Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies

342 Pages·2002·3.57 MB·English

by  Bruce M. Knauft

critically modern

Critically
Modern
Alternatives, Alterities,
Anthropologies
Edited by Bruce M. Knauft
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Critically modern : alternatives, alterities, anthropologies / edited by Bruce M. Knauft.
p. cm.
Revisions of papers presented at a special session held at the 2000 meeting
of the American Anthropological Association in San Francisco.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-253-34125-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-253-21538-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Social change—Cross-cultural studies. 2. Civilization, Modern—Cross-cultural studies.
3. Acculturation—Cross-cultural studies. I. Knauft, Bruce M.
GN358 .C75 2002
303.4—dc21
2001008306
1 2 3 4 5 07 06 05 04 03 02
Contents
Preface vii
Critically Modern: An Introduction 1
Bruce M. Knauft
part 1
One: Bargains with Modernity in Papua New
Guinea and Elsewhere 57
Robert J. Foster
Two: Development and Personhood: Tracing the
Contours of a Moral Discourse 82
Ivan Karp
Three: Trials of the Oxymodern: Public Practice
at Nomad Station 105
Bruce M. Knauft
Four: “Hands-Up”–ing Buses and Harvesting
Cheese-Pops: Gendered Mediation of Modern
Disjuncture in Melanesia 144
Holly Wardlow
part 2
Five: Modernity’s Masculine Fantasies 175
Lisa Rofel
Six: Accessing “Local” Modernities: Re®ections
on the Place of Linguistic Evidence in
Ethnography 194
Debra A. Spitulnik
Seven: The Otherwise Modern: Caribbean
Lessons from the Savage Slot 220
Michel-Rolph Trouillot
Contents
vi
part 3
Eight: On Being Modern in a Capitalist World:
Some Conceptual and Comparative Issues 241
Donald L. Donham
Nine: Alternative Modernities or an Alternative
to “Modernity”: Getting Out of the Modernist
Sublime 258
John D. Kelly
Ten: Modernity and Other Traditions 287
Jonathan Friedman
Contributors 315
Index 319
Preface
Some ideas germinate for a long time, while others develop quickly.
Though concern with “modern society” has been robust for well over a
century, an explicit concern with “modernity” seems to have mush-
roomed in the human sciences, especially since the mid-1980s. Yet more
recently, during the late 1990s, issues of alternative or vernacular mo-
dernity have come to the fore. The present book acknowledges a debt to
all these strands of social thought, while being most immediately im-
pacted by the last. The differentiation of modernity has stimulated an-
thropologists as well as other scholars to think both more carefully and
more critically about what it means (and does not mean) to become
“modern” in various cultural and world area contexts. These issues pro-
vide the core concerns of the present book.
For me as the editor of this volume, a concern with the alternatively
modern arose most forcefully not from academic writing but from ¤eld-
work—when I returned to the Gebusi of Papua New Guinea after an
absence of sixteen years. Though all the contributors to this volume
have their debts to acknowledge, my own stem especially from Gebusi
—speci¤cally, from their willingness to share the remarkable transfor-
mations of their lives with me. As I returned from ¤eldwork in late
1998, the comparative dimension of what it meant to be or become mod-
ern was especially poignant to me. But when I started perusing the
manuscripts, articles, and books that had been accumulating during my
absence in the rainforest, it became quickly obvious that notions of al-
ternative, vernacular, or “other” modernity were emerging almost ex-
vii
Preface
viii
plosively through independent invention and reinvention across a range
of disciplinary and world area perspectives.
After inaugurating and assuming the leadership of a Ford Foundation–
funded program at Emory University on “Vernacular Modernities,” it
became possible, in 2000, to return to a plan I had deferred since re-
turning from the ¤eld: to organize a session on alternative modernities
at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association
(AAA). By this time, the literature on the subject had swelled to such a
size that the task was as much to take critical stock of this intellectual
endeavor as it was to propose or push it forward. The resulting session,
“In®ections of Modernity,” was held at the annual AAA meetings in
San Francisco on 16 November 2000. The presentations of that session
were so productive and acute—in both ethnographic perception and his-
torical sweep—that it seemed ¤tting for us to revise our papers and
collect them into an edited volume. The contributions to the present
volume were all originally presented at the AAA “In®ections of Moder-
nity” session. Jonathan Friedman’s chapter in this book and my own
introduction both stem from our participation as discussants on this
panel.
Though it is commonplace for session organizers to tout the collec-
tive success of their enterprise, the participants in the present collection
deserve special note. Both at the session itself and during our ensuing
discussions and revisions, this project has had a strong sense of intellec-
tual dialogue. The value of this dialogue stemmed from our differences;
we do not all agree concerning the issues that swirl about the modern
and the alternatively modern, nor even on the exact terms of this dis-
cussion. But it seemed to us (and is, I hope, self-evident in the chapters
herein) that we have been wrestling deeply and concretely, from our
complementary vantage points, with a key problematic in contemporary
cultural anthropology. The present volume is an acknowledgment, ap-
preciation, and extension of recent interest in modernity and, in equal
proportion, its critical reevaluation.
Given our spontaneous sense that we were engaged in a larger collec-
tive enterprise, it was especially pleasing to us that Rebecca Tolen, an-
thropology editor at Indiana University Press, took keen interest in hav-
ing our efforts revised for publication. Beyond the usual shepherding
and logistics, Rebecca has been a source of creative planning, timely
advice, and effective management for the prompt production of this vol-
ume. In an academic world where edited books often languish for many
years before emerging in print, great thanks are owed to Rebecca, as
well as to all the contributors, for a publication process that has maxi-
mized quality while also enabling swift completion.
Preface
ix
We also extend warm and sincere thanks to our two external manu-
script reviewers, who have generously made their identities known to us:
Edward LiPuma and Charles Piot. The penetrating comments of these
scholars have been invaluable to the contributors, and especially to me
as editor, during the process of revising the book’s manuscript.
The remaining debts of this volume are more intellectually diffuse in
nature. As editor, I have bene¤ted greatly from the scholarly and aca-
demic environment of the Vernacular Modernities Program at Emory.
This program, which is funded in signi¤cant part by the Ford Founda-
tion’s “Crossing Borders” initiative, has brought a wide range of speak-
ers to Emory and supported an interdisciplinary cadre of graduate stu-
dents in our Vernacular Modernities Seminar. The students, scholars,
and colleagues of the Vernacular Modernities Program have had a major
impact on my intellectual development and hence on the conceptualiza-
tion of the present volume. The Vernacular Modernities Program has it-
self been importantly supported, in a variety of ways, by Emory’s Insti-
tute for Comparative and International Research, the Emory Graduate
School of Arts and Sciences, Emory College, and Emory’s anthropology
department. Warm thanks are extended to all these organizations.
My ¤nal thanks is for the powerful engagement and ongoing stimu-
lus provided by the contributors to this volume. Their work has strongly
in®uenced me. More generally, they have refreshed my belief that criti-
cal dialogue and sustained intellectual effort can illuminate key features
of cultural change and inequality in a contemporary world.
Bruce M. Knauft
Atlanta, Ga.
August 2001