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The Ethnographer's Textual Presence: On Three Forms of Anthropological Authorship Author(s): Haim Hazan Reviewed work(s): Source: Cultural

Anthropology, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Aug., 1995), pp. 395-406 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/656343 . Accessed: 05/03/2013 13:40
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The Ethnographer's Textual Presence: On Three Forms of Anthropological Authorship


Haim Hazan
Department of Sociology and Anthropology Tel-Aviv University

Ethnographic Cues Let the informantbe the vicarious ethnographer. The three following anecdotal fieldwork accounts may attest to the rationale underpinningthis article.1 The first case concerns elderly women attending an adult education course for the illiterate, held as part of an Israeli urban-renewalproject. The women, who participated in these classes principally in order to improve communication with their grandchildren,took a great interest in one children's story told to them. It related the intricate escapade of an egg who wished to become something else and, having attemptedto disguise itself as various round and elliptic objects, returnedeventually to its original state and even hatched. The students, most of whom were of Moroccan origin, construed this cyclical transformation as analogous to their own life cycle: thus, despite the experience of immigration, culturalassimilation, and social change, their primordialethnic identity reigned supremeover any alternative guise of personhood. By referringto a given text, the women used the story as a template for the constructionof their own text of identity, thereby implying that an identification between authorship(the ability to formulateone's life narrative)and authority(the license to do so) must be accomplished. The second case concerns a rabbi, a resident of an Israeli old-age home, who enacted his life story in an uncompromising adaptive manner. Systematically and meticulously, he eliminated from his narrativethose life events and attributes that could have associated him with the much disdained group of the synagogue congregants. Irrespectiveof his past ecclesiastical career,he emphasized only those elements in his past that could contributeto bolstering his position in the old-age home-drawing on the Zionist-Socialist ideology of the institution's administration.Hence, contextual constraints of survival overrode
CulturalAnthropology 10(3):395-406. Copyright ? 1995, American Anthropological Association.

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other sources of identity. The authorshipof the rabbiwho rewrotehis biography was no longer furnishedby the authorityof masteringa coherentreality. In fact, the former was divorced from the latter. The third case is derived from the verbal discourses articulated within a group of old-age pensioners who constituted a study class at the University of the ThirdAge in Cambridge,England.This voluntaryself-help organizationenabled its members to form various settings for mutual-aidlearning and to conduct free-floating, unstructured discussions. The generaloutlook propoundedin those meetings was that although one should view the world "with a third-age eye," that "eye" sees the underlying fundamentals upon which all human thought and action are edified. This atemporaluniversal code is beyond culture, language, society, and subjectivity and thus embraces all humans and is revealed in their basic presocialized natureof humanness. Here, both authorship and authorityare dismissed. The rules governing behavior and ideas are irrelevant to either context or text. Each of these research examples is based on ethnographieswhose informants regardedthemselves as authentic, genuine, and faithful representativesof "the natives' point of view" concerning the "true"fabric of their existence. The anthropologistwho presumes to fathom the essence of his researchsubject's experience through the ambivalent practice of participant-observationis also forced to grapple with the dilemma of authorshipand authority.One must grapple, that is, with his or her constructionof the anthropologicalnarrative,on the one hand, and the credibility and validity of the presenteddata as a reflection of the studied arena, on the other. The three cases suggest three anthropological modes whose distinctive property is the relationship between author-that is, the anthropologist-and the source of the authoritythat endows the monograph with a sense of acknowledged ethnographicauthenticity.The three models draw on different systems of anthropologicalaccountability,whose exploration constitutes the main objective of the following. The Problem The anthropologist's point of view as an issue in its own right within anthropological discourse has gained increasedrecognition with the discovery of the autobiographicalmark at its core.2Thus, self-searching inquiries alongside methodological considerations constitute the two main pathways into the personal origins of ethnography.However, if personal involvement is to be ascertained and understood neither as an idiosyncratic effect nor as a research imperative, focusing on the anthropologist as an individual must be suspended. That is, the fieldworker's propensities and preferences, the sociocultural systems of accountability to which the fieldworker is subjected, and the natureof the researcharenaall have to be kept at bay as relevant factors shaping the contours of the autobiographicalpresence in the composition of the ethnographic text. In short, our perspective on the issue at hand endeavors to unravel the metalanguageof incorporatingpersonal interjectionsinto the end productof the anthropological process.

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Evidently, one would invoke theoretical commitments to explain away the metalinguistic properties underlying an academic text. However, be they implicit or explicit, such considerations should be regardedmerely as conceptual statements framed by a modality concerning the interplay among ideas, field, and text as orchestratedby the anthropologist. Indeed, it is this organizationof linkages between these threeconstituents that sets the scene for our approachto the problem of understandingthe presence or the absence of autobiographical attributesin anthropologicalmonographs.3 The Proposition Since the anthropologicalmonographis both the targetandthe databasefor our discussion, detection of autobiographicalsuggestions must not exceed the confines of the texts in question. That is, the indications for the mode of interplay among ideas, field, andthe writtenpresentationshould be sought and ascertained by means of textualanalysis alone. Thus, the self-presentationof a monograph is regardedas an exclusive testimony to the particularmode of interplay among ideas, field, and text embedded in it. There are three ways of arrangingthe orderof priorities among ideas, field, and text. The monographcould present itself as an ideas-oriented text, a fieldoriented text, or a text-orientedtext. The first mode gives prominenceto an a priori conceptual model which in turndetermines and shapes the ethnographicconcerns and the presentation of the field. By way of deduction, the text is constructed to corroboratea theoretical truism whose validity rests within its own inner conviction. This mode suggests a temporal conception of a prefieldwork paradigm. Since such a paradigmdisregardsparticularcontext and is culturally nonrelativistic, it invariably consists of argumentspurportingto establish rules of interconnectedness between elements. Thus, form governs content, and structureoverridesprocess. It is the dictate of the syntax of explanationthatunderlies this type of text, in which substanceand particularsare subservientto a set of extra-ethnographicrules that serve as a general code to decipher field accounts.4 Such an intellectual stance toward anthropological materialrendersthe anthropologist uninvolved, almost irrelevant.His or her understandingof the field is, thus, in no way an emergentpropertyof participant-observation. Rather,it is an applicationof nonspecific explanatoryprinciples to a given ethnographicexample. The monographas a text, therefore, is devoid not only of any personal commentarybut also of suggestions affecting the field or constructingit. The anthropologist, in this case, appearsas a disinterested, neutralpresenterand interpreter of rules to which both researcherand researchees are equally subjected. The second mode is intent on introducing into the text an ethnographic presence that capturesthe natureof the reality under study and does justice to its incumbents. Notwithstandinganthropologists' acute awareness of the incoherent Rashomon effect prevalent in any field, the desire to provide a full-fledged account of a social unit or phenomenon drives the researcherto depict a highly detailed picture of the interwovenfactors constituting that context. It is, indeed,

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the concern with context ratherthan text or syntax that shapes the presentation of the field and hence defines the unassuming partof the anthropologistin cultivating it. Here the anthropologist's predicament,the dual position of participant-cum-observer,is probably the most pressing of the threemodes. He or she is compelled constantly to strike a fine balance between the imperativeof letting the field talk for itself, the editorial need to organize data in a meaningful manner, and the need to set a hidden or overt explanatoryagenda to frame the presentation.The author,therefore,becomes a third-personnarrator whose main undertakingis to preserve the illusion of objectivity and ethnographiccredibility. However, what might put that illusion in jeopardy is the need for reflexivity.5 Once an anthropologist enters a contemplative state regarding his or her role in the field, that role can take the form of personal introspection, social advocacy, or both. A growing awareness of the anthropologist'sunique contribution to the presentationof the field could lead to a declared position of a writer whose literaryflair and personal touch generate the monographictext. Text, indeed, is the main concern of that third mode; it is its own justification and its only end. Thus, it would be inconceivable not to expect more than just a mere autobiographicalmark. Since the anthropologist's own experiences, deliberations, and existential problems unrelentinglyimpinge upon the presentation,the text is an undeniable piece of autobiography. Evidently these three modes are not mutually exclusive, nor are they rigid paradigmsfor constructing anthropological texts. Rather, they constitute foci for a range of alternatives that could be arrangedon a continuum with one end representing an absence of a biographical mark in an anthropological monographand the other signifying the omnipresence of such marks.The syntactical, the contextual, and the textual modes, respectively, possess some self-evident and distinguishable propertiesthat could be construedas direct offshoots of the correlationbetween the conception of the field and the autobiographicalpresence. If the intricate and somewhat puzzling relationshipbetween emic nomenclature and etic concepts is to guide our discussion, then the following distinctions could be propounded.In the first mode, emic and etic are uncompromisingly separated, with the latter being furnished by the former, but not the reverse. The result is a predominance of the anthropologist's concepts whose aim of reachingfor an understandingof humanuniversals endows them with an impersonal, culturally neutral quality. Consequently, informants who convey emic ideologies to the anthropologist hardly feature in the text, which is composed to advance an argumentratherthan to provide substantive information. The second mode suggests that emic and etic inform each other and, indeed, concepts from the realmof the formerarerestyled and adaptedto serve the latter.Thus culturallanguage is transformedinto anthropologicallocution. This nexus makes for an open, bilateral channel of communication between researcherand researchees with a mutual recognition of a distance between participant and observer. The organization of the text follows the principle of pur-

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THE ETHNOGRAPHER'S TEXTUAL PRESENCE 399

suing the ethnographic present and is faithful to the parametersof the field as processed through the anthropologist's perspective. The third mode, by definition, abandons any claim for experience-distant of concepts6and lends its depictions of the field to the subjective interpretation the anthropologist.The choice of key concepts in this case is conditioned by the fusion of emic and etic. Identificationbetween explanation and field categories, therefore, is complete. The text, being the authentic reflection of its author's mental horizons, becomes an object for a free personal expression. Why Monographs on Aging? To test the proposition, I have selected three monographs on the elderly. All of them deal with English-speakingJews in age-homogenous environments. This last factor is comfortablyexplicable by the methodological demandto keep constant as many ethnographic attributesas possible so that the comparisons among the three can remain focused on the issues at stake. The first point, the choice of aging as an appropriatephenomenon for the sake of our discussion, calls for furtherelaboration. The anthropologyof aging has come of age only in recent years. The holistic natureof anthropologicalresearchbanished the elderly to a place of marginal importance.Being removed from the center of power, economy, and family, the elderly in simple societies were ethnographically submerged within the domains of age-grades, ritual,and kinship genealogies.7 This scant attentionto the elderly as a sociocultural researchobject in its own right left the academic turf of the phenomenon barrenwith no serious attemptto develop suitable explanatory frames. The discovery of the old in anthropologyhas followed the growing anthropologicalinterest in underprivilegedminorities and social problems.This trendhas advanced the elderly towardthe limelight at least in Americananthropology. This nascent development has created a twofold consequence: a proliferation of ethnographic material and anthropological literatureon the elderly, alongside a significantly noticeable lacuna of concepts, analytic tools, methodologies, and theoretical perspectives. The absence of anthropologicalconventions makes any monographon the elderly into an unconventional text. Having a foundation that is neither programmable nor predetermined,the reported ethnography on the elderly transpires as a noncommittal anthropological production. This condition enables one to detect the autobiographicalmarkwithout the opaque screening of takenfor-grantedanthropological modalities. The following will briefly invoke three monographs to testify to the three corresponding categories previously described. This is by no means a representative sample of relevant literature,nor is it a randomselection. Rather,it is an attemptto illustrate with appropriate examples the proposition underconsideration.In thatrespect, one should treatthe ensuing discussion as a heuristic device in formulating a working definition of the linkage between the autobiographical mark and the respective type of textual presentation.

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Monograph as Text The first monograph is BarbaraMyerhoff's (1978) seminal study of the cultural arenaof elderly members at a Jewish day center in Venice, California. This anthropologicalaccount is imbuedfrom its very beginning with explicit assertions of the author's committed involvement in the center's scene and to the broader existential scope of her research subjects. The acknowledgment that prefaces this text reveals some of its self-justification. As Myerhoff states, "I am grateful above all to the Center people who gave themselves to me so fully and by doing that gave me partsof myself and my heritage"(1978:VI). This confessional declarationis amply qualified and amplified throughoutthe text: I sat on the benchesoutsidethe Centerand thoughtabouthow strangeit was to be backin theneighborhood wheresixteenyearsbeforeI hadlived.... Likemany secondgeneration Americans I wasn'tsurewhatbeinga Jewmeant.WhenI was a child my family had avoidedthe wordsJew and Yid. We were confusedand aboutourbackground. embarrassed [Myerhoff1978:11] As a consequence of this quest for identity Myerhoff decides to "studyher own kind" and ponders over the problem of how to labelwhatI was doing-was it anthropology or a personal quest?I never methodsand askedmany fully resolvedthe question.I used manyconventional butwhenI hadfinishedI foundmydescription didnotresemble typicalquestions, mostanthropological writings.Still the resultsof the studywouldcertainlyhave been different hadI not been an anthropologist [1978:12] by training. The dilemma of having to choose between the autobiographicaldrive and the anthropologicalcommitment governs the whole structureand content of the ensuing text. Thus, the anthropologist constructs her database by asking her subjects to participatein storytelling groupsthat she conducts.Herown involvement in the life of the center becomes so substantialthatthe elderly members are eventually exposed to the limelight of the Americanmedia and enjoy something of a celebrity halo. Empathicidentification is so intense that the authororganizes her text according to her subjects' folk classifications. Hence, the titles for the chapters follow major emic themes stemming from the experience of the people under study. For example: "We don't wrap herring in a printed page"; "For an educated man, he could learn a few things"; "We fight to keep warm"; "Jewish comes up in you from the roots." This last title is most indicative of the spirit of the text-an attemptto use anthropologyas a viable, credibletool to reconstruct the sharedconceptions of common heritage that unite the authorwith her field. The lack of discrepancy between emic and etic is embeddedin the conceptual frameworkchosen by Myerhoff to analyze the plight of being old. Concepts of honor, worth, visibility, and aging well are employed to discuss the situation of the people in question and directly reflect their conceptions and worldviews by using their own terminology.

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Involvement and identification reach the limits of the anthropological license to the extent that Shmuel, Myerhoff's main informant, offers more detached, more objective personal observationsof the center membersthanthe anthropologist. However, his self-assessment as an informantmakes him reluctant to act in that capacity: "So you want me to be your native. No, that's flattering but not good," he said. "I am not typical. Get some of the others at the Center; I am not like them. I don't join clubs, I am not a Zionist, I do not believe in God. Find someone else" (Myerhoff 1978:8).8 Monograph as Context While Myerhoff closes her monograph with a highly personal epilogue, Doris Francis (1984) concludes her book with policy-making recommendations. Francis's book's title alone alludes to its referential scope, paraphrasing a well-known Beatles song: Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still Feed Me When I Am 84? In contrast to Myerhoff's biblical metaphor, "Number Our Days," Francis sets the analytic scene for her presentation by framing the semantic zone of her work, within which needs, dependency, support,and interaction are the chief coordinates. Indeed, the book purportsto compare the social supportnetworks of Jews residing in Cleveland, Ohio, to those of Jewish inhabitantsof sheltered housing in Leeds, England. The thesis advanced in this work maintains that the English Jews developed a strongersense of community and enjoyed better intergenerational links than their American contemporaries.The anthropologistemployed with sampling integratedresearchmethods, combining participant-observation and structured interviews. The of the techniques underpinnings inquiry seek to factors associated with interactional residential explore patterns, continuity and ties. The main the are of a kinship concepts guiding presentation middle-range type, verging on both emic and etic orientations-hence, the termsfriendship networks,community,role adjustment,and urbancontext. It is, indeed, the overall context-environmental, interactional, and intergenerational-that constitutes the research design and the ethnographic output produced in this monograph. The position of the author vis-a-vis the field is clearly stated in terms of methodology ratherthan in termsof personal involvement. Her presence in both localities is thus described as a process dominated and regulated by the constraintsand the requirementsof the study. Consistently using the term informants in reference to her research subjects, the anthropologist eliminates any hint of personal involvement in their lives. Initially having faced noncooperation and being surroundedby an air of suspicion, she briefly reports her introductionto the field: On the days that Social Securitychecks were deliveredand the elderly were certain to be home,I accompanied themailmen on theirroutesandwas introduced as a friend doing a researchproject about the neighbourhood and its older

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402 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY residents.For the next several months, I got to know people informallyand a surveyandsurveyinterviews.[Francis1984:10] conducted As the community becomes more accessible, the anthropologist continues to penetratethe social world of her informantsto the extent of accompanyingthem "to many activities" and also joining them for afternoon coffee at the local deli. "I often met informantswhile shopping or banking in the neighbourhoodwhere I also lived," she writes. "Theyin turnintroducedme to friends, neighboursand family members"(Francis 1984:10). This impersonal account presents participant-observationas a mere research tool that enables the anthropologistto gain a credible pictureof the field. Having discharged that methodological exposition, the authorgoes on to compose her text in a most dispassionate manneras a detailed, cogently systematic depiction of her two fields in accordancewith the main conceptual frameworks of adjustmentand networks.The seemingly vast potential of her participationin the lives of the people under study does not materialize in any textual form. Monograph as Syntax Devoid of any direct autobiographicaltouch is Hazan's (1980) monograph on the social life of elderly members of a Jewish day center in London. Ostensibly context-boundresearch,the monographis equipped with the panoply of a conventional field account, including ecological details, backgroundinformation, and delineation of social boundariesand interactionalpatterns.However, a closer look at the textualpresentationwould reveal a different analytic organization. The articulationof the argumentis concerned with a construct-timewhich under the circumstancesof that particularfield falls entirely into an etic category. Hence, the attemptto identify the temporal universe of the people at the center is neither a reflexive exercise nor a deciphermentof folk taxonomy. Rather,by employing propertiesof the context, the anthropologistelicits from the field materialparametersand criteriaenabling him to address a general humanistic issue.9 The text, therefore,lacks full-fledged descriptions of the main characters, and it does not provide systematic accounts of extended case studies. Rife with descriptive illustrations,the text fragments and reconstitutes the ethnographic presentto form a conceptualmodel of approachinga humanuniversal.In thatrespect, the conclusions reached in that work are amenable to extrapolationto other realities, not necessarily of a similar ethnographic substance. The position of the authoris dualistic, for his presence and voice are both entirely pertinent and highly impertinentto the monographic text. On the one hand, the nonrelativisticnatureof the argumentprecludes personalcommentary on what seems to be a nonspecific universal;on the other hand, it is this very assumption that encompasses the anthropologistand his research subjects within one indivisible mental universe. Hazan's solution to this dual commitmentis a brief rendition of the intellectual history leading toward the development of the concept of time in relation to the field. Here the author lends the text the well-

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THE ETHNOGRAPHER'S TEXTUALPRESENCE 403

defined aspect of his cognitive self, carefully excluding all other dimensions such as the emotional, the social, and the cultural. Conclusion The threetexts offer different approachesto positioning the field in the textual presentationof ethnography.Each perspective, by its own built-in rationale, commits the anthropologistto his or her self-exposure. It ranges, as we have seen, from a powerful injection of autobiographicalcontemplations andjustifications, through a methodologically conditioned personal commentary, to an impersonalapproach.It is interesting to note that, although the three examples cited are on more or less orthodox fieldwork, the reflections in the respective monographsvaried from personal reflexivity to neutrality. The question of the reasoning behind these choices is intriguing and could add to our knowledge of the interconnectionbetween autobiographyand ethnographic narration.As a preliminary proposition it could be argued that in the case of the study of aging and the aged, the basic attitudetoward the subject at handhas an impact on the decision as to which temporalmode-postfield, field, or prefield-the anthropologist should adopt in the construction of the text. It would seem that to view aging as a unique phenomenon, whose understanding requires the enlisting of personal resources and insights, would yield the first orientation.Considering old age as a practicalmatterof adjustmentand circumstances would produce the second orientation,whereas searchingfor a universal paradigmfor a majorexistential issue, which could be served by the case of aging, results in the third orientation.To examine this hypothesis one would have to conduct a cross-referential study of the writings of the anthropologists discussed on other subjects. This is beyond the scope, the capacity, and indeed the rationaleof this article. The autobiographicalmarkis herewith considered neither an anecdotal anthropological curiosity nor the core issue of ethnographicresearch. Rather,it is employed as a viable yardstick for the interdisciplinaryparadigmaticdistinctions. These divisions, which serve no other purpose than the epistemological recognition of anthropological patterns of knowledge, are structurallydevised and in that sense are divergent from metaphorically oriented approaches,10 as well as from field-ethnographerdialectical postulates.1 Each stance alludes to a differentframeof anthropologicalunderstandingand thus calls for an interpretative code of relevant rules on its own terms. Notes
1. The three cases are based on three anthropological field studies. The first was carried out in an Israeli renewal project neighborhood during 1981-83 (see Hazan 1990). The second is based on research in an Israeli old-age home (see Hazan 1980) and the third is based on data collected in Cambridgeduring 1984-85. 2. The analogy recently drawn between anthropological accounts and literary writing has given rise to the trend of "new ethnography"whose advocates (see, for example, Clifford 1983, 1986; Clifford and Marcus 1986; Fiske and Shweder 1986)

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concentrate on the literary qualities of the text, thereby falling under what Nugent calls "textualism" (Nugent 1988; see also Fernandez 1985; Marcus and Cushman 1983; Shweder 1986). 3. This approach is largely attuned to the epistemological debate concerning the organization of tacit knowledge (see, for example, Harre 1977 and Salamone 1979). Various attempts have been made to reconsider the relations between specific anthropologists and their works. Kirschner(1987) and Caplan(1988) use this autobiographical approach to reflect on the influence of identities, especially engendered ones, on ethnographic knowledge. Geertz (1988) uses it to describe, in a more impressionist manner, the connection between "works"and "lives," while Strathern(1987) suggests that anthropological narrativesare basically autobiographicaland thus always historically situated. 4. Such attempts to search for a deductive method of inference are inherent in a variety of theoretical approaches from evolutionism, through extreme versions of functionalism, to structuralism.The Batesonian theory of schismogenesis and its derivatives could also be consideredto fall underthatcategory. For an articulatediscussion of intellectual manifestations of anthropologicalschools of thought, see Shweder 1984. 5. Of the abundantworks on reflexivity, Babcock's (1980) analysis of the term is probably the most succinct and conceptually lucid. For more recent, postmodern discussions on reflexivity as an ethnographiccondition and predicament,see Tyler 1987 and Clifford 1988. 6. For a discussion of the dialectics between experience-near concepts and experience-distant concepts in anthropologicaldiscourse, see Geertz 1979. 7. For an overview, see Simic 1979. On the general notion of the rhetoric of anthropological holism, see Thornton 1988. 8. It is importantto note that it is not the subject matter (i.e., life histories) that engenders autobiographicalcommentary. Kaufman's (1986) work, for example, deals with similar data, but in a conceptually disciplined fashion and with considerable personal distance. 9. Two more examples of this explanatory model are Handelman's (1977) work on encounters and play among the aged and Gubrium's (1986) analysis of old-agerelated professional categories of senility. 10. See for example Kline-Taylor's (1985) analysis of the element of "understanding" in anthropological models. 11. This alludes to a long-standingdebate concerning the paradoxes and dilemmas involved in the relationship between field and ethnographer.See, for example, Murphy 1971; Jarvie 1975; and Fabian 1983. For a discussion of the problematic relations between the ethnographerand his fieldnotes, see Jackson 1990 and Sanjek 1990, as well as the special issue of the Journal of ContemporaryEthnography (Van Maanen et al. 1990) dedicated to ethnographicresearch writing.

References Cited Babcock, Barbara 1980 Reflexivity: Definition and Discrimination. Semiotica 30(1-2): 1-14. Caplan,Patricia 1988 Engendering Knowledge: The Politics of Ethnography.Anthropology Today 4(6):14-17.

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PRESENCE 405 THE ETHNOGRAPHER'S TEXTUAL

Clifford,James 1983 On EthnographicAuthority. Representations l(spring): 118-146. 1986 On Ethnographic Allegory. In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. James Clifford and George Marcus, eds. Pp. 98-121. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1988 The Predicamentof Culture. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press. Clifford,James,and George Marcus,eds. 1986 Writing Culture:The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography.Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress. Fabian,Johannes 1983 Time and the Other:How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press. Fernandez,James 1985 Exploded Worlds: Text as a Metaphor for Ethnography (and Vice Versa). Dialectical Anthropology 10(1-2): 15-26. Fiske, Donald, andRichardShweder,eds. 1986 Metatheory in Social Sciences: Pluralisms and Subjectivities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Francis,Doris 1984 Will You Still Need Jle, Will You Still Feed Me When I Am 84? Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press. Geertz, Clifford 1979 From the Native's Point of View: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding.In InterpretiveSocial Science: A Reader. Paul Rabinow and William M. Sullivan, eds. Pp. 225-241. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1988 Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford:Stanford University Press. Gubrium,JaberF. 1986 Oldtimers and Alzheimers: The Descriptive Organizationof Senility. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Handelman,Don 1977 Work and Play Among the Aged. Amsterdam:Van-Gorcum. Harre,Rom 1977 The Structureof Tacit Knowledge. Journalof the British Society of Phenomenology 8(2): 172-177. Hazan, Haim 1980 The Limbo People: A Study of the Constitution of the Time Universe among the Aged. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1990 A Paradoxical Community. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Jackson,Jean 1990 Deja Entendu:The Liminal Qualities of Anthropological Fieldnotes. Journal of ContemporaryEthnography 19(1):8-43. Jarvie,Ian C. 1975 Epistle to the Anthropologists. American Anthropologist 77(2):253-266. Kaufman,Sharon 1986 The Ageless Self: Sources of Meaning in Later Life. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

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