistorical r social circumstances. razerwasnot manipulating he internaldiscriminations etweenwriter and subject matter,between observer nd ob-served, hattypified hemodernists. n thecontrary,edepended n a kinshipbetweenhis own revelations ndcontemporarynterestn theclassics,herethe Old Tes-tament, nd in the earlyhistory f man. Farfromdis-tancinghimself rom is audience,he appeared o sharemuchwith them.Certainlyhe evinced neitherof the strategies hatwere to become so significant. irst,he was not inter-ested n thestatusofhis frames,n perpetuallypecify-inghis own ethnocentrism. ence the ease withwhichhe could comprehendwhat it was like to be inNemi orwhat theancientHebrewsmightbe expected o do (e.g.,I9I8, vol. 3:8o). There was no problem bout interpret-ingpeople's emotionsormotivations. n the courseofhis disquisition on marriage,Frazeris meticulous inlocating heparticular ources fromwhichhe gleanshisinnumerablepieces of information.Wherepossiblehequotes such reasonsas people arereported iving, ut hehas no hesitation n supplying hem himself.This is a

29. Other isjunctionsypical f hismode ncludei) dividing atainto domains, uch as kinship r economy,which arethen col-lapsedor seen as versions fone another;2) definingoncepts ynegation-the X have say)no concept f"culture"-in order ointroduce iscontinuitiesnto what arehabitualdichotomiesnWesternhoughte.g., he ontrastetween ulture ndnature);3)cross-culturalomparisonwhich rests on an elucidation ofsimilaritiesnd differencesut always mplies hedistinctivenessofunits o compared; nd 4) nternal omparison ithin he naly-sisbetween s and them, ow and then the ther eing resentedas a version foneself r n antithesis o the familiarelf).30. hope have made tclear he extent o which woulddefendtheMalinowskiandisjunctions: rtificialitybetween us" and"them") s containedwithin heconstructionf literaryroductconcerned ith question hat s far romrtificial, aking on-ceptual pace for ocial others. et me draw n an instancewithwhich am concerned:he erms gift"nd"commodity"or on-trasts etweenMelanesian and Western xchange ystems. hetwoterms nlymake ensefrom hepoint fviewof commodityeconomy. t the sametime, ne can use them o talk abouttworadically ifferentaysof rganisingheworld. his aysoneopentoempiricistuggestionhatgiftwas never bservedn a pristinestate.Butobjections f this kind eaveone serious roblem: owotherwises a writer nMelanesia o present o a largelyWesternaudience hedistinctivenessfMelanesian ocialorganisation,fideas aboutpersonhood,f all the subtle nd complex, s well asfundamentalndcrude,ways nwhichMelanesian oncepts o ordonothaveanalogiesntheWestern orld?As a practicaliterarynecessity,ow s one toproceed? e Heusch, ornstance,hrinksthe deaofgiftoaneconomic ransactionndputs n ts stead heidea of ritualcuisine as "the expression f the social order"(i985:I7). Anthropologistso this ll thetime;but t makes om-parison ardbecause one needs oknow he iteraryocusof uchconstructsn the writer'sccount:whatthey tand or-not usthowthey redefined utwhatpart hey lay n the onstructionfanalysis.

3I. The triadwriter/subject/audienceas constantlylayed s adyad observer/observed,nthropologist-reporter/reader)cf.Web-ster 982)32. Gellner i985b:645) uses thisphrase fthe reaction fMali-nowski's unctionalismoFrazerianpeculation. razer ssemblesa vastarray ffragmentaryata out ofcontext, hereasMalinow-ski'sfieldwork ethod, e observes, as anexhaustive xplorationof social contexts.Lienhardti966:27) succinctly resents hemodernistrthodoxy: razer thought e could understanderyforeigneliefs uiteoutof heir eal ontextsimply y n effortfintrospection.


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262 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume28, Number 3, June 987comment n thedirect xchange fwomen nMelanesia(vol. 2:2i6):

No doubt thepractice fexchangingwomen nmar-riagemay be observed rom variety fmotives, neofwhich n certain ases may well be the desire okeep up a sept at full trength y onlypartingwithwomen on condition freceiving n equal number fwomen n exchange.But such a motiveofpublic pol-icy seems less simple and primitive hanthepurelyeconomic motivewhich taketobe at thebase ofthecustom; forwhile the economic motive ppealsdi-rectly o everyman in his individual apacity, hepublic motive ppeals to menin their ollectiveca-pacity s members fa community,nd thereforeslikely o affect nly that enlightenedminority hoare capable of ubordinating heirprivate nterest othepublic good.The selectionofreasons s governed ywhat he imputesas likely examples of simple and primitive ehaviour.Few modem monographs o not also impute thoughtsand feelings o thepeople beingdescribed; hedifferenceis the validatingpresenceofthe fieldworker, ho usesthe elf s a metering evice cf.Clifford983). In talkingofthe economicmotivesofmarriage, razerhad to beguidedby the ethnographers ho reportedo him.Thus,he says carefullyhat "the natives ofthenorthernoastofDutch New Guinea are said to regard heirmarriage-abledaughterss wares whichthey ansell without on-sultingthe wishes of the girlsthemselves" I9I8, vol.2:2I7). Yet this eads not to a scrutiny f what the saidnatives might mean but to a general extrapolation p.220):

[Ilt eems probable hatthe practice f exchangingdaughters r sisters n marriagewas everywhere tfirst simplecase ofbarter,nd that toriginatedn alow state of savagerywherewomen had a higheco-nomic value as labourers, ut whereprivate ropertywas as yet at so rudimentary stage that man hadpractically o equivalentto give for wifebut an-otherwoman. The same economic motivemight eadtheoffspringf uch unions,whowould be crosscousins,to marry ach other....For a modernist eader,t is not ustthe economicsbutthe kinshipstructureswhich requireelucidation.Therelationship etween these would give an internal u-thorityo the account. Frazer stablisheshis authority,however,with reference o an extraneous frame, hesense of historywhich he shareswith his readers p.220):

Ifthe history fthe custom could be followed n themanydifferentartsof the worldwhere t has pre-vailed, tmightbe possible everywhere o trace tbackto thissimple origin; or nder he surface likeof avagery ndofcivilisation he economic forces reas constant nd uniformntheir peration s theforces fnature, fwhich ndeed, hey remerelypeculiarly omplexmanifestation.

Frazerwas not particularlynterested, hen, n framingoff is ideas from ither hose ofhis audience or thosehewas describing, nd the second point is that conse-quently he did not have to make good sense of thebizarre. True, he sought to show how customs sinceabandoned and disclaimed as barbaricwere not to bedismissed from he Old Testament as fantasy ut boreclose resemblance o thepracticeofmanycultures.Butthis s not the same as making ense ofthem.Rather,tconfirmsheir tatusas indices of avagery: razer's av-age was the antique manwhose practicesofsimpleandprimitive imes were still preserved. e established heplausibilityof the numerous customs he reported yshowinghowthey ccurred gainandagain, nd he sup-plied motives and reasons fromhis generalunderstand-ingofprimitive ociety.But therewas noneed to ustifythem nterms fa logical system r teaseout their on-nectionswithother deas.His narrative howed exampleafter xampleofwhat happened-it could not create ninternal ontext or urninghe merely onceivable ntoa distinctive ultural ogic. The customs made sense inonly very imitedway.Above all, he had no theoreticalmotive forrenderinghe exotic ordinary. n the con-trary,he effect fhis literary ompositionwas to show,at everypoint,the ordinary o be cognatewith the ex-traordinary.33This perhaps s the powerof all those examples out ofcontext.Aproposthe Old Testament,Frazerwas takinga storywhich wouldhave beenvery amiliar o his read-ers. Whateverwas thought bout particular ncidents,withinthe framework f the biblical story hey had along-established lace.34He exposesthestory pisodebyepisode, showingthe affinities f Hebrew customs tothosedrawnfrom avageorpatriarchal eoplesfrom llover the world. Incidents which mighthave been ac-ceptedas simply partofthenarrative re shown to beremarkableby comparisonwith exotic customs. Thusthedisjunction ponwhich Frazerplays s betweenhisreader's rior erceptions fbiblical customs s ordinary33. Boon i982:II) claims thatFrazer's rosedescribes nbeliev-able rites believably.At the same time,while Malinowski n-scribed ractices ot as exotic specimens ut as straightforwardhuman xperience, razer representedhe culmination f tradi-tional compilationsof 'fardles of fashions' and cabinets ofcuriosities"i982:I7). Frazermade such curiosities lausible utnot logical. Cf. Stocking i984:i83): "the armchair nthropolo-gist-archetypically,razer-couldgive irrationaleliefsndcus-toms] rational meaning throughthe in-built rationalisticutilitarianismf the doctrine fsurvival:whatmade no rationalsense nthepresent as perfectlynderstandables the heer er-sistence fthe mperfectlyational ursuit futilityn an earlierstage."34. Malinowski's wn review reprinted962) ofthe bridgeddi-tionofFolk-lore omments hatFrazer eshapes amiliar actsndsituationsthe story as been ived hrough y every neofus")butthat hough amiliar heywere lwaysdisturbingnd ncom-prehensible,ound p withdreams ndfantasiesnstilledn child-hood. Feeley-HamikI985) develops the suggestion hat TheGoldenBough, s a treatise n thesavagethoughtshat ompelpeople o kill norder o prosper,eployshe acrificef hepriest/king s a metaphor o understandhe rrationalitynd violenceunderlying,s she puts t, he mooth urface fChristiandeals fprogressnVictorianndEdwardian ngland.


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STRATHERN Out of Context1263and theirfarfrom rdinary ognates.This allows a fur-therdisjunction, etweenthe customsthe reader akesforgrantedn his or herown culture nd the origins fthese same customs undervery different,avage, re-gimes. In short,Frazer has takenhis text apart.Whatcoheres,as the biblical tales unfold, s shown to be apalimpsestofreports bout events whichno longerbe-long ntrinsically o one another ut nsteadhavea fam-ily resemblance o doings ll overthe world.Theyare tobe appreciatedn the ight f ocial and practical easonsthatappear n many timesand places: a global cultureindeed,differentiatednlythrough he stagesofsavag-ery nd civilisation.35Frazer'sprefatoryemarks, ated May i9I8, concludewith the observation hat "the revelationof the baserelementswhichunderlay he civilizationof ancient s-rael, s theyunderlie hecivilizationofmodern urope,servesrather s a foilto enhanceby contrast he glory fa peoplewhich,from uch darkdepthsof gnorance ndcruelty, ould rise to such brightheights" I9I8, vol.i x). t is not ust themultitude f timesand places thatmakesan effect, ut thatforhis parallelsFrazer rewoncultures hat would alreadybe classified n thegeneralreader'smind as exotic. The revelationwas that ivilisa-tion so-called should consistof so muchformer avag-ery.Was it this uxtaposition fcivilisation nd savagerythatgripped is contemporaries'minds? n the relation-ship Frazer njoyedwithhis general eaders nd throughwhathe read)with thoseabout whom he wrotehe pre-sumeda continuity.t was a continuity hat embracedthe rational ndirrational like, that couldbe shared nthe groundsof eithersavageryor civilisation,neitherdistinguishedn any absolute sense as the attribute fthis or thatwhole society.The "enlightenedminority"amonghis Melanesians foreshadowed civilisedatten-tiontothepublic good, ike the iteraryight hat honeforth rom he Hebrew writers. his themeof llumina-tion runs through is narrativen consistent aralleltothe unearthing fthe "baser elements": "The annalsofsavagery nd superstitionunhappilycompose a largepart fhuman iterature; ut n what other olume thanthe Old Testament] hallwe find, ide byside with thatmelancholy record,psalmistswho poured forth heirsweetand solemn strains, tc." (I9I8, vol. i:xi, my em-phasis).Reader and writer harea text:what the writerforces isreaders o realise s the unevennessofthe textitself, ts multivocality,ts side-by-side onjunctionofsavagery nd civilisation.When, 50 yearsbefore, ubbock had lectured t theRoyal nstitution n "The Origin fCivilization nd thePrimitiveConditionofMan," he had confessed blockto his desire o describe he "social andmentalconditionofsavages" (1875a): he would have to refer o ideas andactswhichmight e abhorrentohis listeners. razer,ncommandofan astonishing rray fmaterials,muchof

it collectedin the intervening ears,gives a vivid dis-course on the social and mental conditionof savagesthrough he mediating extsofworksthoroughly amil-iar and respectable.The result, have suggested, s theexoticisation fthosefamiliar nd respectabledeas.Theworld is seen to be plural, composite,full of diversemanners, f echoes from he past. The present, he ordi-nary, holds all the colourfulpossibilities of folklore,quite as much as civilisation s revealedas barelycon-cealing a medleyofpractices which belong to darker,older days.Infact, ne could almost call Frazer n "aesthetewiththe ability to select references," orwhom "the act ofinvention onsists nrereading hepast andrecombininga selection of its elements" (The Listener,March 20,I986, p. 32), or say that his style "evokes, hints,re-minds," n a world of nfinite eferrals heresigns"arenot arbitraryecause meanings re sedimentedn them:signshave 'been around'; they bear the tracesofpastsemanticmanoeuvres"; consequently, instead of ana-lytical teps there s a suggestive se of mages, uizzicalmanoeuvres and numerous asides," so that writingcomes to seem a promiscuous dissemination r explo-sion (Crick 985:72-73 and citingTyler 984:329).These remarks re not, of course, made of Frazerbutrepresent wo attemptsto evoke a postmodernmood.This bringsme to my final commentson the natureofFrazer'screativity.Playingwith ContextWhetherwe areorarenotentering postmodern hasein social anthropology,noughpeople seem to be speak-ing s thoughwe werefor he dea to be of nterest. ricksees it as among those diverse trendswhich includereflexive nthropology, ritical anthropology,emanticanthropology,emioticanthropology,nd post-structur-alism I985 :7 ). This, he says quotingHastrup 978), isnota unitary osition,but in the aftermathfmodern-ism we are not to be surprised hat there ppears to beno particular uture36 r that historymay be put intoreverse.Crickdescribes s suitably ronictherecent e-trieval fLeenhardt, evi-Strauss's redecessorn Paris,whose work s ripefordiscoveryn a post-structuralistera (Clifford982:2; cf.Young I983:I69). At the sametime ArdenerI985) is arguing hat lthough ther isci-plines may think of structuralism s postmodern,tsplace in anthropologys as a thoroughlymodernist he-nomenon.Thus he traces the span of modernism n an-thropologyromMalinowski (in 1920) to thebeginning

35.He appears o use thisclassificationrom ime otime, ut tdoesnotorganise is arrangementfexamples.Nordoes he seekhistoric arallels o hisbiblical haracters.hus he adduces apuaNewGuineaparallelsn hisdiscussion fthePatriarchal geandtheTimesofJudgesndKings like.

36. f hemodem s a kind f ppropriateduture,ts collapsemustbe perceiveds thecollapseofthefutureArdener985:57). How-ever,ntheveryway currentxperimentsn ethnographicritingbringmodemismo consciousness,heymay lsobe seen spart fmodemismtselfe.g.,Marcus 986); cf.Fosteri985 [i983]:ix): "ifthemodem rojectstobe saved t all, t must eexceeded."twillbe apparenthat use the contrast etweenmodernismndpost-modernismo indicate shiftwithin nthropologicalriting-one might rmightnot wishto subsume t all under heterm"modem."


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264 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume28, Number3, fune 987of the decline ofstructuralistnfluencen themid-'70s.The demise ofstructuralism/modernisms underlinedby the resurrection fLeenhardt, figurewho precededthe chiefexponentofstructuralism s far s much an-thropologys concernedCrick985:72).

Crick here draws attention o Clifford's iography fLeenhardt.Leenhardt s presented s someone whosework"addresses tself o the present oncernwith more'open' culturaltheories-modes of understanding apa-ble ofaccountingfor nnovativeprocess and historicaldiscontinuity . . and forreciprocityn ethnographicalinterpretation"Clifford982:2). Leenhardt's ccess to"the native's point of view" was not just throughfieldwork mpathy but involved a collective work ofmutual translation, ne that could not be easily domi-nated by a privilegednterpretationClifford980:526).The context orClifford'snterest s similar eciprocitiesidentifiablen the writing f new generation f thnog-raphers oncernedwith therepresentationfdialogue-how the fieldwork ncounter s itselfhandled, nd thushow ethnographys written.The historian's championingof Leenhardtalso in-volvessomething fan assault on Malinowski CliffordI983).37 The time seems ripeto exposethefigure f thefieldworker howas theregisterfthe otherness fcul-tures.Cliffordacklesthe authoritywhich anthropolo-gists claimed this gave theirwritings: he fieldworkerwho came back from nother ociety spoke for t in adetermining way which now appears repugnant.Whether r not anthropologistsver did claim such au-thority s beside the point. It is the kindof book theywrotewhichis exposed:themonograph resented im-plyas though twere about a particular eople,the au-thor bsentbecause the fieldworkers theauthority orthetext andseeMarcusandCushman 982:3I-32). But"the silenceoftheethnographic orkshop as been bro-ken-by insistent,heteroglot oices, bythe scratchingofother ens" Clifford983: 12I). For omewhilenowithasbecomewidely ccepted hat hefieldworker ustbe written ack ntothetext s also its author ndrepro-duce the conditions of his or her encounterwith theother.Reflexive nthropologyees the resultant roduc-tionas a dialoguebetween nthropologistnd nformantso-called: the observer/observedelationshipcan nolongerbe assimilated to thatbetween subject and ob-

ject.38 he object(ive) s a jointproduction.Many voices,multiple texts,plural authorship e.g., Rabinow I983;Clifford980, i982) suggest new genre. Ethnographymust hang on in good faith to the myriadcontingen-cies and opaque personalities freality, nd deny tselfthe illusion of a transparentdescription" (Websteri982:iii). Writing as become a question of uthorship,even to the point of a new denial of it, insofar s the"negotiated eality" fthetext s the social orexperien-tial reality fneither artyCrapanzano 980).Overthe ast decade ortwo,therehas beenincreasingawareness that the dichotomies which characterisedmodernism n anthropologywill not do, the easiesttarget eing synchrony,he timelessness fdescriptionsframednot by historybut by the distinctionbetween"us" and "them." In fact,there has always been criti-cism oftheahistoricityfanthropology,n the mislead-ingcharge hat nthropologistsreate n idealisedbreakbetweenthe pristine ociety "beforecontact" and the"social change" since (misleading because, to borrowfromArdener,treads thedichotomies s a matter f iferather hangenre).This has joined withmounting riti-cism about the audacityofthe anthropologisto speakfor heother, otreat ther ersons s objects,notallow-ingtheauthors f ccountstheir wnvoice,and so on.39In short, hatpowerfulmodernist rame, he distinctionbetweenus and themwhich created he context or osi-tioning he writer n relationto those he/shewas de-scribing, as become thoroughly iscredited. he otheras literary bject,beingtakenbycritics s situating u-man subjects as objects, can no longer surviveas theexplicitorganising rame f texts. No one set of voicesshouldbe denied orprivileged-the authormustobjec-tify is ownposition n theethnographyuite as muchas he orshe strives o render he subjectivity f others.There is an inherent mbivalence "ludic" is Crick'sword) n certain current xponentsofpostmodernism.They are deservedly fter he event-for their trengthlies in exposing the artificial difice of structuralism,ethnographicuthority,rwhatever.40 tructuralistnd

37. "Assault" s too strong word n the ight f his overall p-praisal fMalinowski. n subsequentlyomparing alinowski sthe diarist nd as the author f Argonauts, liffordi986) resur-rectshim as an original eteroglot,omeone apable ftryingutdifferentoices,differentersonae; nd he sympatheticallye-scribes he ample,multiperspectival,eanderingtructurefAr-gonauts" i986:i56) wheremodernists ave simply een argu-mentswithout tructure. he fact hat convincing otalisationalways scapedhiswork, lifforduggests,lignsMalinowski ithlatter-dayosmopolitanism.n his earlier rticle,Argonauts adbeen he rchetypeor generationf thnographieshat success-fullystablished articipant-observation'scientificalidity"Clif-ford983:I23-24). Clifford'shesis s thatwhatwas createdn thewriting fethnographyas theexperiencefthefieldworkers aunifyingource f uthority,issonantwith hefieldworkxperi-ence tself.What hus equiresssault s the uthoritymbeddednthe iteraryymbol fMalinowski s fieldworker.

38. Websteri982:96) criticises hetraditionn anthropologynwhich theunderstandingubject nd the objectunderstood regraspedsprimordialealities. hinking necan substituteubjectfor bjectwill not do: we have toknow hat t s in the course fdialogue hat oth ubjectificationndobjectificationrenecessar-ily created.39. Marcus and Cushman i982:25-26) arguethatrecent elf-reflectivenessn ethnographicriting imstodemystifyhe pro-cess offieldwork,ndthusto confrontheobjectificationftheresultantexts.Geertz i985) referso postmodernelf-doubtsanxiety bouttherepresentationftheother nethnographicis-course.However,t s interestingonote parallel etweenWeb-ster'si982:97) criticismfGeertz ndRabinow's riticismfClif-ford: oth Geertz ndCliffordre attuned o multiple extsbutproceed oabsent hemselvesrom henarrative-i.e., ail oobjec-tifyheir wnparticipation.40. A pointalso made outsideanthropologicalnterestn post-modernism; enceJameson'somment o the ffecthat herewillbe as many ifferentorms fpostmodernisms therewere stab-lishedforms fhighmodernismi985:iii). If as in anthropology"modernism"s now uncoverednretrospect,herewillbeconsid-erable mbiguityboutwhat s modernistndwhat spostmodern-ist seen. 36).A simplebinarism ill not do: insofars postmod-


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STRATHERN Out ofContext 265ethnographerlike were playinggames too, the differ-encebeing hat heydidnot know t. t s thatrealisationwhich s cruciallypostmodern. he appropriate enre snotrepresentationutthe"representationfrepresenta-tions" (Rabinow i986:250).41 In the subsequent reap-propriationfanthropological istory, eenhardts par-ticularlynterestings a pre-Malinowskianieldworker.42Perhaps he is attractive ecause the religious embodi-ment of his ideas (Clifford982:3) evinces thatmoveaway from he separation of the sociological and phe-nomenologicaltowards signs embedded n human useand ntentionalityowhich yler efersi984:328). Themissionary bserver s a goodexemplar, ince his under-standings re purposed.But British nthropology as aprominent igure f its own, so to speak, in Malinow-ski's supposedpredecessor, razer. ndeed, n some re-spects,Frazer'sbookishplenitude s highly vocative.I am not suggesting hatFrazer s a postmodern.Hecould not be, since the mood takes its creativity rommodernismArdener985:6o). But perhapshe is a per-son whompostmodernismllows us to countenance. tis salutaryto think of Frazerbecause it is salutarytothink boutwhat themodernists ound o distastefulnhim-taking things out of context. The postmodernmood is to make deliberateplaywithcontext. t is saidto blur boundaries,destroythe dichotomisingframe,juxtapose voices, so that the multiple product,themonographointly uthored, ecomes conceivable. t re-mainsup tothe reader opickhis orherwaythroughhediffering ositions and contexts of the speakers. Merepointsofview (cf.Hill I986), these contextshave ceasedin themselves o provide heorganising rameworks ortheethnographic arrative.A newrelationship etweenwriter, eader, nd subjectmatter s contemplated. e-coding the exotic ("making sense") will no longerdo;postmodernismequiresthereader o interactwith ex-otica in itself.However, wantto ntroduce note ofdiscord: oraiseFrazerboth withrespect nd as a spectre.The discord sbetweenwhat contemporarynthropologistsre doingin toyingwith abels such as postmodernismnd whatthey continue to do in theirwritings. ndeed,as hap-pened in the earlyprogrammes or feministwriting,there s more talk aboutwhatpostmodernismmightbethanexamplesof t. I suggest hat there s a significantdifferenceetweenblurring ontexts and playingwiththem,betweenfreeplayandplay,betweena compositeidentity nd reciprocity;nd that the evocation ofpost-

modernism rawsonimages notalways very ppropriatefor

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147981951 Strathern Out of Context