Being There

"In recent decades anthropologists have learned to think of themselves as prisoners of text. In the new orthodoxy, ethnography is best viewed as a certain kind of literary genre, textual criticism provides a master theory for understanding all manner of social and cultural phenomena, and young anthropologists show a reluctance to leave the comfort zone of the archive and the library where, whatever else happens, no unruly interlocutor is going to do something unseemly like answering back. This brilliant and humane volume promises to put paid to all that. Anthropology is the product of an encounter with the world we call fieldwork, and fieldwork is an edgy business in which researchers necessarily put themselves at intellectual, political and ethical risk. This volume restores that edgy business to the heart of our concerns, and reminds anthropologists that their distinctive way of engaging the world can be the source of real intellectual excitement, and as worthy of sophisticated theoretical reflection as anything they do."—Jonathan Spencer, University of Edinburgh