Table Of ContentWORKS AND LIVES
The Anthropologist as Author
The Harry Camp Lectures at Stanford University
The Harry Camp Memorial Fund was established in
1959 to make possible a continuing series oflectures
at Stanford University on topics bearing on the dignity
and worth of the human individual.
WORIZS AND LIVES
The Anthropologist as Author
CLIFFORD GEERTZ
Stanford University Press
Stanford) California
Stant(>rd Univcrsitv Press
Stantord, Calit(>rnia
© 1988 by the Board ofTrustees of the Leland Stant(>rd
Junior University
Printed in the United States of America
Original printing 1988
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Geenz, Clillord.
Works and lives: the anthropologist as author I Clill'ord Geenz.
p. em.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8047-1428-2 (d) IS liN 0-l!op-1~47-l! (ph)
1. Ethnology-Authorship. I. Title.
GN307.7.G+4 1988 87·20310
306--dCI9 CII'
PREFACE
The first four chapters of this volume were given, in some-
what different form, as the Harry Camp Memorial Lectures
at Stanford University in the Spring of 1983; the third chap-
ter has also been previously published in Raritan, Fall 1983.
A few preliminary caveats are necessary, not in the way
of apology, which won't help, but for the sake of clarity.
First, the term "anthropology" is used here mainly as equiv-
alent to "ethnography" or "works based on ethnography."
This usage, though common to the point of being standard,
is, of course, inexact. I am quite aware that archaeology,
comparative linguistics, physical anthropology, and various
other forms of study not, or not necessarily, ethnographi-
cally based exist and have as valid a claim to be included in
the "anthropology" rubric as does "ethnography" and that
they raise discourse issues special to themselves. I use the
term to refer to sociocultural anthropology, and particularly
to that part of it that is ethnographically oriented, merely for
the sake of expository convenience. This use carries no sug-
gestion that the sort of work I discuss exhausts the referent
v
PREFACE
of the term or that such work is more deserving of it than
other sorts.
The second caveat is that although both biographical
and historical matters inevitably enter my discussion at nu-
merous points, this study is not itself either biographical or
historical in intent, but is primarily concerned with "how
anthropologists writc"-that is, it is textually oriented. I am
emphatically not one of those who believe in wholly auton-
omous "ontological" texts, and doubtless biographical and
historical matters arc far from irrelevant to the interpreta-
tion of anthropological works. My stress here, however, is
on other, if you will "literary," matters, normally much less
attended to in discussions of anthropology.
A large number of people have commented on one or
another aspect of the manuscript, pro, con, and otherwise,
and if I single out Professors Karen Blu and Amelie Rorty
for explicit mention and particular (and particularly heart-
felt) thanks, it is only because their efforts were extensive and
have had a substantial effect on the final form of what ap-
pears here. I am grateful to everyone who has taken the time
to try to help me find my way out of my own particular fly-
bottle.
Finally, in lieu of a dedication, which would be pre-
sumptuous, I would like merely to mention the name of the
man, nowhere cited in the body of the text, who has had no
direct connection to it or me, but whose work has served as
its governing inspiration at almost every point: Kenneth
Burke.
The Institute for Advanced Study e.G.
Princeton, N.J.
February 1987
Vl
CONTENTS
I.
Being There: Anthropology and the Scene of Writing
2.
The World in a Text: How to Read 'Tristes Tropiques' 25
J.
Slide Show: Evans-Pritchard's Mrican Transparencies 49
4.
!-Witnessing: Malinowski's Children 73
s.
Us/Not-Us: Benedict's Travels 102
6.
Being Here: Whose Life Is It Anyway? 129
Index 153
WORI<S AND LIVES
The Anthropologist as Author
I.
BEING THERE
Anthropology and the Scene of Writing
The illusion that ethnography is a matter of sorting strange
and irregular facts into familiar and orderly categories-this
is magic, that is technology-has long since been exploded.
What it is instead, however, is less clear. That it might be a
kind of writing, putting things to paper, has now and then
occurred to those engaged in producing it, consuming it, or
both. But the examination of it as such has been impeded by
several considerations, none of them very reasonable.
One of these, especially weighty among the producers,
has been simply that it is an unanthropological sort of thing
to do. What a proper ethnographer ought properly to be
doing is going out to places, coming back with information
about how people live there, and making that information
available to the professional community in practical form,
not lounging about in libraries reflecting on literary ques-
tions. Excessive concern, which in practice usually means
any concern at all, with how ethnographic texts are con-
structed seems like an unhealthy self-absorption-time-
wasting at best, hypochondriacal at worst. What we want to
BEING THERE
know about is the Tikopians and the Tallensi, not the nar-
rative strategies of Raymond Firth or the rhetorical machin-
ery of Meyer Fortes.
Another objection, here coming mostly from the con-
sumer side, is that anthropological texts are not worth such
delicate attention. It is one thing to investigate how a Con-
rad, a Flaubert, or even a Balzac, gets his effects; to engage in
such an enterprise for a Lowic or a Radcliftc-Brown, to
speak only of the dead, seems comic. A few anthropolo-
gists-Sapir, Benedict, Malinowski, and these days Levi-
Strauss-may be recognized as having a distinctive literary
style, and not being above an occasional trope. But that is
unusual and somewhat to their disadvantage-suggestive
even of sharp practice. Good anthropological texts are plain
texts, unpretending. They neither invite literary-critical
close reading nor reward it.
But perhaps the most intense objection, coming from
all quarters, and indeed rather general to intellectual life
these days, is that concentrating our gaze on the ways in
which knowledge claims arc advanced undermines our ca-
pacity to take any of those claims seriously. Somehow, atten-
tion to such matters as imagery, metaphor, phraseology, or
voice is supposed to lead to a corrosive relativism in which
everything is but a more or less clever expression of opinion.
Ethnography becomes, it is said, a mere game of words, as
poems and novels arc supposed to be. Exposing how the
thing is done is to suggest that, like the lady sawed in half, it
isn't done at all.
These views are unreasonable, because they are not
based on the experience of threats present and actual, or
even looming, but on the imagining of possible ones that
might occur were everything to be suddenly otherwise than
it now is. If anthropologists were to stop reporting how
2
