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Title
The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology

Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2xq430hc

Journal
Current Anthropology, 36(3)

Author
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy

Publication Date
1995-06-01

Peer reviewed

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CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36, Number 3, June r995
ttl 1995 by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved oo32041~5136o3·ooo3S2..oo

For much of this century cultural anthropology has been

concerned with divergent rationalities, with explaining
2 how and why various cultural others thought, reasoned,
and lived-in-the-world as they did. Classical anthropo­
The Primacy of logical thinking and practice are best exemplified, per~
haps, in the ~reat witchcraft and rationality debates of
decades past. Ideally, modernist cultural anthropology
the Ethical liberated "truth" from its unexamined Eurocentric and
Orientalist presuppositions. But the world, the objects
of our study, and consequently, the uses of anthropology
have changed considerably. Exploring the cultural logic
Propositions for a Militant of witchcraft is one thing. Documenting, as I am now,
the burning or "necklacing" of accused witches, politi~
Anthropology! cal collaborators, and other ne'er-do~wells in belea­
guered South African townships-where a daily toll of
"charred bodies" is a standard feature of news re­
by Nancy Scheper-Hughes ports-is another. 3 A more womanly-hearted anthropol­
ogy might be concerned not only with how humans
think but with how they behave toward each other, thus
engaging directly with questions of ethics and power.
In South African squatter camps as in the AIDS sana­
In bracketing certain "Western" Enlightenment truths we hold toria of Cuba and in the parched lands of Northeast Bra­
and defend as self-evident at home in order to engage theoreti­
cally a multiplicity of alternative truths encoded in our reified
zil, I have stumbled on a central dilemma and challenge
notion of culture, anthropologists may be "suspending the ethi· to cuIrural anthropology, one that has tripped up many
cal" in our dealings with the "other." Cultural relativism, read a fieldworker before me (for example, Renata Rosaldo
as moral relativism, is no longer appropriate to the world in [r989:r-2rl in his encounters with Ilongot headhunt­
which we live, and anthropology, if it is to be worth anything at ers): In bracketing certain "Western" Enlightenment
all, must be ethically grounded. This paper is an attempt to imag­
ine what forms a politically committed and morally engaged an· truths we hold and defend as self-evident at home in
thropology might take. order to engage theoretically with a multiplicity of alter­
native truths encoded in our reiRed notion of culture,
NANCY SCHEPER-HUGHES is Professor of Anthropology at the anthropologists may be "suspending the ethical" (Buber
University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, Calif. 94720, 1952:147-56) in our dealings with the ((other," espe­
U.S.A.). Born in 1944, she was educated at Berkeley (Ph.D., cially those whose vulnerable bodies and fragile lives
19761. She has taught at the University of North Carolina, are at stake. Moreover, what stake can anthropologists
Chapel Hill, at Southern Methodist University, at the University
of Cape Town, and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences expect to have in current political debates in rapidly "de­
Sociales, Paris. Her research interests include the application of mocratizing" nations in Eastern Europe, Latin America,
critical theory to medicine and psychiatry, the anthropology of and Africa where newly drafted constitutions and bills
the body, illness, and suffering, the political economy of the emo­ of rights-and those of Brazil and South Africa are exem­
tions, and violence and terror. Among her publications are
Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ire­
land (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, unreflexive cultural relativist, Levinas's notion of a "pre-cultural"
1979l, the edited volume Child Survival: Anthropological Per­ moral repugnance toward unnecessary human suffering came back
spectives on the Treatment and Maltreatment of Children [Dor­ to haunt me with a vengeance, along with the specter of three-year­
drecht: D. Reidel, 1987), and Death Without Weeping (Berkeley old Mercea, who died abandoned by both her mother and her an­
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992l. The pres­ thropologist during Brazilian Carnival celebrations in 1989.
ent paper was submitted in final form 25 x 94. 2. Excellent reviews of these debates in anthropology can be found
in Mohanty (1989), Hollis and Lukes (1982J, Wilson (1985), and
Tambiah (1990J.
I. This paper was originally presented as a keynote address at the 3- Here is how the death of suspected police collaborators and
Israel Anthropological Association Meetings, Tel Aviv University, witchcs is described in the local white newspaper in Cape Town
on March 23, 1994, where the conference theme was "Politically (my emphasis): "Dozen Bodies Removed from Guguletu in Week­
Committed Anthropology." On my return to South Afriea I pre­ end Casualties"; "The charred bodies of seven people, including a
sented the paper to my colleagues at the Department of Social 50 year old woman and her teenage daughter, were found in Tho­
Anthropology, University of Cape Town, on May 13, 1994, where koza hostel and Katlehong on Friday. . The burned and blackened
it achieved a certain notoriety and generated a strong response, bodies of two young men were found at the Mandela squatter camp
aspects of which have worked their way into this revision. In No­ in Thokoza and another body at Katlehong railway station" (Cape
vember r994 parts of this paper were read at the AAA symposium Times, September 1993); "Another 40 bodies found on the East
"Rethinking the Cultural: Beyond Intellectual Imperialisms and Rand"; finally, "Charred bodies of two witches found in Nyanga"
Parochialisms of the Past" (see Winkler 1994:AI8). I am grateful (Argus, January 21, 1994l. The women accused of witchcraft had
to my Israeli, South African, and North American colleagues for been bound together with rope and were "badly burnt." While
their contributions and criticisms. Finally, at a crucial moment in white deaths "counted"-as, for example, in the extensive and
my failed attempts to "make sense" of the "useless suffering" of personal coverage of the white victims of the St. James Church
the multitudes of Northeast Brazilian angel-babies, T. M. S. Evens "massacre" in Cape Town in late July r994-the black victims
introduccd me to certain key writings of Emmanuel Levinas [1986}. of township violence were merely "counted," recorded as body
Although I originally rejected these with the vehemence of the counts.

409
410 I CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36, Number 3, rune 1995

plary-speak to a growing global consensus I"Western/ 1I "my" anthropological subjects. On the day that I was
"bourgeois,1I IIhegemonic," if you willi defending the about to leave the field in Northeast Btazil in r982 a
rights of women, children, sexual minorities, the ac­ fight broke out between my research assistant, "Little
cused, and the sick against traditional and customary
If Irene," and several women of the shantytown of the Alto
law/' cultural claims increasingly viewed as hostile/ op­ do Cruzeiro (aptly named Crucifix Hill) that was to
pressive/ and exploitative? change irrevocably the course of my life and work as
an anthropologist. The women-all of them shantytown
mothers-were waiting outside the creche and social
Framing the Issue and Calling the Bluff center of the squatters' association where I was gather­
ing the sad reproductive histories that would eventually
In the introduction to Death Without Weeping (r992b: result in the publication of Death Without Weeping a
21) I suggest that cultural relativism, read as moral rela­ decade latet.
tivism, is no longer appropriate to the world in which When I emerged to see what the commotion was
we live and that anthropology, if it is to be worth any­ about, the women were prepared to tum their anger
thing at all, must be ethically grounded: "If we cannot against me. Why had I refused to work with them when
begin to think about social institutions and practices in they had been so willing to work with me? Didn't I care
moral or ethical terms, then anthropology strikes me as about them personally any more-theit lives, their suf­
quite weak and useless." The specific instance I treat at fering, their struggle? This was a reference to my previ­
length in Death Without Weeping concerns the moral ous history in the community when, during the mid­
thinking and social practices of poor shantytown r960s, I lived and worked in the Alto do Cruzeiro as a
womeD toward some of their small, hungry babies politically committed community organizer, helping to
viewed as II wan ting fl to die or "needing" to die, as filling fOWld UPAC, the squatters' association, and attending
the role of "generative scapegoats" (Girard r987) and dy­ to the community's perennial quest for clean water, gar·
ing.. like Jesus, so that others might live. bage collection, street lights, and paved streets, along­
More recently, I have dealt with the impact of the side the fight for fair wages, rudimentary medical and
AIDS epidemic on moral Lbinking, public policy, and dental services, protection from police brutality and
the "politics of truth JJ in the United Statesl Brazill and death squad violence, and, perhaps most important,
Cuba [Scheper-Hughes r993, r994a). I suggest that more proper and dignified burials.
could have been done to ptevent the spread of the epi­ Why was I now, 20 years later, so-how could they
demic if such standard public health measures and ptac­ put it?-so passive, so indifferent, so seemingly resigned
tices as routine testing with partner notification had not to the destruction of the association by right-wing politi­
been rejected in the United States and, more generally, cal attacks, to the closing of the creche, and to the end
in the West (through the WHO global AIDS program) as of the festas and celebrations of everyday lives and ev­
politically unpalatable. I point to a lapse in moral cour­ eryday saints that I had once thrown myself into with
age by those empoweted to protect the well-being of the such abandon. I explained, once again, what anthropol­
social body and in the writings of medical anthropolo­ ogy was and that I was there to observe, to document,
gists, among whom Ifcritical" thinking seems to be sus­ to understand, and later to write about their lives and
pended in the time of AIDS. Finally, in South Alrica I their pain as fully, as truthfully, and as sensitively as I
ran headlong into a dispute with local IIrliscipline" and could.
tlsecurityll committees in a black squatter camp of the That was all well and good, replied the women, but
Western Cape, where the threat of the "necklace" and what else was I going to do while I was with them?
public floggings were used to keep especially young bod­ Shouldn't we hold squatters' association meetings again,
ies in line. now that grassroots organizations bad been "unbanned"
In each case I have had to pause and reconsider the by the newly democratizing government? Couldn't the
traditional role of the anthropologist as neutral, dispas· old IIcultural circles" and Paulo Freirean literacy groups
sionate, cool and rational, objective observer of the hu· that we once had be revived? Many Alto men and
man condition: the anthropologist as "fearless specta­ women had lost Lbe basics of reading and writing that
tor," to evoke Charles McCabe's (unlfelicitous phrase. they had learned years before. And what about the
And I am tempted to call anthropology's bluff, to expose creche building itself? It was in a bad state of disrepait,
its artificial moral relativism and to try to imagine what its roof tiles broken, its bricks beginning to crumble.
forms a politically committed and morally engaged an­ Shouldn't we organize a collective work force, a muti·
thropology might take. rao, as we did in the old days, to get the building back
in shape?
I backed away saying, "This work is cut out for you.
Anthropologist and Companheira My work' is different now. I cannot be an anthropologist
and a companheira at the same time." I shared my reser·
My transformation from lIobjective" anthropologist to vations about the propriety of a North American's tak·
politically and morally engaged companheira was, how­ ing an active role in the life of a poor Brazilian commu·
ever, the result not so much of a tortured process of nity. This was "colonialist," I patiently explained, trying
critical self-reflexivity as of the insistence of some of to summarize the arguments of Edward Said, Talal Asad,
 D' ANDRADE/SCHEPER-HUGHES Objectivity and Militancy 14I1

and others that had gained such currency in anthropo­ courteous relations with both the white aristocracy and
logical circles. But my arguments fell on deaf ears. IIOh, the black sharecropper families Isee Powdermaker 19391.
Nanci," they protested, IIDoutor Claudio !tbe owner of But the times and anthropology had changed. It now
the local sugar mill, Cuaranji} is colonialist, not US," seemed that there was little virtue to false neutrality in
And they gave me an ultimatum: the next time I came the face of the broad political and moral dramas of life
back to the Alto do Cruzeiro it would be on their terms, and death, good and evit that were being played out in
that is, as a companheira. I'accompanying" them as I the everyday lives of the people of Alto do Cruzeiro, as
had before in the struggle and not just sitting idly by in Sunflower County in the 1930S and in the squatter
taking field notes. "What is this anthropology to us, camps surrounding Cape Town and in Jerusalem and
anyway?" 'lits" occupied territories today. What makes anthropol­
And so, each time I returned between 1987 and ogy and anthropologists exempt from the human respon­
1992-for fOUl mOle fieldwolk trips in all-I assumed sibility to take an ethical (and even a political) stand on
the local cargo of anthropologist-companheira, dividing the working out of historical events as we are privileged
my time land my loyalties) between anthropology and to witness them?
political work as it was assigned to me by the activist The plot and the dilemmas thickened as I moved from
women and men of the Alto, even when it meant being Northeast Brazil into the even more politically charged
drawn land not always happily) into local campaigns on climate of South Africa during r993-94.
behalf of the Socialist Workers' Party candidate for presi­
dent, Lula, during the heated election campaigns of 19 9
or being asked to support a mill workers' and cane cut­
ters' general strike the year before. My reluctance to do Who's the Killer?
so was born out of my own natural anthropological incli­
nation to want-as Adlai Stevenson once put it-just to At a special showing of the once-banned antiapartheid
sit back in the shade with a glass of wine in my hand film A Dry White Season at the University of Cape
and watch the dancers. Town in August I993, I was unprepared for a spontane­
But the more my companheiras gently but firmly ous audience reaction: muted but audible boos and
pulled me away from the IIprivate' world of the hisses accompanied the scene of the I976 Soweto
wretched huts of the shantytown, where I felt most schoolchildren's uprising against forced instruction in
comfortable, and toward the {'public" world of the mu­ Afrikaans. "Why would a liberal audience of Capetoni­
nicipio of Bam Jesus da Mata, into the marketplace, the ans react so negatively to the scene of black township
mayor's office and the judge's chambers, the police sta­ youth defending their rights?" I asked a new colleague
tion and the public morgue, the mills and the rural the next day. I had recently arrived in South Africa to
union meetingsl the more my understandings of the take up a new post, and, still suffering from the disloca­
community were enriched and my theoretical horizons tion/ I desperately needed a running interpretation of the
were expanded. Truel I lost the chameleon-like ambidex­ subtexts of everyday life. III suppose some people are
terity of the politically uncommitted lor, at least, the sick and tired of violent schoolchildren on rampage/I
noncommitall anthropologist, and as I veered decidedly . the colleague replied. The answer surprised me, and I
toward "left-handedness" I had to deal with real politi­ tucked it away in a fieldnote.
cal foes who} on more than one occasion, sent local Before the month was out however I had seen my
l l

thugs after me, requiring me to leave our field site until illl of newspaper and TV media images of local township
the //heat" was off. Now I had to accept that there were schoolchildren burning textbooks, toyi-toyi-ing Ithe
places where I was not welcome in Born Jesus da Mata high-spirited revolutionary marching dance of Southern
and local homes-both grand and small-that were irre­ Africaj while chanting for death to the IIsettiersl/ and
vocably closed to me and consequently to anthropology. IItorchingll the cars of suspected government lIagents"
There were embarrassing incidents, such as the time I who dared to enter the black townships during the
was accosted in the main town square just as a busload teachers' strike called "Operation Barcelona" (an allu­
of people returning from Recife spilled onto the side­ sion to the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona and the
walk. Fabiano, the dominant plantation family/s parti­ torches carried by their lead runners). In townships
san journalist, red-faced and angry, knocked me off bal­ torches were also a symbol of liberty but were used more
ance and yelled drunkenly, IINancil Nanci, querida, ominously to keep out 'Isettlers" and to bum out sus­
watch out! Why are you messing around with a bunch pected collaborators and other "bad eggs/l whose shacks
of wortpless anarchists and a Commie-faggot priest?JI were torched or whose bodies were set afire with /lneck­
IITsk! Tsk!" commented local middle-class residents as laces ll of petrol-filled tires wrapped around their necks.
they scurried pastl heads down, with their shopping bun­ We learned our lesson when our car was denied entry to
dles under their arms. the New Crossroads squatter camp outside Cape Town
I wondered what my late mentorl Hortense Powder­ on the day we had hoped to attend an ecumenical peace
maker, would have saidl recalling her enormous pride in service announced by Archbishop Tutu.
her ability to negotiate her way skillfully between Later, however/ my work brought me into contact
and around the IIco lor line" in Sunflower County, Mis­ with the rural squatters of Chris Ham campI a new com­
sissippi/ in the 1930s, managing to maintain open and munity of recently arrived African migrants from the
4I21 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36, Number 3, Tune 1995

black homeland of Transkei. The camp suddenly ap­ Sidney: You see they stole 400 rands from one of the
peared in 1992 on the hilly landscape of Franschhoek, a people's houses. So they bought brandy and weap­
white-dominated grape-farm, vineyard, and tourist com­ ons, pangas [machetes] but when they were caught
munity in the Western Capel as blacks took advantage they gave 200 rand back. Due to certain codes of con­
of a new liberal spirit and presence on the Franschhoek duct they were punished this way. At first the com­
town council. (Franschhoek was the site of Vincent Cra­ munity called for burnings, then it got set up at IOO
panzano's celebrated book Waiting: The Whites of South lashes. Before the punishment was set people were
Africa, published in r985.1 The incident to which I now waving pangas and said that they are going to get
tum concerns three young thieves whose "necklacing" burned because they are thieves. So the boys were
was narrowly averted by the intervention of ANC and here just waiting to get killed.
PAC IPan African Congress 1politicized youth, who drew
me into their action as a way of diverting attention from NS-H: Why wouldn't they run away?
themselves. Though I was fearful of being lured into a
potentially dangerous trap, the even more fearful condi­ Sidney: They couldn/t because they were surrounded
tion of the "disciplined" young thieves overdetermined by the whole community and the people had these
a "human" and engaged rather than a distanced and "ob­ pangas and sticks. They didn't have any chance to
jectiveil anthropological response.
run away.
The incident involved the theft of 400 rands (about
$1251 from a shabeen owner by three teenaged boys.
Caught red-handed, the thieves were immediately sur­ NS-H: Do the people ever think to wait until things
rounded by a mob demanding their death by necklacing. are more calm to take action?
The sentence was overruled, however, by a small group
of youths, citing the ANC Bill of Rights, which con­ Sidney: No, no, no! If they catch them now, within
demns the death penalty. Necklacing was replaced by five minutes this whole place is full of people. It's
100 strokes with a sjambock la large bullwhip), further very quick. But this is not the traditional way. In
reduced to 50. The floggings were performed collectively the homelands [Transkei) where I come from, I don't
by several older men of the squatter-camp community. have the right to judge. Only an old man with a lot
Sidney Kumalo, my IS-year-old field assistant, just re­ of experience can stand up and speak out and give
cently returned from his month of Xhosa initiation, iso­ up the punishment. But here it is too simple. If I
lation, and disciplined hunger in the bushes near Khaye­ don't like that one or that one I can just say, "Give
litsha township, confronted me for the first time as a him 80 lashes." Other people who like him better
reborn, remade man: "There is something you need to may come up with a smaller number, and so on. It's
know about our codes of discipline. You must see the very harsh.
boys for yourself," he said, and I accompanied him and
his small group of comrades with trepidation and a NS-H: Would they really kill you for stealing 400
heavy heart. Squatter-camp business is public business, rands?
and within minutes the word would spread from shack
to shack that the new IJwhite woman'/ was in the camp Sidney: Let me ask the boys themselves .... Yes,
again and nosing around the "prisoners. JJ Recording for they say the punishment was that they must get
whom? they would wonder. burned ... but some of us had sympathy with them
JlWe all deserve a lashing/' I had recently written in and we said, /INo/ just give them the lashes."
a despairing letter to friends. "The sadism of society de­
mands it." But the sight of the raw and bleeding backs NS-H: Who wanted to protect them?
of the young thieves made me want to eat those words.
Kept in isolation and denied food and water as a continu­ Sidney: Some of their friends. And a lot of the young
ation of the discipline imposed by the community, the people here in the PAC and the ANC youth commit­
boys were not a pretty sight. They could not bend their tees are against the discipline codes. The ANC does
legs, sit down, or walk without wincing, and three days not want us to use the lash on ourselves like a Boer
alter the whipping they were still unable to urinate or farmer.
defecate without difficulty. The smallest, Michael B.,
scowled with pain and revenge. "I'll kill them," he kept NS-H: What about their relatives?
repeating of his tormentors. The community did not
want anyone (especially not me) to see the boys for fear Sidney: If their relatives speak out, the people here
of police involvement and had refused them medical at­ will think} I'oh/ so you put them up to this, you sent
tention. Their parents were nowhere in sight, fearful them there Ito steal]." So the parents don't have any
that their shacks might be burned were they to show chance to defend their children. And from my experi­
any concern for their children. The following was tran­ ence/ if a parent speaks up for a son, the people can
scribed from a tape-recorded interview with the boys, come and burn down your shack. They are very
with Sidney serving as translatorlinterpreter: strict in this discipline.
 D' ANDRADE/SCHEPER-HUGHES Obiectivity and Militancy 1413

NS·H: Has anyone ever been "burned ll in this com­ for general inlection and possible kidney damage. She
munity? departed for Cape Town that evening, but her visit to
the camp had aroused anxiety and suspicion. The next
Sidney: No, not yet. And thaI's what makes it diffi­ morning Sidney and I took Michael by combi-taxi to the
cult for them to kill. No one has been killed yet. regional hospital in Paarl, where the boy was put on a
And we afe afraid, we youth committee people, of course of intravenous antibiotics. The young Afrikaner
what will happen here after they take that Step once. doctor noted that he was severely dehydrated, anemic,
and malnourished and recommended keeping him hos­
NS-H: Ask Michael whal he learned from this experi­ pitalized for a few days. That night I received an anony­
ence. mous phone call at "The Anchor Bed and Breakfast,"
my safe little harbor in rural Franschhoek. "Stay away
Sidney limerpreting for Michaell: AI this momem he from Chris Hani camp/' the heavily accented brown­
don't think he will steal again, but the only thing Afrikaner voice warned. "People there are angry that
that's going through his mind over and over is re­ you interfered with their 'discipline.' Your safety cannot
venge. But I told him Ihal if he lakes revenge he'll be guaranteed."
be punished all over again. But right now he can't The next time I returned to Chris Hani campI several
think about anything but revenge, except he doesn't days had passed, and I went to attend the funeral of
have the power to do it. a young comrade who had died of tuberculosis, the new
scourge of squatter-camp life. His young widow was
NS-H: Since the whole community made the deci­ beside herself. I slipped into the back of the hastily con­
sion to whip him, he would have to take revenge structed "chapel,'l a lean-to of scrap metal and wood
against everyone! covered by a large tarpaulin, painted redl green, and
black in the ANC colms. Nter the service we left in
Sidney: Yeah, but he knows who were the people processionl accompanied by strains of the IIUmkhonto
who did this to him, the ones who whipped him, be­ we Sizwe" military rag l recorded with background
cause they don't cover their faces. He knows all sounds of rifle and cannon shots. At the grave site the
their faces of those who did this. men took up shovels to bury their fallen comrade collec­
tively. Then Duncan, a close friend of the deceasedl sud­
NS-H: Does he have a job? denly came alive and led the ANC youth in a militant
toyi-toyi, stamping his feet and chanting in Englishl
Sidney: Nothing permanent. He only works casually while staring fixedly in my directionl flWhols the killer?
on the farms helping with the harvests. Who's the killer' Who's the killet?"
The following Sunday a community meeting was held
NS-H: Is he initiated? to discuss the question of justice and security at Chris
HanL The intervention in the incident of the three
Sidney; No, none of them has been initiated. Here in youths had provoked a crisis and the security committee
the camp there are even grown men who have not had quit the night before, and there had been blood­
been initiated! They may have built their own
shed in the camp. Residents were asked their opinions:
house, have a child, but still they don't have any
Should the security guard be reconstituted l or should
rights. the community allow the regular {whitel police to patrol
NS-H: Why don't they go through the initiation? the community? One by one people stepped forward to
express their views. Everyone wanted the local security
Sidney: The difficulIy is money. In the old days you system, but they wanted the rules and regulations to be
would just go to the kraal and get a goat or a sheep, clearer:
but today you must spend a lot of money. You get
presents but that only pays back a small pan of the Who are the security, anyway? People come to our
money that is spent. Another thing. the clothes you door and give us orders and we do not know if they
wore before the initiation, you must give them are really our security or not.
away, for now you are starting a new life. Even the
room you stay in, these newspapers on the wall, In the heat of the moment everyone calls for pun­
you must take them down and start all over. So you ishmentl but after it is carried out, everyone wants
seel everything goes back to money and these guys to criticize.
donlt have any.
On the following Saturday I brought a young "col­ What about the fairness of the punishments given?
ored" medical student from the University of Cape It shouldn't be that people with stronger families get
Town to examine the boys, who were still under house off easier than single people, but that often happens.
arrest. Rose decided that Michael, the smallest and most
injured of the boysl needed more extensive treatment What does the ANC say about discipline?
4 r 41 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36, Number 3, June I995

The ANC is againsr the necklace. her favorite son a final hug, "You'll be able to come
back.'1 But was that a threat! an ironYI or a critique?
Shall we build a iail here?

Can't we JUSt wait for the elections in April and Waiting: The Anthropologist as
see what happens then? Spectator
Finally, I was called up to speak, and my knees were
weak as I approached the microphone (Sidney and In juxtaposing II m ilitancy" and lithe ethical!' in this pa­
Temba served as translatorsl: per I wish to question two sacred cows that have pre­
vented anthropologists from participating in the strug­
Forgive me, for I am a stranger here and have no gle: the proud, even haughty distance from political
authority to speak except as you ask me to. 1 am a engagement and its accompanying! indeed, its justifying
member of the ANC IIILong live! Long live!" re­ ethic of moral and cultural relativism. The latter has
sponded the crowd I and I understand why you reject returned with a vengeance in the still fashionable rheto­
the police and why you want to have your own sys­ ric of postmodemism! an excuse for political and moral
tem of justice. I interfered not to be partial to three dalliance if ever there was one.
boys who wronged the communiry but because I felt In his book on white South Africans of the Western
sorry for their mothers, who were ashamed of what Cape, Crapanzano (t984:44) invoked rhe generative met­
their sons had done but who were afraid to help aphor of "waitingll to describe the intellectual and moral
them. IHere rhe older women nodded their heads in paralysis of rural white farmers, both Boer and English,
agreement.J And I was afraid that Michael had a seri­ on the eve of the inevitable unraveling of apartheid:
ous infection and could die without antibiotics.
Many people are asking for alternatives ro whippings Waiting means to be oriented in time in a special
and burnings, some of the young people and many way.... It is a sort of holding action-a lingering.
women think it might be better to put thieves to lIn its extreme forms waiting can lead to paraly­
work for the community: digging ditches, cleaning sis.1 ... The world in its immediacy slips away. It is
up garbage, sewage, and hauling water. de·realized. It is without elan! vitality, creative
force. It is numb, muted, dead .... [Waiting] is
A committee was formed representing all groups in marked by contingency-the perhaps-and all the
the camp-old and young! men and women! sports anxiety (and all the . .. powerlessness! helplessness,
groups! political paniesl security members them· vulnerability, and infantile rage] that comes with the
selves-to draw up alternatives for popular justice. In experience of contingency. [Waitingl is a passive ac·
the interim there would be no more whippings. Squat­ tivity. One can never actively seek the object of wait­
ter-camp leaders asked for help from the Community ing ... ultimately its arrival or non arrival is beyond
Peace Foundation of the University of the Western Cape! our con tral.
and two representatives of that foundation attended sub­
sequent meetings to help the community draft less puni­ These phrases irked my white South African colleagues
tive rules and alternative punishments. After elections at the University of Cape Town to a point of near­
in April, civic association leaders began negotiations murderous rage Isee Coetzee r985, Skalnik n.d., Bothma
with the local police about sharing responsibility for r99r). They appeared to cast aspersions on all white
keeping order at Chris Hani. South Africans and to ignore the role of those coura­
Michael, who could not get over his anger and desire geous whites who had joined the political struggle that
for revengel was advised to leave the squatter camp and eventually brought the apartheid state to its knees. Butl
was helped in locating a new home. The other two while their anger was understandable, their actions dur·
thieves accepted their punishment and were reinte­ ing the tumultuous year of political transition might be
grated into the community. Following Sidney!s lead, described in terms of the metaphor of waiting. This is
several other youths went into the bush to undergo not surprising, for watchful waiting is what all anthro­
Xhosa initiation. The last time I saw one of the thieves pologists are best-trained to do. Above and outside the
he was slathered in white clay and smiling broadly. He political fray is where most anthropologists cautiously
boasted that his circumcision Itcutll had hurt him worse position themselves.
than his flogging. In the Department of Social Anthropology at the Uni­
When I left Chris Hani, a few older men scolded me versity of Cape Town, Ifbusiness ll proceeded as usual.
for having exceeded my role as a visitor and a guest! but The content of anthropology was presented in the An­
the women invited me to a farewell beer party where I glo-American tradition of modern social anthropology,
was asked to show the slides I had taken of the boys with little attention-except for an incessant preoccu­
after their whipping. Seated at the front of the room, pation with falling "standards" and with diagnoses of
the women murmured their disapproval. The older men/ the presumed fllack!! and Ifdeficiencies" of the incoming
somewhat abashed, stood to the back of the room close black students-to the dramatic shift in the composi­
to the door. /fOon!t worry/' said Mrs. Kumalo, as I gave tion of the student body as black Africans, Indians, Ma­
 D' ANDRADE/SCHEPER-HUGHES Objectivity and Militancy 1415

lay Muslims, and HCape Coloured" students began in the investigation into Webster}s death} and the inquest
much greater nwnbers to take their places in the front­ ended without reaching any definitive conclusions. But
row seats of large lecture halls. "Race/' "ethnicity/' the judge in the inquest said that "the truth was not
"tribe/' "culture/' and "identity" were dutifully decon­ told on who killed Webster because many of the suspect
structed and de-essentialized in Anthropology 101, witnesses were professional liars who made their living
where they were taught as historically invented and fic­ in deception" (Mkhondo 1993:84-85). Given this hor­
tive concepts (see Boonzaier and Sharp 1988). Mean­ rendous social and political reality, leaving South Africa,
while, throughout the year South African Xhosas and my anthropological colleagues would say, was easy; the
Zulus (manipulated by a government-orchestrated decision to stay behind was more difficult and fraught
II third force'j daily slaughtered each other in and around with sometimes liie-preserving compromise. 4
worker hostels in the name of IItribe/' "ethnicity," and But in the necessary settling of accounts now taking
"culture. The relativizing, deconstructionist exercise
/I place in South Africa}s a radical self-critique 6 is a neces­
seemed irrelevant to the material history of oppressed sary precondition for recasting anthropology as a tool for
and oppressor "tribes" in South Africa and to the recoy­ human liberation in the new South Africa. Without this,
ery of "spoiled identities" and "spoiled ethnici­ anthropology in South Africa will sUIVive only as the
ties" ("Colored," "Zulu/' and "Afrikaner" among them) quaint hobby of privileged postcolonials.
in the politically negotiated process of new-nation
building.
And tea was still served, with predictable regularity, Moral Accountability and Anthropology in
at ten, twelve-thirty, and three in the appropriately Extreme Situations
dowdy tearoom, the same space where Monica Wilson
once held court. Departmental "founding father" A. R. The idea of an active, politically committed} morally
Radcliffe-Brown's rough-hewn initialed mailbox still engaged anthropology strikes many anthropologists as
perches jauntily on a side table, a sacred icon to the unsavory, tainted, even frightening. This is less so in
less-than-sacred history of anthropology at the Univer­ parts of Latin America} India, and Europe (Italy and
sity of Cape Town (see Phillips '994:2'-29, 270-741. France, for example), where the anthropological project
As the tea itself, served up with a sharp, intimidating, is at once ethnographic} epistemologic, and political and
exclusive, and only rarely self-mocking humor, is a re­
minder that the old order is hanging on to the bitter 4. For example, Monica Wilson bowed to pressure from the ruling
end, tearoom topics are carefully circumscribed: cricket, South African National Party's apartheid government and removed
film, and popular culture are acceptable, as are anec­ what the government viewed as an offensive chapter on black
dotes about foibles of odd and eccenrric South African South African resistance movements from the second volume of
or European anthropologists, living or dead. Anxieties her and Leonard Thompson's History of South Africa, 1870-1966
(1982), published in Cape Town by D. Phillip. The edition pub­
and fears about the political transition are (understand­ lished in 1971 in New York as the Oxford History of South Africa
ably) commonly expressed. However, any seemingly na­ included that chapter. Many South African radical intellectuals
ive and optimistic reference to the "new" South Africa were extremely critical of this publishing decision.
can result in a dramatic exodus from the tearoom. 5. The new parliament of South Africa has established a Commis­
IIWhat do you expect?" commented an ANC constitu­ sion of Truth and Reconciliation to enable South Africa and South
Africans to come to terms with their past. Just before leaving Cape
tionallawyer and former professor of human rights} now Town in July 1994 I received a memo from the Ministry of Justice
a member of the new Parliament. "Academics are use­ and from Minister Dullah Omar, MP, addressed to the chair of the
less. They are far too willing to serve any master. The
/I Department of Social Anthropology. The memo outlined the steps
involvement of one tradition (Englishl of South African to be taken by the official commission, and it invited the depart­
anthropology in the service of colonialism and, of an­ ment along with all other "public organizations and religious bod­
ies" to submit comments, suggestions, and proposals regarding the
other (Afrikaner) in the implementation of the mun­ commission's work. My thoughts on the topic were also stimulated
danely evil details of grand apartheid is illusrrative. by an IDASA (Institute for Democratic Alternatives in South
However, in the complicated and dangerous history Africa)-sponsored conference entitled "Justice in Transition­
of contemporary South African politics} noninvolve­ Dealing with the Past" that I was privileged to attended in Cape
Town on February 25-27, 1994.
ment had its virtues, and it could be seen as an evasive 6. What "colonialist" social anthropology did not do in the "old"
microstrategy of resistance. One South African anthro­ South Africa was open its doors to the training of black South
pologist, David Webster, who made his resistance rather African anthropologists in great numbers who might have been
more public} was murdered for his involvement in the able to put our discipline in the service of human liberation there.
political struggle against apartheid. At the time of his Insofar as social anthropology did not seek to make itself an intel­
lectual and moral home for black South Africans, the discipline
assassination David Webster was a lecturer in social an­ was consequently impoverished. There are some exceptions. Today
thropology at the University of the Witwatersrand. On there is one African social anthropologist, Harriet Nugubane (who
May I, 1989, as he walked to the back of his van to let was trained in Britain1, who is serving as an elected official, a mem­
out his dogs, a white sedan with darkened windows sped ber of the new parliament, where she represents her homeland,
Kwazulu, and the Inkatha Freedom Pany. Mamphele Ramphele is
down the road, a shotgun appeared through the back an African anthropologist (as well as a physician) who is a deputy
window and at close range and shot a hole through Web­ vice chancellor at the University of Cape Town, where she received
ster's chest. Senior police officers took steps to inhibit her doctorate in anthropology.
4161 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36, Number 3, Tune r995

where anthropologists do communicate broadly with Ileave anthropology behindJ and we enter the politi­
lithe polis" and lithe public. II cal process.
Many colleagues reacted with anger when I first began
to speak and to write about the routinization and medi­ But why is it assumed that when anthropologists en­
calization of hunger among Brazilian sugarcane cutters ter the struggle we must inevitably bow out of anthro­
and about the mortal selective neglect and unnecessary pology? Since when is evil exempt from human reality?
deaths of their young childrenl in which layers of bad Why do anthropologists so steadfastly refuse to stare
faith and complicity joined the oppressed and their op­ back at it, to speak truth to its pawed What are we
pressors in a macabre dance of death. The bad faith ex­ passively waiting for? One listener threw up his hands
isted on many levels: among doctors and pharmacists in mock confusion in response to a paper on the political
who allowed Iheir knowledge and skills to be abused; economy of mOlher love and infant death in the Brazil­
among local politicians who presented themselves as ian shantYlown that I delivered at the University of Chi­
community benefactors while knowing full well what cago in 1987." Why are we being served this?1I he asked.
they were doing in distributing tranquilizers and appe­ "How are we supposed to feeU . And what in the
tite stimulants to hungry people from the overstocked world are we supposed to do~1I
drawers of municipal file cabinetsj among the sick poor
themselves, who even while critical of the medical mis­
treatment they received continued to hold out for a med­ The Politics of Representation
ical-technical solution to their political and economic
troubles; and, finally, among medical anthropologists As writers and producers of demanding images and
whose fascination with metaphors, signs, and symbols texts, what do we want from our readers? To shock? To
can blind us to the banal materiality of human suffering evoke pity? To create new forms of narrative, an "aes­
and prevent us from developing a political discourse on thetic" of misery, an anthropology of sufferin& an an­
those hungry populations of the Third World that gener­ thropological theodicy? And what of the people whose
ously provide us with our livelihoods. suffering and fearful accommodations to it are trans­
What was I afterJ after all? Chronic hungerJ of the sort formed into a public spectacle? What is our obligation
that I was describing in rural Brazil, was not unusual, I to them?
was told at a faculty seminar at the University of North Those of us who make our living observing and re·
Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1983. Many, perhaps the ma­ cording the misery of the world have a particular obliga­
jority, of Indonesian villagers the critic had been study­ tion to reflect critically on the impact of the harsh im­
ing were surviving on a similarly meager and deficient ages of human suffering that we foist on the public. I
diet as the Northeast Brazilian cane cutters. Why had I think of the brutal images of fleeing Haitian boat people
made that-the mundane concreteness of chronic hun­ and the emotionally devastated family around the bed­
ger and its eroding effects on the human spirit-the driv­ side of a dying AIDS patient with which the business
ing force and focus of my Brazilian work? "Is this an magnate BenettoD has assaulted us, for reasons that re­
anthropology of evi!?" asked the late Paul Riesman as a main altogether unclear, and of Ihe daily media images
formal discussant in a AAA-sponsored symposium in of horror in BosniaJ SomaliaJ the Middle East, and the
response to my analysis of the "bad faith" which al­ townships of South Nrica and of Sebastiiio Salgado's im­
lowed clinic doctors, as well as rural workers them­ ages of hunger and death in the Brazilian Northeast. To
selves, to overlook the starvation that lay just beneath what end are we given and do we represent these images
the skin of their own and their babies' ((nervousness/' as long as the misery and the suffering continue un­
lIirritability," and IIdelirium ll and permitted the doctors abated! The expetience of Northeast Brazil and South
to medicate even the smallest toddler's hunger with Africa indicates that the more frequent and ubiquitous
painkillers, phenobarbital, antibiotics, and sleeping the images of sickness/ political terror, starvation and
pills. Riesman (cited in Scheper-Hughes 1988:456 n. 41 death, burnings and hangingsl the more people living
concluded: the terror accept the brutality as routine, normal, even
expected. The shock reaction is readily extinguished,
It seems to me that when we act in critical situa­ and people eveIY'vhere seem to have an enormous ca·
tions of the SOrt that Scheper-Hughes desctibes for pacity to absorb the hideous and go on with life and with
Northeast Brazil, we leave anthropology behind. We the terror, violence, and misery as usual.
leave it behind because we abandon what I believe As Michael Taussig (1992) has noted, citing Walter
to be a fundamental axiom of the creed we share, Benjamin's analysis of the history of European fascism,
namely that all humans are equal in the sight of an­ it is almost impossible to be continually conscious of
thropology. Though Scheper-Hughes does not put it the state of emergency in which one lives. Sooner or
this way, the struggle she is urging anthropologists later one makes one's accommodations to it. The images
to join is a struggle against eviL Once we identify an meant to evoke shock and panic evoke only blank stares,
evil, I think we give up trying to understand the situ­ a shrug of the shoulders, a nod-acceptance as routine
ation as a human reality. Instead we see it as in and normal of the extraordinary state of siege under
some sense inhuman J and all we then try to under­ which so many live. Humans have any uncanny ability
stand is how best to combat it. At this point we to hold terror and misery at arm's length, especially
 D'ANDRADE/SCHEPER-HUGHES Objectivity and Militancy 1417

when they occur in their own community and are right that most Cape Town Xhosa} Venda} Zulu} Afrikaner,
before their eyes. Anthropologists do so themselves and Moslem students want is not the anthropology of
when they apply their theoretical abstractions and rhe­ deconstruction and the social imaginary but the anthro­
torical figures of speech to the horrors of political vio­ pology of the really real, in which the stakes ale high,
lence-both wars of repression and wars of libera­ values are certain, and ethnicity (if not essentialized) is
tion-so that the suffering is aestheticized (turned into certainly essential. Here, writing against culture 7 would
theater, viewed as "performance") and thereby mini­ be writing against them, against their grain, against their
mized and denied. The new cadre of "barefoot anthropol­ emergent need, in a newly forming and, one hopes} dem­
ogists" that I envision must become alarmists and shock ocratic state} for collective self-definition and historical
troopers-the producers of politically complicated and legitimacy-for a place in the SWl.
morally demanding texts and images capable of sinking Anthropology} it seems to me} must be there to pro­
through the layers of acceptance, complicity, and bad vide the kind of deeply textured, fine-tuned narratives
faith that allow the suffering and the deaths to continue describing the specificity of lives lived in small and iso­
without even the pained cry of recognition of Conrad's lated places in distant homelands} in the "native yards"
(1910) evil protagonist, Kurtz: "The horror! the horror!" of sprawling townships} or in the Afrikaner farm com­
munities of the Stellenbosch and the Boland. And we
need, more than ever} to locate and train indigenous lo­
Anthropology without Borders: The cal anthropologists and organic intellectuals to work
Postmodern eri tique with us and to help us redefine and transform ourselves
and our vexed craft.
Ethnography has had a rough time of it lately. In the Many younger anthropologists today, sensitized by
brave new world of reflexive postmodernists, when an­ the writings of Michel Foucault on power/knowledge,
thropologists arrive in the field everything local is said have come to think of anthropological fieldwork as a
to dissolve into merged media images} transgressed kind of invasive, disciplinary '/panopticonJl and the an·
boundaries, promiscuously mobile multinational indus­ thropological interview as similar to the medieval inqui­
try and workers, and transnational-corporate desires and sitional confession through which church examiners ex­
commodity fetishism. This imagined postmodem, bor­ tracted "truth" from their native and "heretical"
derless world (Appadurai I99I) is, in fact, a Camelot of peasant parishioners. One hears of anthropological ob­
free trade that echoes the marketplace rhetoric of global servation as a hostile act that reduces our "subjects"
capitalism, a making of the world and social science safe to mere "objects" of our discriminating, incriminating,
for "low-intensity democracy" backed by World Bank scientific gaze. Consequently, some postmodern anthro­
capital. The flight from the local in hot pursuit of a pologists have given up the practice of descriptive eth­
transnational, borderless anthropology implies a parallel nography altogether.
flight from local engagements, local commitments, and I am weary of these postmodemist critiques, and,
local accountability. Once the circuits of power are seen given the perilous times in which we and our subjects
as capillary, diffuse, global} and difficult to trace to their live, I am inclined toward compromise} the practice of
sources, the idea of resistance becomes meaningless. It a "good enough" ethnography (I992b:28j. While the an­
can be either nothing or anything at all. (Have we lost thropologist is always a necessarily flawed and biased
our senses al together? 1
The idea of an anthropology without borders, aI,
though it has a progressive ring to it, ignores the reality
of the very real borders that confront and oppress "oue) 7. Here I have taken Lila Abu-Lughod's "writing against culture"
anthropological subjects and encroach on our liberty as notion out of context, and I want to suggest that her reflections
on the "abuses" of the culture concept are not incompatible with
well. (The obstacles that the u.s. government puts in the views pUt forward in this paper. Culture has been invoked in
the way of North Americans wishing to conduct re­ many inappropriate contexts as a kind of fetish. Paul Farmer (I 994l
search in Cuba or establish ties with Cuban scholars are notes in his recent reflections on the structure of violence that the
just one case in point.) These borders are as real as the idea of culture has often been used to obscure the social relations,
passports and passbooks, the sandbagged bunkers, the political economy, and formal institutions of violence that pro­
mote and produce human suffering. Cultures do nOt, of coursc,
anned roadblocks and barricades, and the "no-go zones" only generate meaning in the Geertzian sense but produce legiti­
that separate hostile peoples, territories, and states. The mations for institutionalized inequality and justifications for ex­
borders confront us with the indisputable reality of elec­ ploitation and domination. The culture concept has been used to
tric fences, razor wire, nail-studded hand grenades} exaggerate and to mystify the differences between anthropologists
AK47}Sj where these are lacking} as in South African and their subjects, as in the implicit suggestion that because they
are "from different cultures, they are [also thcreforcl of different
townships and squatter camps} stones and torches will worlds, and of different times" (Farmer r994:24). This "denial of
do. coevalness" is deeply ingrained in our discipline, exemplified each
Having recently returned from South Africa, where time we speak with awe of the impenetrable opacity of culture or
both black and white tribes, Zulus and Afrikaners, were of the incommensurability of cultural systems of thought, mean·
ing, and practice. Here culture may actually be a disguise for an
demanding enclosed and militarily defended homelands, incipient or an underlying racism, a pseudo-speciation of humans
it is difficult to relate to the whimsical postmodernist into discrete types, orders, and kinds-the bell jar rather than the
language extolling borderless worlds. The anthropology bell curve approach to redying difference.
4181 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36, Number 3, fune r995

instrument of cultural translation, like every other crafts­ gins as a mediator in the clash of colonial cultures and
person we can do the best we can with the limited civilizations} anthropological thinking was, in a sense,
resources we have at hand: our ability to listen and to radically "conservative Jl with respect to its "natural"
observe carefully and wirh empathy and compassion. I suspiciousness of all projects promoting change} devel­
still believe rhat we are besr doing whar we do besr as opment, modernization, and the like. We knew how of­
ethnographers, as natural historians of people until very ten such interventions were used against traditional,
recently thought to have no history. And so I think of nonsecularl and communal people who stood in the way
some of my anthropological subjects-in Brazil Biu, of Western cultural and economic expansion. Therefore,
Dona Amor, lirtle Mercea, little angel-baby rhat she is it was understood that anthropological work, if it was to
now; in South Africa, Sidney Kumalo and the rhree boys be in the nature of an ethical project, had to be primarily
rescued in the nick of time from a morral flogging-for transformative of the self, while putting few or no de­
whom anthropology is not a Ithostile gaze" but rather mands on lithe other. The artificial and jat times I coun­
II

an opportunity for self-expression. Seein& listenin& terintuitive notion of cultural land moral and political)
touching, recording can be, if done with C3fe and sensi­ relativism evolved as the sacred oath of anthropological
tiviry, acrs of solidarity. Above all, rhey are rhe work of fieldwork. As the physicians' injunction was to "do no
recognition. Not to look, not to touch, not to record can harm} the anthropologists' injunction was (like the
IJ

be the hostile act, an act of indifference and of turning three monkeys of ancient China) to IIsee no evil, hear
away. no evil, speak no evil in reporting from the field.
lJ

If I did nor believe that ethnography could be used as While the first generations of cultural anthropologists
a tool for critical reflection and for human liberation, were concerned with relativizing thought and reason, I
what kind of perverse cynicism would keep me re­ have suggested that a more IIwomanly" anthropology
turning again and again to disturb the waters of Born might be concerned not only with how humans think
Jesus da Mata or to study the contradictory medical and but with how they behave toward each other. This
political detention of Cubans in the Havana AIDS sana­ would engage anthropology directly with questions of
torium? Orl more recently, to study the underbelly of ethics. The problem remains in searching for a standard
political violence and terror in the makeshift mortuary or divergent ethical standards that take into account
chapels of Chris Hani squatter camp (Scheper-Hughes (but do not privilege) our own /lWestern" cultural pre­
1994bl? What draws me back to these people and places suppositions.
is not their exoticism and their II otherness" but the pur­ In the shantytown of Alto do Cruzeiro in Northeast
suit of those small spaces of convergence, recognitionl Brazil I encountered a situation in which some mothers
and empathy that we share. Not everything dissolves appear to have "suspended the ethical"-compassion,
into the vapor of absolute cultural difference and radical empathic love, and care-in relation to some of their
otherness. There are ways in which my Brazilian, Cu­ weak and sickly childrenl allowing them to die of ne­
ban, Irish l and South African interlocutors and I are not glect in the face of ovenvhelming difficulties. In the
so radically "other" to each other. Like the peasants of South African squatter camps of the Western Cape [
lreland and Northeast Brazill I too instinctively make srumbled upon another instance: the expressed senti­
the sign of the cross when I sense danger or misfortune ment that one less young thief or police "collaborator"
approaching. And like Mrs. Kumalo and so many other makes good sense in tenns of social and community
middle-aged women of Chris Hani squatter camp, I too hygiene. At times the shantytown or the squatter camp
wait up [till dawn if necessary) for the scrape-scrape resembles nothing so much as a battlefield, a prison
sound of my son and daughters as, one by one, following camp, or an emergency room in a crowded inner-city
their own life plans, they turn their keys in the latch hospital, where an ethic of triage replaces an ethical re­
and announce their arrival one more day from an unsafe gard for the equal value of every life. The survivor's
and booby-trapped outside world. "logic" that guides shantytown mothers' actions toward
some of their weak babies is understandable. The fragil­
ity and "dangerousness" of the mother-infant relation­
The Primacy of the Ethical ship is an immediate and visible index of chronic scar­
city, hunger, and other unmet needs. And the
The work of anthropology demands an explicit ethical revolutionary logic that sees in the pressured but self­
orientation to "the otheL" In the past-and with good serving acts of a young police collaborator the sorcery
reason-this was interpreted as a respectful distancel a of a scarcely human witch or devil is also understand­
hesitancy, and a reluctance to name wrongs, to judge, able. But the moral and ethical issues must still give
to intervene, or to prescribe change} even in the face of reason to pause and to doubt. How often the oppressed
considerable human misery. In existential philosophical turn into their own oppressors or, worse still, into the
terms, anthropology, like theology, implied a leap of oppressors of others!
faith to an unknown, opaque other-than-myself, before Anthropologists who are privileged to witness human
whom a kind of reverence and awe was required. The events close up and over time, who are privy to commu­
practice of anthropology was guided by a complex form nity secrets that are generally hidden from the view of
of modern pessimism rooted in anthropology's tortured outsiders or from historical scrutiny until much later­
relationship to the colonial world and its ruthless de­ after the collective graves have been discovered and the
Struction of native lands and peoples. Because of its ori­ body COUntS made-have, I believe, an ethical obligation
 D' ANDRADE/SCHEPER-HUGHES Ob;ectivity and Militancy 14r9

to identify the ills in a spirit of solidarity and to follow anthropology to the natural sciences, /lwitnessing" links
what Gilligan (1982) has called a II womanly" ethic of anthropology to moral philosophy. Observation, the an­
care and responsibility. If anthropologists deny them­ thropologist as "fearless spectator," is a passive act
selves the power Ibecause it implies a privileged posi­ which positions the anthropologist above and outside
tionl to identify an ill or a wrong and choose to ignore human events as a "neutral" and "objective" ILe., un­
Ibecause it is not pretty} the extent to which dominated committedl seeing IIeye. Witnessing, the antluopologist
people sometimes play the role of their own execution­ as companheira. is in the active voice, and it positions
ers, they collaborate with the relations of power and si­ the anthropologist inside human events as a responsive,
Ience that allow the destruction to continue. reflexive, and morally committed being, one who will
To speak of the "primacy of the ethical" is to suggest "take sides" and make judgments, though this flies in
certain transcendent, transparent, and essential, if not the face of the antluopological nonengagement with ei­
"precultural," first principles. Historically anthropolo­ ther ethics or politics. Of course, noninvolvement was,
gists have understood morality as contingent on and em­ in itself, an "ethical"and moral position.
bedded within specific cultural assumptions abour hu­ The fearless spectator is accountable to "science"j the
man life. But there is another philosophical position that witness is accountable to history. Anthropologists as
posits lithe ethical" as existing prior to culture because, wimesses are accountable for what they see and what
as Emmanuel Levinas 1198]: rool writes, in presupposing they fail to see, how they act and how they fail to act
all meaning, ethics makes culture possible: "Mortality in critical situations. [n this regard, Orin Starn's poi·
does not belong to culture: litl enables one to judge it." gnant essay "Missing the Revolution: Anthropologists
Here I will tentatively and hesitantly suggest that re­ and the War in Peru ll {I9921 indirectly makes "my" case.
sponsibility, accountability, answerability to 'Ithe Anthropologists, no less than any other professionals i
other/I-the ethical as I would define it-is precultural should be held accountable for how we have used and
to the extent that OUf human existence as social beings how we have failed to use anthropology as a critical tool
presupposes the presence of the other. The extreme rela­ at crucial historical moments. It is the the act of "wit­
tivist position assumes that thought l emotion l and re­ nessing" that lends our work its moral, at times almost
flexivity come into existence with words and words theological, character. In Death Without Weeping I ob­
come into being with culture. But the generative pre­ served how participant·observation has a way of drawing
structure of language presupposes, as Sartre (19561 has ethnographers into spaces of human life where they
written, a given relationship with another subject) one might really prefer not to go at all and, once there, do
that exists prior to words in the silent, preverbal 'Itaking not know how to escape except through writin& which
stock Jl of each otherls existence. Though I veer danger· willy-nilly draws others there as well, making them
ously toward what some might construe as a latent so­ party to the witnessing.
ciobiology, I cannot escape the following observation: 1 have an image, taken from John Berger (r967), of the
that we are thrown into existence at all presupposes a ethnographer/witness as the "clerk of the records." The
given} implicit moral relationship to an original village clerk listens, observes, and records the minutiae
(mjother and she to me. "Basic strangeness"-as the psy­ of human lives. The clerk can be counted on to remem­
choanalyst Maria Piers labeled the profound shock of ber key events in the personal lives and in the life his­
mis-recognition reponed by a great many mothers in lOry of the community and lO keep confidences, know­
their first encounters with a newborn-is perhaps the ing when lO speak and when to keep silent. The
prototype of all other alienated self-other relations, in­ ethnographer/witness as clerk is a minor historian of
cluding that of the anthropologist and her overly exot­ the ordinary lives of people often presumed to have no
icized others. Just as many women may fail to recognize his lOry. Privileged to be present at births and deaths and
a human kinship with the newborn and see it as a other life cycle events, the clerk can readily call to mind
strange, exotic, other-a bird, a crocodile, a changeling, the fragile web 01 human relations that bind people to­
one to be returned to sky or water rather than adopted gether into a collectiviry and identify those external and
or claimed-so the anthropologist can view her subjects internal relations that destroy them as a community. In
as unspeakably other, belonging to another timel an­ the shantytowns and squatter camps of Brazil and South
other world altogether. If it is to be in the nature of Africa there are a great many lives and even more deaths
an ethical project, the work of anthropology requires a to keep track of, numbering the bones of a people often
different set of relationships. In minimalist terms this thought of as hardly worth counting at all. The answer
might be described as the difference between the anthro­ to the critique of anthropology is not a retreat nom eth·
pologist as "spectator" and the anthropologist as "wit­ nography bur rather an ethnography that is personally
ness." engaged and politically committed. If my writings have
promoted a certain malaise or discomfon with respect
to their sometimes counterintuitive claimsi then they
Witnessing: Toward a Barefoot Anthropology have done the work of anthropology, "the difficult sci­
ence": to afflict our comfortable assumptions about
In the act of writing culture what emerges is always a what it means to be human, a woman, a mother.
highly subjective, partial, and fragmentary but also I want to ask what anthropology might become if it
deeply personal record 01 human lives based on eye­ existed on two fronts: as a field of knowledge (as a "dis­
witness accounts and testimony. If "observation" links cipline'l) and as a field of action l a force field, or a site
420 I CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36, Number 3, June 1995

of struggle. Anthropological writing can be a site of reo academic health? Why should we assume that cuI·
sistance. This resembles what the radical Italian psychi· tural-social-anthropology has any unity other than
atrist Franco Basaglia 119871 called becoming a "negative through an administratively driven economy of knowl­
worker." The negative worker is a species of class trai­ edge? Why should we assume that unity is desirable?
tor-a doctor, a teacherl a lawyer, psychologistl a social There are many often contradictory practices of anthro­
workerl a manager, a social scientist, even-who col­ pology, including the pedagogic, and many divergent
ludes with the powerless to identify their needs against goals, methodologiesl interpretive strategies, and ex­
the interests of the bourgeois institution: the universitYI planatOry procedures. I would argue that the reduction
the hospital, the factoty. Negative workers are hospital· of anthropology to a single practice is neither realistic
based psychiatrists who side with their resistant or nor morally or politically commendable. This is particu­
"noncompliane' mental patients, grade-school teachers larly true today with the development of anthropologies
who side with their "hyperactive" students, social around the world and the consequent increase in distinct
workers who side with their welfare "cheats/I and so orientations that, threatening to our hegemonic assump­
forth. tions, may well produce a backlash justified on bogus
Anthropologistsl too, can be negative workers. We can scientific grounds.
practice an anthropology-with-one/s-feet-on-the-ground, Anthropology should be conceived, I believe, as a cre­
a committedl grounded, even a "barefoot anthropology.
lJ
atively agonistic arena whose centering and boundaries
We can write books that go against the grain by avoiding are always in question. Stabilization suggests that forces
impenetrable prose (whether postmodemist or Lacanianl beyond its immediate ken are at play. I am not denying
so as to be accessible to the people we say we represent. anthropology its turf. I am asking for the critical consid­
We can disrupt expected academic roles and statuses in eration of that turf, its formation, its definition, and the
the spirit of the Brazilian /lcamavalesque." We can make practices and transgressions it facilitates and those it
ourselves available nOt just as friends or as "patrons ll in does not. We should look at anthropology with the same
the old colonialist sense but as comrades (with all the critical edge that we look at our chosen subjects of eth­
demands and responsibilities that this word impliesl to nographic research.
the people who are the subjects of our writings, whose What distresses me about these papers is their failure
lives and miseries provide us with a livelihood. We to look with ethnographic rigor at the field which, as
can-as Michel De Certeau (19841 suggests-exchange they argue, they constitute. They are polemical. For
gifts based on our labors, use book royalties to support D'Andrade the enemy is those who hold a moral model
radical actions, and seek to avoid the deadening tread­ of anthropology and are therefore willing to sacrifice ob­
mill of academic achievement and in this way subvert jectivity for moral engagement. For Scheper·Hughes the
the process that puts our work at the service of the sci­ enemy is those who refuse moral and political engage­
entific, academic factory. ment. Despite their differencesl they are united by a dis­
We can distance ourselves from old and unreal loyal­ trust if not a rejection of relativisml which they identify
ties as Virginia Woolf {I938J described them: loyalties
l
at times with postnlodemism. In their papers postmod­
to old schoolsl old churches, old ceremoniesl and old emism is an empty category that serves a defining (a
countries. Freedom from unreal loyalties means ridding latently unifying) function. Projectively predetermined,
oneself of pride of family, nation, religion, pride of sex it offers no real challenge to its critics I assumptions.
and gender, and all the other dangerous loyalties that I don't have the foggiest idea what D'Andrade or
spring from them. In doing so we can position ourselvesl Scheper-Hughes or many anthropologists who bandy
as Robert Redfield once put it, squarely on the side of IIpostmodemismll about mean by it. I don It know to
humanity. We can be anthropologists, comrades, and whom they are referring. I don/t know what commonal­
companheiras. ties they find, if indeed they find any, in the writings of
Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, Baudrillardl Andrew Ross, or
the contributors to Writing Culture. In our political cli­
mate relativism can neither be dismissed nor accepted
Comments easily. Certainly it cannot be reduced to the promiscu·
ous surface plays that have been identified with a post·
modernist sensibility, if only because there are many
VINCENT CRAPANZANO types of relativism, including the moral and the heuris­
Comparative Literature, CUNY Graduate Center, tiC, which is probably an essential though transitoty
33 W. 42nd St., New York, N. Y. ro036·8099, U.S.A. component of any interpretive practice.
13 XII 94 This projective dismissal of postmodemism reminds
me of other, equally empty dismissals that have charac­
The twO papers under consideration assume a disci­ terized American anthropology's struggle for internal
pline-an anthropology-that permits their juxtaposi­ hegemonic orientation-think of the rejections of struc­
tion l their arguments, the containment of their con­ turalism and of psychological, symbolic, and interpre·
flicts. But is this disciplinary unity a necessary, a tive anthropology over the past few decades. I've heard
realistic assumption-one that can be justified on objec­ serious anthropologists call these approaches "intellec·
tive, on moral or political, groWlds? on the grounds of tual" with all of the vituperative anti intellectualism of
 D' ANDRADE/SCHEPER-HUGHES Objectivity and Militancy 1421

a Jesse Helms. Of course, I've heard lIintellectuals ll and honest debate. We cannot accept the demands of the
name-call too. Is our discipline(sl so fragile that it re­ people we work with naively any more than we can ex­
quires such mindless rhetoric? Can't we accept a chal­ pect their naive acceptance. We have to grant them their
lenge, however abswd we may at first find it? Ought we ability to see through us. The moral, however rational­
not to treat postmodemism as a social fact like any ized, is always the result of a complex play of desire and
other l We should ask why so few anthropologists enter power. We can never become companheiros and com­
into critical public conversation with advocates of posi­
j panheiras. We are always outsiders-and there lies our
tions they find questionable. power, as dangerous as it may be, and the source of
Obviously I cannot resolve the differences between our interpellation and responsiveness. We cannot deny
D'Andrade and Scheper-Hughes and the several episte­ our expertise-the fact, the conviction, of at times
mologies they invoke. D'Andrade's insistence on the ob­ knowing better-any more than we can deny our infor­
jective fact as prevailing over the moral and political mants' expertise-their conviction, the fact, of their
entanglements produced by engagement is noble. Were knowing better. We have to resist easy slogans like "the
it only true! It takes neither a Marx nor a Foucault to struggle against oppression." In their abstraction,
remind us that the objective cannot be separated from though they may flatter and excite, they counter effec­
the plays of personal and collective power. In his at­ tive engagement. We have-and here we must acknowl­
tempt to separate the scientific from the moral D'An­ edge D'Andrade's call for objective knowledge, as flawed
drade recognizes this. It's clear that we should do our as it may be-to modulate our desire and the lure of
best to separate the twO, but can we? I ask this question power with {'hard" fact. There can, I suppose, be no mo­
with regard to its social and psychological feasibility rality without truth. Truth, knowledge, and objectivity
and its epistemological possibility. Personal experience are not, however, precluded by moral and political en­
leads me to answer the first negatively. I admit my ever­ gagement. One can perhaps be more objective in assum­
increasing pessimism. I would also answer the second ing a moral and political stance than in denying one in
negatively, and not simply because our research involves the name of scientific disinterest, for in disinterest
active engagement with our subjects. IEven the most power and desire are suppressed but no less effective.
invisible anthropologist is, despite himself, an active
presence. I If, as I have suggested in Hermes' Dilemma
and Hamlet's Desire (r9941, categories of social and psy­ JONATHAN FRIEDMAN
chological understanding are derivative of the complex Department of Social Anthropology, Lund
indexical dramas that characterize ordinary social inter­ University, Box 114, 221 00 Lund, Sweden
action, including that between anthropologist and infor­ (jonathan·[email protected]). r 195
mant, then it follows that our human sciences are mor­
ally grounded and have to be recognized as such. To These two statements ought not, in my view, to be un­
argue for the separation of moral and scientific models derstood and discussed as opposing positions with re­
is not necessarily to argue against the moral grounding spect to anthropology: science versus morality. Rather,
of scientific epistemology. their foci dovetail or overlap at certain central points.
We have to develop an epistemology for our disci­ I therefore feel obliged to deal with them separately and
pline(s) which is appropriate to its practice. We cannot then return to them in a concluding paragraph.
buy into irrelevant or only partially relevant models of I feel a great deal of sympathy with Scheper-Hughes's
science that have clout because they have been success­ very personal account of political engagement. The kind
ful in other domains. It seems obvious that most but by of ethnography that delves into the lives of people and
no means all anthropological research precludes correc­ is not afraid to take up issues relating oppression and
tion through replication. Are we to dimiss all but the social crisis to their transfiguration in the horrors
replicable? Better that we accept it, acknowledging self­ and interpersonal violence of the everyday is a critical
critically its limitations and acknowledging the limita­ necessity for a responsible anthropology. I must also
tions, the determinants, of our self-criticism. confess that I was quite shocked at the reactions by
I stress these determinants because there is always the other anthropologists to what she refers to as the "rou­
possibility that in the name of critical self-reflexivity a tinization of and medicalization of hunger." Have I un­
rigid and morally insensitive stance may be warranted. derstood the situation correctly, or has something been
There is danger in Scheper-Hughes's argument that an­ left out-an attitude, a way of presenting the material?
thropologists should become morally and politically en­ Swely it is not "leaving anthropology behind" to engage
gaged in their informants' struggles and throw out an in this kind of analysis.
interfering moral relativism. This danger is not neces­ Scheper-Hughes identifies herself as most strongly
sarily a fault, for in any moral positioning there is al­ against a panicular version of what she calls "postmod­
ways the danger of knowing better and being wrong. We emil anthropology without borders which, in claiming
have to temper our moral convictions with at least a that the local is globalized, can abandon the local in
temporary relativist stance in order to understand as favor of a kind of new diffusionism. Her point is well
best we can. Such a stance, I hasten to add, does not taken and ought to be considered carefully. The new
preclude commitment. In the ethnographic encounter global self-identified hybrids belong to a well-placed
the moral has to result from mutually open, courageous, conference-attending intellectual minority but not to
4221 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36. Number 3. lune 1995

the underclass Itstreet," where transcultwal identity is dividing models oriented to discovering how the world
largely irrelevant. There is, of course, a fragmentation works from those oriented to distributing IIpraise and
of the nation-state, and the increase of ethnic diasporas blame." The first part of the article is a riposte to the
is part of the process of ethnic, indigenous, "racial" iden­ widespread attack on science and the notion of objectiv­
tification as a global systemic phenomenon but not of ity as a legitimating ideology. This ideology of objective
the jolly and IIcreative" son depicted by advocates of science is characterized as a hegemonic discourse and
the globalization approach. While certain jet·setters ex­ the job of engaged, "moral" anthropologists as revealing
perience an absence of boundaries, large pans of the the power behind the discourse. He argues that scientific
world are undergoing the inverse process of balkaniza­ models are not and need not be fused or otherwise com­
tion (Friedman r992:vii and chaps. I I and 121. bined with moral models and that moral models and the
Now, I am myself engaged in the politics of indige­ politics that they inform can only profit by separating
nous peoples and would not for a moment deny the oe· moral and scientific activities. Among the obvious prob­
cessity of such work. The world is full of people mak­ lems that he does not address is the apparent confla­
ing careers on moral stances, known today as political tion of description and hypothesis. The former may, of
correctness, however, and therefore I feel a certain am· course, be part of a moral model: for example, "He helps
bivalence about the primacy of the ethical as a self­ his friends" might be extended by lito gain power over
designation rather than an argument. Part of the prob­ them." How much of this is description? What does
lem lies in statements such as the program of action 1/helpll signify here? He also tends to conflate moral
calling for collusion with the powerless against lithe in­ models and moral purposej certainly what he refers to
terests of the bourgeois institution: the university, the as scientific models can be directed toward moral ends.
hospital, the factory." This is more than a general call Finally, there is the problem of the nature of the scien­
to moral action. The world is totally categorized into tific model itself-accepting for now his use of the word
the powerless, the powerful, and the lackeys of the pow­ 'I mo del."
erful. But the If evil ll to be attacked is surely more com­ It can be argued that the scientific model is simulta­
plex and more ubiquitous than described here. And, of neously a moral model, one that entails that rational
course, not all power, as Foucault himself suggested, is investigation and scientific falsification are not only
evil. The vision is vaguely marxist in inspiration but useful but important for understanding and therefore
diluted as well as transformed into descriptive catego­ changing the state of the world. Insofar as the scientific
ries, good guys and bad guys. I cannot tell from such a model is an imperative in which rules of public account­
shott piece whether this is naive in the extreme or sim­ ability to a scientific community playa central role in
ply a rhetorical device, but we ought not to forget that assessing the validity of statements about the world, we
terror and corruption are perpetuated throughout the have a clearly moral positioning that is, I suggest, rooted
world system on all sides of the multiple political di­ in a social practice. Science is feasible only where there
vides and that the leaders of the powerless have become is a scientific public sphere, that is, where members of
very powerful and nasty in their own right. If the people that sphere share a set of assumptions governing the
we support turn out to be the worst kind of exploiters way in which they communicate. Such communication
themsel ves, then our ethics is pan of a colossal and, I involves (rl the separation of subject from propositions
dare say, systemic self-delusion. Scheper-Hughes's argu­ about the world and 121 the falsifiability of any such
ment for the primacy of the "ethical" as transcendent propositions-the implied replacement of sets of propo­
and IIprecultural" is important but dangerous. The exis­ sitions by other propositions deemed of superior explan­
tential relation between infant and Im)other may ground atory power. This is, of course, a normative condition
sociality as lived experience, but it is simultaneously that is not realized in most cases because of the inter­
replete with not only love but desire, aggression, and vention of socially distorting relations of power and
narcissistic demands. What is founded here may be her prestige, but the norm itself has been powerful, and
IIwitnessing ll as opposed to the distance of the "specta­ in those fields in which intellectual norms have been
tor," but no moral position, unfortunately, is implied. strong, as in certain of the natural sciencesl the model
Ethical first principles must be pan of an open arena of of "progress" has been a true possibility. In other words,
struggle, because their primacy is not at all apparent. the scientific model is a moral model or at least
Scheper-Hughes's engagement and call for engage­ grounded in an ideological matrix, that of Western mod­
ment are vitally important and ought to be inspiring for ernism, which is itself grounded in a social context.
those not totally engaged in anthropology for the sake Criticizing the ideological biases of science and its prac­
of careers. Her use of ethnography to this end is also titioners may well take the form of strictly scientific
critically important insofar as she aims at depicting and praxis, and scientific praxis itself can be placed under
analyzing the structures of human experience rather the same kind of scrutiny, as has occurred in the post­
than merely the products generated in such experience. Popperian debates on the real nature of falsification.
As she insists, we ought to understand the state of emer­ Perhaps the core of the problem rests in the way the
gency in which we live. But engagement demands analy­ nature of science is described: "anthropology's claim to
sis of the way the world works, and here I feel that the moral authority rests on knowing empirical truths about
perspective is not necessarily wrong but weak. the world. II The problem with this representation of
I think we should welcome the lucidity of D'An­ the nature of scientific or lIobjective" truth is that it is
drade's excellent discussion. He takes a strict pOSition, described as inhering in a kind of knowledge as product l
 D' ANDRADE/SCHEPER-HUGHES Obiectivity and Militancy 1423

but this implies that there are really established truths current fascination with the observer's thoughts and
that cannot be falsified. This is a conflation of hypotheti­ feelings is subjective because it involves private, idio­
cal propositions about the world and the world itself. syncratic/ and untestable operations/ not because it pro­
The purist, Popperian model says nothing about the con­ vides information about the observer's reaction to the
tent of propositions other than demanding that they be observed. Indeed, as one of anthropology'S leading meth­
formulated in such a way as to be falsifiable by empirical odologists, D'Andtade is certainly awate that objectivity
experiment or reference. actually does tequire some account of the relationship
D'Andrade would avoid replacing the content of sci­ between the describing observer and the phenomena
entific logic with the logic of moral models. This would described in order to satisfy the rule that observers spe­
be equivalent to eliminating the power of scientific ra­ cify what they have done to gain the knowledge that
tionality constantly to renew itself-its primary func­ they claim to possess. I dwell on this point because pOSt­
tion as producer of knowledge. But there is a slip-up in modernists need to be disabused of the notion that
the confusion of propositions about the world with the science-oriented anthropologists are against putting the
process of replacement itself, even if normatively de­ observer in the picture, What I am against are subjective
fined. Thus there are no scientific statements as such, accounts las defined above), no matter whethet they
that is, statements that can be identified in terms of are about the observer ot the observed. [Of course, I'm
their contents. They need only be falsifiable and take not against novel-writing as long as the author does not
the form of hypotheses. Scheper-Hughes says little attempt to make it the one and only form of ethnogra­
about the content of science and more about the kinds phy.1 In scientific ethnogtaphy, putting the observet in
of questions that ought to be addressed, that is, about the picture requires that we know such items as
the use of scientific rationality in understanding the real where and when the observer was in the field, who the
problems of people in the world. lf there is a problem in informants were, what language was used, and what
her argument it is that by not being explicit about the events took place that might have affected the tesearch
question of scientific rationality she might appear to such as a personal illness or the actions of hostile au·
conflate the critique of certain presuppositions in scien­ thorities.
tific discourses with the critique of rationality itself, I tum to the second dichotomy. In atguing for the
This is marginal, I think/ to her main argument, but it strict separation of moral-subjective from scientific­
allows D'Andrade to make his point. It is one thing to objective IImodels/' D/Andrade needlessly concedes the
say that a critical approach aims at revealing the /linter­ motal high ground to the science-bashing camp. He does
ested ideological components of discourses as well as
ll
this by denying that one can "blend together objectivity
strategies, including/ of course, our own science, There and morality in a single model./I I agree that scientific
is nothing particularly unscientific about this. It is inquiry must be carried OUt in a manner that protects
something entirely different to say that science is, by its findings from political-moral bias to the greatest pos­
definition, a form of capitalist ideology, an instrument sible degree, But this does not mean that scientific in­
of class domination that ought to be replaced by a differ­ quiry should be lor can bel conducted in a political-motaI
ent logic, for example/ for ferreting out witches or restor­ vacuum. First of all, there is strong empirical support
ing cosmic balance. for the position that morality in the form of cultur­
ally constructed values and preferences influences the
definition and selection of researchable projects.
MARVIN HARRIS What we choose to study or not to study in the name
Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, of anthropology is a politico-moral decision. When
Gainesville, Fla. 326rr, U.S.A. 30 XI 94 strllctural·functionalism held sway, many Africanists
chose to ignore conflict and the whole imperialist
I share D'Andrade's general commitment to science­ context. The recent commitment to the study of gender
oriented anthropology, There are aspects of his argu­ roles and ethnicity to the neglect of class stratifica­
ment, howevet, that I cannot endorse. Specifically, I find tion is also a politico-moral. choice. Given limited re·
it difficult to accept the key dichotomies of objective search funding, allocation of research effort is a zero­
versus subjective and science versus morality, U I con­ sum game in which the commitment to one kind of
centrate on these unsatisfactOry aspects of his argument/ study means the neglect of alternative projects and prob­
it is only because I lack the space to comment on the lema tics,
many points with which I agree. Morality blends with science in another way. Moral
For D'Andrade, "objective/l is defined as /ltelling decisions need to be based on the best available knowl­
about the thing being described//I while "subjective" is edge of what the world is like. D'Andtade's resistance
defined as "how the agent doing the description reacts to a blended model prevents him from contesting the
to the object,1I This is a misleading contrast leven attempt by science·bashers to condemn science as an
allowing for the fact that D'Andrade states that "objec­ obstacle to the making of correct politico-moral deci­
tive accounts must also be testable and replicable"j. The sions. But the shoe is on the other foot. It is a lack of
difference between objective and subjective lies in the scientific knowledge that places our politico-moral deci­
methods used in the descriptions-methods that in sions in greatest jeopardy. (By "scientific knowledge"
the one case are public, replicable, testable, etc., and in [ mean knowledge gained through publicly accessible,
the other case private, idiosyncratic, and untestable. The replicable, and testable operations resulting in parsimo·
4 2 41 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36, Number 3, Tune r995

nicus, generalizable, and predictive/retrodictive theo­ and, like it or not, to military and civilian intelligence
ries·1 To claim the political-moral high ground one must gathering during World War II and to the anti-Vietman
have reliable knowledge. We have to know what the War movement (especially Lhrough the invention and
world is like, who is doing or has done what to whom, spread of the teach-inl-and all this before the genera­
who and what are responsible for the suffering and injus­ tion of critical anthropologists had gotten out of grad
tice we condemn and seek to remedy. If this be so, then school. So there is nothing very new, let alone stanling,
science-minded anthropologists may plausibly claim in Scheper-Hughes's declaration that uif we cannot be­
that their model is not only moral but morally superior gin to think about social institutions and practices in
to those that reject science as a source of reliable knowl­ moral or ethical terms, then anthropology strikes me as
edge about the human condition. Fantasies, intuitions, quite weak and useless." But she neglects to add Lbat if
interpretations, and reflections may make for good we cannot begin to think about social institutions and
poems and novels, but if you want to know what to do practices in scientific-objective terms, then anthropol­
about the AIDS time bomb in Africa or landlessness in ogy will be even weaker.
Mexico, neglect of objective data is reprehensible. For myself the weakness of Scheper-Hughes's treat­
Let me underscore Lbe point that the blended model ment of nervos and necklacing is not that she indig­
applies only to the extent that the blending takes place nantly and passionately takes sides but that she does
without violating the distinctive rules of scientific­ Dot present enough objective evidence for others to de­
objective inquiry. Distorting the data-gathering process cide who or what is responsible for these atrocities. Her
in order to make the findings concur with a desired po­ theory that hunger in Brazil is medicalized to mask the
litical-moral outcome must be vigilantly excluded. It is source of rural suffering sounds plausible, but it calls for
in this sense and only in this sense that D'Andrade's call rigorous tests. To strengthen her condemnation of those
for the rigid separation of moral and scientific models is who prescribe tranquilizers instead of food, more evi­
an ineluctable imperative. dence is needed. Thus the credibility of the moral judg­
Of course, as D'Andrade is careful to say, merely fol­ ments made by Scheper-Hughes cannot be dissociated
lowing the rules of scientific inquiry does not guarantee from her apparent indifference to the question of meth­
the achievement of reliable knowledge. Scientists make odology.
mistakes, and some even cook their data. But given its Unlike the majority of postmodemists whom she fe­
many successes (in anthropology as well as in the harder licitously excoriates for their relativism and obscu­
sciencesl, science is the best available system for pro­ rantism, Scheper-Hughes intends to IIspeak truth to
viding a factual foundation for politico-moral decision power." But I cannot see how she expects to do this and
making (Reyna r9941. Antiscience paradigms such as at the same time accept the Foucauldian mantra that
ethnopoctics, interpretationisffi, henneneutics, and phe­ lithe objectivity of science and of medicine is always
nomenology provide no such foundation and therefore a phantom objectivity." I would argue to the contrary:
cannot be regarded as morally superior to cognitive sci­ without science, morality is always a phantom morality.
ence or cultural materialist or other neopositivist para­ Without science, critical anthropology will dissolve into
digms. the postmodemist mainstream in which radical skepti­
Because D'Andrade concedes the moral high ground cism, relativism, and nihilism are the order of the day
to the antiscience camp, CA's innovative and praise­ IGross and Levitt 1994, Rosenau r9921. Indeed, Foucauft
worthy attempt to juxtapose his proscience position himself, whom Noam Chomsky once described as "to­
with the antiscientism of Scheper-Hughes's anicle falls tally amoral" Iquoted in Miller 1992:2371, well exempli­
rather flat. For D'Andrade the weakness of Scheper­ fies this danger.
Hughes's position is that she registers her indignation
and takes sides. As a materialist and neopositivist I have
no such fault to find. f have always mixed science­
oriented and political-moral engagement Ifor example, ADAM KUPER
see the pamphlet I wrote about Mozambique "in order Institute for Advanced Study, Princeron, N.T- 08540,
to discharge what I consider[edJ to be a moral obliga­ U.S.A. 21 Xl 94
tion" not to confine my writing to "such neutral or
purely technical subjects as would lead to no involve­ Scheper-Hughes presents a lively self-pomait of the eth­
ment in politically controversial issues" IHarris r9 58: t). nographer as activist, negotiating about life-and-death
Scheper-Hughes and other promoters of ucritical anthro­ matters in a Cape squatter camp or mobilising women's
pology" seem unaware of the fact that their ballyhooed groups in Brazilian slums. The effect of this self-portrait
substitute for an imagined morally neutral positivism is heightened by the contrast she draws between herself
has toOts that go back at least as far as E. B. Tylor and his and her former colleagues at the University of Cape
identification of anthropology as "essentially a reformer's Town, who are represented as genteel colonials, drink·
science . .. active at once in aiding progress and in re­ ing tea, talking about trifles, withdrawing from the
moving hindrance" (quoted in Lowie 1938:831. They struggle. Together, these images are made to represent
seem unaware that science-minded anthropologists have what the ethnographer should and should not do in the
a long history of contributing to the struggle against rac­ field.
ism, anti-Semitism, colonialism, and, yes, even sexism Let me begin with this caricature of her colleagues.
 D'ANDRADE/sCHEPER-HUGHES Ob;ectivity and Militancy 1425

Scheper-Hughes mentions only in a footnote two self with perhaps less attractive allies? She also reports
women who were leading members of the Cape Town that she found young ANC and PAC activists working
department through the eighties: Harriet Ngubane was in alliance, but this was a very unusual situation. What
a leading member of the fnkatha Freedom Party and is would she have done if they had been working against
now a member of Parliament; Mamphela Ramphela was one another or if she had come into a war zone where
l

closely associated with the Black Power movement and ANC and Inkatha fighters confronted each other? Cho­
is now a senior member of the university administra­ sen sides?
tion. How could they have operated happily aod produc­ The broader problem is that not all activists are active
tively in the milieu she sketches? In fact, like most in ways we should like. What would Scheper-Hughes
South African social scientists at the English-speaking saYI for instancel to a Catholic missionary/ethnographer
universities/ her colleagues were committed opponents who puts evangelical purposes before science? Or are we
of apartheid and generally sympathetic to the African to assume that the term lI activist ll is properly used only
National Congress (though ANC intellectuals did not for those who toe some particular progressive line?
blindly support township radicals). Some supported In shoTtI Scheper-Hughes presents a situation in
other popular movements or were liberals rather than which it is easy to know what the right choice is. How­
radicals. everl most ethnographic situations are less dramatic and
Moreover, in addition to drinking tea and moaning most political choices rather more complicated. As
about the students, some of her former colleagues also D'Andrade points out, it is not always obvious that the
did research. Scheper-Hughes does not cite a single oppressed constitute a clearly defined class with an
study that emanated from the Cape Town department unambiguous shared interest. It is perhaps worth re­
in the past decade. There were a number, some of con­ marking that the voters in the Western Cape-including
siderable power, that among other things documented those in Franschhoek-rejected the ANC by a substan­
the poverty of the resettlement areas, the corruption and tial majority in the April t994 elections, so the ANC
violence of local apartheid authorities, the deprivation was not seU-evidently the party of the majority in this
of children in workers' hostels, etc. (for a review of the region.
literature, together with some contextuaHsation, see But even where the choices seem to be clear, there is
Gordon and Spiegel 19931. The English-speaking anthro­ a real problem as to how and when a foreigner, let alone
pologists were, indeed, sometimes reproached for al­ the foreigner who has been accepted as an ethnographer,
lowing a political agenda to steer their scholarship. may properly intervene. Should the ethnographer in In­
In short, her ethnography of the South African anthro­ dia act directly against the caste system? Moreover, in
pological scene is unreliable, insulting to individual some places intervention may be virtually impossible.
scholars, and, coming from a serious scholar, little short Should anthropologists only work in countries where
of outrageous. they will be permitted to be political activists? There is
What, then, of the sell-portrait of the activist­ alsol of coursel the danger that the foreign anthropolo·
ethnographer? I shall limit my remarks to Scheper­ gist-free to depart-can put informants at risk. I would
Hughes in South Africa, where admittedly she was op­ have grave doubts about urging a political innocent, try·
erating without the advantages that she enjoyed in Brazil ing to understand foreign waYSI to intervene on the side
of long experience in the field or command of the lan­ of the good.
guage. Judging from her account of South African an­ Finally, there are many situations in which political
thropology, she was not even familiar with the scholarly activism will inevitably close off various avenues of in­
literature. It is also left unclear whether she actually did formation and cloud judgment. Whatever its moral justi­
any field research. She evidently chose, above all, to be fication, activism does not generally go haod-in-hand
an activist-but an activist inevitably somewhat handi­ with good research. If there is a trade-off between ethno­
capped in her grasp of the complexities of local situa­ graphic enquiry and political activism, should we al­
tions. She gives no hint that she appreciated the delicacy ways-usually? ever?-choose activism? There are of­
of her position as she marched into the arenal but activ­ ten many local activists and rather few ethnographers.
ism before research is a chancy business. The problem does not arise in quite this way if one
Consider her representation of the politics of sum­ believes that objective research is impossible. However,
mary execution in the squatter camps. According to her if one takes a relativist position, then commitment be­
account, the local ANC leadership bravely holds out comes problematic in another way_ But according to
against the lynch mob, and she gives them her support. D/Andrade, the new hegemonic American cultwal an·
(And quite rightly, the ethnographer should certainly thropology is content with two contradictory argu­
close her notebook to save lives.) But she does not ex­ ments. Objective research is an illusion, and yet we can
plain why on this occasion the local activists took such somehow know for certain where justice lies. As D'An­
a humane line, since in many other situations local drade indicates, the fashionable professors have dressed
ANC leaders were right out there with tyres and the marxism of the sixties in drag, clothing it incongru­
matches. Would she have supported these more incendi­ ously in the language of relativism Icf. Kuper t994). (He
ary activists? Or would she have thrown herself into the quotes Scheper-Hughes as an instance, though in the
struggle to Stop the kangaroo courts and their summary present paper she apparently recognises the inconsis­
executions-even if that might have meant aligning her­ tency and criticises the anthropological postmodernists.
4261 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36, Number 3, Tune 1995

In this paper she is preaching something closer to the age and more recently. Conservative political correct­
Frankfurt School theory of the sixties.) ness was hidden in words such as IIprogress,lI "develop­
It is certainly interesting that this incoherent episte­ ment/' and l'aid. 1I Indeed, positivist science itself had a
mology still has such a grip on American cultural an­ "moral model II in objectivity versus subjectivitYI which
thropology, and it would be worth having D'Andrade's meant among other things that positivist science often
opinion on how it has succeeded. However, he may be ignored the emotional bias of the researcher in choosing
tOO pessimistic about its influence. The new American the research question.
orthodoxy has in general fallen flat outside the United Ii we are comparing ourselves to "real scientists" we
States. For reassurance I would recommend a visit to a might remember that physicists always calibrate their
conference of the European Association of Social An­ instruments. Reflexive anthropology, when its purpose
thropologists or a switch from reading Cultural Anthro­ is reflection rather than performance, is an attempt to
pology and Ethos to reading CURRENT ANTIIROPOLOGY, calibrate the instrument-in this instance the record­
Man, and Social Anthropology. ing anthropologist. And "real scientists I' such as phys­
In his frustration, D'Andrade proposes as an alterna­ icists spoke up about nuclear weapons, sometimes at
tive a pure research programme uncontaminated by mo­ the cost of security clearancel and are working dili­
rality or politics. At the beginning of the century, Weber gently at this moment to develop means of ridding Out
noted that while one may-perhaps should-ask ques­ planet of nuclear arms. Anthropologists were not pres­
tions that are motivated by moral and political concerns, ent at Wounded Knee, and those who have spoken out
the research that is done to answer these questions at the horror of what we might have been part of have
should nonetheless be as objective and thorough as pos­ usually been relegated to the margins of the field.
sible. And while Weber insisted that social scientists While I agree that IImoral models" can be irritating,
must try to grasp the motives and ruling ideas that shape especially when they are someone else's moral models
the behaviour of actors, he tried to demonstrate that and especially when they are holier-than-thou, I prefer
this did not necessarily lead to subjectivitYI solipsism, moral models that are visible. Then I can ask someone
or projection. like Scheper-Hughes, "How come you think you know
what's best?" Orl more likely, IIHow come, if you are
interested in miseryl you don It study up more, go to the
LAURA NADER source rather than the victims?11 Or "Do you really think
Department of Anthropology, University of California, that a post modem, reflexive anthropology is any better
Berkeley, Calif. 94720, U.S.A. 19 XII 94 at predicting the revolution in Peru than the structural­
functionalists were in predicting the Red movement in
D'Andrade argues here for building knowledge by means the United States?" I can also ask her if she remembers
of what some call positivistl objective science, while Kathleen Gough, who so often put her career last in her
Scheper-Hughes constructs an impassioned and freneti­ activism, all the while contributing first-rate anthropol­
cally paced statement about a militant anthropology, ogy, Or John Davis 119921, who has written about the two
one that puts its players to work on the ethnography of anthropologies-"the comfortable ... and the painful."
misery. The papers are a contrast between white-coat Some anthropologists in the Amazon today are risking
and barefoot anthropology. Yet D'Andrade and Scheper­ their lives for people in misery while doing excellent
Hughes are both writing about the adequacy of anthro­ ethnography. IIWhy don't you make common cause?1I I
pology, a concern which has inspired past anthropol­ might ask. Maybe moral models are not the real agenda.
ogists and a number of my own publications as well In this regard it is interesting to reread Richard Hand­
jNader '972, t976, t989). ler's interview with Clifford Geertz 11991). Geertz
It takes patience to son out these position statementsl is very plain-spoken in responding to the question
in the firSt case extrapolating from a handful of per­ "Against what were you revolutionizing?11 Selected re­
forming anthropologists while in the other relying pri­ sponses include "a four-field approach," I/Chicago was
marily on autobiographical field experiences of the kind the main dispersal point for British social anthropol­
many of us lincluding D'Andradel have had, but the sort­ ogy,1/ [Boasj"didnlt think much, II "the notion that an­
ing out may well be worth our while. There is a good thropology comes mainly out of the British utilitari­
deal at stake-the integrity of the discipline and the rep­ ans. . and the other, . .. that the only ancestors of
utation of anthropologists, as well as the practical value anthropologists are other anthropologists" (p. 6091. "My
of knowing what we know and often the very lives of own opposition to Levi-Strauss is my general opposition
people amongst whom we work. But rather than argue to rationalism .. but ... he made anthropology an
objectivity versus subjectivity or moral models versus intellectual discipline. He made it theoretical, intellec­
positivism I think the focus of argument should be on tual, philosophical. ... He got it out of the crait mold.
adequacy, indeed, scientific adequacy. I have been an He got it out of the empiricist data-collecting business
anthropologist long enough to know that "moral mod­ and introduced a note of French intellectuality" Ip· 6091.
els" were not invented by D'Andrade's five-indeed, liThe amount of time live spent in a wholly anthropolog­
long enough to know that "moral models" not only ical environment is minuscule" lp. 609). III came out of
come from the left but also are inherent in some of the a nonscientific backgroundJ and I never did buy this
conservative, positivist anthropology of both an earlier stuff" (p. 607J. "We wanted to get culture, however de­
 O'ANORAOE!SCHEPER-HUGHES Objectivity and Militancy 1427

fined, back in the picture" Ip. 608). That was the agenda ertheless be advanced as "true ll by the supposedly loftier
not only for Geertz but for many of his followers, some standard of Ifreflection" or some other form of revelation
of whom are discussed by D'Andrade. It was a conscious available only to a self-selected few.
erasure of anthropology as a discipline that the Clyde As a blanket assertion that the ideas, values, and prac­
Kluckhohn I knew, after his disillusionment with Social tices of all social groups are equally "valid,1I cultural
Relations, would not have been a part of, and the Geertz relativism has always been a dubious moral philosophy.
followers did not read much anthropology either. Personal reflection is an appropriate means for deciding
Now younger anthropologists like Paul Farmer Ir9941 whether we should apply that moral philosophy in any
combine the best in the scientific/medical tradition particular circumstance, and support for or opposition
with anthropology. Farmer has recently observed that to its application is properly mounted on moral grounds.
it is time to put the "socio-" back into socio-cultural The critical question here is not whether it is ethical for
anthropology as he simultaneously documents the anthropologists to try to help people in the course of
II chilling misuses of the culture concept." The lack of their work lof course it is, and many have) or whether
rigorous attention to the structural violence that Farmer scientific objectivity requires anthropologists to be per­
discusses is an inadequate anthropology not repaired, by sonally aloof from the people they study lof course it
the way, by militancy. does not, and most have not, regardless of how they
D1Anclrade is correct that the current moral model is write). The critical question is whether empirical truth
ethnocentric and that equality and freedom characterize is to bend before "ethical propositions. II
Euro-American culture more than any other. He is also D'Andrade argues that Ilanthropology's claim to moral
correct that the Gramscian model is inadequate to all authority rests on knowing empirical truths about the
tasks and that the current trendy work is lI a good model world." Scheper-Hughes argues that if anthropology is
for intellectual battle within the university./I And who to be worth anything at all, it must be "ethically
could disagree with Scheper-Hughes that anthropology grounded." Whether these two arguments are comple­
should be ethically based? mentary las they should be} or contradictory depends on
What [ have repeatedly argued for is for the best an­ what Scheper-Hughes means by the vague term "ethi­
thropology we can collectively muster, and I am per­ cally grounded." In arguing that anthropologists should
suaded that no single school is capable of the best single­ give ethical propositions IIprimacy" over scientific ob­
handedly. We need quantitative and qualitative models, jectivitYI does she mean that if private reflection reveals
we need humanism and some kind of science, we need one's political goals to be righteous enough, then a false
good writers and good thinkers. But we do need an an­ empirical proposition may be styled as IItrue"? Herbert
thropology with a deep respect for integrative thinking Spencer thought himself a great humanitarian, believing
and for empiricism also. Anthropologists like Farmer that "survival of the fittest ll was the fastest road to
and others on the front line do not debate whether biol­ achieve the goal of social improvement. Are we now to
ogy should or should not be in anthropology-it is there take his faulty empirical premises concerning biological
in their real world. Anthropologists in the Amazon do inheritance and social learning as true" because they
fl

not debate whether ecology is anthropology or not-it were Ilethically grounded"? Jackson proposes a IIdiffer­
is necessary to their job of understanding the world. Per­ ent notion of truth than that to which a scientistic an­
haps the reason that I can be optimistic is that I also thropology aspires ... a notion of truth based less upon
read and listen to the work of anthropologists outside of epistemological certainties than upon moral, aesthetic,
eli te departments of anthropology and find their work and political values" (r989:r671. According to his "prag­
increasingly approaching the best our profession has to matist notion of truth/' he concludes that tlii illusions
offer. have real and useful consequences then they are truths"
Ir989:t67, Hj; see O'Meara r9901. Scheper-Hughes
seems to imply as much but does not make herseU en­
J. TIM O'MEARA tirely clear on this vital matter. I urge her to do so now.
Department of Anthropology, University of Let me complement 0' Andrade's logical argument by
Melbourne. Parkville. Victoria 3052, Australia stating the matter in the stark, moralizing terms favored
(omeara"[email protected]). 23 XI 94 by critical theorists: I hold that epistemological relativ­
ism is evil. It is an instrument of subjugation, not of
As an applied anthropologist I heartily welcome liberation. No matter how righteous the cause, it is dan­
Scheper-Hughes's call for anthropologists to do some gerous as well as false to claim a speciailiway of know­
good in the world, but like 0' Andrade I get nervous ing'l about the physical world that produces "knowl­
when people support their arguments by claiming a spe­ edge" which is immune to empirical testing and logical
cial "epistemology" for discovering "truths ll about the contradiction. Well-meaning people should stop han­
world. The more private that cpistemology and thc more dling that venomous snake-which they apparently do
righteous those "truths" are proclaimed to bc, the more not understand and certainly cannot control-before it
nervous I become. My unease peaks when "truth" starts turns fascist and bites us all.
appearing in quote marks-implyin81 I fear, that what Hitler's propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, would have
is taken to be false by the pedestrian standards of obser­ been delighted to hear respected academics arguing that
vation and logical inference available to us all may nev­ adherence to relevant data and sound logic is a fonn of
4281 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36, Number 3, June '995

II mys tification," Neofascists must be delighted now downtrodden of the earth, it is a pragmatic as well as a
with the credence given a warning against generaliza~ moral question whether we should become str.eet parti·
tions in tenus of such generalizations as that the {{dis­ sans-knowing that the internal workings of the power
course of 'objectivity' .. is inevitably a language of elite will then be hidden from our view forever.
powerl! and "all professional discourses by nature assert The scientist's commitment to objectivity is "ethi­
hierarchy" (Abu·Lughod r99r:150-51, cited by D'An­ cally grounded." According to that ethic, attempting to
drade). They must be equally delighted with the promi­ distort matters of fact to fit personal feelings or preju­
nence given to another self-contradictory logic which dices is immoral; hence D'Andrades acute observation
urges us to embrace epistemological relativism but re­ that anthropology's claim to moral authority rests on
ject the cultural relativism that it implies. Scheper· knowing empirical truths. According to the ethic of ob­
Hughes would have us reject cultural relativism because jectivity, anyone may present observations and logical
it provides a warrant for claiming that apartheid is just arguments to support or undermine an empirical claim,
as "valid" as any other type of social relation. Fair and the truth or falsity of the claim is to be evaluated on
enough. But by that logic and morality, should we not those grounds regardless of the authority of contending
also reject epistemological relativism because it pro­ parties. Arguments from authority (moral or otherwisel
vides a warrant for claiming that the Holocaust is just are anathema to the egalitarian ethic of scientific objec­
a Zionist myth? tivity-and vice versa.
Critics take "objective knowledge" to mean "certain In 1613 Galileo published his support for Copernican
knowledge' gathered by a "value-free' scientist, which theory. He summarized his defense against the resulting
Popper pointed out over 30 years ago is a IInaive and charge of heresy by arguing that "in discussions of physi·
misguided idea of scientific objectivity" (1992[1961]:721. cal problems we ought to begin not from the authority
Instead, Popper argues that "scientific objectivity is not of scriptural passages, but from sense-experiences
a matter for the individual scientist but rather the social and necessary demonstrations" (Galilei 197911615]:231.
result of mutual criticism. 1I Empirical science does not Pope Paul V gave primacy to ethical propositions over
produce certain knowledge-it being utterly impossible scientific objectivity, however, and ordered Galileo to
to free research completely from the distorting effects stop holding and teaching the Copernican theory be­
of reseachers' interests and understandings Ithat was cause it was shown to be false by the alternative episte­
demonstrated 250 years ago by the great empiricist, Da­ mology of biblical revelation. In r632 Galileo contra­
vid Hume, not by latter-day critical theoristsl. But must vened that order by publishing his famous Dialogue, but
we therefore throw the gates wide open to distortion by the books were seized and further publication halted.
answering every question according to how it serves our Under threat of immediate persecution, Galileo was
moral and political interests? Since there is no certain forced to submit. Fortunately for us, Galileo's writings
empirical knowledge, I cannot say with absolute deduc­ and his ideal of scientific objectivity survived that inqui­
tive certainty that there are no alternative epistemolo­ sition.
gies for learning about the physical world we inhibit, Scheper-Hughes claims that lithe objectivity of sci­
but I can say with conviction that to make such claims ence. . is a mask that conceals more than it reveals"
is dangerous and immoral. (1992:291. That claim is itself a mystification of social
Contrary to widespread belief, scientific objectivity relations, designed to mobilise political action by excit­
does not divide the world into a value-free "objective ing the moral outrage of people who, like the critics
domain" of rocks, trees, endocrine secretion, and the themselves, are militantly ignorant of the fundamen­
like, and a separate, value-laden "subjective domain" of tally democratic nature of scientific objectivity and
goals, motives, feelings, and the like-the first to be oblivious to the vital protection against demagogy that
known by 1I 0 b;ective principles of elucidation, IJ "expla­ it alfotds us all. If demagogy and mystification are truly
nation," and "epistemology" and the second by a differ­ the enemy today, then scientific objectivity should be
ent set of "subjective principles" (Rappaport 1984:432­ embraced as an ally, not spumed as a foe.
331. These are myths based on the antiquated notion
that, unlike endocrine secretions, people's thoughts
and feelings inhabit a mysterious nonphysical domain
which is perforce immune to objective study. The myth A1HWA ONG
that scientific objectivity would require anthropologists Department of Anthropology, University of California,
to remain "value-free Ji and aloof from the people they Berkeley, Calif. 94720, U.S.A. 2 I 95
study follows from that error. Moral relativism does not
follow from scientific objectivity, as Scheper-Hughes Scheper-Hughes and D'Andrade agree that anthropology
and others seem to believe, so their attack on moral should be moral; their basic difference is over whether
relativism does not require an attack on objectivism. there is objectivity. D'Andrade wants anthropology to
As a pragmatic matter, becoming an emotional or po­ be moral but to keep objective and subjective goals sepa­
litical participant in the lives of the people we study rate so that moral assessments can be arrived at from a
may sometimes open new doors and help reveal new dispassionate distance and after a careful weighing of
insights to us, but, as Scheper-Hughes found, other doors facts. Scheper-Hughes argues that there is no objectivity
may then be closed to us. Thus, if the goal is to help the that stands outside a moral position. This is because
 O'ANORAOE/sCHEPER-HUGHES Ob;ectivity and Militancy 1429

power operates through hegemonic constructions of would conduct "empirical research" before making any
social reality, making commonsensical, routine, and moral judgment, while Scheper-Hughes combines the
Ifnatura!" the immoral arrangements that perpetuate so· exposure of hidden forms of injustice with IIspeaking
cial inequalities such as the widespread neglect of chil­ truth to power. II 121 How should the anthropologist's
dren/ women, the poor, and the disenfranchised. She ar­ morality interact with the morality of cultural others?
gues that anthropologists are also susceptible to such Neither directly addresses this issue here. IScheper­
hegemonic commonsensical views of the world and that Hughes does deal with this subject in Death Without
their normallizedj reactions have been to take the de­ Weeping 1'9921, recounting her sttuggles with the mo­
tached pose of objectivity, even indifference, and call it ralities of the Catholic faith and the "womanly solidar­
"objectivity." In contrast, D'Andracle thinks that there ity" she claims to share with local mothers.) D'Andrade
is a difference between empirical knowledge (out there) hints that he will take a varied, situational approach
and a moral position (adopted by the anthropologist). He depending on empirical findings and a weighing of
seems to avoid the issue that all models devised to col­ pros and cons (determined by himself), while Scheper­
lect and evaluate empirical evidence are ultimately Hughes proposes a kind of Christian morality that is at
based on implicit moral criteria, recognizing this only once individualistic-in sense of "the authorially cen­
when he talks about stories as a form of generalization. tered, Western, epistemological (I'"/Hall I988:671-and
Such disagreements have been with Western scholars sweeping in its universalizing claims. Let me briefly
for much of the 20th century. What makes the current comment on the political implications of the two ap·
debate significant is the alternative claims for defining proaches.
anthropology las part of the social sciences or the hu­ Many Asian societies hold that there is no truth out­
manities?!. A fundamental problem is confusion over side morality (Scheper-Hughes's position I. D'Andrade
the use of terminology and failure to situate claims in warns against ethnocentricism in applying a Western
specific historical·cultural contexts. It is amusing that notion of morality and seems to find refuge in an empiri­
D'Andrade calls Scheper-Hughes and others advocat­ cism that he believes would avoid the pitfalls of making
ing anthropological ethics "postffiodernist," whereas "wrong" moral judgments in ethnographic situations.
Scheper-Hughes uses that appellation for anthropolo­ This position enables him to maintain a superior ob­
gists who, in her view, choose to study transnational jectivist Western relation to cultural others. Scheper­
processes. This comedy of mislsed)labeling is further Hughes'S approach is more courageous and complicated.
compounded by both authors l conflatingl after their own She claims that, despite cultural dillerences, all human
fashion, the concepts of hegemony and ideology, reduc­ societies share a "precultural" morality based on the pri­
ing one or both to "mystification" (D1AndradeJ or "false mary dyadic relationship between mother and child.
consciousness" (Scheper-Hughes). Nevertheless, both This ideology of human universalism (a form of sociobi­
authors make important points. By and large, I agree ology?) makes it morally obligatory for her to intervene
with D1Andrade's argument for empirical research but in and struggle with the morality of cultural others. She
wish that he would see that research is designed within does not consider that her self-identificatioD as a West­
and inseparable from power relations that, among other ern feminist-an apparently fixed subject position con­
things, set moral terms. I agree with Scheper-Hughes's stituted within a particular ideological discourse-is
view that anthropology is ultimately aboUl ethics, but I open to a range of subsequent interpellations. What are
am uncomfortable with her sense of political righteous­ the political implications of an anthropologist's firm
ness. I think that, taken to the extreme, both positions moral position in the face of the actual play of negotia­
are very dangerous, if not for anthropologists, then for tiOD, contradiction, and interchange with other morali­
the people they work with. ties? How does her postfieldwork discourse on ethical
The disagreement between Scheper-Hughes and anthropology reposition her in relation to other Western
D'Andrade strikes me as very familiar, very Western l ideologies produced from a variety of other positions?
and very ethnocentric. Neither's pOSition is situated Modem Chinese morality is a combination of Confu­
within a broader, cross-cultural, global context. Both use cian traditions and Western Enlightenment notions of
universalizing terms such as objectivitYI power, and mo­ progress. The state defines the composition of this ideol·
rality without pausing to consider whether other cul­ ogy, but a large number of Chinese people share a "rela·
tures might take different positions on these subjects. tional ethics ll whereby morality is constructed in terms
An anthropological hegemony seems to be at work here of interdependency and the exchange of feelings, goods,
(see Dng n.d.), as the cultural others on whose behalf and services !Yang t9941. It is io many ways a morality
we anthropologists are making objective descriptions or that powerfully constrains the individual for the good of
taking moral stands are silenced or ignored except as the collective. Power is generally viewed not as oppres·
obstacles and bit players in yet another Western debate sive but as enabling. It is a responsibility to secure the
over making know ledges about those same others. overall good of society, of the largest number of people(
m a nutshell, there are many oppressions, as D1An­ of the nation-state. Such a political ethics often entails
drade assertSI and also many moralities in the world. making painful choices in which some people will be
There are two key questions for anthropologists: It I hurt as the cost of safeguarding the interests of the rna·
Do we have a moral obligation to understand how power jority. For the anthropologist the point should be first
relations work? Both would answer yes, but D'Andrade to understand how this cultural system works in its po­
430 I CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36, Number 3, June 1995

litical context and second to determine what justifiable As an anthropologist acutely conscious of geopolitical
moral action to take in this different moral universe. forces and cultural differences and one who has con­
This issue finds its clearest exposition in the explo­ ducted research on transnational capitalism} migrant
sive debate over human rights. In China, state ideology workers, war refugees, and overseas Chinese, I am dis­
and popular consciousness express strong resistance to mayed at Scheper-Hughes's view that the study of trans­
the privileging of individual rights against the good of national forces represents lI a flight from local engage·
the collective. During my 1993 visit to the southern ments} local commitments, and local accountability."
cities in which market reforms were in full flood, people Indeed, as a number of new anthropological studies have
talked about the Tiananmen crackdown as justifiable shown} the transnational perspective has increased our
and moral because these disruptions could have over­ understanding of the moral dilemmas of postcolonial
turned the government and thrown China into chaos, subjects (Lurhman n.d.; Ong r995, n.d; Ong and Peletz
thus derailing the development desperately needed to r9951, the resilient and resistant cultures of diasporic
make China a strong, healthy country. People who populations (Gilroy r987, '9931, the nation-building
fought for human rights were considered selfish because efforts of displaced populations (Basch, Schiller, and
they sought to obstruct the development that would en­ Blanc-Szanton '9931, the cultural polities of Asia-Pacific
able the most Chinese to benefit not only materially societies IDominguez and Wu n.d.I, and the political ef­
but also in terms of the freer society made possible by fects of commodity culture and the emancipatory prom·
economic prosperity and political stability. Further­ ise of transnationalism {Hall '99', Adams n.d.l. In other
more, human rights activists were considered immoral words, the study of transnationalism is imperative if an·
because their activities were seen as weakening China's thropology is to remain at the forefront of cultural analy­
bargaining position in global trade. sis. Refusal to engage and understand how global forces
From a Western moral perspective this repudiation of affect our everyday lives is an intellectually untenable
individual rights is repugnant. Safeguarding the interests position for anthropologists.
of the wider society cannot justify throwing prodemoc­ In other words, an ethical antluopology is not limited
racy activists in jail or quickly dispatching common to working only in a single locality or being in a position
criminals in order to acquire their organs for trans­ to rescue dying babies and tortured prisoners. This cou·
plantation into the bodies of good citizens. Western an· rageous intervention is very commendable when the 10·
thropologists may hold different moral views about free­ cal conditions allow it. Indeed, an ethical anthropology
dom of speech or the rights of prisoners} but in what must be more aware of the local effects of geopolitics,
sense can we impose our notion of morality on other transnational capitalism} and rescue anthropology. In
cultures~ To put things in rather stark terms} when soci· much of the Third World, the North American anthro­
ety is faced with difficult moral dilemmas-the good of pologist is often viewed as a powerful person} one who,
society or the good of a few individuals-whose moral· rightly or wrongly, is backed by substantial resources,
ity comes into play? Writing on this topic elsewhere the U.S. government, or even the eLA. Of course, the
lOng n.d.I} I suggest the answer is not a return to cultural female anthropologist is in a special position to help­
relativism and its implied apolitical detachment. Indeed, by giving voice to silenced women, helping to build
we can no longer afford a simple cultural relativism but creches} or participating in union struggles. Neverthe­
must acknowledge the making of other worlds in their less} such actions also reinforce her personal power as a
own terms} outside of Western political domination. white woman as well as the very structure of geopo·
One is forced to recognize that Western modernist val­ litical power she seeks to subvert. What are the wider
ues (including full-fledged democracyl can have limited political implications of such ethnographies when the
application to non·Western countries. At the same time, central moral character often appears to be the
emergent world powers like China can enact other fonns anthropologist herself? Isn't the kind of moralizing stral­
of cultural hegemony that inspire both fear and resis­ egy Scheper-Hughes proposes a deployment of intellec­
tance. What this entails for an ethical anthropology is tual power that depends on "liberating" the poor and
not aligning itself with the totalizing claims of any sin­ hungry of the Third World? Isn't it the kind of modernist
gle culture} society} or nation or appealing to some pre_
II antluopology (dating to the colonial periodj that has to
cultural ll sociality as the template for a universal moral­ be rethought in our postmodern world, where old divi­
ity. Instead, I see the task of anthropology as developing sions have been subverted, redrawn, or collapsed and
a mobile sensitivity to cultural difference that neverthe­ we are all multiply positioned in a range of ideological
less insists on defending minimal modem human rights formations and where the West-Rest relationship has
Ifreedom from hunger and torture and the right to sur­ yet to be reworked?
vive as a peoplel. The world has come through hundreds
of years of struggle between Enlightenment ideas and
social oppression} between cultural domination and hu­ PAUL RABINOW
man emancipation for us to insist on basic human guar­ Department of Anthropology, University of California,
antees for all peoples in the late 20th century. If it is to Berkeley, Calif. 94720, U.S.A. 29 XII 94
remain relevant into the next century} anthropology
must develop its own relational ethics to societies and For the past five years I have been studying scientists
peoples everyv,rhere} guided by the "weak" human uni­ and science. There are a number of reasons for this
versal of emancipation. choice, but the one most relevant here is that it seemed
 D'ANDRADE/sCHEPER-HUGHES Objectivity and Militancy 1431

to me important-as a citizen of the world and an an­ of moralism which apply everywhere and nowhere. Sub­
thropologist-to understand in some detail what was jects are always enmeshed in power relations and hence
going on in the world of molecular biology and genetics. in one form of politics or another. Independently-but
It seemed important for two major reasons. First, the nonetheless connected-these subjects} in fields of
subject matter was interesting in and of itself j I was power, produce knowledges of various kinds which then
curious aboUl these fields (and bored by the debates circulate, increasingly in transnational flows (guided by
about lurking eugenics and imminent therapeutic mira­ capital formations, states, media networks, and the
cles two steps removed from the actual materiall and kinds of things that Arjun Appadurai has ptovided us
decided that learning something new was a good thing the tools to understandj. Reason is a thing of the world,
to do. I was l in short, expressing and exercising my curi­ a social practice.
osity. Second, the field in which aspects of molecular I spent several years part-time doing fieldwork at the
biology and genetics were taking shape was a field, or a Cetus Corporation, near Berkeley, studying the inven­
multitude of sites, heavily saturated with power rela­ tion of the polymerase chain reaction, a technique to
tions of all sorts. Power relations are productive, and isolate and 1hen amplify specific sequences of DNA mil­
much was being produced. Michel Foucault draws a dis­ lions of times in a short period of time. In my forthcom­
tinction between different types of power relations: ex­ ing book Biotechnology Emergent I argue that the poly­
ploitation, domination and subjection. It was clear that
j merase chain reaction is perhaps the most important
massive amounts of money were being invested by vari­ biotechnology to date because, among other things, it
ous states, by large multinational pharmaceutical firms, has turned genetic scarcity into bounty. Working closely
and by venture capitalists. That money and the truths with the scientists was salutary on many levels not least
it would produce would surely be used in a range of of which was that it moved me beyond the endless and
fashions which would funher consolidate existing in­ empty debates of the SOrI that D'Andrade rehearses.
equalities both within the countries where these pro­ These scientists were passionately, existentially con­
cesses were undertaken and between the North and the cerned with questions of the place of their science in
South. As many cri tics of the Human Genome Project the world, their own lives, etc. They were less doctri­
had pointed out, money was being made and hierarchy naire about these issues than the major spokespersons
further consolidated. Finally, less explored and of more for or against the Genome Project or The Bell Curve.
interest to me, there would surely be a variety of new Perhaps that means they don't count as intellectuals.
types of subject formations. Not only would people be For me} as an anthropologist of reason} it was exhilarat­
forming cultural categories around the production of ing to watch and to discuss with them. It gradually
these new truths but a burgeoning variety of practices dawned on me that one of the reasons I was getting such
was emerging. These new practices included new sub­ good access to these busy men and women was that they
ject positions for scientists (how does one conjoin the wanted to discuss what they were doing. I offered one of
traditional Mertonian norms which are alive and well in the few opponunities in America's companmentalized,
the scientists' cultural formations with those of venture suessed, and angry culture for them to explain what
capitalists, pharmaceutical production methods, mas­ they were doing, how they came to do it, what they
sive data bases of genetic information, ever-accelerating thought about their lives, and the dangers and potentials
conditions of competition} etc.?). I was curious about of genetic engineering} genetic therapy, and the like.
what was emerging-new truths, new hybrids} new This was fieldwork among equals-not that we were
fOnTIS of power and identity. These emergences and identical in our skills or our locationj they were molec­
events posed the challenge of a new or at least modified ular biologists and biochemists and I was an anthropolo­
subject position for anthropology as well. For some time gist of the interpretive social science school. We were
now, I have been calling this work the anthropology of all members of the larger cosmopolitan milieu. They
reason. Inventing it and practicing it usually requires were curious about my work as I was about theirs. There
wearing shoes. It requires attention to the present. It was no transcendent witnessing or moralizing, only im­
has little room for denunciation and sweeping claims of manent subjects caught in complex webs of power and
stasis. It abjures the professoriat}s victim culture (the knowledge leading 1hrough many intermediary steps
barbarians are at the cafe). It flees ressentiment and nos­ eventually to the Bedouins and Cairenes so-well studied
talgia. It is not postmodern. by Lila Abu-Lughod. If this be postmodemism land I
Reflective curiosity (the term is from Hans Blumen­ firmly believe it isn'tl, so be it-nothing to denounce
berg's [19851 magisterial The Legitimacy of the Modern yet, no underlying malevolent genies} no universal
Age) seemed to me an essential virtue and a public value claims about lithe world}" just emerging objects, sub­
as well. Ethically and politically I felt compelled to learn jects, hybrids, networks. Both D'Andrade and Scheper­
enough molecular biology to be able to converse with Hughes would be disappointed. Ethics, politiCS, and
the scientists. Ethics, politics, and epistemology are cer­ knowledge were everywhere intertwined (but not identi­
tainly not the same thing, nor are they so hygienically cal), changing, and everyone was wearing shoes.
separated and privatized as some might wish. Once one I was fortunate enough to receive an NSF Professional
undertakes any activity, one is occupying or inventing Training Grant to go to the central human genome map­
a subject positionj the self-formative practices involved ping center in France, the Centre d'Etude du Polymor­
are, in my understanding, the ethical ones. These ethical phisme Humain (CEPHI, in Paris. There I was trained
practices contrast with the sweeping, static principles in the use of a range of technologies, including the use
4321 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36, Number 3, June I995

of yeast artificial chromosomes, for genome mapping. two cancer specialists over technologies for displaying
The CEPH is run by lean Dausset, a Nobel Ptize winnet, hundreds of genes (in different tissues) at the same time
and Daniel Cohen, an extremely dynamic would-be No­ as well as the differences between the monisms of Spi­
bel Prize winner 30 years his junior. Dausset has always noza and Platoj with a specialist in a rare muscular dys­
been interested in the relations of science and ethics, trophy over whether there was such a thing as a genetic
having founded one of the first international groups de­ self; with an Argentinian molecular biologist visiting
voted to the question. Cohen, fully aware that there the CEPH who wanted to start a genome mapping proj­
were uncharted domains full of potential dangers in ge­ ect of T. cruzi, a parasite found in Latin America which
nome mapping and even more so in its sequels, was ea· causes massive problems! over whether anthropology
ger to have an interlocutor close at hand. France has a was an experimentaf science (I thought not but the biol­
National Ethics Committee which hands down pro­ ogist was surprisingly adamant that it wasb with several
nouncements on a variety of topics from embryo re­ of the women scientists about the role of sexism and
search to the use of artificial procreation. These pro­ diversity in French science (they thought the NIH forms
nouncements are usually of great generality. Cohen was requiring statements about minority representation hys­
interested in something more fine-grained, processuaI, terically funny).
less judgmental. A nominalist without knowing it, he No moralism! no denunciation! no pity: lots of knowl­
invented the name "philosophical observatory" for the edge, politics, and ethics (I leave aesthetics aside here for
slot he was seeking to fill and waited for someone to simplicity's sake). I suppose it was neither sufficiently
occupy it. I found Cohen's label appealing, having liked "far away!' for some nor transparently 'Ithe world!' for
Pierre Bourdieu!s phrase of "fieldwork in philosophy" as others. I don!t care. It slaked my curiosity only to re­
a characterization of the kind of anthropology I do. I awaken it even more! day after day. It enables me to
nominated myself for the position, and Cohen and Daus­ read the latest announcement of lithe gene for X" with
set graciously invited me in. more appreciation for what it does and does not implYI
I arrived just after the CEPH had announced the first freeing me from dependence on the science writers of
physical map of the human genome, a stunning triumph the New York Times who announce every discovery in
over the much-better-financed American effort. What to molecular biology with the phrase "could well lead to a
do next? Intense debate and struggle ensued over what cure for cancer or AIDS.'I It enables me to talk with
scientific goals to pursuel what technical means were some authority to my students about such matters. I see
available or on the horizon which would make abstract no evidence that these labs and their science arenlt as
scientific goals such as "isolate multifactorial disease Ilreall y real!! as shantytowns. Power and knowledge are
genes" a plausible route to take, how these undertakings interconnected-for things to be interconnected they
would be financed in an era when the nation-state (espe­ must be partially separate as well. Watching new con­
cially of countries in Europe still mired in a prolonged figurations emerge is exhilarating and scary. At the end
recession) would no longer be the central financier and of my stay, Daniel Cohen told me that it had been ex­
regulator of research. Research! like capitalism! was en­ tremely useful to him to have me there during this in­
tering an accelerated phase of transnational expansion tense period of workl travell and cogitation about how
and uncertain and perilous invention of institutional ar­ science was to survive! about how the South could be
rangements. Again, both capitalism and science were in integrated into this rapid change Ihe was helping to es­
fiercely competitive moments of invention. The end of tablish a genome center in Tunisia), about juggling the
the period of state-financed and state-regulated science constraints and enabling capacities of state money ver·
which had emerged after the Second World War was sus pharmaceutical contracts or venture capital risks
nigh-not that the state was to disappear! but its and entanglements. tlBut DanieV' I said, I'all I ever did
near-hegemony in these arenas was coming to an end. was ask you what you were doing and watch you do it. 1I
So too was biology as local craft. I spent day after day True! after some time I began offering my opinions on
listening to debates about whether eDNA display was certain thingsi gave a talk to 500 geneticists and molecu·
the technology to bet on: whether the long polymerase lar biologists on the Enlightenment philosopher Pierre­
chain reaction would make yeast artificial chromosome Louis Moreau de Maupertuis's projects for international
cloning obsolete or whether new vectors such as some projects to be financed by princes for the good of human­
of the old phage viruses would prove less chimerical ity; wondered who owned the DNA used in discovering
than the artificial yeast chromosomesj what to make disease genes (humanity! the statel the doctors! the sci­
of the fact that not only was the single-gene paradigm entists! the patients! the families! the financiers?), where
inadequate for polygenetic conditions tat the very least the threshold of patenting should be (coding sequences,
vastly different types of statistical modeling would be therapeutic molecules?)j shared my distrust of academic
required) but increasingly single-gene maladies were moralism; agreed that it was the best of times and the
turning up with the Iisingle" genes located on several worst of times.
different chromosomes or containing totally unexpected No! Professor D'Andradel the relations of truthl
internal tandem repeats (the same gene being found in powerl and ethics have not been unchanged for the past
different forms and in different placesl; which kind of 200 years. Moralism! it is true l is millennial! and there
business and scientific alliances would be the most effi­ are careers to be made in braying its truisms when other
cient and the most ethical. I had long discussions with faculties fail. But for those-like yourself-with real
 D'ANDRADE!SCHEPER'HUGHES Obiectivity and Militancy 1433

projects and important research to carry forward, why social scientists and anthropologists, including his own,
waste your precious time on it? No, Professor Scheper­ ale full of generalizations, many of which are reasonably
Hughes, barefoot is not the only way to go. However} as objective. How did these generalizations escape the play
you have so eloquently and movingly shown us, it is of poweI? Crapanzano's staIement is really a political
one way to go. We live in a world Inot lithe warldlll in argument dressed up as "wise-words," making the im­
which there are specific dangers and potentials, a world plicit statement that it is foolish to strive for objectivity
in which there are many different things to do and and science.
things to learn and one equally full of stupidity, terror, Harris takes up the issue of how "objectivity" is to
and Babbittry-a curious place, one in which it seems
j be defined, aIguing that it is method which makes a
to me, the question "What is Enlightenment?" still has statement "objective." According to Harris, if the meth­
its importance. ods used are public, replicable, and testable, tben the
statements they generate will be objective. It is true that
these methods are used to test if an observation is objec­
tive, but it is not methods which make an observation
Reply objective. What makes an observation objective is that
it describes a phenomenon that exists independent of
the observer's feelings or thoughts about it. ObjecIivity
ROY G. O'ANDRADE in my sense is not sufficient for building adequate mod­
La folla, Calif., U. S.A. 19 I 95 els of the world, but it is necessary. An excellent critical
analysis of the mOIalist and postmodemisI attacks by
In Iesponse to Crapanzano I would like to point out that Rosaldo, TyleI, Rabinow, Rotty, and others on objecIiv·
his complaint that the two papers are "polemical" con­ ity and science can be found in Reyna I r9941.
tradicts the very thesis he propounds-that "truth, More important, Harris appears to reject the separa­
knowledge, and objectivity are not ... pIecluded by tion of moral and objective models I propose. Instead,
moral and political engagement." (If Scheper·Hughes or he proposes a "blended model. II If by "blending" here he
I do it, it is "polemicaV' but if he does it, it is "moral means that the empirical models used by anthropolo­
engagement"?) Crapanzano is also distressed by what he gists should have morally evaluative terms in them, I
calls the "projective dismissal of postmodernism" in disagree for all the reasons I stated. However, if he
both papers. He says, "We should ask why so few an­ means that anthropologists can do good wOIk while hav­
thropologists enter into critical, public conversations ing the strongest moral stakes in the model they are
with advocates of positions they find questionable." building, I would certainly agree. Indeed, on Ihis point
Since Ihis is exactly what Scheper·Hughes and I are do­ Harris has misunderstood me; I do not propose that an­
in& Crapanzano must be complaining tbat we are not thropology should be carried out in a moral vacuum, and
talking about what he wants us to talk about. Yet when I do not think that "the weakness of Scheper-Hughes's
we do talk about postmodernism Crapanzano says he pOSition is that she registers her indignation and takes
does not have the Itfoggiest idea" what either of us sides." I like Scheper-Hugbes's indignation, and on
means by it. For me, the central ideas of postmodemism many issues I am on her side. My complaint is that she
are a dismissal of metanarratives, a rejection of objectiv­ does not keep her indignation separate from her observa­
ity and science, an emphasis on power, a concern with tions and mixes them together in her stories and in her
representations, discourse, and text as cenual objects for theoretical model of "oppression."
analysis, and a relativistic stance with respect to knowl­ Kuper's commentary on Scheper-Hugbes's paper bears
edge but a moralistic stance with respect to Western on the issues I raised in my paper about the use of anec­
colonialism. Postmodernist ideas have been blended dotes. Scheper-Hughes does not state explicitly the gen­
into the current moral model, but most postmodernists eralization that the academic anthropologists at Cape
distrust the metanarrative of oppression that is central Town are colonialists who are indifferent to social con­
to this model, as Crapanzano's remarks on Scheper­ flict in South Africa. Instead she presents vignettes in
Hughes's paper illustrate. which business proceeds as usual, ethnicity is decon­
Crapanzano says that there can be "no morality with­ structed in classrooms, and tea is served with regularity.
OUt truth" and that we need to "modulate our desire and KupeI takes Scheper-Hughes to task for this, finding her
the lure of power with 'hard' fact. II I agree. But Crapan­ implicit generalizations inaccurate and insulting. He
zano also says that "the objective cannot be separated also finds her anecdote aboUl the "triple necklacing" to
from Ihe plays of personal and collective power." This be an unrepresentative picture of political relationships
generalization sounds very worldly-wise and knowing, in SouIh Africa. Stories are a perfect way to blend Ihe
but is it really true? Most of us learn to make exactly objective and the subjective. Sometimes it is hard to
this separation as a part of normal socialization. It may leU who has been fooled mOSI, Ihe listener or the teUer.
be difficult to describe someone one does not like in Remember Ronald Reagan's stories?
objective terms, but it is not beyond most mortals. Cra­ Kuper, who has written about the postmodemist pro­
panzano states that "personal experience" has led him gram and its ties to political correctness IKuper 1994),
to believe that the objective cannot be separated from tracing the roots of American anthropological postmod­
plays of power. But what experience? The writings of eroist movement through Boas, Parsons, and Geertz to
4341 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36, Number 3, June 1995

the present configuration expressed by Marcus, Rabi­ Rabinow's comments are primarily about his recent
now, Herzfeld, Abu-Lughod, and others (see also Kuper work among biologists. He appears to have moved away
t9931, asks how the current moral model in its postmod­ from crirical and postmodem anthropology. Apparently
em vestment came to obtain such a grip on American he no longer believes in the fusion of morality and an­
cultural anthropology. [ believe the success of this thropology. Contrary to what Rabinow says, I am not
model in the United States is due to the confluence disappointed or surprised by what he found at the Cetus
of a number of historical factors, including the near­ Corporation or at CEPH j the world he describes is rea·
extinction of tribal cultures, the collapse of the StruC!UI­ sonably familiar to many academics. Nor is it surprising
alist/interpretivist cultural agenda, the coming of age of that he found "ethics, politics, and knowledge" to be
an academic generation schooled in the antiestablish­ {'everywhere intertwined. II But it would be surprising
ment attitudes of the late sixties, the politicization of indeed if these biologists did not keep their ethical mod­
literary studies, and the notoriously moralistic character els and research models separate. A last point: I do not
of Americans. My own question is-when will it lose know why Rabinow says that I believe that the relations
its grip? of truth, power, and ethics have not changed for the past
Perhaps it could have been different. At one time dur­ zoo years-I don't think anything of the kind.
ing the early eighties I believed that an empirically ori­ Friedman says that the /lconflation of description and
ented poststructuralist cultural anthropology was possi­ hypothesis ll is a problem for any attempt to keep moral
ble, and I became involved in the creation of a society and empirical models separate. However, whatever this
within the American Anthropological Association that problem of conflation may be, I do not see its bearing
would suppOrt such an enterprise. David Schneider, Roy on the issue of the separation of moral and empirical
Rappaport, Paul Kay, Annette Weiner, and others who models. He also raises the issue that the "scientific
founded the Society for Cultural Anthropology were model" has its own morality-the morality of getting
generally supportive of an empirical agenda. However, the facts right, using relevant procedures, etc. This is
the younger anthropologists, such as George Marcus, certainly true. But it would be a mistake in logic to say
were antagonistic to science and interested in forming that because science has its "morality" it is nothing but
an intellectual alliance with the postmodernist move­ morality. In the main I agree with Friedman's character­
ment in literature. Apparently they felt the anthropol­ ization of the importance of the public sphere of science
ogy they inherited had failed, and so they turned to intel­ and his conclusion that "engagement demands analysis
lectual figures outside anthropology for ideas and issues. of the way the world works. II
Ironically, over the past few years the moral agenda in O'Meara's commentary is a strong defense of science.
anthropology has become more popular than the interest He stresses that science is egalitarian, democratic, and
in writing, and the moralists have begun to turn against a vital protection against demagogy. For O'Meara the
the esthetes-as Scheper-Hughes's attack on postInod­ attacks of critical anthropology on science are not just
emism illustrates. American anthropology turned to lit­ unfortunate; they are immoraL He points to the danger
erature for a language to talk about representations, but inherent in the moralists' notions that they have a spe·
it ended up with a political doctrine. In any case, it is cial way of knowing what is right, leading them to be­
somewhat reassuring to hear from Kuper that the new lieve that they have the right to attack and destroy those
American orthodoxy has not spread outside the United they believe are wrong. American anthropology has
States. sometimes been susceptible to this kind of moralistic
Nader makes the argument that it is the scientific fascism. Currently, sociobiologists such as Napoleon
adequacy of the work that counts, not whether the mod­ Chagnon are attacked at meetings of the AAA simply
els involved are moral or objective. However, the argu­ because of their beliefs. These political attacks are moti­
ment of my paper is that if one wants to do scientifically vated by a desire to keep people who have "bad" ideas
adequate work, moral models are a great hindrance and and who write ffbad" things from doing research. As
objective models are a great help. Nader also discusses O'Meara says about this special kind of knowing, "Well­
the "conscious erasure of anthropology as discipline" by meaning people should stop handling that venomous
Geertz and others. I believe there is considerable truth snake-which they apparently do not understand and
to this; certainly the attack on the empirical craft aspect certainly cannot control-before it turns fascist and
of anthropology has been devastating in cultural anthro­ bites us a11./I I agree.
pology. And it is true that many of the most "cultural" Ong begins, "Scheper-Hughes and 0'Andrade agree
anthropologists want nothing to do with biological an­ that anthropology should be moral." Not so; I don't be­
thropology or archaeology. [ think this is based more on lieve anthropology should be moral. I said that "anthto­
a wish to take over anthropology and reformulate it as pologists should work to develop more coherent, clearly
"cultural studies" than a wish to erase the field, but in articulated moral models. So should physicists, agrono·
II

the end it may come down to the same thing. On a more mists, and dentists. Because these disciplines create
optimistic note, Nader points to a new young generation knowledge that is relevant to people, practitioners in
that does not bother with the old controversies about these fields need to think out what their knowledge says
what is or isn't anthropology and whether biology is or about how humans can live a good life. For this they
isn't a part of it but JUSt gets on with the business of need a variety of models that explicate the moral impli­
research. This too is reassuring. cations of their knowledge, not a new religion. It is pre­
 D'ANDRADE!SCHEPER-HUGHES Obiectivity and Militancy 1435

tentious for anthropologists to talk about anthropology 'wrong' moral judgments in ethnographic situations II
as if they were talking about a sacred doctrine. We are and that this position enables me "to maintain a supe­
not reincarnations of the Buddha. Our moral sensibili­ rior objectivist Western relation to cultural others. I I I
ties are not much better than anyone else's. A f'moral know what I am being called, but what did I say? The
anthropology" is not likely to be an improvement on cliche terms "silencing," "hegemony," tfethnocentric,lI
the beatitudes. In my view} anthropology should not set and "superiority" form the standard ritualized denucia­
itself the task of proclaiming moralitYi rather, its prac­ tion of the moral modeL
titioners should try to act in ways that are ethical and Ong goes on to defend the study of transnational
develop models that help them think out the moral im­ forces because they increase our understanding of the
tf

plications of their knowledge and practice. moral dilemmas of postcolonial subjects." It is as if the
Gng says that I avoid the issue that "all models de­ only thing that justified studying something were its
vised to collect and evaluate empirical evidence are ulti­ moral implications. This fixation on being moral results
mately based on implicit moral criteria. II Not so; I argue in a squabble with Scheper-Hughes about whether it is
that the evaluation of empirical evidence is not based more moral to study transnationalism than it is to be
on subjective criteria like morality. Gng, in fact, is as· involved in local engagementS. The end point of the ex­
serting the opposite. But on what grounds? How does ercise is a denunciation of Scheper·Hughes-tlOf course,
she know that the evaluation of empirical evidence is the female anthropologist is in a special position to
always based on moral criteria? Has she counted cases help. .. , Nevertheless, such actions also reinforce her
and found that in every case in which someone evalu­ personal power as a white woman as well as the very
ated empirical evidence moral criteria were being used? structure of geopolitical power she seeks to subvert."
I think not. Then what evidence does she have that this This is a good example both of the poisonous atmo­
assertion is true? This is another case of political rheto­ sphere created by the moral model and of the phobia
ric dressed up as "wise-words. 1I about power expressed within that model. In general,
Ong says "it is amusing that D'Andrade calls Scheper­ Ong's comments are those of someone who has strongly
Hughes and others advocating anthropological ethics internalized the moral model and is not careful about
'postmodernist l l whereas Scheper-Hughes uses that ap­ applying it.
pellation for anthropologists who, in her viewl choose With respect to Scheper-Hughes's paper, f have little
to study transnational processes. This comedy of to add that I have not already said with respect to her
mislsedllabeling is further compounded by both authors' other work. A terrible thing about much human tragedy
conflating. after their own fashion, the concepts of he­ is that there is no simple evil, no clear responsible agent,
gemony and ideology, reducing one or both to 'mystifi­ no simple remedy. According to the ethnographic mate­
cation' ID'Andrade} or 'false consciousness' (Scheper­ rial presented in Death Without Weeping, the infantS in
Hughesl." The tone is unfortunatel and the facts are the municipio of Born Jesus da Mata die because their
wrong. I believe the tWO models do have a historical mothers are too poor to provide for them l because their
reiationshipi which I describe in terms of postmodern­ mothers do not breast-feed, because their mothers do
ism's giving the moral model "a more resplendent vo­ not use contraceptives and average 12 pregnancies over
cabulary and greater epistemological bite." But I did not their life span, because the Catholic church tells these
call Scheper-Hughes a postmodernist because I don't women that they must not use contraceptives and that
consider her one jshe believes strongly in a particular babies die because it is God's will, because the distribu­
metanarrative), although she has used poslmodemist ar­ tion of wealth within the economic system is crushingly
guments in her attacks on science. Norl in this apparent unequal, because the political system has little interest
comedy of errors, did I "conflate the concepts of hege­ in helping these women and their children, and because
mony and ideology, reducing one or both to 'mystifica­ the medical system fails to provide proper advice and
tion.'" I claim that the current moral model treats he­ care. My argument is that while Scheper-Hughes de­
gemony as if it were the result of ideology and scribes the situation of these women in rich detail, her
mystification. Why would Ong think that I believe the use of the moral model of oppression oversimplifies and
moral model? I argue at length that the current moral misrepresents the causal relations involvedl leading her
model is not an adequate model and that hegemony can­ to put the onus on the "power structure" and moral
not be maintained on the basis of ideology alone. failings such as "complicity" and Ifbad faith." This
Ong accuses Scheper-Hughes and me of"an anthropo­ moral stance leads her away from a search for realistic
logical hegemony" as the "cultural others on whose be­ solutions toward an approach in which itwitnessing, it
half we anthropologists are making objective descrip­ with its quasi-religious overtones, becomes an end in
tions or taking moral stands are silenced or ignored itself. I doubt that "witnessing" is sufficient to help ei­
except as obstacles and bit players in yet another West­ ther these Brazilian women or the tfnecklacedll unfortu­
ern debate. 11 When my paper was accepted by CURRENT nates of South Africa.
ANTHROPOLOGY I had a number of fantasies about what So-what will happen in anthropology? Isn't it time
various commentators might say, but it never occurred to get rid of this moral model? It has little empirical use
to me that this debate would be called "hegemonic." and is good mainly for denunciations. A number of the
Ong goes on to say that I find refuge in an empiricism commentators suggest that we should be getting on with
that I believe "would avoid the pitfalls of making finding out how the buman world really works. It is a
43 6 1 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36, Number 3, lune 1995

gilt of history that we have the opportunity to take part lamong othersl, calls into question the epistemological
in the construction of a young science. A hundred years and the political/moral status of the f1facts/J and IIreali­
or so from now the opportunity will be gone, Physics ties ll under study. What matters to us is the means
and chemistry 3fe old sciences with not much left to do. through which research data are acquired l the various
They are beautiful structures but almost entirely fixed, meanings the findings have/ and the relations between
In anthropology and the other social sciences there is the knowledge generated and the maintenance of domi­
still plenty of room for exploration and building. nant ideologies and power relations.
However, like the Cartesian mind/body dualism, the
objectivity/moralist dilemma, artificially juxtaposed in
NANCY SCHEPER-HUGHES these two papers written for very different purposes, is
Berkeley, Calif" U.S.A. 17 I 95 a false dichotomy. As Crapanzano and other commenta­
tors note, the twO papers are polemical and distort areas
Some of my critics are very angry, some afC simply of possible convergence. On the one hand/ as Ong points
amused lor bemused" and a few are sympathetic to the OUt/ anthropology has always entailed a moral task/
approach I am trying to map out while recognizing it though the premises and concerns have changed consid­
as an incomplete and rudimentary project. Three of the erably since Boas vigorously fought scientific racism by
responses have been solicited from within my own de­ means of better science. Though today we are still,
partment of anthropology at UC Berkeley lOng, Nader, sadly, fighting scientific tacism Isee The Bell Curve). we
and Rabinowl, forcing us to rehearse in public some of are more likely to do so by unmasking the transparent
OUI family quarrels. political agendas that so often masquerade as scientific
I'll begin with the "big" question: "moraI Ii versus lIob_ evidence than by piling up more and more quantitative
jective" anthropology. Several of the respondents (Har­ "data. II On the other hand, those who question the truth
ris, Nader, O'Meara, Friedmanj note that the current de­ claims of objectivist science do not deny that there are
bate is an old one dressed up in new language. Until discoverable Iffacts" in the world. Some things are in­
recently the objectivist/empiricist and subjectivist/in­ contestably "factual/' and these need to be studied em­
terpretive approaches were seen in terms of epistemolog­ pirically. As I wrote in the introduction to Death With­
ical dilferences conforming to what Thomas Kuhn out Weeping, either 150 or 350 children died of hunget,
called "paradigms" and what Michel Foucault called diarrheal disease, and dehydration in the Brazilian shan­
"epistemes l ' or different shapes of thought/knowledge/ tytown of Alto do Cruzeiro in a given year, and the re­
power. Objectivist and interpretive frameworks were searcher has a strong scientific and a moral imperative
seen as constituting different convictions about what to get it right. Surely my critics know that I am deeply
could be considered useful or respectable data, about re­ committed to finding better ways of getting at crucial
search and funding priorities, about the forms that data but elusive data, including the global epidemiology of
and theories should take, about the kind of language HIV/AlDS Isee Scheper-Hughes 1994a) and the inci­
researchers should use-in short, about how social sci­ dence of "necklacings" in South Africa II994bl, to
entists should go about their business and how research tracking the "disappeared" and documenting the lives
findings should be used or applied to public policy and and deaths of endangered stteet children in Brazil
to everyday life. (Scheper-Hughes and Hoffman 1994). and so on, In Third
Drawing on anthropological metaphors/ the "world­ World countries there are a great many lives and deaths
views" underlying the two approaches were seen as IIfor­ to count among populations generally thought of as not
eign cultures// each one self-contained and autonomous worth keeping track of at all. But crucial empirical work
and possessing its own inner logic and standards of truth of this kind need not be empiricist-that is, it need not
seeking. Viewed in these uncompromising terms, it entail a philosophical commitment to Enlightenment
would be impossible to invalidate the method of one notions of reason and truth. Empirical work can be
from the perspective of the other. To appropriate Evans­ guided by critical-interpretive concerns about the inevi­
Pritchard's statement on Azande witchcraft, I/[n this table partiality of truths and about the various meanings
web of belief every strand depends on every other strand, that "facts" and "events" have in the existential, cul­
and a Zande Ihere read an objectivist or an interpretivistl tural, and political sense.
cannot get out of its meshes because it is the only world Documenting chronic hunger in Northeast Brazil is
he knows. The web is not an external structure. . , . It a case in point. Although often concealed as nervous
is the [very) texture of his thought and he cannot think J/disease," the bare facts of chronic starvation are plain
that his thought is wrong" 1'937:193-94)· enough in the shantytowns of Brazil, where hunger
Much of the original debate turned on the question narratives/ caloric intakes/ and photo documentation
whether I/facts" in the world were uncovered or pro­ should suffice Isee chaps. 4 and 5 in Death Without
duced in the context of research. The objectivist posi­ Weeping}. Meanwhile, empirical evidence of the routine
tion, as advanced by D'Andrade, assumes that rigorous medicalization of hunger in the clinics of Nonheast Bra­
empirical research can lead to a truthful and accurate zil is published in Death Without Weeping (see esp. pp.
representation of the objects or events under study. The 199-2.121 and is available for any other researcher to re­
critical-interpretive approach, advanced, in different fute or verily through more study. Although Harris and
forms, by Rabinow, Abu-Lughod, Rosaldo, and me other North Americans le.g., J. Richmond 1988, Mull
 D'ANDRADE!SCHEPER-HUGHES Objectivity and Militancy 1437

and Mull r9941 have simply denied that clinical medi­ intellectual home for black South Africans, an indige­
cine could be so blatantly abused, my documentation of nous anthropology rather than a distant echo of Cam­
the medicaliz3tion of even toddler starvation is accepted bridge.
in Brazil, where the situation is already well known to While outrageous, my brief comments on some as­
critical scholars (see Cavalcanti 1986, Cardoso 1987/ pects of contemporary social anthropology in Cape
Duarte r9861 and seen as a particularly sad aspect of Town (as conforming to Crapanzano's metaphor of sus­
social and medical reality for the urban poor. The blan­ pended animation or "waiting"l were not meant to
ket skepticism I have met among U.S. critics may be exempt other similar traditions of anthropology Isee,
seen as an illustration of the scientific "taboo on hun­ e.g., my more pointed critique of "conventional"
ger" described many years ago by the Brazilian nllui­ North American medical anthropology IScheper-Hughes
tionist Josue de Castro Ir9521 in his classic Geography r9901l. My close-at-hand understanding of the academic
of Hunger. experiences of some of the very few black South African
My point here is that a politically engaged anthropol­ anthropologists in South Africa hardly conforms to the
ogy could not make the mistake of overlooking the enor­ "happy" situation that Kuper imagines. For a critical
mous si,gnificance of chronic hunger in driving the ev­ assessmem by a black South African of the colonial bi­
eryday lives of the poor of Northeast Brazil, just as it ases in the classical tradition of British social anthropol·
could not ignore the massacres and disappearances of ogy as practiced in Southern Africa, readers may consult
vulnerable people that often occur Ithough one would the review article by Bernard Magubane (r97rl and the
hardly know it) right in front of the anthropologist's un­ acrimonious responses it generated at that time. In a
steady gaze. Starn It992:152-801 takes to task those tra­ more balanced and judiciously self-critical treatment of
ditional Andeanist anthropologists whose selective South African anthropology, Gordon and Spiegellr993)
blindness to the ongoing war in Peru allowed them to note the contributions of the anthropological expose
go about business as usual/ blithely concerned "with writings of the 1970S and r980s against the cruel effects
ecology and ritual, with depicting remoteness rather of the apartheid-mandated migrant-worker hostels, pass
than discerning links" IFarmer 1994:201, and therefore laws, and Group Areas Act, while they also acknowledge
complicit in the Structures of violence and space of the extent to which the apartheid state traumatized the
death that the ongoing war left in its wake. Similarly, practice of anthropology in South Africa l inhibiting, to
Clifford Geertz's celebrated Balinese "cockfight" sce­ a certain extent, its democratic and humanistic practice
nario was developed within the larger context of a na­ and goals.
tional political emergency that resulted in the massa­ As for what guise I was operating under while in Cape
cre of almost three-quarters of a million Indonesians, Town lethnographer or activist'!, 1 arrived in July r993
though it took Geertz three decades to mention the kill­ to fill, though only briefly, the position of "professor and
ings that had engulfed his Javanese field site IGeertz chair" lin the European academic sensei of the depart­
1995:5-121, now forever associated in our minds ment of social anthropology at the University of Cape
with those semiotic fighting roosters. Anthropologists Town, following somewhat awkwardly in the lalge foot­
should, I believe, be held accoumable for what they see steps of A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Isaac Shapera, Monica
and what they fail to see, how they act or fail to act in Wilson, and, most recently, Martin West. In addition to
critical situations. my rather extensive teaching duties, I used a modest
This brings me to the most vexing part of the paper grant from the UCT research office to conduct explor­
and to Kuper's visceral reactions to it: the fleeting im­ atory research on the role of violence in the democratic
ages I leave of an un-seH-reflexive postcolonial anthro­ transition in Cape Town and in its rural surrounds, in­
pology in South Africa today. Kuper's response goes to cluding Franschhoek, where I revisited the small farm­
the hean of the matter and concerns the future of an­ ing and tourist community first studied by Crapanzano
thropology: the political morality and social ethics of Ir9851. I observed the political transition as it was expe­
the profession as a whole, criticism and who mayor rienced not only by white farmers and business people
may not engage in it, the uses and abuses of social an­ but also by colored professionals and farm laborers and
thropology, including responsibility for the recruitment by black rural workers living in a newly formed squatter
and training of Third World anthropologists, and so on. camp. As an lIethnographer of the democratic transi­
One must take Kuper's prickly response to my com­ tion" I also observed the responses and reactions of my
ments as informed by his perception of a reactivated war anthropological colleagues to that year's heightened
between British social and American cultural anthropol­ anxiety and hope, attended mass meetings, political fu­
ogy (see Kuper 19941 caused by what he sees as Ameri­ nerals/ and formal town council meetings in Cape Town
can anthropology's II nativistic" assaults on traditional and in Franschhoek, followed the Amy BieW murder
social anthropology in the forms of critical reflexivity, trial and the Heidelberg pub massacre and its aftermath
the "writing·cultures II project, feminism, multicultur­ Isee Scheper-Hughes r994dl, and compared state­
alism, and the postcolonial, subaltern critiques of con­ administered justice in municipal courts with the daily
ventional (i.e., objective, politically neutral, distanced, enactments of popular justice and people's courtS in
nonreflexiveJ anthropology. For my pan, I do not believe Chris Hani squatter camp Isee Scheper-Hughes r994b,
that anthropology can survive in the new South Africa c; n.d.l. While my writings on South Africa have pro­
unless it is radically transformed so as to become a true ceeded on the spot without the benefit of long experi­
4381 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36, Number 3, June 1995

ence in the field, I felt I could make a contribuiion by wonder whether we haven't already reached the end of
applying my well-seasoned anthropology to the task of modern, realist, objectivist anthropology and whether a
responding to some of the lies and half-truths daily per­ more frankly engaged, partisan/ and morally accountable
petrated by the South African and international media, profession hasn/t already taken its place.
especially as these bore on stereotypes of South Africa's
"dangerous young lions/' the so-called lost generation
of African youth. Because of my linguistic deficiencies
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