Extraordinary Anthropology: Transformations in the Field

475 Pages·2007·1.43 MB·English

by  Jean-Guy A. Goulet

Extraordinary Anthropology
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Extraordinary
Anthropology
Transformations in the Field
edited by Jean-Guy A. Goulet
and Bruce Granville Miller
with a preface by Johannes Fabian
university of nebraska press
lincoln & london
Portions of “On Puzzling Wavelengths”
originally appeared in Journeys to
the Edge: In the Footsteps of an
Anthropologist by Peter M. Gardner, by
permission of the University of Missouri
Press. © 2006 by the Curators of the
University of Missouri.
“Moving Beyond Culturally Bound Ethical
Guidelines” was first published in 2004
as “Une question éthique venue de l’autre
monde: Au-delà du grand partage entre
nous et les autres,” in Anthropologie et
0 Sociétés28 (1): 109–26.
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©2007 by the Board of Regents
2 of the University of Nebraska
All rights reserved
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Manufactured in the
4 United States of America
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Library of Congress Cataloging-
7 in-Publication Data
8 Extraordinary anthropology :
transformations in the field / edited by
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Jean-Guy A. Goulet and Bruce Granville
0 Miller ; with a preface by Johannes Fabian.
p. cm.
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Includes bibliographical references
2 and index.
3 isbn-13: 978-0-8032-5992-8
(pbk. : alk. paper)
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isbn-10: 0-8032-5992-1
5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Ethnopsychology. 2. Dreams.
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3. Ecstasy. 4. Ethnology—Field work.
7 I. Goulet, Jean-Guy. II. Miller, Bruce G., 1951–
8 gn502.e98 2007
305.8—dc22
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2006036210
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To Victor Turner and Edith Turner,
who have inspired so many within
anthropology and beyond
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Contents
Preface ix
Johannes Fabian
Acknowledgments xiii
Map of communities discussed xviii
Embodied Knowledge: Steps toward a Radical Anthropology
of Cross-cultural Encounters 1
Jean-Guy A. Goulet and Bruce Granville Miller
part one: Beyond Our Known Worlds 15
1. On Puzzling Wavelengths 17
Peter M. Gardner
2. On Presence 36
Petra Rethmann
3. Reveal or Conceal? 53
Barbara Wilkes
part two: Entanglements and Faithfulness to Experience 85
4. Recursive Epistemologies and an Ethics of Attention 88
Deborah Bird Rose
5. Ethnographic Rendez-vous: Field Accounts of Unexpected
Vulnerabilities and Constructed Differences 103
Anahí Viladrich
6. When the Extraordinary Hits Home: Experiencing Spiritualism 124
Deirdre Meintel
7. Prophecy, Sorcery, and Reincarnation: Inuit Spirituality in
the Age of Skepticism 158
Edmund Searles
Contents
part three: Epistemological and Ethical Thresholds 183
8. The Politics of Ecstatic Research 186
Bruce Granville Miller
9. Moving Beyond Culturally Bound Ethical Guidelines 208
Jean-Guy A. Goulet
10. Experiences of Power among the Sekani of Northern British Columbia:
Sharing Meaning through Time and Space 237
Guy Lanoue
0 part four: Keeping Violence and Conflict in View 255
1 11. Don Patricio’s Dream: Shamanism and the Torments of
2 Secrecy in Fieldwork among the Mazatecs 258
3 Edward Abse
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12. Clothing the Body in Otherness 283
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Janferie Stone
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13. Dog Days: Participation as Transformation 310
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Duncan Earle
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9 part five: Apprenticeship and Research Practices 321
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14. A Pathway to Knowledge: Embodiment, Dreaming, and
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Experience as a Basis for Understanding the Other 323
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Denise Nuttall
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15. Field of Dreams; Fields of Reality:
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Growing with and in Anthropology 352
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Jeanne Simonelli, Erin McCulley, and Rachel Simonelli
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16. Dancing Lessons from God: To Be the Good Ethnographer
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or the Good Bad Ethnographer 380
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Millie Creighton
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References 419
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List of Contributors 447
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Index 453
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viii
Preface
johannes fabian
Anthropological field research is a means toward an end: ethnographic
knowledge. Being a practice in the service of a discipline, it must rely
on tried and tested habits, techniques, and strategies. It must serve
a scientific, hence public, purpose rather than the needs and desires
of a person; it must pursue theory rather than a private quest. This
has been the conventional and reasonable view of the matter. But it is
hardly a secret anymore—at a time when ethnography has become a
matter of concern and a subject of debate among philosophers, stu-
dents of culture (if that is an appropriate label for those engaged in
“cultural studies”), other social scientists, including historians, and
even among artists—that our conventional certainties are no longer
what they used to be.
This is not the place to tell the story of our certainties getting shat-
tered; it is too long and complicated. Instead, it occurred to me that
it may be of interest to recall just one intriguing episode. When I re-
ceived my training at the University of Chicago, in a department that
was hardly a marginal contributor to establishing anthropology as a
modern, empirical, and scientific endeavor, separate courses on field
methods were not part of the curriculum. Why? Other things were
more important. Our critical energies were channeled toward dis-
cussion of theory. Debating theory rather than worrying about prac-
tice was a luxury we enjoyed, but not for long. Momentous changes
brought about in our “fields” by incipient de-colonization abroad and
social upheavals at home forced us to rethink the premises of our proj-
ects and to say what had gone without saying for a long time. Critical