Final Exam Paper

Social Analysis, Volume 53, Issue 2, Summer 2009, 177–190 © Berghahn Journals doi:10.3167/sa.2009.530211

EvidEncE in Socio-cultural anthropology Limits and Options for Epistemological Orientations

Andre Gingrich

Abstract: This article identifies what Sir Edmund Leach once called ‘amongitis’ as one of socio-cultural anthropology’s major problems that make interdisciplinary dialogues on evidence-based epistemological top- ics difficult. Topics of wider and larger scale, however, can and should be addressed if anthropology brings out more fully its implicit epistemologi- cal strength of a dialogical relationship between objectivism and subjec- tivism. The current conditions of a globalizing world actually transform this possibility into a necessity. In order to face this need, a new realism is proposed that is capable of dealing with the conditions and challenges of a second modernity. Two ranges of epistemological sources are sug- gested that may inform such a new realism. One range is based in the traditions of Western philosophy, while the other is rooted outside the secularized or theological legacies of monotheism.

Keywords: evidence, new realism, objectivism, particularism, second modernity, skepticism, subjectivism

Any assessment of the epistemological basis for socio-cultural anthropology and ethnography requires a consideration of the nature of evidence in these fields (Engelke 2008). What assumptions prevail with regard to evidence, and what can we say about corresponding practices? In the first section of this article, I approach these questions by summarizing briefly the differences of relevant legacies in some neighboring disciplines. As we will see, I believe that socio-cultural anthropology’s dialogical, fieldwork-based orientation places it in a unique position to overcome a subjectivist-objectivist dichotomy that pre- vails in some of these related fields. In the article’s second section, I examine several specific epistemological legacies of socio-cultural anthropology that have been actively engaged in this dialogical enterprise during recent decades.

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This leads me to identify some of the challenges of what has been called a ‘second modernity’, which we are said to be about to enter. In the third and final section, I inquire about the epistemological and evidence-related contents of the challenges imposed upon us by this second modernity and explore the available options for reinvigorating our epistemological skills.

Leaving ‘Amongitis’ Behind

Most authors who deal with the subject will agree that epistemology is con- cerned with human knowledge—with its conditions, its possibilities, and its limits. In the present context I thus focus on the conditions, the possibilities, and the limits of ethnographic and anthropological knowledge. Unavoidably, this involves answers to questions such as “knowledge about what, and about whom?” Here is where the notion of evidence enters our discussion, either implicitly or explicitly. Epistemological implications can and should be consid- ered from various other angles as well, but addressing them through a perspec- tive on evidence helps to emphasize the empirical foundations of socio-cultural anthropology. In one way or another, the discipline has always been embedded in ethnographic fieldwork and rooted in ethnography. For this very reason, it is clear what kind of evidence is most important to ethnography and, by implica- tion, to socio-cultural anthropology: the ‘particular’ case. We teach with it and about it. We use and interpret it for our publications. Our field notes, field dia- ries, interview recordings, visual documentation, and so on, relate to the unique cases that most of us study. These field-based materials are informed and prear- ranged by the researcher’s curiosity and research interests. They are elaborated on the basis of intersubjective fieldwork interactions, and, ideally, they also are stored and maintained in ways that keep them accessible for intersubjective assessments by other members of the research community. Because our field- based evidence relates to particular cases, I call it ‘micro-evidence’.

Since our usual micro-evidence relates to the particular, we often hesitate when colleagues from other disciplines—historians or archeologists, linguists or economists, biologists or medical scholars—ask us what kind of evidence socio-cultural anthropology might have to offer regarding this or that kind of problem that they are investigating. I see two main sets of underlying reasons for our caution.

The first set of reasons has to do with our reluctance to communicate the kind of ‘macro-evidence’ that is often expected from us by colleagues in other fields. We usually prefer to offer particular examples, which may or may not confirm those colleagues’ questions. Edmund Leach (1962) once jokingly remarked that most socio-cultural anthropologists suffer from a contagious dis- ease that he called ‘Amongitis’—that is, our tendency to answer macro-ques- tions from others by replying that “among the Nuer” (or “among the Kachin” or “among the so-and-so”), things are organized in this or that way. ‘Amongitis’, of course, is a nickname for implicit particularism and, at the same time, for implicit Popperianism. The implicit logic behind this attitude would argue that

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either there are, perhaps, no universals at all—which is implicit particular- ism—or if there are any plausible theories about universals, then one negative example is enough to falsify them—which corresponds to Popper’s methodol- ogy of critical rationalism. (I shall continue to use the term ‘Popperianism’ as a shorthand reference to this specific version of neo-positivism, which is particu- larly popular among natural science theorists in the tradition of Sir Karl Popper and among anthropologists inspired by the work of Ernest Gellner.)

Because of socio-cultural anthropologists’ well-known reluctance to answer questions about macro-evidence in any other way than by referring to particu- lar examples, we have gained the increasingly problematic reputation of deliv- ering no evidence at all. A scholarly discipline runs into the danger of under- mining its own standing if it remains careless about such a reputation—that is, if it communicates nothing but particular cases. The danger increases in an era when humanity is facing global problems and challenges, and while anthro- pology continues to claim expertise about human diversity and the human condition at large. I have argued elsewhere (Gingrich and Fox 2002) that, to a certain extent, new forms of anthropological comparison might be one way to improve our skills in processing micro-evidence toward the formulation of conceptualizations and theories along an intermediate scale or range. These ‘medium-range’ methodological operations, it was pointed out, are based pri- marily upon qualitative and comparative assessments. This is why they have very little in common with the sociological tradition of medium-range theories in the legacy of Robert Merton and others, but share the social science tradition of ‘grounded theory’ approaches.

These medium-range conceptualizations and empirically saturated hypoth- eses are thus related to groups of cases that we might label ‘meso-evidence’. As in the case of micro-evidence, the identification, choice, and arrangement of meso-evidence is also informed by the researcher’s—or the research team’s— interests, questions, or hypotheses. Meso-evidence introduces additional levels of abstraction into the particular examples of micro-evidence, thereby trans- forming it toward a level of interpreted abstraction that allows comparability. These processes of excluding and including medium ranges of circumstances and classes (or sets) of examples thus define the empirical basis for the elabo- ration of medium-range concepts and theories.

Later in this article, I follow João de Pina-Cabral (this volume) by arguing that the time also seems right for addressing in new ways, and in a number of carefully selected fields, the question of socio-cultural universals, or what could be called macro-evidence. Again, macro-evidence is created along with the questions we pose (see also Hastrup 2004). Processing new forms of meso- and macro-evidence, on the basis of our existing expertise in micro-evidence, not only would enhance our potential for communicating with other academic fields, but also could improve our reputation. More importantly, addressing meso- and macro-evidence in careful and self-reflexive ways would also substantiate our own discipline’s theorizing, which has not exactly been thriving in recent years.

In addition to ‘Amongitis’, or what I have called our implicit particularism and implicit Popperianism, our continuing reluctance to communicate about

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meso- and macro-evidence across disciplinary boundaries also has to do with a second set of factors. Implicit particularism and implicit Popperianism are safe because they are rooted in our own empirical practices: we prefer to speak only about what we know for sure. At the same time, however, we are also well aware that even the particular case examples that we know so well depend, to a larger or smaller extent, on what others have told us during our fieldwork. Our micro-evidence itself is contingent upon other subjectivities. Because we are so conscious of the weight of subjective factors in our micro-evidence, we display a healthy and critical skepticism toward meso- and macro-evidence, which often is presented as if it consisted of nothing but objective facts. To my mind, this skepti- cism represents a potential strength, despite the fact that it is currently perceived as our weakness. Socio-cultural anthropology has a very long record of assessing subjective and objective factors in relation to each other. It is because scholars in some other disciplines do not have the same kind of critical self-awareness practiced by anthropologists that communication across disciplinary boundaries tends to be difficult. In short, our ‘bad reputation’ with regard to evidence has to do not only with our insistence on the safety of micro-evidence (and ensuing attitudes of implicit particularism and Popperianism), but also with our skepti- cism toward the alleged objectivism of micro- and macro-evidence, and with our critical awareness that objectivism tends to distort reality.

I will use the terms ‘objectivism’ and ‘subjectivism’ here along the lines elab- orated in the early works of Pierre Bourdieu (1972) and Bruno Latour (1988), that is, in the sense of implicit and inherent epistemological ideologies that inform research practices. These ideologies tend to accept evidence only under the condition either that evidence is objectified (in the case of objectivism) or, alternatively, that it is an authentically subjective expression (in the case of subjectivism). The two categories imply problems of their own, of course, which I will not discuss here. For the time being, I use these terms for a very brief illustration of major differences in epistemological legacies between socio- cultural anthropology and neighboring fields. I will employ the two examples of biological anthropology and linguistic anthropology to highlight this point.

Physical or biological anthropology exemplifies perhaps the most explicit objectivist record concerning evidence. In this sub-discipline, more-or-less hard data relate to hypotheses and to accessible and replicable conditions of generat- ing those data. There can be little doubt that biological anthropology largely fol- lows an objectivist legacy. Still, science studies (and many socio-cultural anthro- pologists working in that field) have confirmed and clarified what Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend had theorized previously—that even the most refined objectivist epistemologies cannot flatly ignore the subjective element. Ever since the theorizations of Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg, more refined epis- temologies from the world of the natural sciences have included key topics such as the ‘unknown’, the ‘necessary imprecision’, and, in general, the ‘researcher’s perspective’ (Knorr-Cetina 1981, 1995; Mol [2002] 2005).

Linguistic anthropology and its intersections with discourse analysis, media studies, and studies of performative arts, on the other hand, unavoidably have to rely largely on a subjectivist record of dealing with evidence. Indeed, an

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individual act of performance through body or speech may never be dupli- cated under comparable conditions. Likewise, its interpretation may very well depend upon one researcher’s very specific perspective—to such an extent that very little ‘evidence’ may remain accessible for others. But that small remain- ing part is important. It includes documentation and scholarly debate about the contents and the conditions of documentation. In fact, few researchers in linguistic anthropology—or performative art, for that matter—would be pre- pared to give up that remaining part. A minimum record has to exist that can be assessed by others through intersubjective means and by reference to an empirical foundation. The subjectivist legacy certainly prevails in this field, but a minimum of objectivist reference is retained (Duranti 2001, 2004).

We thus may identify in biological anthropology a dominant discourse of objectivism, with irreducible, minor, and implicit elements of subjectivism, which is quite typical for a general life science orientation. By contrast, we may refer to a dominant discourse of subjectivism, with irreducible, minor, and implicit elements of objectivism in linguistic anthropology, which is typical of a more general humanities orientation.

If we insist—as I think we should—that socio-cultural anthropology, at least in its European version, is part of the social sciences, it thereby becomes clear that an apparent weakness of our field actually represents potential strengths and advantages. In fact, the social science legacies of socio-cultural anthro- pology differ in important ways from what I have just outlined. Indeed, the cases of biological anthropology and of linguistic anthropology may serve as examples for larger trends in the life sciences and humanities, respectively. In this sense, they exemplify dichotomies of relations between objectivism and subjectivism. In socio-cultural anthropology, however, the main epistemologi- cal legacy represents less a dichotomous arrangement than a dialogical rela- tionship between subjectivism and objectivism.

That dialogical legacy in our field makes us skeptical when others appear too enthusiastic about either the objectivist or the subjectivist legacies in their own record. I believe that this specific dimension of socio-cultural anthropol- ogy’s dialogical legacy thus offers us the chance to engage others and to move beyond the ‘-isms’. But in order to do this, we have to give up the false security of limiting ourselves to micro-evidence.

Toward a New Realism

In this second section, I begin to think through some of the implications of what I have identified in a Bakhtinian sense as a dialogical relationship between objec- tivism and subjectivism in our own epistemological legacy. As an academic field, socio-cultural anthropology emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century in a context that followed the model of the natural sciences. Evolutionism and, to an extent, the diffusionist interlude were elaborated along objectivist forms of logic. It has been argued that socio-cultural anthropology’s so-called meta- narratives of the twentieth century continued that logic by further establishing

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objectivism through new theoretical models that were processing field data into theories (Clifford and Marcus 1986). But this is true only to a certain extent. Actually, as soon as ethnographic fieldwork was established as the discipline’s key methodological procedure, an earlier monopoly of objectivism became decisively challenged. Since then, two epistemological elements have remained vital for our enterprise: (1) the ethnographer, from the outset, is being exposed to a socio-cultural context that differs decisively from his or her own—one that constantly questions and challenges the fieldworker’s own epistemological horizon; and (2) this challenge is pursued and promoted primarily through local worldviews that usually include other epistemological horizons.

By definition, then, the ethnographer has to enter into a constant self- reflexive dialogue with subjective alterities, even if the ethnographer’s own epistemological horizon remains the most solid version of objectivism. In socio-cultural anthropology’s formative phases of evolutionism and diffusion- ism, elements of fieldwork did occur, as in the case of Lewis Henry Morgan or the Torres Straits expedition. However, fieldwork’s epistemological status remained marginal during that developmental era, and an exclusively objectiv- ist monopoly prevailed. As soon as ethnographic fieldwork was introduced, a dominant objectivist legacy entered into a continuously dialogical relationship with subjectivist elements (Young 2004).

This dialogical relationship has shaped socio-cultural anthropology’s so- called grand narratives of modernity, or what we may now call its ‘first moder- nity’. The merits of this dialogical legacy should not be underestimated: native views and self-reflexivity in the field have constantly imposed themselves as limiting factors on any excessive objectivist extreme. Simultaneously, field- work’s empirical roots and the logic of everyday life in the field have func- tioned as factors that serve to limit any excessive subjectivist extreme. By and large, objectivism and subjectivism have kept each other in check through this dialogical relationship. This is valid for the period of socio-cultural anthropolo- gy’s so-called meta-narratives of our first modernity, when an objectivist legacy dominated that dialogical relationship. I would argue that it has continued to be true during the past two decades of our postmodernist phase, when, by contrast, a subjectivist legacy dominated that dialogical relationship. The result has been that extremism on either side has never survived much more than one generation of scholarship in our field. This becomes quite evident if we consider, for instance, Marvin Harris’s cultural materialism as an excessively objectivist endeavor, or, for that matter, if we remember Clifford Geertz’s claim that ethnography is nothing but ‘faction’ as an excessively subjectivist agenda. The short life spans of extremes such as these again underline the vitality of the dialogical relationship inside anthropology’s practice (Barth et al. 2005).

Although the epistemological vitality of objectivist-subjectivist dialogues inside our field are hard to deny in practice, their theorizing is still underdevel- oped. We lack major epistemological debates and instead often compensate by importing epistemological theorizing from other fields. At present, this leaves us with an apparent paradox. We have seen that, thanks to its own legacies, anthropology is far better positioned than other disciplines to move beyond

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the ‘-isms’ of objectivism and subjectivism, and that this represents a great opportunity. At the same time, we appear to import too much from elsewhere without theorizing the epistemological implications of this borrowing, at the risk of transforming ourselves from an active into a passive agent in interdis- ciplinary interactions. We thus are entering a phase not only of great risks but also of great opportunities for socio-cultural anthropology.

To my mind, this intra-academic phase of risks and opportunity represents but one dimension of larger public and global transformations. In line with many others, such as sociologists Shmuel N. Eisenstadt (2002) and Ulrich Beck (2007) and anthropologists Ulf Hannerz (1996) and Arjun Appadurai (1996, 2006), I see these transformations as the emergence of a second modernity, one that includes multiple and alternative trajectories in this globalizing world. If we accept this assessment, then socio-cultural anthropology’s reorientation requires a serious reassessment of its epistemological foundations. My own position in this discus- sion about broadening and reinvigorating socio-cultural anthropology’s episte- mological basis is to propose a ‘new realism’ and, as part and parcel of that new realism, new practices of processing meso- and macro-evidence. These forms of evidence help to substantiate our frequent claims about the ‘wider significance’ of particular cases. They also support the ways in which we conceptualize and theorize that wider significance in and for the world we inhabit.

A new realism, therefore, does not imply a return to the old forms of objec- tivism, to Popperian or other forms of neo-positivism. Instead, new realism introduces a maximum of qualitative research and of self-awareness about the power of social and ideological constructions and representations into the research process itself, as much as into the interpretation of results. At the same time, new realism addresses the problems of the world we inhabit, a world that is globalizing and has, in fact, been globalizing for quite a while. In this globalizing world of multiple trajectories and complex transnational connections, the human condition is again central to our enterprise. If more and more people are connected by processes that begin and end beyond local contexts, then our epistemologies, as much as our empirical practices, must of necessity move beyond the particular and address the medium-range cases of wider—and sometimes even of global or ‘universal’—dimensions of the human condition. A new realism therefore moves beyond the documentation of frag- ments and combines anthropology’s original question about human diversities and commonalities with those about human life and human subjectivities in the present and in the future.

Two Modes of Reinvigorating Anthropology’s Epistemology

In this last section, I would like to suggest two non-exclusive and mutually supportive modes of reinvigorating our epistemological basis for the purpose of facing the challenges of a second modernity along the lines of a new realism. These two modes seek merely to expand, strengthen, and continue elements that already are part of what I have called our dialogical epistemological legacy.

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One of these two modes is situated inside European and Western cultural tradi- tions. The other is not.

The first of these two modes is inspired by the legacy of European and wider Western social theory and philosophy. Any epistemology for socio- cultural anthropology must have some relation to the broader context of social theory and philosophy. Indeed, it would be difficult to envision an epistemology for socio-cultural anthropology that had no connection at all to the larger academic enterprises of which we are part. In one way, then, strengthening our broader epistemological foundations inside transnational and global academic worlds is a timely development that will bring us closer to dialogical opportunities with others. But the global academic world itself sometimes experiences short-lived trends and cycles of fashion, particularly so in the humanities and social sciences. A small discipline such as socio-cul- tural anthropology has to be especially careful not to become too dependent on them. To some extent, these fashions in the humanities and social sciences are a response to the fact that philosophy has lost much of its previous status as a meta-science for other academic fields. Some intellectuals experience this as a great loss and are searching for substitute ontologies. I count myself among those who, by contrast, are convinced that the demise of philosophy’s former status need not be seen as a deplorable crisis that has to be overcome by waves of fashionable substitute ontologies. Instead, I sense the opportu- nity for a period of newly liberated cross-fertilization among a plurality of disciplines. In these new contexts, Western philosophy is just one among sev- eral interesting disciplines with good potential for inspiring epistemological debates in socio-cultural anthropology. The reverse is also true: anthropology might indeed inspire philosophy.

In these new contexts, a short examination of major inspirations from European and Western philosophy and social theory indicates three significant trajectories that stand out. First is the inspiration from language philosophy, in general, and from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy, in particular. A number of socio-cultural anthropologists are continuing earlier endeavors, such as those of Rodney Needham (1975), by absorbing Wittgensteinian orientations. Among them are Veena Das (1998, 2007), in some of her recent work about the constitution of local subjectivities, and Thomas Csordas (2004), in his work on embodiment and physical experience. I have developed an attitude of friendly skepticism toward these endeavors. I can see why, for subjectivity- centered approaches, Wittgenstein’s later work may indeed provide some fun- damental epistemological orientation. Still, this work continued to be almost exclusively focused on language and language-based forms of representations, which I find difficult to accept as an exclusive trajectory for the new realism that I think is our central challenge.

Second, several scholars in the social sciences have become engaged with various combinations of pragmatism. By definition, pragmatism orients toward the real world by pursuing central questions about social effects and the results of social intentions. In this sense, pragmatist epistemologies seem to be much more straightforward and successful in addressing key anthropological concerns

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regarding the empirical dimensions of ethnographic fieldwork. Moreover, some versions of pragmatism have absorbed significant dimensions of phenomeno- logical epistemologies, and pragmatism has a somewhat less relativistic take on language than does Wittgenstein. One may remain doubtful about some of the ethical foundations of pragmatism, which tend to be somewhat incoher- ent and eclectic. Still, pragmatism’s evident intersections with anthropology’s fieldwork concerns—and also with an orientation toward a new realism—are clearly attractive to many in our field. Various socio-cultural anthropologists have in fact embraced one or another version of pragmatism, among them João de Pina-Cabral, several former postmodernists, and some Scandinavian scholars, including Kirsten Hastrup (2004, 2005). I find a degree of sympathetic skepticism toward pragmatism to be appropriate.

The third philosophical trajectory, phenomenology, has been gaining increasing attention among quite a few socio-cultural anthropologists. To some extent, this seems to be connected to our cyclical search for fashionable sub- stitute ontologies, as mentioned above. Something similar, in fact, can be said about growing interests in Wittgensteinian and pragmatist epistemologies. But what is less explicit there is more conspicuous among those who embrace Heidegger’s phenomenological work—without any question mark—as the ulti- mate truth in epistemological reasoning. Steven Feld and Keith Basso’s (1996) edited volume Senses of Place is a case in point. In it, a number of very coher- ent local ethnographic studies of a particularist kind are combined with a universalist Heideggerian epistemology and ontology. As I have already argued in “Conceptualising Identities” (Gingrich 2004), a basic reliance on Heidegger tends to lead toward a new particularism legitimized by a universalist ontology that asks few other questions than those about difference. This emphasis on difference, together with Heidegger’s problematic record in the Nazi period, leads me to a position that is neither friendly nor sympathetic toward this tra- jectory for socio-cultural anthropologists. Heidegger and phenomenology in its entirety, however, are not identical with each other—as much as Heideggerians would want us to believe that they are.

In fact, there is a whole realm of phenomenology that stands apart from Heidegger’s specific way of reasoning. That other, wider realm of phenomenol- ogy has a lot to offer to socio-cultural anthropology. In addition to Hannah Arendt’s work, we can look to much of the earlier and some of the more recent German phenomenological traditions, including Husserl, Schütz, and Walden- fels, but also to the crucial French phenomenological tradition, from Sartre to Merleau-Ponty to Levinas. A broad and heterogeneous group of socio-cultural anthropologists has been working for some time now with phenomenologi- cal approaches, ranging from eminent scholars in neighboring fields, such as Achille Mbembe (2001), to anthropologists Paul Rabinow (1997) and Alessan- dro Duranti (2006) and several contributors to this volume, including Christina Toren (2002). These phenomenological orientations combine well with micro- evidence, but it remains to be seen whether they will also develop their poten- tial toward a new realism. Still, it seems obvious that the phenomenological inspiration is bound to stay with us for quite a while.

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I see advantages and opportunities in this development—in particular, empirical openness, temporality, and intersubjectivity. In most of its versions, phenomenology is in fact quite open to the empirical record, which fits well with socio-cultural anthropology’s own roots in micro-evidence. In fact, phe- nomenology has been actively absorbing subjective experience and empirical inspiration, as in the work of Alfred Schütz and his concept of Lebenswelten (life-worlds). In turn, this openness to empirical routine in research itself, and as a field of research, has been picked up by critical theory, as in Jürgen Haber- mas’s (1981) notion of a “colonization of lifeworlds” being a central feature in current phases of globalization.

Temporality had been crucial for Husserl’s endeavors from the outset. In his sense of the term, temporality relates not only to the historical rhythms produc- ing the conditions of the present, but also to the experiential modes of duration in subjective agency itself (Gingrich, Ochs, and Swedlund 2002). In turn, com- pressions of time and space and a shift toward charging the present with the goals and dangers of the future are two fundamental movements toward a sec- ond modernity (Harvey 1990). In this perspective, phenomenology’s emphasis on temporality represents a very clear asset in facing the challenges of global- ization, especially in contrast to the more limited kind of help that would be offered in this regard from pragmatism, let alone Wittgenstein.

Both its empirical, life-world-centered orientation and its emphasis on tem- porality thus strengthen and upgrade socio-cultural anthropology’s established epistemological competencies in terms of a new realism. Intersubjectivity, however, the third among these three major advantages, relates most clearly to my present concern with meso- and macro-evidence. Here I would like to confine myself to phenomenology’s crucial link between intersubjectivity and evidence. That link was elaborated by critical theorists during the 1950s and 1960s, when Adorno and Horkheimer pointed out during the Positivismusstreit of German sociology that their criticism of Popperianism and objectivism by no means implied an abandonment of research evidence as such. In spite of critical theory’s explicit and well-argued point, this insight became somewhat lost during the postmodern moment, which is why we have to retrieve it, put it back into the central epistemological position to which it belongs, and organize our academic practices accordingly.

My point is that intersubjectivity is central to our academic endeavor as social scientists and as socio-cultural anthropologists. If the evidence we pres- ent on the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels is not intersubjectively accessible, together with our research interests that generated the evidence, then our research is a failure. Intersubjectivity thus lies at the core of our academic cul- ture. Abandoning intersubjective scrutiny would transform our practices into something that would more closely resemble art than academic research. What has been said by Adorno ([1970] 1995) and others about art as an independent and equivalent source of insight and understanding remains valid, of course, and I am convinced that many spheres of transition between the arts and aca- demic research yield productive results—from Lévi-Strauss’s ([1955] 1993) lit- erary excursions in Tristes tropiques to some good examples of the present. Still,

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art deals with aesthetic and experiential criteria of intersubjectivity, whereas academic research deals with criteria of logical coherence and intersubjectively accessible evidence. So although I acknowledge all creative potentials of art and all productive transition zones between art and academic research, I would maintain that fluid boundaries are not the same as no boundaries at all. There is some difference between art and academic research, and intersubjectively available evidence is one of its markers (Waldenfels [1990] 1998).

The intersubjective qualities of evidence therefore allow us to establish new norms and practices of democratic and pluralistic scholarship. These norms and practices ensure basic standards of quality as much as they require a maxi- mum of freedom and diversity of research. We have been living far too long in tacit complicity with Clifford Geertz’s dictum that in our field, anyone can do what he or she wants to do and then call it anthropology. This is accept- able only for those who seriously believe that in socio-cultural anthropology it is impossible to decide, after debate and reflection, if some evidence is more appropriate than others and if some insights are better suited to understanding a problem than others. If we do not support such extreme subjectivism, the rest of us will have to move on to a new culture of academic intersubjective plural- ism in which, after debate and reflection, appropriate and adequate evidence will be maintained and inadequate evidence will be left aside. Intersubjectivity thus encourages scholarly debates about concepts, theories, methods, and evi- dence in a field in which they have been absent far too long, due to changing fashions and tastes and to the intellectual star cult.

On the basis of improved scholarly debate, it will be much easier to assess which kind of meso- and macro-evidence is inspiring, productive, and useful, and which is not. If anybody can write up his or her piece of micro-evidence and call it anthropology, while the others shrug their shoulders in response (because we all do nothing but ‘faction’, anyway), then meso- and macro-evi- dence will not stand a chance. If, however, we discuss and debate a volume such as Shamanism, History, and the State—an excellent study co-edited by Nicholas Thomas and Carolyn Humphrey (1994)—and if, 15 years later, we still think that it contains valid material and insights on the medium-range phenomenon of shamanism in its various particular settings (because a whole load of studies since then have basically confirmed and further elaborated what Thomas and Humphrey demonstrated), then we can and should use this material for our field’s meso-evidence on shamanism.

Intersubjectivity, in my view, invigorates the possibilities and potentials for comparison and for becoming explicit about the solid macro-evidence we have. But some would argue that to be more explicit about macro-evidence is both unlikely and unrewarding. Can this be true? Did Arnold van Gennep, almost 100 years ago, really say everything that there is to say about ritual on a very general level, for instance? I believe he did not. I think most socio-cultural anthropologists would agree that no human society exists without rituals. And most would also agree that a vast amount of evidence has been produced during the past century that contains more than just a plethora of particular examples. It might be difficult to accommodate our different theoretical preferences in its

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interpretation, but I remain convinced that the identification of a few socio- cultural universals not only is possible on the basis of existing forms of micro- and meso-evidence, but also is necessary because of the new interest in global questions. Best practices in intersubjectivity among the scholarly communities would be an indispensable prerequisite for such an exercise in macro-evidence on ritual. The same can be said about kinship or myth or any other major concept of the anthropological repertoire. The time has come, therefore, also to consider macro-evidence.

At the beginning of this section, I mentioned two modes of elaborating our epistemological basis: a Western one and a non-Western one. After add- ing a caveat on the first, Euro-American mode, I will present a self-reflexive concluding remark about the second mode. I have articulated my sympathy for strengthening phenomenological elements in socio-cultural anthropology’s epistemological reorientation, because, to my mind, it helps us to cope with some of the requirements of evidence in the second modernity we now face. My caveat is intrinsic to this sympathetic attitude. From Husserl to Arendt, and from Merleau-Ponty to Levinas, phenomenology has not yet been able to transcend the objective-subjective distinction in any satisfactory manner. It is true that phenomenology performs the dialogical movement between object and subject more elegantly, and more pervasively, than most other approaches. But in its elaborate and refined ways, phenomenology still remains caught up inside that basic distinction between subject and object. In this sense, phenomenology indisputably remains part of our specific, Western European and Eastern Mediterranean cultural heritage. The distinction between object and subject goes back not only to Hegel and to Descartes. Their philosophies were the secularized versions of what Maimonides and Augustine had already conceptualized many centuries earlier, through the theological distinctions between the creator and the created or creation. The monotheist legacy of cre- ator and created still informs those secular legacies in which the object-subject distinction remains central—and phenomenology is one of them.

I am therefore convinced that in addition to more sophisticated and improved imports from European philosophy and social theory, it also will be rewarding for socio-cultural anthropologists to connect our epistemology in new ways to the non-European intellectual records that exist. This has already been realized to an extent since the introduction of ethnographic fieldwork, which absorbs ‘the native’s point of view’ and native epistemologies by implication. Perhaps now is the time to broaden and strengthen that central element in our own epistemological legacy as well. We have engaged with particular local epistemologies wherever we have carried out ethnographic fieldwork. In more than one way, however, we have for the most part ignored the non-monotheist epistemological and philosophical traditions that are not based upon one cre- ator—traditions in which the dichotomy between subject and object is not as central as it continues to be in most Western traditions. Perhaps now is also the right time to envision a comparative anthropology of epistemologies.

Evidence in Socio-cultural Anthropology | 189

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank João de Pina-Cabral (Lisbon) and Christina Toren (St Andrews) for the inspiration they provided through editing this special issue and by conven- ing the conference that preceded it. The editorial assistance of Joan K. O’Donnell (Harvard) is gratefully acknowledged. I am also most grateful for discussions with Alessandro Duranti (Los Angeles), Kirsten Hastrup (Copenhagen), John Coma- roff (Chicago), and Eva-Maria Knoll (Vienna) on various aspects and a first draft of this article, as well as for an anonymous reviewer’s comments. Parts of this article’s first section are based on an earlier presentation at a panel sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation at the 2003 meeting of the American Anthropological Association, and parts of the second and third section also were presented and dis- cussed in February 2008 on the occasion of a guest lecture at the Central European University in Budapest.

Andre Gingrich directs the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Social Anthropology (ISA) and has been a panel chair at the European Research Council’s Advanced Scholars Grant since 2008. He has lectured in the US, the Middle East, and several European countries. His areas of ethnographic fieldwork include Saudi Arabia, the Yemen, and Austria. Among Gingrich’s recent publications are “Honig und Tribale Gesellschaft: Historischer Hintergrund, sozialer Gebrauch und traditionelle Erzeugung im südlichen Hijaz” (2007), in a collection edited by Walter Dostal; Neo-Nationalism in Europe and Beyond (2006), co-edited with Marcus Banks; and One Discipline, Four Ways: British, German, French, and American Anthropology (2004), co-authored with Fredrik Barth, Robert Parkin, and Sydel Silvermann.

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