SA 301 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Ethnography, Cultural Relativism

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Sociology and Anthropology
• Course: SA 301
• Professor: Stacy Pigg

Document Summary

We will consider the concept of "ethnographic authority" as it was proposed within. We will discuss critiques of malinowskian assumptions and positivist anthropology and consider alternatives. Clifford, on ethnographic authority (excerpt with slp"s annotations) This ambiguous, multivocal world makes it increasingly hard to conceive of human diversity as inscribed in bounded, independent cultures (23) For ppl to form complex concreate images of one another. The authority of an anthropologist has become more commanding and experienced . The myth of fieldwork : the actual experience is a means for producing knowledge from an intense, intersubjective engagement, the practice of ethnography retains a certain exemplary status (24) How, precisely is a garrulus, overdetermined cross-cultural encounter shot through w power relations and personal cross-purposes circumscribed as an adequate version of a more or less discrete other world composed by an individual author? (24) Cultural relativism makes them diff from missionaries, administrators. The new-style ethnographer uses native languages w/o mastering them.