Crazy-Ass Ethnography

Here is a question for the SM community that I’ll turn into a bit of an ‘open thread’: I’m teaching a large intro course in the fall complete (as regular readers may remember) with a textbook and a few intro ethnographies. Most of the ethnographies I’ll be teaching deal with pretty standard stuff — Hawai’i, college life, etc. I feel like the course may be missing an ‘exotic’ or ‘weird’ ethnography which… is what I’m supposed to be doing, right? So: can anyone recommend a short, easy ethnography that is on some totally crazy-ass subject that will blow students’ minds? Please note that out here in Hawai’i at lot of people are Asian so The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down and other ethnographies of that ilk will strike students as being ‘close to home’ and not ‘exotic’. Maybe something from Africa or Latin America, which are not really on the radar over here?

p.s. I’m officially burned out on The Sambia and don’t have the strength to battle through In Search of Respect. So no recs for those, please.

Blog post,
Rex

Alex Golub is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. His book Leviathans at The Gold Mine has been published by Duke University Press. You can contact him at rex@savageminds.org

50 thoughts on “Crazy-Ass Ethnography”

  1. Have you considered Guests of the Sheik? It’s older, but it’s fairly short, easy to read, and a compelling story. I’ve used it in intro cultural anthropology classes and students always enjoy it. It can also be used to open discussions of gender, Islam, or current-day Iraq.

  2. I love Margery Wolf’s A Thrice-Told Tale, which tells a story from her ethnographic work on spirit possession in Taiwan in three different ways: The first is a short story written right after her return, the second is her rough collection of fieldnotes, and the third is a story of her experience written 30 years later. The book is also chock-full of insightful analysis & exploration of feminist ethno, ethnographic fiction, reflexivity, and multi-voiced texts (to name a few).

    My MA thesis, The Virtual Campfire: An Ethnography of Online Social Networking is pretty ‘crazy-ass’ if the subject matter is of interest to your students. It’s apparently pretty popular among students in the handful of Anthropology / Communication / Information undergrad classes reading it:
    http://thevirtualcampfire.org/thevirtualcampfire

    Is it poor form to suggest one’s own work? Whatevs. 😉

  3. May I suggest my own book, Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (University of New Mexico Press, 2010)? It is about the use of the hallucinogen ayahuasca in the context of shamanic practice in the Amazon. It has received very favorable reviews in scholarly journals. I would guess that it would count as exotic, even in Hawaii. 🙂

    You can check it out on its website, htttp://www.singingtotheplants.com/, and on Amazon, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0826347304/. And it’s only twenty bucks! 🙂

  6. Soul Rebels by William F Lewis and Joan Young Gregg is really good. It is about the Rastafari and is a good example of a multi-sited ethnography. It not only describes Rastafari in Jamaica but also deals with them in the US and “repatriated” Rastafari in Ethiopia. It was published in 1993 so the field work is from the late 80’s and early 90’s. However, I think students would find it interesting. It was one of the books used in my first anthropology intro class way back in the early 2000’s.

  7. Some ethnographies I’ve taught at first or second year with good results:

    Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea – Anette Weiner

    Never in Anger – Jean Briggs (I’m intrigued by her “The Moral Education of a Three year Old” but I haven’t read it yet.)

    The Meaning of Whitemen – Ira Bashkow

    Friend by Day, Enemy By Night: Organized Vengeance in a Kohistani Community – Lincoln Keiser

    Travesti – Don Kulick

  9. Serena Nanda’s “Neither Man Nor Woman” is written at the undergrad level and has a great chapter about hijras removing their genitals, which made my students quite uncomfortable.

  10. Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society, Beth Conklin…

    I used this to make Catholic Kids weep for the poor cannibals who just want to eat their dead relatives…

    Yay, anthropology.

    What do I get if I win?

  11. – Shelter Blues by Robert Desjarlais. (Exotic in its own right)
    – Gypsies, Wars& Other Instances of the Wild. Civilization and Its Discontents in a Serbian Town by Mattijs van de Port. (Amazing and very exotic)

  12. “Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with Money, War and the State”!
    It’s kind of fat to use as only part of a first year course but you might like it because… it’s from Africa, the “Blood, Cattle and Cash” chapter seems to have some pop appeal, it is (I think) a sort of classic that links up to work done by Evans-Pritchard etc, and it’s useful for talking about different approaches to doing anthropology (historical vs….)

    If you were after something shorter from the same continent, How Karembola Men Become Mothers might be alright?

  13. I like Steve Striffler’s “Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s favorite food.” It’s part food social history, but a significant portion of it documents Striffler’s time working on the line at a Tyson Chicken plant with the mostly undocumented Central American laborers that Tyson hired. It’s pitched to undergrads but has good stuff about globalization, identity, consumption, and even a bit on ethics (Striffler didn’t disclose his research to Tyson, and explains why).

  14. Neither exotic nor weird on the face of things, but white students often react strongly to Portraits of “The Whiteman.” Lydia’s open door is good but not short. Ditto for The Devil and commodity fetishism.

  15. My Cocaine Museum by Taussig is not short, nor particularly easy, but it’s pretty gonzo, and in a very fun way. I’m usually reading one chapter or another. 🙂

  17. Why not try
    Challenging Gender Norms: Five Genders among the Bugis in Indonesia by Sharon Graham Davies. ISBN: 978045092803

    I’ve used this–it’s written for students and is very readable. It also shocks students to realize that gender is a cultural construct and this accessible writing both grabs them and helps them to think outside the cultural framework that they may bring to the class. There’s a small online National Geographic clip in which Davies speaks and one can hear the voices of the different genders. And of course, gender doesn’t exist in a vacuum–so one can extend the material to address the different subtopics we teach.
    http://edu.cengage.co.uk/catalogue/product.aspx?isbn=0495092800

  18. I’ve used Grinker’s _Houses_in_the_Rainforest: Ethnicity and Inequality among Farmers and Foragers in Central Africa. Lavie’s The_Poetics_of_Military_Occupation is also good, and in both cases it challenges a lot of assumptions in the lay discourse about the topics.

  20. Tales of witchcraft and sorcery make wonderful fodder for neophyte anthropologist. Two excellent books, both short and engagingly written, are Adam Ashforth’s Madumo: A Man Bewitched, and Harry West’s Ethnographic Sorcery.

  21. I recently finished Jean Briggs Inuit Morality Play: The Emotional Education of a Three-Year-Old. I loved it. I could see undergrads really enjoying the narrative of it. I also like how she takes “exotic” behavior and brings it home to common problems and issues that all/most people deal with, such as “what is mine?” or “who do I belong to?”

  22. Smadar Lavie’s The Poetics of Military Occupation: Mzeini Allegories of Bedouin Identity Under Israeli and Egyptian Rule (California 1990). Bedouin, Israelis, nude tourists, and an Arab Jewish ethnographer on the beaches of south Sinai.

  24. I second Travesti- Don Kulik.
    Maybe Obeyesekere’s Medusa’s Hair?
    I’ve never tried to teach it to undergrads, but it isn’t too long and has nice case study material to work with

  27. I just read “Cheap Meat: Flap Food Nations in the Pacific Islands.” That might still be a little close to home, but I remember food ethnorgaphies didn’t really show up in any of my undergrad anth. classes – and I wished they had!

  28. Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman (Marjorie Shostak) was always a favorite of mine when I was teaching. It is very good for intro because it is personal, broken up into digestable pieces, and also ties into a movie (The Gods Must be Crazy) which increases accessibility.

    I will second “Guests of the Sheik” as well.

  29. Another vote for Guests of the Sheik here! I read it for intro to cultural anthropology, and I really loved it and learned a great deal.

    Also, this is a great post! My summer reading list just doubled!

  30. First, I’ll second MTBradley’s suggestion of Basso’s “Portraits of the Whiteman.” Great ethnography, that one. Anyway, here are some suggestions. I’m not sure if these are “crazy” per se, but they are all some pretty fascinating ethnographies, and they cover some different territories:

    1. Goldstein – Laughter out of Place (Violence, Poverty, and the role of humor in Brazil).

    2. Alvarez – Mangos, Chiles, and Truckers (Transnational life on the US-Mex border…this one is a short, easy read)

    3. Higgins and Coen – Streets, Bedrooms, and Patios (Urban poor, transvestites and pop culture in Oaxaca, Mex)

    4. Binford – The El Mozote Massacre (Histories of brutal violence in El Salvador…this one is heavy, but really good)

    5. Brennan – What’s love got to do with it? (Sex tourism in the Dominican Republic)

    6. Setha Low – Behind the Gates (Ethnography of gated communities…what could be crazier than that? Also, this one is a pretty easy read).

    7. Bruner – Culture on Tour (This one is really good because there are several different chapters about the anthropology of tourism. My favorites are “The Maasai and the Lion King” and the later chapter where Bruner gets fired from being a tour guide because the tour operators didn’t like what he was telling clients. Great book.)

    PS: I guess if you *really* want to go crazy you can assign “The Teachings of Don Juan” by Castaneda…they will be hooked by the first page when he starts talking about peyote, but then you’ll have to tell them the truth about the whole ordeal and have a big discussion about ethics and real ethnography vs “allegory”!!! 😉

  31. Oh ya, what about Righteous Dopefiend by Bourgois? Maybe too theory heavy, but definitely a different way of approaching ethnography.

  32. How about an ethnography of archaeologists…

    Jennifer A. Sandlin and George J. Bey III
    Trowels, trenches and transformation: A case study of archaeologists learning a more critical practice of archaeology. Journal of Social Archaeology June 2006 6: 255-276

  33. 1. Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft
    2. Nightwork (Anne Allison’s book)
    3. Hip-Hop Japan

    I do the anthro of Japan, so my recs are going to be from that area, but I’ll keep thinking.

  35. I like “Pigs for the Ancestors” by Rappaport.
    That way you can also discuss the history of the discipline.
    I have my copy in my lap now.
    I read it in a survey course. My wife helped me write my synopsis.
    She still kids me about it.

    Blessings,

    C

  36. Edmonds, Pretty Modern, for beautiful ethnography on a ‘sexy’ subject.

    For ‘out there’: TUHAMI.

  37. i’ve only taught these two in an upper level course but the students absolutely loved them.

    arun saldanha’s (2007) _psychedelic white: goa trance and the viscosity of race_. he is a critical geographer but the book artfully combines ethnographic insight with spatial analysis to present a novel materialist theory of race as produced in the global rave scene.

    warwick anderson’s (2008) _the collectors of lost souls: turning kuru scientists into white men_. a sort of historical ethnographic approach to thinking through how technoscience and forms of exchange amid the kuru epidemic in PNG remade both researched and researcher(s). great complement to mauss if you have got that on the syllabus already.

    cheers

  41. Allen Feldman, Formations of Violence
    Andrew Lattas, Cultures of Secrecy

    both difficult, but the worth it kind of difficult. Basso’s Portraits of the Whiteman and Kulick’s Travesti are easier and also good, as has been mentioned.

  42. Crocker & Crocker: The Canela: Kinship, Ritual, and Sex in an Amazonian Tribe.
    The data is older, and I won’t say it doesn’t have some issues, but it always blows students minds. Lots of societally sanctioned “extra-marital” sex and partible paternity.

  43. I second Luhrmann’s Persuasions of the Witches’ Craft.

    Also, Paul Stoller’s In Sorcery’s Shadow.

  44. Crazy-ass certainly is in the eye of the beholder.

    The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other, Tzvetan Todorov
    Not an ethnography but more intensely ethnographic than most, and spun through with sparkling theory. It’s Latin America, engages undergrads, beautifully written, and dedicated to the memory of a Mayan woman devoured by dogs.

    It’s the horror that reels them in, but theory (through self/other binary, equality/inequality : identity/difference), hybridization of cultures, and lots and lots of great stories that hooks them.

  45. Charles Piot 2010, Nostalgia for the Future (Togolese people making a full-time occupation of playing the Green Card lottery)

    Niko Besnier 2011, On the Edge of the Global: Modern Anxieties in a Pacific Island Nation (beauty salons, beauty pageants, gyms in Tonga)

  46. This isn’t an ethnography, but it is crazy-ass for sure: Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz. We read it for a senior level class called Diversity in American Life. It definitely blew my mind. Horwitz is an award-winning journalist who chronicles his encounters with the still unfinished Civil War aka The War of Northern Aggression. If that doesn’t sound interesting enough, I have two words to sweeten the deal: Civil Wargasm. It is greatness beyond belief! Good luck choosing between all these recommendations! It would be great to hear what you end up choosing! 🙂

  47. Douglas Raybeck’s Mad Dogs, Englishmen, and the Errant Anthropologist is simultaneously an ethnography, a fieldwork account, and a step-by-step description of becoming an anthropologist. It’s also pretty funny. His mantra: “Things go awry.” How true! He did fieldwork in Kalimantan, Malaysia.

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  50. I’ve used Nigel Barley’s “Adventures in a Mud Hut/The Innocent Anthropologist” with general student audiences a number of times, and always have gotten a good response.

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