When isms become wasms - Structural functionalism, Marxism, feminism and postmodernism

Journal/Book: Crit Anthr. 1997; 17: 2455 Teller Rd, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Sage Publications Inc. 11-32.

Abstract: Exploring the major paradigms in which ethnographic work was cast from her graduate student days in the 1950s to the present, the author assesses the ideological intolerance for the wisdom of the ancestors as anthropologists respond to the latest models in vogue, endlessly critiquing its origins and denying the value of ethnology. The structuralist functionalist analyses allowed ethnologists of the 1950s to capture important insights into colonial societies even at the point when they were gaining independence, and the historical materialism that postdated it is now under attack, often without consideration for the many insights to be gained from a class analysis by those who espouse 'postmodernism'. The author suggests that the interpretive approach that questions the very reality of our subjects is promoting an armchair critique of texts that disparages ethnographic inquiry into social process from a participant observation approach. Sociology, social history and other disciplines that recognize its merits are undertaking the kind of studies that once provided us with the descriptive analyses that were the heritage for future generations. This comes, not coincidentally, at a time when fieldwork has become increasingly dangerous and when white males who once dominated the field are being decentered by those who once served only as objects of inquiry. The author ends with a plea for a postmodernist approach that reflects the perspective of those who are transforming the very structures within which those who claim to have privileged access to it in declining 'core' countries are enmeshed.

Note: Article Nash J, Smith Coll, Northampton,MA 01063 USA

Keyword(s): ethnography; feminism; fieldwork; interpretive anthropology; Marxism; participant observation; postmodernism; structural functionalism; ANTHROPOLOGY

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