The Anthropologist as Writer: Genres and Contexts in the Twenty-First Century

288 Pages·2016·1.076 MB·English

by  Helena Wulff

The Anthropologist as Writer

T A
HE NTHROPOLOGIST
W
AS RITER
Genres and Contexts
in the Twenty-First Century
(cid:2)(cid:3)
Edited by
Helena Wulff
berghahn
N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D
www.berghahnbooks.com
Published by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
© 2016 Helena Wulff
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wulff, Helena, editor.
Title: The anthropologist as writer : genres and contexts in the twenty-fi rst century
/ edited by Helena Wulff.
Description: New York : Berghahn Books, [2016] | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2015034312| ISBN 9781785330186 (hardback : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781785330193 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Ethnology—Authorship. | Communication in ethnology. |
Literature and anthropology.
Classifi cation: LCC GN307.7 .A56 2016 | DDC 305.8/00723—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015034312
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78533-018-6 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-78533-019-3 (ebook)
Contents
(cid:2)(cid:3)
List of Tables vii
Acknowledgments viii
Introducing the Anthropologist as Writer: Across and Within Genres 1
Helena Wulff
I. The Role of Writing in Anthropological Careers
1. The Necessity of Being a Writer in Anthropology Today 21
Dominic Boyer
2. Reading, Writing, and Recognition in the Emerging
Academy 33
Don Brenneis
3. O Anthropology, Where Art Thou? An Auto-Ethnography
of Proposals 46
Sverker Finnström
4. The Craft of Editing: Anthropology’s Prose and Qualms 60
Brian Moeran
5. The Anglicization of Anthropology: Opportunities and
Challenges 73
Máiréad Nic Craith
II. Ethnographic Writing
6. The Anthropologist as Storyteller 93
Alma Gottlieb
7. Writing for the Future 118
Paul Stoller
v
vi Contents
8. Life-Writing: Anthropological Knowledge, Boundary-Making,
and the Experiential 129
Narmala Halstead
9. Chekhov as Ethnographic Muse 143
Kirin Narayan
III. Reaching Out: Popular Writing and Journalism
10. On Some Nice Benefi ts and One Big Challenge of the
Second File 161
Anette Nyqvist
11. The Writer as Anthropologist 172
Oscar Hemer
12. Writing Together: Tensions and Joy between Scholars
and Activists 188
Eva-Maria Hardtmann, Vincent Manoharan, Urmila Devi,
Jussi Eskola, and Swarna Sabrina Francis
IV. Writing across Genres
13. Fiction and Anthropological Understanding:
A Cosmopolitan Vision 215
Nigel Rapport
14. On Timely Appearances: Literature, Art, Anthropology 230
Mattias Viktorin
15. Digital Narratives in Anthropology 243
Paula Uimonen
16. Writing Otherwise 254
Ulf Hannerz
Index 271
Tables
(cid:2)(cid:3)
Table 5.1. World’s Languages (fi rst language speakers).
(Source: Ethnologue: http://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size) 74
Table 5.2. Continental European Postgraduate Courses Taught
in English (June 2013).
(Source: Grove 2013) 75
Table 5.3. The World’s Top 10 Universities 2015–16.
(Source: Reuters) 76
Table 5.4. Distribution of World Languages by Area of Origin.
(Source: Ethnologue: http://www.ethnologue.com/statistics) 79
vii
Acknowledgments
(cid:2)(cid:3)
This volume originates from the fi fth Stockholm Anthropology Roundtable,
which I organized at Stockholm University. The Stockholm Anthropology
Roundtable is an annual forum for international discussion of current and
emergent issues in the discipline.
I am grateful to all speakers for thoughtful presentations that developed
into inspiring discussion. In particular, I am grateful to those speakers who
turned their presentations into chapters for this volume. They constitute
the bulk of the volume. Later, I invited some additional contributors. I owe
them special thanks.
My greatest debt is to Marion Berghahn for her splendid support and
extraordinary effi ciency. It is always a true delight to work with her. It has
also been a great joy to work with Molly Mosher, Duncan Ramslem, and
Jessica Murphy, editorial and production assistants at Berghahn Books. I
am very grateful to Kinga Jankus for compiling the index. Many thanks to
my niece, Victoria Wulff, for taking the cover picture.
The fi fth Stockholm Anthropology Roundtable was funded by Henrik
Granholm Foundation, Stockholm University.
Stockholm, February 2015
Helena Wulff
viii
Introducing the Anthropologist
as Writer
Across and Within Genres
Helena Wulff
(cid:2)(cid:3)
There you are: facing the computer screen. Your “fi eld,” whatever that was,
is some distance away, at least for now. You have worked through the materi-
als you collected there, and think you have them in a promising order. Time
for the next step: to write. You may not get away from the screen any time
soon—not really get away.
Then at some later point, you are there again in front of the screen,
checking your emails. Has that publisher or editor you had in mind been
in touch yet, responding to your proposal, or even to that entire manuscript
you sent? If so, expect—at best—a period in front of the screen again, review-
ing, rewriting, perhaps reorganizing.
Anthropologists have mostly celebrated the fi eld experience in all its va-
riety. Yet in fact, they are likely to spend as much time sitting in front of the
computer screen. Once it has begun, writing is in one way a very solitary ac-
tivity, but in another way, it is not: you may be in interaction with an imagined
audience of colleagues, students, as well as people in your fi eld, perhaps gen-
eral readers, and, increasingly, the representatives of academic audit culture.
For some time now, anthropologists have understood that they are also
writers, and have engaged in scrutinizing the implications of this fact. Clif-
ford Geertz, in his infl uential book The Interpretation of Cul tures (1973: 19),
famously asked (in the idiom of the time): “What does the ethnographer
do?—He writes.” Taking existing conversations on writing in anthropology
as a point of departure, the mission of this volume is twofold: fi rst, to iden-
tify different writing genres anthropologists actually engage with; and sec-
ond, to argue for the usefulness and necessity for anthropologists of taking
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