Thank you Nancy, this is almost what I was trying to articulate and corresponds with my ´individual` understanding of objectivity and with my reading of Weberian terms of objectivity.
Just, having a look at term ´individual perception`, ain`t this a mirror for the larger context ´culture`, which is represented in individual perceptions at certain locality at certain place in time?
Did you make your reflection on your individual perception explicit in the anthropological analysis/describtion you wrote afterwards?
In regards of anthropology`s inherent morality,
it is possible to make it explicit, you see she did it. This is not about relativism, which I consider an illusion, a construction, but about ´reflexivity`, that is tied to ´objectivity` in anthropology.

That being said, I felt OK telling a Cree friend that I felt he was being a hypocrite when he expressed prejudicial attitudes toward Inuit residents. While an analysis of Cree-Inuit tensions has to go beyond that, I freely admitted to my disappointment at learning this in my ethnographic description, specifically how I spent 2 weeks locked away in my room after finding this out, angry with my Cree hosts and not wanting to talk to anyone. When this obviously didn’t lead to anything, I came out and tried to understand “why”.

Maybe our “screen personality” is a convenient way to mask our inner reactions which would make our research seem ethnocentric if it was admitted. We are only doing ourselves a disservice by trying to suppress thoughts and feelings, however intellectually distasteful we may find them, that we are experiencing.

If one wants to study a community as an external observer, so be it. But a more resourceful subject of study, in my opinion, is the interaction between cultures that takes place, the hierarchy implicit in the researchers presence, the emotional reactions, on both sides, between researcher and researched. Let’s study the personal experiences of people’s interactions, as people in a global context, without separation between researcher and subject, and see what they have to offer us.

Malinowski’s journals are fascinating because they offer a deeper view into the whole experience of the time and place where they were written. If anthropologists want to really practice cultural-relativism let’s stop acting like we’ll somehow disrupt a fragile culture with our advanced ideas of human rights and individual freedom and start acting like we’re people too, as ignorant as anyone else, with different ideas that are no more valid than those we’re studying. We’re full of emotional reactions, which are often the result of the same processes we are trying to study, and by protecting people from them we’re only implying that our thoughts are somehow superior.

Way back in the mid-90’s, when I was a God-fearing, girl-loving Boy Scout, I had a great scoutmaster who was wise in the ways of this world. (To this day, the Boy Scouts of America still get my vote for awesomest. homophobic institution. evar.) Scoutmaster Swift pretty much never got angry at any of the Scouts, no matter what they did. Play tug of war with an axe? Get a mild rebuke. Pee right outside the tent in the middle of the night? Have a calm discussion about why this might not be such a good idea. I asked him, once, how he kept such a cool head. His answer: Everything a person does makes sense to them at the time; when you understand why a person behaves the way they do, it’s impossible to be angry.

I think a similar attitude applies in anthro work: Cultural relativism isn’t an anything-goes moral relativism; neither is it some sort of mythical po-mo/quantum theory rejection of the idea of objective truth. It’s just the admission that we humans all have pretty darned similar brains, and as such, we can understand one another, but only if we recognise this equivalence. Like my old Scoutmaster, once we understand, we can definitely disagree with and fight against acts and practices (to fail to do so would be to deny our commonality by refusing to operate on the level of other human beings), but we aren’t in a position to condemn people or peoples.

Traditional ethnography, as an attempt to understand, usually omits moral commentary as this isn’t particularly pertinent (or so the old theory goes). But this doesn’t mean that anthropologists have necessarily had a bland, value-free outlook on the world: Malinowski’s diary; Boas’ and Mead’s outspoken activism; Benedict’s service to the US military.

So, yeah: I think anthropologists can say that. (Though, I’d say that an anthropological attitude would go beyond ‘This is stupid and mean.’ to ‘This is stupid and mean… I wonder why they do it.’) Heck, I think they should. (Full disclosure helps us greatly in evaluating the ways in which ethnographers’ attitudes may have biased their work.)

But as for what then? I think that’s more your job as an anthropos than as an anthropologist.

By the way… What’s a lamb flap?