Comments on: Claude dit: http://savageminds.org/2008/11/03/claude-dit-4/ Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:58:55 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: ryan a http://savageminds.org/2008/11/03/claude-dit-4/comment-page-1/#comment-521818 ryan a Sat, 08 Nov 2008 06:10:11 +0000 http://savageminds.org/?p=1376#comment-521818 Here's what I like about this quote: it strips away the mere distance of the field as a kind of measure of importance. Forget it. CLS is saying that what matters most is not the fact that an ethnographer had to travel to some distant place; what matters most is what is learned or discovered (those elusive "truths"). Funny how he even calls the distance a "negative" aspect. Very much against the tradition of anthropology that calls (or used to) for distant fieldwork as a kind of ritual ordeal for turning oneself into a "real" anthropologist. Maybe this is an early argument for turning the anthropological lens inward? Or maybe he was just feeling a little grumpy when he started that book... Here’s what I like about this quote: it strips away the mere distance of the field as a kind of measure of importance. Forget it. CLS is saying that what matters most is not the fact that an ethnographer had to travel to some distant place; what matters most is what is learned or discovered (those elusive “truths”). Funny how he even calls the distance a “negative” aspect. Very much against the tradition of anthropology that calls (or used to) for distant fieldwork as a kind of ritual ordeal for turning oneself into a “real” anthropologist.

Maybe this is an early argument for turning the anthropological lens inward? Or maybe he was just feeling a little grumpy when he started that book…

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