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Important to Whom? On Ethnographic Usefulness, Competence and Relevance Glenn Petersen

This paper portrays critical ethnography in the sense that it explores ethnography’s

relationships with the larger world in which it is embedded, rather than critiquing

methodological or theoretical issues internal to its practice. 1

My approach is

autobiographical: I aim at what troubles me about anthropology, both as it

constitutes a way of confronting the world and as a profession; and I conceptualise

the ties that link anthropology and public life through my own experiences as an

anthropologist and citizen.

The Public’s Grasp of Contemporary Anthropology

In order to convey some sense of the public’s grasp of just what anthropologists are

up to, I begin at the intersection of anthropology’s most recent public ethical

controversy—the challenge to Napoleon Chagnon’s work on the Yanomami—with

the first professional controversy I personally experienced, which was in 1971 when

the American Anthropological Association (AAA) was in turmoil over the question of

American anthropologists aiding the US military in Southeast Asia. 2

In his review of

Tierney’s Darkness in El Dorado (Washington Post 10 December 2000), the work that

sparked the Yanomami controversy, Marshall Sahlins refers repeatedly to the war in

Vietnam, alluding more and less directly not merely to the similar jungle settings in

Southeast Asia and South America, but also to the services that science renders war,

via the West’s ‘arrogant perceptions of the weaker peoples as instrumental means of

the global projects of the stronger. In the human sciences, the war persists in an

obsessive search for power in every nook and cranny of our society and history.’ 3

My interest in the Chagnon episode is in the way the public understands

anthropology, which is most directly observed in the popular press. The press treats

any issue as if it is novel and thus ipso facto news. Time magazine reports that,

‘Scientists fear the Yanomami controversy could tarnish the reputation of

anthropological research at a time when indigenous peoples are asserting their

Correspondence to: Glenn Petersen, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Bernard Baruch College, City

University of New York, 1 Bernard Baruch Way, New York, NY 10010, USA. Email: [email protected]

Anthropological Forum Vol. 15, No. 3, November 2005, 307–317

ISSN 0066-4677 print/1469-2902 online # 2005 Discipline of Anthropology and Sociology, The University of Western Australia DOI: 10.1080/00664670500282022

rights to restrict foreign scholars’ (Roosevelt 2000, 77–78). The Chronicle of Higher

Education spins it similarly: an article headlined ‘Scholars Fear that Alleged Misdeeds

by Amazon Anthropologists will Taint Entire Discipline’ claims that: ‘Some scholars

are worried that the allegations will make it harder for all cultural anthropologists

who do fieldwork to persuade their subjects and the public that they are responsible,

objective, and trustworthy’ (Miller 2000, A14). Looming above a piece describing

anthropologists as constituting ‘one of the most bellicose tribes on earth’ and riven by

disputes tending toward ‘blood feuds’, the New York Times headline proclaims

‘Anthropology Enters the Age of Cannibalism’ (Zalewski 2000, 4). In Science, we learn

that the controversy ‘has prompted a fierce firefight, but so far little soul-searching’

(Mann 2000, 416).

Perhaps the most striking of these accounts comes from John Noble Wilford’s

coverage of the AAA meetings in San Francisco, headlined ‘Book Leads

Anthropologists to Look Inward’. Wilford, a New York Times science writer who

regularly covers anthropological topics, reports that, ‘anthropologists have taken the

first step to re-examine their own culture, the way they delve into the mores of other

cultures’ (Wilford 2000, A19; my emphasis).

The Chagnon affair inclines me to believe that, whatever it is that ethnography is

or has become, it is understood poorly, if at all, by the public. The message I

repeatedly find in reports and editors’ headlines is that anthropologists have not been

especially concerned about what happens to the people we study.

An Autobiographical Detour

I feel as though I have been waiting for more than 25 years to be on the receiving end

of a professional critique, or to find that my work in some way has been put to use

against the people among whom I do my ethnography.

At some stage in my undergraduate days, I began to imagine that not only would

anthropology provide me with a morally rewarding means of earning a living, but

also that I might do something useful with it. I also recall the powerful impact of Vine

Deloria’s criticisms of anthropology in Custer died for your sins (1969). He was

excoriating in his portrayal of anthropology’s dealings with American Indians. It

strikes me now that his work did not deter me from believing anthropology could be

of use to the world.

In Marvin Harris’s graduate course on the history of anthropological theory, I

wrote a paper that was critical of the work of American anthropologists in Micronesia

during the years immediately following World War II and, shortly thereafter, I

decided to do dissertation work in Micronesia. My recent survey of political

anthropology in Micronesia (Petersen 1999a) is in part an attempt to put that early

hostility toward Micronesianist anthropology into better perspective. I am aware that

I have long expected something similar to happen to me, that is, that I will in turn be

subject to intense criticism from younger anthropologists or others committed to

political issues in Micronesia or to other political projects. This has not happened,

308 Anthropological Forum

and I think one of the reasons I am writing this now is an attempt to understand why

I have not been critiqued on these grounds.

The link between Sahlins’s evocation of the Vietnam conflict and the Chagnon

affair resonates here. Over the years, but especially in my early years of study in

Micronesia, I have worried about having my ethnographic work abused. At the outset

of my graduate studies I learned that a monograph on Vietnamese Montagnards by

Georges Condominas (1977) was used by the US military, much to Condominas’s

outrage; I was thus aware that if one worked on a sensitive topic one had to be

attuned to the possible misuses to which one’s work might be placed. A large portion

of what I have done has focused on questions of contemporary Micronesia’s political

status. 4

During the years of difficult negotiations with the USA, I feared that the US

negotiating team might misappropriate some of my reports and analyses. I have

never been accused of spying for the USA, and only occasionally have Micronesians

alluded to the possibility that I might be. I had been investigated, though, by the FBI

for my anti-war activities at Columbia, and had spent time at the Soviet Union’s

United Nations embassy (as well as with UN representatives from other countries

who were involved in trusteeship issues), so I knew that some branch of the US

government’s intelligence-gathering operations was at least aware of my actions.

The initial memorandum circulated by Turner and Sponsel regarding allegations

about Chagnon’s impact upon the Yanomami evoked my own misgivings about

misuse of anthropological data. It also referred to a debate scheduled for the

forthcoming AAA meetings. My immediate reaction was to recall an analogous

episode at my first AAA meeting in 1971. This incident shaped my own attitude

toward anthropology, and involved two of the anthropologists who most shaped my

career in anthropology.

While I initially took up anthropology in order to return to the Pacific islands I

had fallen in love with while I was in the military, I made my decision to work in

Micronesia specifically in order to engage with and challenge the American colonial

presence there. I was both struggling with the guilt of having fought in a colonial war

and seeking to expiate it through some form of political action. The 1971 AAA

incident led me to believe that anthropology was compatible with my attempts to

resolve these issues.

I was at that time engaged in a range of anti-war activities in New York and

Washington. I was also active in the advocacy group, Friends of Micronesia, and

lobbied among delegates to the UN Trusteeship Council for Micronesian self-

determination. It seems fair to say that my interest in Micronesia was from the outset

thoroughly embedded in the larger framework of my opposition to American

imperialism. It is in this context, then, that my experience of the AAA controversy

over the covert services of anthropologists in Vietnam shaped my outlook on the

profession.

These events represented the culmination of a short, intense flare-up of questions

about anthropological ethics, recounted in Eric Wakin’s Anthropology goes to war

(1992). Put succinctly, some surreptitiously obtained documents implicating social

Important to Whom? 309

scientists, including anthropologists, in covert studies in Southeast Asia in

conjunction with American military and intelligence operations there were forwarded

to Eric Wolf, chair of the AAA’s Ethics Committee, who invited those implicated to

explain themselves. Instead, these individuals proposed that the Ethics Committee be

rebuked for trafficking in stolen documents. The Association established an ad hoc

committee headed by Margaret Mead to consider the matter.

At the plenary business meeting of the AAA meetings, Mead reported on her

committee’s conclusions, excusing those who were accused of working with the

military and chastising Wolf for dealing with the purloined papers. An open debate

ensued, during which it became clear that a substantial majority of those present

repudiated Mead’s report and its conclusions, asserting instead that professional

anthropologists were responsible first to the people they study, and should not work

for a military power engaged in hostilities against them.

For me it was a turning point. Despite my misgivings about anthropologists who

had worked for the US military administration in Micronesia in the years following

World War II, this episode convinced me that anthropology was largely committed

to an anti-colonialist perspective. It meant that I could practise anthropology as part

of a commitment to opposing imperial authority. I have maintained this outlook, as

has the discipline, ever since. My sense of the larger sweep of anthropological ethics

intersected with my personal experiences and transfixed those events into my deeply

felt attitudes toward anthropology.

In 1972, I had a more direct dispute with Mead at the AAA meetings in Toronto.

She was discussant for a panel on recent ethnographic work in Tonga and Samoa; an

Islander complained about the session’s lack of relevance to current political issues,

and I joined the skirmish. Mead rebuked us both for what she insisted was our

naiveté. Shortly thereafter, she became a member of my doctoral committee, and

despite my distaste for her part in the two episodes discussed above, I came to respect

her practical sensibilities regarding the human aspects of fieldwork; she gave me good

advice.

Eric Wolf and I came to have adjoining offices at the City University of New York’s

Graduate Center, and we spoke of our episodes with Mead and other related topics

over the course of two decades—he was one of my two or three key role models in

anthropology.

I began my dissertation field research in Micronesia in 1974 and my first

publication was on the 1975 referendum on Micronesia’s political status, held while

the first Micronesian Constitutional Convention (ConCon) was underway in Saipan.

Entitled ‘What do we do now that we have voted to be independent’, it appeared in

the Micronesian Independent (10 August 1975), a small newspaper published in

Majuro. I analysed in detail the vote in what was then Ponape District, demonstrating

that the ethnic Pohnpeians with whom I worked voted two-to-one for independence,

and, in doing so, made it clear that they were uninterested in any other political

relationship with the USA. This piece was widely discussed among the ConCon

delegates. Because the US government closely monitored the Trust Territory and was

310 Anthropological Forum

attempting to influence the outcome of the ConCon, I assumed that the US

negotiating team was assessing my reports. I was ambivalent about this, wanting the

USA to know how Pohnpeians perceived the situation, while also fearing that this

knowledge would be used to their detriment.

At a 1993 conference on the history of American anthropology in Micronesia

(Kiste and Marshall 1999), Felix Moos, who appears to have been the only

anthropologist serving on the US negotiating team, asserted that there had been no

indigenous interest in Micronesian independence, only that of outside agitators such

as Thomas Gladwin at the University of Hawai‘i. In the course of the discussion, I

cited my 1975 article detailing the extent and intensity of Pohnpeian desire for

independence from the USA. ‘Didn’t the committee read that?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ said

Moos, ‘we read it, but we didn’t believe it’—so much for my fears and doubts.

Misunderstanding ‘Ethnographic Authority’

Over the years, I have found repeatedly that, outside anthropology, ‘ethnography’ has

come to mean no more than writing about a place one has visited. Why should this

be so? The responsibility, I think, lies at least in part with James Clifford (1988), and

with the work of Clifford Geertz (1973) and the volumes edited by Clifford and

Marcus (1986) and Marcus and Fischer (1986).

In The predicament of culture’s opening essay, ‘On Ethnographic Authority’,

Clifford (1988, 22; his ellipsis) writes: ‘the predominant mode of modern fieldwork

authority is signaled: ‘‘You are there … because I was there’’’. This might otherwise

be rendered as ‘I was there, so I know’, which has in turn come to be widely

misunderstood to mean that ‘ethnographic authority’ is essentially produced by

writing about a place to which one has been. In turn, all that is necessary to produce

or do ethnography is writing from personal observation. 5

I believe, however, that ethnography is, at least to anthropologists, an inherently

critical activity. When trying to explain what anthropologists mean by ethnography, I

find myself using the concept of struggle: the ongoing struggle between trying to see

what is actually happening and trying to put it into an interpretive framework; the

struggle, once one has arrived at tentative conclusions or hypotheses, to continue

paying attention to what is actually going on; and the struggle between seeing

patterns of social behaviour and not losing sight of individual actors engaged in living

their own lives. 6

Crucial to these processes of struggle is the willingness to tolerate

them; to cultivate an ability to appreciate tensions between the different aspects of

raw observation and interpretation, between individual action and collective patterns;

and to recognise that a successful attempt to reconcile the contradictions does not

reconcile them away, but is progress toward an appreciation of how the countervailing

forces and tendencies within societies work to preserve the whole. We must maintain,

not resolve, the tension between all these poles.

The Chagnon affair tells us that the public, at least in the guise of the press, does

not understand that ethnographers are inherently critical in their awareness of what

Important to Whom? 311

sorts of relations they have with the people among whom they study. Apparently,

fellow scholars do not understand that ethnography is inherently critical in its work,

that is, in the gathering, interpretation and use of data. Why is this so? Perhaps we are

not as critical as we think we are. Or maybe the way we do things is obscuring what it

is we are doing. Or is something else going on here?

On the Uses of Ethnography

For some time, I have been torn by my contrasting senses of ethnography’s use to me

in the classroom and its irrelevance elsewhere. My own work as an ethnographer

makes it possible for me to teach about what it means to be human in a way that no

other knowledge or experience does, but I also find myself asking a larger question

about ethnography: to whom is it important, if indeed it is important at all, and why?

By ‘important’, I mean in this context both useful to someone or some project and

recognised as useful. To be useful, it must also be recognised as being of good quality.

For me, the degree and kind of importance in each of these realms is continually

changing, both separately and in relation to each other. When I first left for Pohnpei,

my interests lay in some rather narrowly defined aspects of social and political

economic theory, and I was taken aback when Robert Murphy told me that I should

first do good ethnography. Now, 30 years later, I am proudest of the quality of my

ethnography. Being a good ethnographer, then, is important to me. Nevertheless, is it

important to anyone else?

It often seemed to me that its primary, if not only, relevance was to my

performance as a classroom teacher. Eventually, however, a change came about as I

added courses in international affairs and political geography to my anthropology. A

few years ago, I drew upon these other fields to prepare and present a paper on

strategic location and sovereignty in Micronesia at the meetings of the Association of

American Geographers. The positive reception I received led me to develop and

publish this paper (Petersen 1999b). Not too long after I gave copies to Micronesian

leaders, I was appointed as a member of the Federated States of Micronesia’s

Permanent Mission to the United Nations, and finally found a use for my

ethnography.

Since Micronesians know about Micronesia, they have neither need for nor much

interest in my ethnography; they already know about themselves, to put it simply.

They can make use of outside expertise, however, and, to the extent that I want to be

useful to them, I have to do something other than anthropology. Moreover, because I

was able to serve them in the context of international politics, I was able, at last, to

begin doing something that matters.

As I have come to value my own ethnography, I simultaneously have had to

recognise that any practical importance to be found in what I do would seem also to

derive from not doing ethnography. This conundrum first provoked me to undertake

this paper. Moreover, I am inclined to believe that this may be an element of what

currently afflicts anthropology as a whole. It also occurs to me that it is ethnographic

312 Anthropological Forum

competence (as opposed to authority) that enables me and us to move on to other

realms, that is, it may take a very long time to ground ourselves sufficiently in

ethnography to move on to other realms. My position representing Micronesia at the

United Nations required my familiarity with Micronesia, a familiarity I gained

because of my ethnographic work.

On Ethnographic Competence

Ethnographic authority implies that a reader unfamiliar with a body of material can

rely upon the authority of the writer for assurance that the text provides an accurate

depiction. However, this is almost entirely a matter of literary context. To use

ethnography for more practical or mundane purposes requires a different sense of

accuracy, one that provides some assurances that policies can be based upon what is

recounted with some certitude. I call this ethnographic competence.

Though Clifford quotes Malinowski’s own related usage, I think we may

reasonably take Clifford (1988) as the ur-text from which notions of ethnographic

authority might derive. First, Clifford discusses the efforts of early twentieth-century

anthropologists to distinguish their work from that of their predecessors, the ‘men-

on-the-spot’—traders, missionaries, soldiers and administrators—whose writings

represented the locus of authority for the exotic locales from which these individuals

reported. Second, Clifford (1988, 35, 37) stresses the crucial importance of the

fieldwork experience; the participant observation method produced ‘experiential

authority’, and this in turn ‘served as an effective guarantee of ethnographic

authority’. However, for ethnography to be of practical rather than of theoretical or

literary use, the method itself is only of marginal importance. For the people among

whom ethnographers work, it is the degree to which this knowledge is useful and

accurate that is at issue, not how it was acquired. It is common for a population to

have hosted multiple anthropologists, all or most of whom engaged in some

recognisable form of participant observation. Yet only a few are recognised as having

learned enough to achieve what the concerned local leaders would deem competence.

What is more, in the course of living in a community, the ethnographer is continually

demonstrating what manner of person he or she is. The simple fact is that participant

observation, as the Chagnon case has shown us, does not necessarily result in the local

population developing respect for the ethnographer. The ethnographic experience is

not sufficient.

It seems as though the experience that is celebrated as ethnographic authority is

simply being present and spending some time in a place. The content and the validity

of what is being transmitted do not appear to be at issue. It is in the processes of

writing and reading that ethnographic authority seems to take shape. One’s

reputation as an ethnographer comes, with a few exceptions, from those who know

little or nothing of the place or the people, that is, not from those who are judging the

degree to which the written work reflects real conditions, but who judge it instead in

terms of how it stimulates them or animates their imaginations. A writer’s authority

Important to Whom? 313

is a product not of how well he or she represents what is actually there, but of how

effectively he or she communicates to readers a sense of what it is like there. Having

been there is thus necessary, but what one did or learned there seems to run second to

the simple fact that one was there.

Ethnographic authority, then, seems to refer much more to a relationship between

the ethnographer and the reading or scholarly public, rather than to a relationship

between the ethnographer and the data. More important, it has little to do with a

relationship between the ethnographer and the people among whom he or she works.

In other words, there does not seem to be a relationship between the accuracy of an

ethnographer’s work and the respect that readers have for either the ethnographer or

the work.

By ethnographic competence, on the other hand, I refer to evaluations made either

by the people among whom the ethnographer works, or by those who must make

practical use of the ethnographer’s data in their own work. The crucial difference in

this case is between being recognised as competent by the people in the community

where one works and by outsiders who make and/or implement policies that affect

the community.

To be more explicit, there are degrees of competence in the range of contexts or

areas of knowledge. In addition, there are differences between possessing accurate

knowledge and being able to communicate that knowledge effectively.

As I understand my own case, specifically in the context of helping to represent the

Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) at the United Nations, my ethnographic

competence derives from the conjunction of three trajectories. More than 30 years of

off-and-on living with the same family in the Pohnpeian community gives me an

intimate perspective on the lives of a specific group of people. First-hand study of two

Micronesian plebiscites and two constitutional conventions, detailed archival work,

and steady research with the FSM national government provide me with perspectives

on a wider range of Micronesian concerns. Finally, years of advocacy work at the

United Nations and in Washington, DC, as well as archival work in both arenas, give

me a sense of Micronesia’s global situation. Competence requires awareness of a

diversity of outlooks, opinions and desires among Micronesians; knowing just one

village or one island is insufficient.

Moreover, one has to learn how to use knowledge properly, to act and speak

without bluster or force. One must understand that in Micronesia many public goals

cannot be accomplished if they are undertaken in public view; subtlety is a necessary

accessory of honesty, and nuance is as important as skill. It is important to recognise

that the Micronesian states must exist and function on essentially the same level as

the other international entities with whom they deal; yet their actions must

simultaneously reflect local-level political cultures and structures. This calls for a

complex sociopolitical calculus, and formulaic answers are not adequate.

Ethnographic competence confers an ability to envision many problems before they

arise; it does not grant the wisdom to prevent them, but sometimes enables us to find

workable solutions.

314 Anthropological Forum

I would like to think I understand local sensibilities enough not to offend

Micronesians while representing them as we pursue legal and political safeguards,

seek development funds or forge alliances. This means taking into account differences

and tensions between households and lineages, between lineages and local

chieftainships, between local chieftainships and paramount chieftainships, between

paramount chieftainships and an island as a whole, between individual island

populations and island groups or archipelagos, among the many different regions

and/or states of the FSM, or among the various distinct political entities that

constitute modern Micronesia.

While recognising the salience of disagreements among different communities, I

must also know what unites people, for example, respect behaviours, economic

redistribution and prevention of the alienation of land. I must know how to navigate

among contradictions that typify local social dynamics, such as the tensions that link

hierarchy and equality. Ethnographic competence lies at least partly in understanding

when and among whom, for example, hierarchy trumps equality, or who is interested

in the possibility of making land a commodity and who is opposed, and in what

specific contexts these positions are most likely to be enunciated or diminished. At

another more inclusive level, it lies in having a sense of how to show respect for the

authority of the USA without being cowed by it. This, in turn, depends on my grasp

of traditional balances of and oppositions between hierarchy and equality.

Conclusion

Cultures are defined at least partially by their internal disagreements and

discrepancies, even while the social lives of very different peoples tend in many

ways to be quite similar. Much of the importance of ethnography lies in the duty to

state repeatedly, based on each ethnographer’s own data, that we are all

simultaneously the same and different. This idea needs constant reaffirmation and,

more to the point, renewal. Competent ethnography promotes both.

I see in ethnography an inherent tension between our desire to go somewhere else,

to learn about and from those who are different, and our equal desire to come back

and celebrate those people. A notion of ‘the other’ is, after all, a good thing, for this

otherness gets us out there in the first place, so that we can come back and tell folks at

home not only about the differences, which are interesting, but the similarities, which

can, under the best of circumstances, promote a degree of international peace and

harmony.

Let me close with several questions. Many anthropologists have an entirely

ambivalent relationship with the exotic, but does cultural studies—to name what

seems to be the primary alternative to anthropology—have a better or different way

of dealing with this? My professional chauvinism distorts my views, but I have not

seen that cultural studies provide us with any advance. Moreover, the literary/cultural

studies nexus misunderstands the nature of ethnography, a point to which I now

return.

Important to Whom? 315

As I have worked on this project—first as a conference paper and then as an

article—I learned of the deaths of Damian and Iulihda Primo, in whose house I have

lived while on Pohnpei. This prompts me to ask: To what extent do I know life on

Pohnpei through their eyes? Living on their land, participating in community events

as a member of their family and lineage, numbering many of their family members

among my closest island friends and acquaintances, I find my entire outlook on

Pohnpei shaped by this very specific context. I am not entirely certain that I can say I

know life on Pohnpei as it is lived on a daily basis in any way that is distinct from my

embedded position on the house-plot Peiare and the farmstead Otoi, or with its

lineage of the Under-the-Breadfruit-Tree-Clan (Dipwenpahnmei). I cannot imagine

that I could have gained a better look at, or insight into, life there in some manner

other than living with a family.

One profound difference between ethnography and cultural studies is this: an

ethnographer knows something about life in the relevant community as individuals

experienced it, and thus knows something about the effect of cultural contradictions

on their lives—in terms of how they report upon experiencing their lives. In trying to

deal with reality as a text (as in cultural studies) there is ample opportunity to explore

complexity, but it does not seem possible to gain insight into how those complexities

shape actual lives, or are experienced by people in daily life.

From Iuli’s stream-of-consciousness accounts of her life and of the lives of her

family and neighbours and Damian’s deep philosophical insights, I now know

something of how specific persons experience life on Pohnpei. It is not much,

perhaps, but I can claim that, at the level of one human being to another, I have

shared some pieces of their existence. My communicating about life on Pohnpei,

whether in the classroom or through publications, is important because Iuli and

Damian, and Dorip and Lukas and Adeli (all of whom have died in recent years),

took the time and care to share their lives with me. I can best repay them and show

my respect by communicating what they thought I should know. 7

Where does this leave me? First, it was that anthropology was important to me.

Then it was that my anthropology should be important to Pohnpeians and the

scholarly community. In time, I cared increasingly that it be important to the world,

and I now can see that it is of importance: to my students and to Pohnpeians via the

United Nations and international community. It has always been important to me, but

now it seems increasingly so. Is this enough? I do not know—and that is why I write.

Notes

[1] The version of this paper that appears here is considerably less than half the length of the

version I first presented at the conference on Critical Ethnography. I thank Michèle Dominy

for the hardheaded, tender-hearted editing that pared it down to size.

[2] In the fall of 2000 Patrick Tierney published Darkness in El Dorado, a journalistic account of

work by the geneticist James Neel and the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon among the

Yanomami of Venezuela. Tierney reported significant abuses by Neel and Chagnon;

widespread indignation within anthropology concerning these was met by spirited rebuttals.

Borofsky (2005) provides an in-depth review of this controversy.

316 Anthropological Forum

[3] Sahlins was among the anthropologists at the University of Michigan who helped to organise

one of the first teach-ins on the Vietnam War and worked with Eric Wolf in the course of the

AAA’s struggle over this question (an incident I discuss below); his evocation of the war

should not be taken lightly.

[4] The Micronesian islands had been under Japanese rule, and became the US Trust Territory of

the Pacific Islands after World War II. The USA sought to annex the islands permanently, but

Micronesian leaders negotiated for self-government throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The

various island groups ultimately entered into separate relationships termed ‘free association’

with the USA and joined the United Nations in the 1990s.

[5] This viewpoint actually misinterprets what Clifford says about the rise of ethnography as a

cornerstone of anthropology.

[6] Clifford (1988, 28; his emphasis) speaks of ‘the tension between ethnography and

anthropology’. I assume that his notion of tension is much the same as my sense of struggle.

[7] I have always wanted to speak, not for Micronesians, but to report on what they say. Charles

Lindholm (1995, 272), in an entry on Clifford Geertz in A companion to American thought,

says Geertz ‘has painted the anthropologist, and especially himself, as an artist of culture,

[but] most practitioners still consider it their job to help their subjects to speak, not speak for

them’. I would qualify this: my intention is not to help Micronesians to speak—they tend to

be as articulate as any other people—but to try to promulgate what they say to those not likely

otherwise to hear them.

References

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