Ethnographic Artifacts: Challenges to a Reflexive Anthropology 9780824844196

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 Introduction: Ethnographic Artifacts
Part I Ethnography as a Personal Dilemma
Chapter 2 The Politics of Representation on a Polynesian Atoll
Chapter 3 On Not Knowing One's Place
Chapter 4 A Question of Audience: The Effects of What We Write
Chapter 5 The Politics of Ethnography in New Zealand
Part II Regarding Ethnography
Chapter 6 The Tikopia and "What Raymond Said"
Chapter 7 Will the True Ethnographer Step Forward: The Asmat Case
Chapter 8 Writing about Culture and Talking about God: Christian Ethnography in Melanesia
Chapter 9 The Enigmatic Baining: The Breaking of an Ethnographer's Heart
Chapter 10 Epilogue: Ethnography as a Social System Parts, Wholes, and Holes
References
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

ETHNOGRAPHIC ARTIFACTS

ETHNOGRAPHIC ARTIFACTS Challenges to a Reflexive Anthropology

Edited by Sjoerd R. Jaarsma and Marta A. Rohatynskyj

University of Hawai'i Press Honolulu

© 2000 University of Hawai'i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 00 01 02 03 04 05

5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ethnographic artifacts : challenges to a reflexive anthropology / edited by Sjoerd R. Jaarsma and Marta A. Rohatynskyj. p.

cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8248-2225-0 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 0-8248-2302-8 (paper : alk. paper) 1. Ethnology—Philosophy.

2. Ethnology—Authorship.

Jaarsma, S. R.

3. Ethnology—Methodology.

II. Rohatynskyj, Marta, 1946-

GN345.E73 305'.001—dc21

2000 99-058503

University of Hawai'i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources.

Designed by Jill Chen Loui Printed by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing

Group

I.

Contents Acknowledgments

1

Ethnographic Artifacts Marta A. Rohatynskyj and Sjoerd R. Jaarsma INTRODUCTION

Parti Ethnography as a Personal Dilemma 2

The Politics of Representation on a Polynesian Atoll Niko Besnier

3

On Not Knowing One's Place Michael Goldsmith

4

A Question of Audience: The Effects of What We Write Grant McCall

5

The Politics of Ethnography in New Zealand Toon van Meijl

Part II Regarding Ethnography 6

The Tikopia and "What Raymond Said" Judith Macdonald

7

Will the True Ethnographer Step Forward: The Asmat Case Sjoerd R. Jaarsma

CONTENTS

vi

8

9

10

Writing about Culture and Talking about God: Christian Ethnography in Melanesia Mary N. MacDonald

150

The Enigmatic Baining: The Breaking of an Ethnographer's Heart Marta A. Rohatynskyj

174

Ethnography as a Social System: Parts, Wholes, and Holes Jonathan Friedman

195

EPILOGUE

References Contributors Index

209 243 247

Acknowledgments Serendipity brought the two of us together as visiting fellows in the Department of Anthropology at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS) at the Australian National University in the winter of 1994. The idea for this volume arose casually in conversation while we were working there in what is probably one of the more challenging academic settings around. We had discovered complementary interests in the history of the discipline, on the one hand, and in a reflexive stance in the doing of social anthropology, on the other. It was equally serendipitous that we met the perfect sounding board for our ideas in the presence of a third visiting fellow, Simon Harrison, who criticized our ideas when he should and encouraged us when he could. It was not until some months later that we decided to attempt to widen our discourse on the subject and organize a conference session. We placed a call for papers for the upcoming annual meeting of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania (ASAO) with the carefully negotiated title "Ethnography of Ethnography: Cultural Brokerage and the Generation of Ethnographic Statements." The initial response was encouraging. We met first as a working session in Clearwater, Florida, in 1995, and again the next year as a symposium in Kona, Hawai'i. Probably unduly encouraged by sun, sea, and sundry items, it was decided that our discourse should result in an edited volume. After a few years filled with doubts and rewrites, the results are in front of you. Of course, it is impossible to successfully complete an edited volume on your own. First, we would like to thank the participants who—while they did much to aid the development from our first fledgling ideas to the present focus on the challenges of present-day fieldwork in the Pacific—have chosen not to contribute to this volume. They are Peter Black, Jane Goodale, Jane Fajans, Shane Solomon, and Douglass St. Christian. We extend our thanks and appreciation to the people who did contribute for their cheerful cooperation and collegial support throughout the several years it took us to bring this material to publication. They surely hated us at times for our continuous rewrites, but they never grumbled (at least not very audibly). Jonathan Friedman did not participate in the sessions but graciously accepted our invitation to write a concluding overview for the volume. As much as various chapters in this volume reflect upon the structure of the ASAO sessions in the promotion of comparative research, it is necessary to acknowledge the importance of this venue for scholarly research and the

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encouragement of association members and officers in the realization of this project. We would especially like to thank Niko Besnier and Michael Goldsmith w h o commented on various versions of the introduction to this volume. Deborah Gewertz and John Barker provided constructive suggestions at crucial points in the writing of this introduction, and our gratitude goes out to them both. We also wish to acknowledge the very helpful suggestions of the three anonymous readers w h o went over the manuscript prior to its acceptance by the University of Hawai'i Press. We especially thank Pamela Kelley for the trust she placed in us, and Masako Ikeda, Virginia Wageman, and others involved at the University of Hawai'i Press for guiding us safely past all the pitfalls that would otherwise have dogged our first sizable publishing adventure.

Chapter 1 Introduction

Ethnographic Artifacts Marta A. Rohatynskyj and Sjoerd R. Jaarsma

Ethnography is in trouble. A "crisis of representation," set in motion by rapid social and economic changes in a globalized world order, dogs the discipline. There is gloomy speculation about its future. A regional focus, such as inspires this volume, needs to be defended from charges of exoticism, localism, and the perpetuation of colonial hierarchies (Lederman 1998). All this, no doubt, is the result of the change in the relations between the scientist and the citizen, here more appropriately called anthropologist and native, to use and expand upon John Barnes' original terms (1980).' Citizens and natives in Papua New Guinea, in Hawai'i, and across the Pacific are reading the work of anthropologists and demanding a political accountability that was difficult to imagine a generation or so ago. Natives are now scientists themselves and necessarily are placed in opposition to noncitizen, nonnative scientists. It is not the spread of literacy and of Western higher education that is at the core of this much touted trouble. Rather, this change has made it impossible to ignore the mutual entailments of the relationships that bind the scientist/anthropologist to the citizen/ native. In other words, the relationships that surround the production, publication, and reception of ethnography are not so much changed as become apparent to all observers. It is now impossible to deny the influence these relations have on the practice of our discipline and the production of the ethnographic artifact. This volume examines the kinds of problems that arise in the production, distribution, and reception of ethnography at the end of this century in Oceania. These problems must not be seen as somehow encumbering the normal course of ethnographic practice, but are the substance of a reflexive stance in ethnography. They have entered the normal course of disciplinary practice. Contributors to this volume consider in various contexts and from various perspectives the colonial heritage of the discipline in specific settings in Oceania, the implications of the spread of literacy (both textual and cultural), the responsibility of

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advocacy, the ethical dilemma of catapulting local and regional identities onto a global arena, and the recursiveness of the products of our practice on our data. These issues are faced by contributors either as personal dilemmas in the production of ethnography and the completion of the research process (part I), or appreciated in terms of prominent aspects of a particular ethnographic corpus or type of ethnography (part II). Jonathan Friedman's epilogue bridges both these perspectives not only by confronting them in his own and other contributors' work, but more importantly by tying them to theoretical developments in anthropology and sociology. We appreciate the practice of the discipline as it defines the identities of both the ethnographer, as a professional representing a particular cultural and material tradition, and of the community being researched. Many of the particular issues considered emerge from the moral entanglements of the ethnographer projecting local or regional knowledge into print. Whereas fifty years ago it was unlikely that the subject population of ethnography would be able to see and read a description of themselves in print, it is less unlikely at the end of the century for most of the world. But still, as many of the individual chapters show, few communities in Oceania have routine access to ethnography. Furthermore, the capacity to read the ethnography in the way it was intended to be read by the author is even less evenly distributed than ethnographic texts in this part of the world. This capacity is dependent on a textual and cultural literacy developed through formal education. It is the gradual collapse of the boundaries between sponsors, citizens/ natives, scientists/anthropologists, and gatekeepers that encourages the imagination of a global community serving as audience for ethnography. However, the reality of what is available to whom is another matter requiring contextual study. The crux of the moral entanglement between scientist and citizen— anthropologist and native—is the permanence of a written representation of the community from the perspective of one individual based on a historically particular experience. Such a representation is supported by the cultural and material power of hegemonic authority. With the imagination of a global audience, the community sees itself as robbed of its power to control representation of its self in this forum, and in many instances is left helpless to successfully compete with the authorized representation. In the realities of the local and regional negotiations of identity, the ethnographic text might well act to deflate and deflect local strategies or, on the other hand, to promote them, as becomes clear in several chapters in this volume. Whether or not the particular ethno-

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graphic text plays a role in the power relations and struggles of local community interests is largely dependent on specific material and social conditions. Among them is the extent to which the community is open to outside influences and becomes entangled in extralocal political issues. The problems for ethnography in the discipline engendered by the partial collapse of boundaries between audiences and subjects of ethnography represent a more fundamental entanglement. Ethnographic texts play a basic role in the creation of the conditions for the conduct of further ethnographic research and for the creation of community and personal identities. The writing of ethnography, its publishing, as well as the dissemination of the texts in the world are social acts that impinge on the social activities and identities of those implicated in these processes. Ethnographic discourses on particular groups as portrayed in this volume all underline the multilayered and complex embeddedness of the ethnographic text in local, regional, and at times global social life. Through the particularities of individual historical instances, we can trace some of the possible relations among the ethnographic text, the researcher, the audience, and the subjects of ethnography. In doing so we suggest a unique approach to the reflexive study of the products of our research in the larger world. It is an approach in which ethnography comes to play a central role as it is no longer envisaged as merely the product of anthropological research, but as an artifact representing (and embodying) the triad of relations between anthropologist, subjects of research, and audience(s). The adoption of such an approach allows us to more clearly understand the kinds of trouble ethnography is prone to these days.

The Problem of Ethnography Our approach builds on the well-established literature on the politics of ethnographic representation (Behar and Gordon 1995; Clifford 1988,1997; Clifford and Marcus 1986). At the same time it emphasizes the historical nature of the ethnographic artifact as what Nicholas Thomas (1991) calls an entangled object, mediating and defining the Western academic stance in relation to "natives." As much as the representation literature exposes that ethnography is not always just ethnography, it may also be, from specific perspectives, literature, travel writing, political rhetoric, and the like; this volume attests to the fact that an ethnographic monograph is not always just a book, but also possibly a doorstop, a historical relic, a commodity, or the like in specific con-

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texts. The recognition of the material aspect of the ethnographic artifact frees discussion of ethnography in the larger world from disciplinary interests and allows for the fact that the social life of these objects is beyond the control of individual authors or academic conventions. We are thus including ethnographic artifacts within the larger category of objects produced by material and cultural traditions that have more conventionally been the subjects of our study. Like a Maori war club or a Sepik mask housed in an anthropology museum of any major university, or displayed on the wall of the corporate offices of a mining transnational, the ethnographic artifact of our concern embodies a complex and shifting set of social relationships. 2 Generally, two main themes are found in discussions of ethnography within the discipline today. The first has to do with the problem of representation and addresses the relationship between the researcher and the informant and the rhetorical style in which this relationship is represented in the text of ethnography. The second has to do with reflexivity of the ethnographer in both the data-gathering event and in the presentation and analysis of the outcomes of this event in writing. The two themes tend to merge in various current discussions. Both reflect concern over the objectification of non-Western populations by Western intellectuals.3 In the representation literature, the concern with ethnography as an objectification of the subjects of research, the citizens/natives, is met with the prescription that these subjects must be able to "speak with their own voice" in the ethnography, must be able to "represent themselves." Currently, these declarations of identity appear the ideal counter within a discipline founded on objectification of individual and group identities within a conventional literary form, the ethnographic monograph. The virtue of such subjective declarations is upheld by the postmodernist critique of the scientific project and by the predominance of literary metaphors structuring currently privileged knowledge in the social sciences (Geertz 1983). It is not surprising that in a postcolonial, globalized academic discourse, a discipline whose mandate was to make the "Other" intelligible should be undergoing a crisis of relevance (Ahmed and Shore 1995). The second theme of reflexivity is implicated in the representation approach as it demands self-consciousness of the social being of the ethnographer within the act of data gathering and of the form of literary presentation. However, the intellectual roots of reflexivity in general lie more with the discussion of the ethics of anthropological practice, something that is nearly as old as the insti-

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tutionalized discipline itself (Barnes 1980; Fluehr-Lobban 1991c). This specific focus has informed all attempts to understand the place of anthropology and its practitioners within the larger social world both historically and in the present. This necessity to view ourselves collectively in the process of scrutinizing others is dependent upon a particular understanding of social phenomena. Jean and John Comaroff (1992, 9-11), in attempting to delineate the unique thrust of ethnography in relation to historical studies, argue against the restriction of ethnography to an intersubjective dialogue between the researcher and the informant or to constraint within local, experienced structures as opposed to global, objectified ones. They conclude with a recognition of the universal ambiguity of meaning in social life and the historically contingent and culturally configured nature of ethnographic knowledge. Such knowledge, seen in its historical and cultural context, can be used, according to Jonathan Friedman (1992a, 333), to attain a broader perspective on the particular plight of the discipline itself within current global realities. He argues that the decline of ethnographic authority is itself an expression of the fragmentation of the hegemonic structures of the world system and that the context of this loss is crucial "since the issues debated by anthropologists are generated by problems of anthropological identity" (331; see also chapter 10 in this book). The preoccupation with the act of doing research itself and with the rhetorical form of the text holds its own dangers; Friedman underlines the triviality of anthropologists' problems within the context of the determining larger issues. The strong reflexivity that we strive for, our ability to understand ourselves and our enterprise as anthropological objects, must go beyond the simple concern with the appropriate range of representation offered by the culturally configured dimensions of the written text. It must attempt to go beyond the particular Western tropes deemed appropriate to the practice of an academic discipline "by situating being and action, comparatively, within their diverse cultural contexts" (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992, 27).

Reflexivity, Representation, and the Ethnographic Artifact There have been previous systematic attempts at reflexive anthropological understanding aiming to place our practice in the larger social world. The best known of these is the work of John Barnes (1980), published some twenty

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years ago. The title—Who Should Know What?—provides the question to be answered in the text. Barnes uses the device of the pursuit of knowledge to structure his discussion of the different interests represented by the various historical actors in the process of social inquiry. He discerns four actors—scientist, sponsor, gatekeeper, and citizen—and sees social research as the process of interaction and negotiation among them. The chapters of the book examine the different processes of negotiation in the colonial setting as opposed to those "at home," i.e., in an English urban setting. Similarly, Barnes looks at the configurations of the public and private spheres in different contexts and the rise of the social scientist as advocate. His concern is to display the range of situations in which moral decisions have to be made in the course of research. This work sets out to document the sociological conditions of social research in the period just following the dramatic social upheavals of the 1960s in Western nations, the demise of colonial regimes, and the aftermath of the Vietnam War especially in terms of the role of the anthropologist. Barnes' enumeration of the agents in the process of social inquiry is still referred to frequently in the literature; indeed, it structures much of this volume. His perspective is informed by the interest of perpetuating research in the disciplines he discusses in an ethical manner. Another more recent attempt is that by John van Maanen (1995) in an edited volume titled Representation in Ethnography. In the introduction to the volume rather dramatically titled "An End to Innocence: The Ethnography of Ethnography," he identifies three moments or "activity phases" associated with ethnography (5).4 These phases are the collection of data on the culture, the writing up of the data, and the reception and reading of the written ethnography by various audiences. Like Barnes, van Maanen distinguishes for each phase a set of agents: producers, subjects, and consumers. It is interesting that in comparison to Barnes' scheme, sponsors and scientists are skewed into one category, the producers of ethnography. This may be a sign of the times, but it is more likely the result of van Maanen's "particular understanding" of ethnography. Most of what van Maanen says on ethnography revolves around the process of reading and writing of texts (1995, 3). In consequence, the loss of innocence he describes largely concerns the gradual deconstruction of past templates for representation in ethnography. Nevertheless, van Maanen also indicates that this can never be a purpose in itself. We can challenge ethnography on a variety of grounds with differing results. But criticism of ethnog-

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raphy—like ethnography itself—can only be understood in the context of its use. What we cannot influence is that ethnography is in the end only convincing because a specific audience creates a demand for it. Van Maanen focuses on what he calls "the third moment of ethnography," which is the reading of it, the consumption of the text. He sees this moment as possibly the determining one, as reading can itself be a creative act (26). Whereas Barnes uses the ethical distribution of knowledge as a device around which to structure his analysis of the interests of the various actors involved in the process of social inquiry, van Maanen introduces the text as mediating these social relations. By focusing on the processes of production and consumption of the text, van Maanen allows for the indeterminacy and contextuality of ethnographic interpretation. But still, his texts are weakly anchored in the material world, and thus his schema does not allow us to bring to the fore the full range of social relationships in which ethnography is implicated. An ethnographic monograph, ethnographic article in a journal, or other product of ethnographic description and analysis is also a physical thing, not just a configuration of ideas, but an artifact that concretizes a complex set of social relationships. It is through the device of the ethnographic artifact, a "thing" let loose in the world, that we can approach the type of anthropological understanding of ourselves and of the relations that structure our enterprise (Appadurai 1986, 5).

The Social Life of Ethnographic Artifacts The meanings, uses, and trajectories of ethnographic artifacts may then be understood on two planes. The first has to do with the domain of the system of symbols comprising the text, and the second has to do with the object itself. Access to the first domain is governed by the degree of literacy of individuals and groups that ascribe meaning to the text and use the text. Simple functional literacy in the language of the text does not guarantee a uniformity of meaning or use. At issue is a normative cultural literacy perhaps best epitomized by the understanding of ethnographic texts as objective representations of social facts. Such an understanding is one propounded by practitioners of a traditional realist ethnography; however, it is a position that is challenged within the discipline itself as well as subject to reinterpretation outside the scholarly context. As will be demonstrated in some of the chapters in this volume, such reinterpretation is increasingly also the province of the natives.

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Like other objects, ethnographic artifacts are promiscuous (Thomas 1991, 27). The significance of a book written about a particular community will vary depending on the context. It may have one meaning within an academic classroom, another meaning within the community about which it is written. Indeed, the artifact will take on as many meanings and uses as contexts through which it travels. It is possible to imagine a commodity phase in the life of the ethnographic artifact as well as contexts in which it would have sumptuary value. Intersecting these domains of textual interpretation and the social significance of the ethnography as object in particular contexts is the nature of the ethnographic artifact as historically a product of the relationship between Western Europe and its previous colonies. In this sense it is one of Thomas' "entangled objects" (1991), both bridging and maintaining the gap between the knowers and the known, the scientist/anthropologist and the citizens/ natives. It is not our intention to focus here on the life of the ethnographic artifact as an object of exchange. We merely wish to underline the strong link between the distribution of ethnographic artifacts throughout the world and the distribution of that cultural literacy that would allow an understanding of the text commensurate with the dictates of a realist ethnography based on the goal of scientific understanding. Ethnographic artifacts have traditionally clustered in cultural centers of European enlightenment such as universities and scholarly libraries whether situated in historically metropolitan or in colonial centers. It is in these centers that adepts have trained neophytes in the proper decoding of the texts within the generalized project of reproduction of Western European institutional structures. This categorical division between those having attained the necessary level of cultural literacy and those without such means of access has diminished with the increasing diversity of contexts of use and audiences. A small but significant concentration of these artifacts may be found in collections that have been established to counteract such European hegemony. This is especially the case in Fourth World settings, like the Maori of New Zealand and the native Hawaiians, where the capture of such artifacts and the claim to the right to interpret their significance are often seen as a fundamental first step in self-definition and identification. Some ethnographic artifacts will be found thinly spread out, far from both libraries and adepts of the cultural literacy that produced them. Their significance in such contexts would depend on the particular fetishization of the

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book active in the community. What does it mean to the community in question to be described and analyzed in a published volume? The answer to this question suggests a further domain that must be recognized if we are to grasp the parameters of variation of the meaning and uses of ethnographic artifacts. Implied here are questions of authority of the written text as well as the imagined realities accessible to readers. This domain of meaning is accessible to those innocent of textual and cultural literacy; critical to this domain is the political significance of just knowing that something has been written about the community in a book. Key questions that a reflexive anthropology should ask are: under what conditions is the ethnography of a community accepted, and under what conditions is it rejected? These and similar questions can only be effectively asked if it is recognized that the ethnographic artifact is located at the intersection of a complex of social relations.

Ethnographic Artifacts at the Intersection of Social Relations These social relations, concretized in the ethnographic artifact, are not restricted to the relationship between the researcher and the community under study. The relationship between the researcher and the audience s/he writes for, and between the community under study and this audience, are equally significant. This triadic configuration is mediated by the ethnographic artifact itself, and the specific relationships involved are determined by a complex of political, social, and historical factors, which may or may not be exteriorized in the text itself. In the classical ethnographic universe, the only relationship recognized by the discipline was between the researcher and the audience. The people studied were perceived as unchanging, and their comprehension of the world was seen as bounded by the ethnographic inquiry. Their participation in the production of the ethnographic text was viewed as passive or at least unselfconscious. Their interests were looked after by gatekeepers like missionaries and administrators, whose role in the production of the ethnographic text was only peripherally recognized. Under these conditions, the relationship between the audience and the researcher was considered reciprocal and equal. Ethnographers wrote for an audience imagined to be much like themselves. It may be argued that this classic image of the conditions under which ethnography was historically undertaken is tinged with both the Orientalism first

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criticized by Edward Said (1978) as well as the Occidentalism identified by James Carrier (1995). Needless to say, the one implies the other. Following Nicholas Thomas' (1994) insistence that colonial discourse itself has been essentialized and a false uniformity has been attributed to colonial culture, it is necessary to stress that the conditions under which specific classical ethnographies were generated are only now being scrutinized. Clearly, the assumed passivity of populations subject to ethnographic research is open to question, and it is not unlikely that such confrontations as played out in the debate between the late Roger Keesing and Haunani-Kay Trask, the challenge of the authority of the researcher by the native intellectual, took on a localized, nontextual, possibly nonverbal form.5 The Keesing-Trask debate, which launched the journal The Contemporary Pacific, is an exemplar of the type of complex moral dilemma that is ever present in the social life of contemporary ethnography. Superficially, it can be seen as a classic enactment of the question of who can speak on behalf of the citizens/natives: the well-intentioned non-native scientist or the committed native scientist. Under closer scrutiny there are myriad issues played out in the brief interchange: scholarly competence, the confusion of different types of representations of history and culture, the efforts to overcome differing positions between scientist and citizen/native, and the ethical responsibility of the scientist to do no harm to the subjects of her/his research. The core of the conflict lies in Keesing's denial of the fundamental premise of the discipline and that is, of difference. Drawing on the work of Antonio Gramsci, Keesing (1989, 25) de-authenticates cultural representations of self on the part of natives and reduces what Trask (1991) sees as an authentic Hawaiian renaissance to mere mimicking of hegemonic discourse. The antagonists in the debate act out the polar positions whose careful negotiation has historically enlivened ethnography. It is ethnography's capacity to negotiate difference and similarity in their specific, unique manifestation that renders the discipline and its practice compelling. To return to the previous point, it is quite likely that citizens/natives of previous times felt the same outrage at being talked about, spoken for, and represented as Trask expresses but lacked recourse to the cultural resources at Trask's disposal. Resistance to the intrusion of foreign scribes and chroniclers may well have been expressed through other means, perhaps not as clearly decipherable by Western scholars of the time. It is here that some caution needs to be exercised in the formulation of grand overviews of the discipline

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as pointed out by Marta Rohatynskyj (1998). She questions James Clifford's (1997, 87) sweeping contention that a shift from rapport to alliance building has taken place in the relationship between the scientist and the citizen/native in recent years and demonstrates that what looked to us like rapport, if hard won, may always have been viewed as alliance building by the citizen/native. Historical overviews of the discipline are only accurate to the degree that they take into account both parties in the historical process. What has irrefutably changed is the composition of the audience of ethnography. These days audiences encompass the very subjects of ethnographic research as a result of both rising textual and cultural literacy and the increased distribution of ethnographic artifacts on a global scale. This fact in itself accounts for much of the contested meanings and uses of ethnographic artifacts as well as the way we have come to question not just ethnographic authority but the very identity of the ethnographer as the constructor of identities (e.g., Friedman 1992a, 1992b, 1993, and chapter 10). The relationship between the researcher and community members has been the subject of many personalized accounts of fieldwork experience. It is generally assumed that this social interaction exhausts the process of data collection, an important part of the production phase. Few ethnographers have analyzed this relationship in the process of ethnographic description, and fewer still have considered it within the historical context of previous research. The relationship between the researcher and the community is the simplest to put under scrutiny. Historians of the discipline have perused notes, diaries, and letters documenting emotional states, the development of concepts, the likes and dislikes of the ethnographer among community members, and so on. This relationship was and is the most reciprocal of the triad formed by anthropologist, native, and audience, for it is its negotiation that allows ethnographic research to take place, giving rise to the process of objectified knowledge of a culture. The degree of equality within this relationship, both historically and in the present, is subject to extreme variation. The relationship encompasses the very quandary of our traditional methodology: participant observation. To the degree that in a range of contexts we enjoy intersubjectivity and participation in community life, we achieve equality (Fabian 1994). To the degree that we objectify the community's realities for esoteric purposes, we create a hierarchy. Whatever the disparities between the researcher and community members, the two parties see the relationship quite differently and enter into it with different goals in mind. The limits of reciprocity and equality are defined in

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the construction of a common project. And of course, the understanding of the view of informants of the researcher is a prerequisite for a reflexive stance.

The Production of Ethnographic Artifacts The relationship between the researcher and the community does not exhaust the process of production of the ethnographic artifact. Van Maanen's second phase of ethnography (1995, 7) has to do with writing up the data for a preconceived audience. Again, this activity cannot be seen as limited to the relationship between "the data" and "the ethnographer." Writing up is the stage at which perhaps the most intensive pressure is exerted on neophytes to conform with the standard practices of the discipline. Writing up is an extremely social process, even for the neophyte not just limited to a supervisor and committee, but often expanded to include large audiences at scholarly conferences. Michael Goldsmith (chapter 3) reflects on the practice of conference organization at the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania (ASAO) annual meetings, specifically in terms of the division of labor between the conveners of a session and the panel of contributors. He sees the chair of the session as laying claim to theoretical generalities and the panel being restricted to the presentation of facts from a single locality. This particular division of labor enacted in the individual conference session reflects a deeper malaise within the structuring of the intellectual practices of the discipline. Goldsmith challenges this status quo both within his chapter as well as in his own scholarly practice. The completion of the production phase of the ethnographic artifact has to do with the publication of the monograph. At this point a further molding of the text occurs to suit concerns that would view the ethnographic artifact as a commodity. The moment of publication is also the moment in the process of the production of ethnography that is at times most vulnerable to contestation. Toon van Meijl (chapter 5) describes a personally painful set of events where members of the Maori community with whom he had worked for several years on problems of community development challenged his right to publish his doctoral dissertation. The challenge was raised in response to an image of the community presented in the thesis that was at variance with the image that community members wished to present at a particularly sensitive time in legal negotiations aimed at reclaiming alienated land. The saga evolved for van Meijl with accusations of bad faith by anthropologists sympathetic to the community

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leadership, confusion as to whether a bound, photocopied version of the dissertation was in fact a "published" book, and elusive promises of resolution through open consultation. Van Meijl's chapter revisits the question of the right of the community to control the entry of a representation of itself into the public sphere. Clearly, the relationships between ethnographer and community, ethnographer and audience, audience and community, are by no means transparent and direct. In uncovering their particularity and intricacy, a first step would be to move beyond the essentializing discourse of center and periphery that draws clear boundaries between elements of the aforementioned triad. A second step would be to situate the ethnographic artifact within what Arjun Appadurai (1990) has called the global cultural economy. In focusing on the life of Oceanic ethnographic artifacts, individual chapters capture isolated moments and historical patterns of flow, cross-reference, and generation of meaning. These instances may be generalizable to broader transnational relations, beyond Oceania. But it seems that if there is a global phenomenon that ethnographic artifacts in this part of the world enter into, it is what Appadurai has termed "heritage politics" (13), through the codification of cultural identity first in the text and second in the very fact of the material existence of such a text.

The Reception of Ethnographic Artifacts It has been stressed that ethnographic artifacts are received, given meaning, and used by other than the textually and culturally literate. There is evidence that ethnographic artifacts are charged with meaning even for those who have not read the text. Caroline Brettell's important collection When They Read What We Write: The Politics of Ethnography (1993b) identifies three scenarios of negative response to an ethnographic artifact by natives of the community described. The first is on the part of "natives," the second is on the part of "native intellectuals," and the third is created through the intervention of the press. The role of gossip and rumors is documented by several authors in the collection. It becomes clear that the negative interpretation of the ethnographic artifact is sometimes a secondary ploy in larger patterns of social interaction. Dona Davis (1993) writes that the social ostracism she experienced at the hands of some of the residents of the Newfoundland fishing village she had written about was part of the phenomenon of social leveling she had described in her ethnography. Ofra Greenberg's (1993) description of his attempts

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to diffuse the results of the vicious misrepresentation of his text by irresponsible journalists echoes this same sense of the artifact entering into pervasive local patterns of relations. One is tempted to ask why at this particular point in time the natives of this community would want to believe that the ethnography they had not read was a negative depiction of them and their community. This is a sociological question, well removed from the scrutiny and analysis of the form of the text. Ethnographic artifacts are positively valued by some communities. Judith Macdonald (chapter 6) describes the strong and positive sense that Tikopia have of their cultural identity and how they liked what Raymond Firth wrote about them. Goldsmith (chapter 3) describes the Samoans he encountered as accepting "their appearance in print and any resulting controversies with notable aplomb." Not coincidentally, he writes of the available social slot for scribes such as himself, in Samoa tusitala, "writer, storyteller," and in Tuvalu failautusi, "secretary." He speculates on the meaning and significance of using Gordon Macgregor's Ethnology ofTokelau Islands (1937) as an object of exchange between his Tokelau host and himself, and a similar use of The Work of the Gods in Tikopia (Firth 1967) between himself and the general secretary of the Tuvalu Church. Likewise, he wonders what the elderly Lauofo in Ta'ii must have thought of the way Derek Freeman denigrated Margaret Mead's published work. These specific incidents reveal the significance of the artifact in all three domains of meaning, as texts, objects, and representation in the public sphere, and their embeddedness in local scenarios of power and individual and group identities. The trouble with ethnography then is its far-reaching impact on social life, much more profound than just a positive or negative effect on local political strategies. Judith Macdonald (chapter 6) raises the question of how Firth as cultural authority could have shaped her research some fifty years after his initial work. She identifies what she calls the "recursive loop," which Grant McCall (chapter 4) interprets as ethnography "setting the stage" for future research. Not only do we, through the act of creating and publishing a text, set the stage for our own future research and that of ethnographers to follow, we also set the stage for the subjects of our research to reflect on their identities; we set the stage for the negotiation of identities between the subjects of the ethnography and their real or virtual neighbors, and for the interaction between the subjects of ethnography and governmental authorities. The realization of

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15

recursiveness is complete in the recognition that all of these activities, themselves, feed in to the nature of the data collected and the construction of ethnographic representation. The tracing of this recursiveness and the development of a historical discourse is the concern of those chapters, comprising the second part of this volume, that take as their subject the ethnographic corpus of a particular people or type of ethnography. Just now, we indicated the dominant influence that Firth's Tikopian work had on Judith Macdonald's ethnography (chapter 6). Sjoerd Jaarsma (chapter 7) considers the question of authority and advocacy in the diverse ethnography of the Asmat of Irian Jaya. Mary MacDonald (chapter 8) writes about missionary ethnography and the work of the Melanesian Institute, reflecting on the special relationship between researcher and audience in this case. Rohatynskyj (chapter 9) examines the historical conditions that caused and perpetuated the very negative image of the Baining of East New Britain in Papua New Guinea both in ethnography and in the regional system of identities. Those chapters grouped in the first part arise from the consideration of personal dilemmas in the conduct of ethnographic research. We have already touched on van Meijl's (chapter 5) personal trials concerning the publication of his thesis, which did not agree with the representation desired by some members of the community. Niko Besnier (chapter 2) similarly worries about the implications of presenting an image of Nukulaelae society that would counter the placid, harmonious "cover story" they had cultivated for some time. Goldsmith (chapter 3) challenges the normal practice of academic conferences and reflects on the obsolescence of the one ethnographer/one culture equation. McCall (chapter 4) considers in detail the power of the intended audience to shape ethnographic writing and the dire consequences of presenting inappropriate material to a particular audience.

Challenges to a Reflexive Anthropology An anthropology reflexive in the strong sense that we aspire to would take into account all the complex and particular variations in the relationships between the researcher, the community studied, the audience, and the mediating role of the ethnographic artifact. It would do so in a historical perspective scrutinizing processes of production and reception, tracing the significance of past

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research on present findings, of published ethnography on the host community's sense of self, and of constructions of ethnographic truths on the parts of various audiences. The approach that has developed in the preparation of this volume provides a template for such an undertaking. For the discipline it offers no solutions to the problems of ethnography and argues that what has transformed the practice of ethnography in recent years is a context of recognition of moral relationships that were obscured by earlier historical and political conditions. Through reflection we may understand the ethical import of our practice, historically as well as in the present and in the future. As much as Friedman (chapter 10) writes of a current "mirage of globalization," it is well recognized that the discipline labored under a mirage of compartmentalization until a few decades ago. The partial dissolution of the compartments has forced the full recognition of the manner in which our actions are entangled with the aspirations of numerous groups and individuals acting as the subjects of our research. Our approach in this introduction has been an attempt to delineate the social context of the ethnographic artifact as it moves through the world. In doing so we are providing a framework for the reflexive consideration of the various spheres of social activity implicated in our mandate, a necessary step in the ethical evaluation of our practice. We have identified some specific kinds of relationships that ethnography in Oceania is implicated in and the kinds of trouble that results for natives and ethnographers alike. No doubt there are similarities and overlaps between the contexts and configuration of relationships that structure the ethnographic artifacts generated in other regions of the world. An interesting question to consider would be if a similar volume focusing on the ethnography of ethnography of other regions of the world would be a possibility in the present. If so, it could be of value in discerning the development of the discipline in other regions of the world to take into account what it would look like, and how the processes of its production, distribution, and reception would differ from those of this volume. Notwithstanding the variability of the practice of the discipline in specific ethnographic regions, as well as within specific national or academic traditions, it is possible to argue that each of the following chapters touches upon issues fundamental to the discipline as a whole. The concern about short- and long-term implications of the creation of a particular ethnographic artifact is at the heart of each chapter. The recognition

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17

of our agency in the histories of Oceanic peoples emerges from reflection on these specific cases. And this recognition brings the social life of ethnographic artifacts in the world to the forefront of disciplinary concern.

Notes 1. In Barnes' terminology, the citizen is the lay person, the one who is often the subject of social scientific research but also the general informed public acting as audience for the writings of the scientist. Further, we introduce the term native that occurs in Brettell (1993b), for example, to indicate the subject of ethnographic research. Grant McCall (chapter 4) uses the term to refer to the subjects of ethnographic research as well. But in his usage the native is the audience for the writings of the ethnographer. The term also represents a stance that insists on cultural difference between the researcher and the subject of research. It is an identity that defines itself against a hegemonic representation. We will use both the terms citizen and native in order to cover all of these different denotations. 2. We thank John Barker for drawing this parallel to our attention. 3. We would like to follow Mary E. Hawkesworth (1994) in distinguishing "objectifying" from "objectification." The former may be understood as a necessary epistemological step, the latter as a distortion or caricature with negative consequences. Philosophically, we cannot avoid objectifying, whereas we must guard against objectification that is politically harmful. Many writers tend to conflate the two, and much of the "representation" literature tends to see objectifying as a fundamental evil. 4. Somewhat ironically, the title of the symposium that inspired the present volume was "The Ethnography of Ethnography: Generating Ethnographic Statements and Cultural Brokerage." We were unaware of van Maanen's volume at the time we convened the symposium. 5. Some interesting comments in this respect can be found in Friedman's "The Past in the Future" (1992b, 851). For the debate itself, see Keesing 1989, 1991, and Trask 1991. It is an enactment of the challenge on the part of the native to ethnographic authority and the power to judge the authenticity of one's own culture.

Parti

Ethnography as a Personal Dilemma

Chapter 2

The Politics of Representation on a Polynesian Atoll Niko Besnier In mid-19911 returned to Nukulaelae, a small atoll in the Tuvalu group, on the boundary of Polynesia and Micronesia, for three months of fieldwork. This trip was the third and shortest period of field research that I had conducted among Nukulaelae's 350-odd inhabitants since late 1979. As in the past, I boarded the one government ship, the M.V. Nivaga, which makes the trip to Nukulaelae from the capital of Tuvalu, Funafuti, about once a month. Among the other passengers on this voyage figured a middle-aged man whom I shall call Paanapa, and with whom I was reasonably well acquainted from previous fieldwork. Paanapa was returning from several years' residence on Nauru, an island republic fifteen hundred kilometers northwest of Tuvalu that derives great wealth from decades of mining its one natural resource, phosphate. Like many Tuvaluans, Paanapa had been a contract worker with the Nauru Phosphate Company, whose labor force is almost exclusively recruited in countries like Kiribati, China, and the Philippines in addition to Tuvalu. Under normal circumstances, the return home is for a Nukulaelae Islander a triumphant opportunity to distribute money and goods to relatives and friends, underscore one's usefulness to family and community, and enjoy a well-deserved respite after years of hard work. What I learned only gradually is that Paanapa's return would not be the usual triumph, but rather, a disgrace. Paanapa had originally been lucky, as the Nukulaelae Council of Elders had nominated him to be the toeaina (elder) of the Nukulaelae community in temporary residence on Nauru, which is made up at any given time of a few families and several dozen young unmarried men. As such, he served as liaison between the Nauru government, the Nauru Phosphate Company, and the Nukulaelae Council of Elders. The position is an enviable one, since it requires no physical labor while being relatively remunerative. Unfortunately, Paanapa and members of his immediate family began throwing their weight around; already known to be boastful and ambitious, Paanapa quickly gave full rein to these traits. His wife would get into heated arguments in the Nukulaelae workers' compound and in the midst of these would claim that her husband was the

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only legitimate chief of Nukulaelae. Moreover, his eldest son had gotten drunk and shown up at a feast, eating from communal trays and promptly throwing up in the same. These antics struck different sensitive chords in the Nukulaelae psyche, and their combination amounted to a rather dislikable picture. Circumstantially, Paanapa had always been widely suspected to be in the possession of a fagu (means of performing sorcery; literally, "bottle," i.e., of magical substance). As dissatisfaction with him and his family grew in the Nauru-based Nukulaelae community, this suspicion gained increasing prominence in people's memories. Coincidentally, Paanapa was spotted on a particularly deserted area of Nauru's lunarlike landscape, unmistakably consorting with spirits that would enable sorcerers' deeds. Mounting suspicions were confirmed when a well-known spirit, speaking through a medium on Funafuti, named Paanapa as a sorcerer. Soon the junior members of the Nukulaelae community on Nauru put pressure on the Nukulaelae Council of Elders to recall Paanapa, to which the council eventually yielded. Paanapa was ordered to return to Nukulaelae immediately, allowing him no time to gather the tools, implements, cloth, dinghies, and other materials to be distributed to relatives and friends or used to make life more comfortable on Nukulaelae. I learned little about Paanapa's predicament from our fellow passengers. As I knew from my years on the atoll, Nukulaelae Islanders are careful to hide discord from outsiders. However, I could sense an unmistakable reserve around Paanapa and his family, even in the context of the ship's crowded deck, as well as a certain air of hurt bravado in Paanapa's demeanor. Not long after our arrival from the overnight journey from Funafuti, the scandal unraveled itself before my eyes. Within a couple of days, Paanapa asked that a meeting be held with everyone on the atoll, an unusual request since formal meetings normally concern only designated senior men. During this dramatic event, Paanapa attempted to deny in front of the entire community the sorcery accusations that had been leveled against him. However, his efforts were thwarted because sorcery and Christianity coexist in private contexts, but only Christianity is given credence in public forums (Besnier 1996a). Thus, rather than getting the fair hearing he had hoped for, Paanapa was castigated for raising issues in a public context that did not belong there. Since then, Paanapa has continued to live on the atoll for lack of anywhere else to go. He and his family are the target of subtle yet hurtful forms of ostracism and marginalization. While they partake in the regular communal activities, everything they do or say generates in others knowing glances, pregnant

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silences, and avoidance strategies. They are no longer well integrated in the community-wide system of informal prestation. And, perhaps most damagingly, Paanapa will never again be nominated for consequential positions or prestigious appointments.1

Sanctioned and Other Versions of Reality Paanapa's story must be understood in a broader political context. As in other Polynesian societies (Marcus 1989), except perhaps more dramatically, life on Nukulaelae is suffused with tensions between egalitarianism and authoritarianism, both of which inform the ideological underpinnings of society and the practice of everyday life (Besnier 1996b). The complexities that ensue from these coexisting but divergent forces mean that individual members of the Nukulaelae community have at their disposal quite a few opportunities for political maneuvering, opportunities that today are accentuated by the increasingly transnational nature of the community. At the same time, these complexities offer many opportunities for people to fall between the cracks because of their own misjudgment, because they adopt life trajectories that run against the grain of one or the other ideology, or simply because they are bypassed by the system. Paanapa's experience is an example of what happens when one's timing is somehow wrong in attempting to exert authority over others in this community, or in invoking communalism and equality. And indeed, Paanapa is not the only Nukulaelae Islander to have fallen flat on his face for one reason or another; experiences like his abound. When I first became acquainted with the atoll, I saw it as a model of harmony, free of trouble or strife, as consensus driven as any human aggregate could aspire to be. However, changing circumstances over the years have placed me in intimate contact with certain marginalized members of Nukulaelae society and have given me a very different perspective on life on the atoll. One cause of the evolution of my own understanding was the changing structure of the family I have lived with whenever I am in residence on the atoll. At the beginning of my fieldwork in the early 1980s, the head of this family was the charismatic elected chief of the Council of Elders, and the family occupied a focal position in the community. In 1987 this man died, and the family was reduced to his widow, two younger daughters, and myself when I am on Nukulaelae. This family forms a household with other distant relatives from other islands who come and spend more or less extended periods of time

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on Nukulaelae, and the household forms a sometimes tense alliance with a larger household whose head is the younger brother of the deceased chief. While variation over time and space is not untypical of Nukulaelae families and households, the structure of ours is especially peculiar because of its gender and age composition and, I should add, because of my own marginal but visible membership. Other factors also play a role, such as the unusual character of certain visiting members of the household and the fact that the family has access to a seemingly more stable and substantial source of money through their association with me. My research on Nukulaelae soon progressed from generalized and neutral topics to increasingly particularized and ethically sensitive issues, in which inequity, conflict, and marginalization, of which Paanapa's story is illustrative, figure prominently (Besnier 1993, 1994, 1996a, 1996b). I gradually came to understand that the cover story of the community as an exemplar of harmony and unity was a powerful ideological construct that Nukulaelae Islanders have perfected over a century and a half of interaction with the outside world. My increasingly modulated understanding of the social dynamics and structural context of the community gave me a new perspective on atoll life as rife with discord and injustice. I hasten to add that the miseries that contemporary Nukulaelae people inflict on each other rarely take on the form of physical violence, at least so far as adult members of the community are concerned. They certainly pale in comparison to the violent practices reputed to be common in societies like the Yanomamo or the Gebusi (cf. Knauft 1987). However, one should not minimize the severity of social marginalization and economic ostracism of the type imposed upon Paanapa in a tiny community that so overdetermines sociality as fundamental to human nature and in which economic interdependence continues to be essential for survival, despite the rapid encroachment of capitalism.2 My focus on sensitive issues necessarily raises questions about whose voice I should articulate in my ethnographic work. At least two sets of voices emerge: the official version of reality, ratified and articulated by the powers that be, i.e., predominantly Nukulaelae male elders in this gerontocratically organized society; and the unsanctioned version of reality, illustrated by the painful experiences of marginalized individuals such as Paanapa, whose dissenting voices I have come to know gradually but intimately over years of fieldwork. These two sets of voices are not necessarily homogeneous entities, and the boundary between them is often difficult to identify. Indeed, voices in

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general have a remarkable propensity to blend (Voloshinov 1978; see Besnier 1996a for examples from Nukulaelae). What is clear is that these voices occupy different structural positions, with distinct historical antecedents. The conflict-ridden depiction is for the most part hidden, both in contemporary society and in the historical record. Historical records of conflicts in Tuvaluan society are few and far between, in part because the authors of most records were outsiders, such as visiting missionaries or colonial officers, with little familiarity with the inner workings of the societies they described. Today, while Nukulaelae Islanders often talk about conflicts, they do so only in gossip and comparable contexts and, even there, do so in hushed tones or in a manner that distances the gossipers from the conflicts that they gossip about and exonerates them from gossiping about them (Besnier 1989, 1990, 1992). Normatively at least, they avoid talking about these issues overtly with outsiders, although in practice many members of the community, particularly if they have been victimized by conflicts, will talk about such events quite openly to strangers: Paanapa never expressed any qualms about telling me his side of the story, but then he had little to lose. In contrast, the romantic vision of serene Pacific Island communities that I brought uncritically to the initial stages of my field research is richly elaborated in the accounts of casual observers of Tuvaluan society, who have reiterated over the decades the same myths of harmony and peace, be it in ship logs, colonial reports, travelers' narratives, or reports by foreign experts in modern days. 3 "As a race," writes visiting missionary Stuart J. Whitmee in 1871, "the Ellice Islanders are very quiet and peaceable. Quarrels are rare, and ordinary disputes are settled by the authority of the king or chiefs" (1871, 27; quoted by Goldsmith and Munro 1996). Tuvaluans themselves have contributed heavily to this mythmaking. Peace (fiileemuu), mutual empathy (feaalofani), and related concepts are key ingredients of the prescriptive discourse one hears in maneapa (meetinghouses) throughout the group. They are celebrated in songs and speeches, kitchen-hut conversations, and interviews with ethnographers. They figure prominently in local depictions of the "enlightenment" (maalamalama) that characterizes the Christian, progress-oriented, and reasondriven present times, in contrast to the "dark ages" (aso o te pouliuli) before Christianization, from which contemporary Tuvaluans distance themselves and during which coercion and violence reigned (Brady 1975; Besnier 1995, 62). The idealized depiction of Nukulaelae and Tuvaluan society as peace loving, cohesive, and consensus driven is central to the "official," communally ratified

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cover story that Nukulaelae Islanders provide of themselves to others and, in many contexts, to themselves. Indeed, it is this depiction that the Council of Elders invoked to silence Paanapa (Besnier 1993, 2 0 5 - 2 0 6 ) . History has proven to Nukulaelae Islanders and to Tuvaluans in general that emphasizing communalism and concomitant values can be a powerful political tool for their island communities in the face of threat from the outside. During the colonial period ( 1 8 9 2 - 1 9 7 5 ) , the Ellice Islands, as Tuvalu was then known, were a remote outpost that colonial authorities had arbitrarily attached to the Gilbert Islands, a much larger and more populated island group to the north of the Ellice Islands, peopled by Micronesians. In the triangular relationship among Ellice Islanders, Gilbert Islanders, and the British colonial authorities based in the Gilbert Islands, Ellice Islanders were the weakest. However, the colonial authorities tended to favor them over Gilbert Islanders, because they found them more peaceful, civilized, and industrious, and thus in essence more "European-like." This portrayal was not unmitigated, but it prevailed in the discourse of the day, as the following illustrates: The Gilbert Islander is not a model domestic servant; his talents are adapted to sterner conditions. Though he is faithful and shows much desire to please, his forgetfulness and lack of method seldom prove amenable to teaching. As a policeman, under conditions of strict discipline, he shines: without unremitting "nursing" he is a failure. The Ellice boy, who is much inferior to the Gilbertese in all things that really matter, makes a better house servant. He springs, not, as the Gilbertese, from a warlike stock, but from a peace-loving race. He is quicker to learn than a Gilbert Islander, and also makes an excellent policeman, but his chief talents are domestic. As a personal servant he is ready, hard-working and retentive, but too often dishonest. Cases of dishonesty among Gilbert houseboys are exceedingly rare. (GEIP 1916, 15-16) This passage establishes a clear pecking order between Ellice and Gilbert Islanders in which the ones can be given authority over the other, although it also reflects the ambiguous and shifting nature of the relationship among the colonizing and the two colonized groups. 4 Colonial officials, missionaries, and other Western observers needed little encouragement to buy into the image of Ellice Islanders as more peaceful and "civilized" than the Gilbertese. In fact, they took an active role in constructing it. First, the purported contrast between the lighter-complexioned Polynesian

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27

Ellice Islanders and the darker, more "savage" Micronesian Gilbertese fell right into the groove of European racialist expectations that the former would necessarily be further along the path of human evolution than the latter. While these expectations may not have been always explicitly articulated in this particular context, they are strongly rooted in Western constructions of Polynesia since the Enlightenment's initial encounter with the islands at the end of the eighteenth century (as discussed by Smith 1985 and Thomas 1989, among many others). They also fall right in line with colonialists' predilection to understand the colonized in terms of overdetermined notions of "peacefulness" versus "violence" (Goldsmith and Munro 1996). Second, the depiction fits the "facts" of early contact history. While relations between nineteenth-century Euro-American voyagers (e.g., explorers, whalers, traders) were often tense in the Gilbert Islands, interactions with Ellice Islanders, although much less common, were rarely violent. For example, George Barrett, captain of the first Western ship to sight Nukulaelae, in 1821, reports in his logbook that his two crew members who went ashore "were treated very kindly by the natives who made them presents" (Ward 1967, 257), an auspicious initial contact. 5 The prominent role that firearms played in early trade with the Gilbert Islands contrasted with the lack of such trade in the Ellice Islands (B. Macdonald 1982, 29). So did Ellice Islanders' alleged enthusiasm for Christianity with Gilbert Islanders' lack thereof in the nineteenth century (Goldsmith and Munro 1992b; B. Macdonald 1982, 31-53). Some islands of Kiribati experienced periods of extreme violence in the nineteenth century. Tem Binoka's reign on the island of Abemama in 1878-1891 is a particularly memorable instance (Maude 1970). Tem Binoka, a ruthlessly ambitious tyrant, is reputed to have forced his subjects to crow like roosters around his house in the morning and to have used his slaves as targets in rifle practice. His cruelty and despotism have been folklorized both in Western literature (e.g., Stevenson 1924) and in the oral lore of modern-day Tuvaluans, who relish telling Tem Binoka stories as evidence of the violence and cruelty they see as inherent to the Gilbertese character.6 The persistence of these expectations, or more accurately of Tuvaluans' use of them, is particularly evident in the debate over the separation of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, which occupied the first half of the 1970s. Since the 1960s Britain had busied itself unloading its colony and began talking of independence for the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony (B. Macdonald 1982, 220243). The Ellice Islanders argued for the separation of their group from the rest

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of the colony, invoking, among other things, "the Gilbertese predilection for fighting [in contrast to] the low incidence of violence in the Ellice" (254). 7 In short, the image of their societies as free of serious conflict has worked in Nukulaelae and Tuvaluan people's favor and has enabled them to turn to their advantage historical situations in which they might have fared poorly as marginal and numerically insignificant players in a remote colonial outpost. The discourse of community cohesion, peacefulness, and harmony is not merely a historical phenomenon. Rather, it continues to emerge at strategic moments in interactions between Nukulaelae Islanders or Tuvaluans and the outside world. Nukulaelae Islanders use it in their dealings with the national government of Tuvalu. In turn, the national government invokes it as a useful way of presenting itself in interactions with representatives of Western nations and similar bodies, particularly when foreign aid is at stake. Tuvaluan immigrants in New Zealand, whose numbers are increasing, invoke it in their sometimes strained relations with the New Zealand government (immigration authorities in particular), in order to distance themselves from groups from other Pacific Island nations (particularly Tonga and Samoa), which are substantially more powerful and numerous but are plagued with negative stereotypes of violence. Thus, in addition to posing questions about the extent and nature of ethnographic authority, my field research on the "underbelly" of Nukulaelae society presents a poignant dilemma: to what extent is it ethical, moral, or otherwise advisable for an ethnographer to undermine a mythology that has long served a relatively powerless community as a defense against the power of outside forces?

Airing Out Other People's Dirty Laundry? The ethical entanglements I face are hardly unique to the Nukulaelae situation. Social scientists have long confronted the problems associated with presenting communities in a fashion that they do not find attractive, desirable, or politically useful. Communities' scandalized reactions to the ways in which researchers have depicted them have periodically rocked the boat of sociology (Brettell 1993a; Allen 1997). Sociology is more vulnerable to these occurrences than anthropology, because the distance between the describer and the described in fieldwork-based sociology has traditionally been less dramatic than in anthropology, geographically, linguistically, culturally, or otherwise. However, the anthropology of the Pacific has also had its share of such con-

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troversies, particularly where anthropologists have scrutinized instances of the ill-named "invention of tradition." Indigenous scholars and activists who have found useful political ammunition in stressing connections to a mythologized past have confronted anthropologists who have contended that the historical constructs in question may be fictional (though not necessarily illegitimate). This situation has arisen most notably where disenfranchised ethnic groups are in the process of reaffirming their identities and claims to resources, as is the case of Hawaiians and New Zealand Maori (for example, the controversy over Hanson 1989, the case study presented by Toon van Meijl in chapter 5, and the debate among Jolly 1992, Keesing 1989, Linnekin 1991, Trask 1991, and others). Nukulaelae Islanders live in a considerably less fraught and contentious world than the Fourth World populations that have been the context of these choleric exchanges (to my relief as well as theirs, I suspect). The stakes are considerably more modest, the colonial encroachment has been much less dramatic, and the history is less tragic than in the Hawaiian and Maori situations, although Nukulaelae certainly has had its share of suffering in the hands of Westerners. Nevertheless, serious ethical questions remain concerning the depth and motives of ethnographic probing, the presentation of ethnographic materials, their potential consequences, and the nature of the relationship between the ethnographer and the ethnographed. While I am not going to tackle each of these topics in the same amount of detail, I describe in what follows several stances that have been taken in the recent literature on comparable situations and attempt to apply them to the Nukulaelae context. The most radical stance of relevance is the assertion that no ethnographic research of any kind should be allowed, on Nukulaelae or anywhere else, because anthropology is yet another instance of the colonization of the lives of Third and Fourth World peoples, particularly the sort of voyeuristic prying that my research could, at worst, be said to amount to. Critics like Trinh Minh-ha (1989,47-76) condemn the hegemony that anthropological scientism exerts on its subjects, a hegemony that is so deeply embedded in the history and practice of the discipline that it is even perpetrated in the works of reflexive anthropologists, despite their claims to "expose the workings of ethnographic authority and ideology" (157). In less-nuanced language, Haunani-Kay Trask (1991, 1993, 161-178) lashes out at anthropologists for robbing graves, treating other human beings like objects, and exploiting the intimate details of their lives to pursue highly lucrative careers in Western academia. 8 In more grandiloquent

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fashion, Pedro Bustos-Aguilar (1995, 164) denounces the "apparatus of ethnographic surveillance" central to the "imperial anthropology machine." There are several responses to the blanket identification of anthropological fieldwork with colonial exploitation. One is that this identification seriously lacks a sense of perspective. Penelope Harvey (1992) points out that there is a difference between the exploitiveness of cultural anthropologists and that of, say, multinational corporations intent on turning the forests of the world into logging quarries and its beaches into luxury resorts. Nukulaelae is too remote and lacking in resources to be a direct target of such exploitation, but it is vulnerable, along with the rest of Tuvalu, to less direct forms of neoimperialism. Among these figure most prominently the exploitation of Tuvaluan laborers by the Nauru Phosphate Company over the decades, as well as their exploitation by German and Hong Kong shipping conglomerates since the early 1980s, which find in Tuvalu a source of nonunion, eager seamen satisfied with deplorable wages. One also finds exploitation of a different kind in the gradual habituation of Tuvaluan children to imported junk food and trashy videos, particularly on Funafuti, and Tuvaluans' general vulnerability to the uncontrolled dumping of substandard consumer goods (Laban and Swain 1997). Last but not least, radiation contamination from nuclear wastes dumped elsewhere in the Pacific and rising sea levels due to the greenhouse effect seriously threaten the very existence of exposed and low-lying island groups like Tuvalu. To the extent that my prying into Nukulaelae lives can be labeled exploitative, this exploitation cannot compare, in intent, method, or consequences, with truly worrisome forms of economic and political colonialism that Nukulaelae and the rest of Tuvalu face. The intent of the anthropological monograph, whatever it may be, is certainly not the enrichment of the author (pace Trask); it is even doubtful that it advances careers, in a climate of increasing distrust of intellectuals and in an academic market in which most scholars hang on precariously to part-time temporary employment in undesirable locations. The potential effect of a monograph or set of papers on internal discord, published in recondite venues, is to point out that the image that a community finds it useful to present of itself is a partial depiction (in both senses of the word "partial"). This threat is unlikely to leave the realm of ideas and representations, and is eminently resistible, unlike nuclear pollution, rising sea levels, and labor and consumer exploitation. As Sherry Ortner points out (1995, 188), "the notion that colonial and academic texts are able completely to distort or exclude the voices and perspectives of those being written about seems to me to endow these texts with far greater power than they have."

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Another response to the characterization of anthropology as neocolonial exploitation, voiced by Edward Said (1991) among others, demands that close attention be paid to what critics of this exploitation propose to replace it with. Often, the most virulent critics of outsiders' entitlement to investigate the inner workings of Third and Fourth World societies are themselves in positions of intellectual and material hegemony over the "truly" disenfranchised members of these societies (Jacoby 1995). Replacing the hegemony of outsiders with society-internal hegemony, which is potentially more veiled and thus more insidious, is hardly an improvement. Yet another, perhaps more dramatic, response would highlight the parallels between censorship and barring outsiders from knowing what goes on "inside." Preventing outside scrutiny is something that certain governments are very good at because it allows them to kill, suppress, and sterilize in peace. A final argument for barring outsiders' access to knowledge would invoke the fact that knowledge is irremediably tied to power, as Michel Foucault has demonstrated and many (including Bustos-Aguilar) have reiterated, and thus that First World knowledge of social processes in a Third World society further reinforces the power differential between the First and Third Worlds. This power differential, and the colonial oppression and other forms of hegemony that go with it, can only be undermined through a deconstruction of the mutually reinforcing linkage between knowledge and power. However, controlling access to knowledge is different from the deconstruction of this linkage; it is even antithetical to it. A variation on the anticolonialist critique of anthropology would maintain that anthropologists should only focus on issues devoid of political sensitivity, and that ethnographic attention to charged issues is unwelcome (cf. van Meijl, chapter 5). Much traditional ethnography, by focusing its efforts on studying kinship, counting fish catches, or collecting plant names, has tacitly followed this unstated precept, for one reason or another. Commonly, this focus results from the self-censorship that all ethnographers must apply to their fieldnotes. Just as often, anthropologists have lacked the linguistic fluency, the time, and the personal connections in the field to become privy to the details of their hosts' lives. Some ethnographers have made explicit efforts to ensure that they not become affiliated with one faction or another in their host communities; while it may have personal or analytic advantages (which may well be illusory, as John Barnes [1980, 115], suggests), this strategy has the unfortunate consequence of keeping the ethnographer well outside the workings of the community.

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The confinement of anthropological inquiry to "neutral" pursuits may place anthropologists in a better position to deflect accusations of neocolonial exploitation by allowing them to point to the harmlessness of their activities in the field. However, it makes them subject to other criticisms. First, anthropology of this type erases lived experience from the picture, and with it agency, humanism, and the (inter)subjectivity that occupies a central place in the lives of members of all societies (as skillfully argued by authors like AbuLughod 1991,1993; and Jackson 1995,1996, 1998). In addition, such research perpetuates understandings of non-Western societies as isolated, internally coherent, kinship-driven aggregates, whose members are concerned principally with cataloguing items in their environment and distributing the resources that their bountiful and benign environment provides to them. The resulting picture is a familiar one in the history of anthropology, but also one from which anthropologists have tried hard to get away for decades. Alternatively, my description could have focused on political strife, but only insofar as it pitches Nukulaelae against outside forces, such as nineteenthcentury slavers, traders, and missionaries; twentieth-century colonial rule; the late-millennium encroachment of capitalism; or even perhaps the contemporary dealings between Nukulaelae and the Tuvalu nation-state. Here again problems emerge, of both an analytic and ethical nature. In particular, as Ortner aptly argues (1995, 179), "the impulse to sanitize the internal politics of the dominated must be understood as fundamentally romantic" (see also Luhrmann 1996, 232-233). The more vociferous critics of anthropology maintain, more or less explicitly, that social research should be conducted only by "insiders," namely individuals who belong to the same social group as the people being researched. This stance raises more questions than it answers. In the first place, there is ample evidence that "insiderness" has to date not turned out to be as privileging as it is cracked up to be, both in the First World and elsewhere. British anthropologists conducting fieldwork in Essex have as many barriers to overcome, albeit different ones, as English anthropologists conducting field research in Papua New Guinea (Strathern 1987a). In Mithila (Bihar, Northern India), Brahman men are as predisposed to identify Tantric symbolism in rural Brahman women's folk artistic production as are foreigner scholars, even though Tantric symbolism has little relevance to the paintings and their intended meaning (Brown 1996). "Insiders" in this case are thus not particularly privileged in their understanding of what is produced locally, sometimes in their very own houses.

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More fundamentally, who counts as insider or outsider is hardly a straightforward question. Insisting on an opposition between "inside" and "outside" generally assumes a tacit conceptualization of ethnicity, society, or culture as homogeneous, immanent, and well bounded, characteristics against which all empirical evidence militates (Turner 1979; see van Meijl, chapter 5, for further discussion). Furthermore, as Lila Abu-Lughod argues (1991, 141), the very act of observing social behavior places the observer in a liminal position: "the [indigenous] anthropologist is still defined as a being who must stand apart from the Other, even when he or she seeks explicitly to bridge the gap." This liminality is most dramatically illustrated by what Abu-Lughod terms the condition of the "halfie," the hybrid anthropologist with complex allegiances to multiple backgrounds and contexts (see also Narayan 1993 and, for a slightly different perspective, Cerroni-Long 1995). 9 These entanglements derive directly from the complexities of what constitutes identity in any context, not just that of the anthropologist conducting field research, but complexities that postmodernist and poststructuralist writers like Judith Butler (1990) and Gayatri Spivak (1988) have brilliantly exposed, if not uncontroversially so. At the most basic level of analysis, I may share a racial, ethnic, or national identity with the villagers or islanders among whom I am conducting fieldwork, but I may also be alienated from them by my elite or foreign education, my privileged social class affiliation, and the dual citizenship or visas that afford me the choice of residing in either the First or Third World (cf. Abu-Lughod 1991, 138-143). Any aspect of my identity can override whatever binds me to my kindred hosts and establish a power differential between them and me. This power differential, incidentally, does not necessarily place the anthropologist in the superordinate position, as illustrated by the case of anthropologists (indigenous or not) who are of the "wrong" sexual orientation and find themselves in sometimes precarious positions visà-vis their hosts (Kulick 1995; Lewin and Leap 1996). In Alexandra Bakalaki's apt words (1997, 519), "one becomes insider and outsider, representative of local or global discourses, in the context of social and especially power relations with others."

Privileges and Complexities Returning to the specifics of the Nukulaelae situation, several factors have contributed to making my fieldwork experience a particularly privileged one. These factors include the longevity of the fieldwork, the fact that I began re-

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search on Nukulaelae while still very young, and the trust that some Nukulaelae Islanders have vested in me. These privileged circumstances have made me privy to knowledge about the community from which I would have been barred under more ordinary circumstances, and this situation raises a thorny dilemma: the powers that be on Nukulaelae continue to assume that my interests focus on High Culture, "customs and traditions" (tuu mo aganuu), and what they think are topics worthy of ethnographic attention, even though my actions, questions, and explanations clearly indicate that this is not the case. It is therefore difficult if not impossible for me to explain what my research topics are, and at this point I am never asked to justify my presence and activities on the atoll in any case. For most Nukulaelae people, outsiders are by definition incapable of acquiring anything but the most superficial understanding of their society, and I am no exception despite the fact that I am an unusual outsider (because of my fluency in the language, fictitious kinship connections, long association with the community, and so on). While people, other than those who know me well, express (mostly bemused) surprise when I betray some understanding of behind-the-scenes events, these flashes of evidence fail to shake their understanding of the scope of my insights and interests. To what extent am I deceiving my respondents by conducting research on something other than what they insist is, should be, and can only be the topic of my research? To what extent are my Nukulaelae informants really providing me their "informed consent," which some insist should be given as much importance in ethnography as it has in other human sciences (e.g., Fluehr-Lobban 1994)? As Barnes discusses (1980, 89-133), the motives of social scientific research are never entirely clear to informants, even in contexts where no linguistic and cultural barrier separates researcher and researched, because informants generally lack familiarity with the intellectual and social context in which the research is embedded, i.e., how questions arise, how they are addressed, how results are disseminated, and to what end. This is certainly the case of Nukulaelae society, whose members remain for the most part unacquainted with the basic precepts of academic research. For the moment at least, as far as I know, no one associated with the Nukulaelae community has raised an objection to any aspect of my representation of Nukulaelae society. Similarly, I know of no case in which my statements about Nukulaelae society have been used against the interests or endeavors of the community, and thus the arguments I entertain here remain solidly grounded in the hypothetical, the eventual, and the contingent. 10

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This situation may change somewhat in the near future, as the Nukulaelae community becomes increasingly transnational and thus less likely to be intimidated or impressed by Western academic practices. Already, a number of younger people have received university training in Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, and Hawai'i, and their reactions to my work are beginning to trickle back to me, in mostly polite terms thus far. Nevertheless, these same people are unlikely to return to reside on the atoll (a situation that is itself potentially subject to critical scrutiny) and thus are unlikely to have a direct impact on my own research practices and the responses of the atoll's residents to them. In the unlikely event that educated Nukulaelae Islanders would oppose my being privy to sensitive material, my documenting it in print, or even my conducting further research in the community (as Maori leaders did to van Meijl, chapter 5), this opposition would undoubtedly be contested by other members of the community, even if it is as a matter of egalitarian principles. These issues raise the question of who is entitled, on Nukulaelae or in any other society, to provide informed consent to the anthropologist. Indeed, Nukulaelae Islanders who are victimized by sorcery accusations, disparaging gossip, and other overt or covert forms of hegemonic action see in my fieldwork an opportunity to make their voices heard and the injustices that are perpetrated upon them documented. These people frequently urge me to write about what has happened to them, so that those who are the perpetrators of these injustices, many of which are never redressed, be exposed. 11 On the one hand, one can maintain that ethnographers are bound by the community's overarching desires to be presented under a certain light. On the other hand, this stance raises questions about who represents the community and the extent to which these desires are consensual. Standard professional codes of ethics are of little help on this issue, because they conflate unproblematically the interests of individuals and those of the society to which they belong, in such statements as "anthropologists' first responsibility is to those whose lives and cultures they study" (AAA 1991, 274, emphasis added). Of course, people's attitudes—like their identities (as discussed earlier)— can be complex, and alignments can change over time and across contexts. Could the same people who urged me to write about forces that have victimized them, as Paanapa did among others, change their minds when they see the final product? Will they suddenly align themselves with the rest of the Nukulaelae community despite the pain it inflicted upon them, in contradistinction to a nosy anthropologist who had the nerve to paint a less-than-glamorous

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picture of their community? Here again, identities, affiliations, and sociopolitical stances are by nature shifting and negotiable, and, at least at the local level, the anthropologist is as vulnerable to these shifts as his or her informants can claim some power through them. A further twist is the central role that gossip has played in many aspects of my research and presence on Nukulaelae. Gossip is notoriously difficult to define in a general fashion, as has been pointed out repeatedly (e.g., Besnier 1996c; Brenneis 1989; Haviland 1977, 28^17), and this difficulty is a direct reflection of the ambiguity inherent to gossip as a social activity (e.g., what a third party calls "gossip" may be "exchanging information" to those who engage in it). Suffice it to say that "talk about absent others, often talk about those very characteristics and activities they would least like having discussed" (Brenneis 1989, 225) is one of the principal means through which I have obtained information about social life on the atoll over my years of fieldwork. Gossip has also been a central focus of several papers in which I have sought to understand the formal structure of gossip and its social meaning (in particular, Besnier 1989, 1990, 1993, 1994, 1996a). But gossip also figures prominently in my social and affective relations on Nukulaelae, in that my actions, intentions, and identity are common objects of speculation in the kitchen huts of the atoll. Gossip is Nukulaelae people's means of ethnographing the ethnographer, of turning the agent of description and analysis into an object of description and analysis (cf. Murphy 1985). As in other societies, gossip is not a neutral activity in the moral economy of the atoll. In fact, it represents a particularly sensitive issue for Nukulaelae Islanders because one of the most prominent stereotypes that Tuvaluans from other islands attach to them is their love of gossip. Nukulaelae Islanders will denigrate their own siblings to complete strangers, the stereotype states. Like all stereotypes (Herzfeld 1992), this stereotype is not without foundation, but it does not flatter Nukulaelae Islanders. Nevertheless, individuals on the atoll easily concede that Nukulaelae people (other than themselves, of course) are gossipy. Nukulaelae people and other Tuvaluans attribute the ease with which Nukulaelae Islanders disparage one another to the small size of the community. I also see a constitutive relationship between their propensity to gossip and the tension between hierarchy and egalitarianism that I described earlier. Disparaging talk is one of the principal means through which unbridled social ambitions and claims to authority can be kept in check, and thus emerges as a powerful political tool. Nukulaelae Islanders also recognize that disparaging

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gossip addressed to strangers undermines the social cohesion and oneness of spirit that they elaborate in such positive terms in the "cover story" version of their society, and that is closely tied to the drive for hierarchical authority and control. My field research has benefited directly from the Nukulaelae enthusiasm for gossip, and many of its results focus on gossip in more or less direct fashion. In the first respect, my research may not differ greatly from much anthropological work that Trinh Minh-ha (1989, 67-68) disparagingly equates with gossip.12 Viewed from a local perspective, my retelling of the less-thansavory aspects of life on Nukulaelae might be seen as falling right in line with common social practices in the community: I, too, paint an unflattering picture ("disparaging" attributes the wrong connotation to my intentions) of close friends to my readership, i.e., to complete strangers. However, the medium that I employ in my gossip is clearly different: no longer confined to the (albeit largely illusory) privacy of a cooking hut, my gossip is printed and thus acquires an implicit claim to authority and truthfulness (cf. Luhrmann 1996, 228-229). However, the printed word only makes a claim to truth, one that can be rejected and resisted, as Nukulaelae Islanders often do. As astutely literate people, they approach a written text with the expectation that it is authoritative and truthful, but they are also intensely aware of the fact that written texts are not end products, and that their production and consumption is deeply embedded in broader social contexts that determine the "truthfulness" and authority of the text as much as its literal meaning (Besnier 1995, 165-166; cf. Lambek 1990). People can respond to texts, evaluate, accept, or reject them. There are other differences between oral gossip in huts and ethnography-as-gossip. First, the latter makes serious attempts to maximize anonymity, while the former does everything to maximize recognition.13 Second, the gossiper's intent is very different from that of the ethnographer, whatever that may be (pace Trinh Minh-ha). Third, and in a similar fashion, audience intentions differ in each case. Indeed, it is unlikely that many members of the anthropological community, to whom the work is principally addressed, will be interested in a specific manner in the scandals of a tiny atoll lost in the Pacific. Readers with close connections to the field site may have such interests, but it is difficult to imagine how they could use the specific knowledge they may acquire through the work for damaging purposes. In short, the parallel between gossip and ethnography breaks down under closer scrutiny.

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The Politics of Field Research Some may dismiss the conscience-probing exercise I have performed in this chapter as superfluous handwringing or as foolhardy self-exposure better suited to the confessional (or the wine-lubricated anthropologists' party) than to a "serious" published forum. Others may find that I have stopped short of deconstructing the sordid inner workings of the politics of an academic discipline.14 Through this modest effort, I contend that anthropologists do not engage in such exercises often enough. For example, in an otherwise perceptive essay that I have cited repeatedly here, Ortner (1995, 179) criticizes as romantic anthropologists' reluctance to study internal forms of hegemony in dominated groups; yet she fails to give any thought to the ethical implications that such research may have. All too often, questions of representation in "serious" academic fora are framed only in terms of their intellectual content, while ethical considerations, or discussions of the political implications of anthropological field research, are relegated to newsletters and other marginalia. Witness the discussion of anthropological ethics in the American Anthropological Association's Anthropology Newsletter between 1992 and 1994, compared to the absence of any substantial discussion of the topic in the recent pages of the same association's journals. The result is that ethical issues appear marginal to anthropological thinking, lending some validity to the strong reactions of the type voiced by Trinh Minh-ha and Trask. However, what these reactions overlook is that the ethics of field research are not straightforward questions with straightforward answers. Anthropological inquiry is embedded in social relations, just like relations with one's familiars, one's boss, and one's employees. And, like all other social relations, relations in the field are potentially suffused with bonds of friendship and goodwill, as well as potentially fraught with difficulties (Luhrmann 1996, 233-236). Ethnographers are working with complex allegiances and obligations, and from complex identity formations. Field research is subject to both local regimes of justice, cohesion, and social relations, as well as to more global regimes, and the interaction between these different regimes can be murky. Traditional thinking about the "community" and its response to the ethnographer and his or her writings is in serious need of analytic scrutiny. It is time for us anthropologists to address the complexities of these issues as seriously and prominently as we debate the intellectual merit of theoretical positions.

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Notes My research in Tuvalu since 1979 has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the H. F. Guggenheim Foundation, the Wenner Gren Foundation, the Yale Council for International and Areal Studies, and the Fondation de la Vocation, and was made possible by permission from the Government of Tuvalu and, on Nukulaelae, the Council of Elders, as well as the numerous individuals on Nukulaelae who have supported my efforts or put up with them in one fashion or another. I thank Susan Brownell, David Faloon, Kenneth George, Michael Goldsmith, Sjoerd Jaarsma, Michael Jackson, Lamont Lindstrom, Francine Lorimer, Douglass St. Christian, and my graduate students at Victoria University of Wellington for useful comments on earlier drafts. 1. Paanapa's story and its implications are analyzed in Besnier 1993. 2. It is suggestive that the "traditional" form of punishment, applied in cases of serious antisocial behavior (e.g., incest, murder) until probably the beginning of the twentieth century, consisted in fakataapea the culprit, i.e., setting him or her in a canoe onto the open ocean. Death is a likely outcome, particularly if the culprit is given a leaky canoe and nothing to drink, but—significantly—it is preceded by banishment from the community. 3. In this particular case, anthropologists have not played a significant role in constructing this vision, in contrast to other situations around the Pacific and elsewhere, ranging from the Tikopia embracing Raymond Firth's analyses of their society (Judith Macdonald, chapter 6), to Samoans defining their culture as antithetical to both Margaret Mead's and Derek Freeman's descriptions (Holmes 1987, 137-140). One of the reasons for this is that the anthropological corpus on Tuvalu is very small and remains largely unread locally. 4. The striking candidness of this passage, in an official report whose audience was the British Parliament, would be somewhat toned down in subsequent official reports. The remark about the Ellice inferiority "in all things that really matter" is puzzling, but it is also revealing of the British colonial officer's ambivalence toward the colonized, as well as, undoubtedly, the ambivalence of both Ellice and Gilbert Islanders toward him and what he represents. In particular, because of their situation as a doubly colonized group, Ellice Islanders played on their multiple allegiances as the occasion suited, ingratiating themselves to the British colonizers at one moment and underscoring their bonds of solidarity with Gilbert Islanders at another. Such "footing" (Goffman 1979) between collaboration and resistance, between acquiescence and defiance, is hardly unique to this situation and indeed characterizes any structure of dominance (Ortner 1995, 175-176). 5. However, an article in the Boston Daily Journal of 8 August 1865, titled "Four Years among the Cannibals," makes the secondhand assertion that Nukulaelae people

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"were frequently at war with a neighboring tribe. Going forth to battle, they confined their captives in a stockade, releasing them on their return" (Ward 1967, 2 6 1 - 2 6 2 ) . Who that neighboring tribe might be is a complete mystery, and the same report contains other items of doubtful veracity, from the attribution of cannibalism in the title to the assertion that "[c]orn, pumpkins, yams and oranges were abundant, and required but little cultivation" (261), an unlikely description of a coral atoll. The newspaper obtained this information from Tom Rose (or Thomas Ross or, locally, Taumeesi), a beachcomber reputedly from Jamaica who had spent four years on Nukulaelae and undoubtedly had his own ax to grind (Goldsmith and Munro 1992a, 33). The journalists who recorded the information may also have contributed their own exotic fantasies to the report. Goldsmith and Munro (1996) point out that there were in fact instances in which Tuvaluans reacted violently to Westerners' visits and encroachments in the days of early contacts, but that commentators subsequently played them down as isolated and uncharacteristic incidents. Violence in the other direction figured prominently in at least two important chapters of Nukulaelae nineteenthcentury history, namely forced enslavement by Peruvian "Blackbirders" of threequarters of the atoll's population in 1863 (Maude 1981, 7 4 - 8 2 ) and the murky leasing of a large portion of the atoll to a German plantation endeavor from 1865 to 1980 (Munro, Iosefa, and Besnier 1990). 6. Nukulaelae Islanders also invoke a rich body of contemporary evidence of Gilbertese violence. A favorite theme is the violent jealous rage named koko in Gilbertese, during which men sometimes bite off the nose of their spouse to disfigure her (see Brewis 1996, 4 6 - 5 2 ) . 7. The British authorities who heard these arguments were not entirely convinced that they constituted compelling grounds for the establishment of a separate state. As Barrie Macdonald reports, "perhaps the cultural arguments, especially in translation, might sound facile and trifling to a European but many Ellice Islands believes that having said 'we are different people' they had explained their desire to separate" (1982, 255). Also invoked as part of the same body of arguments was the fear that Gilbert Islanders in a joint independent state would seek revenge on Ellice Islanders for the British favoritism they had enjoyed for decades. 8. The rather distorted nature of Trask's representation of anthropologists' lives, field practices, social standing, and disregard of basic ethics has been commented on by others (e.g., Linnekin 1991), and I will not pursue these points here. 9. While unmistakably fair skinned and blue eyed, I find in the model o f the halfie much to identify with. A citizen of three countries, only two of which I have resided in, I grew up multilingually in various parts of Europe, Asia, and North America, although not under particularly privileged conditions. I was born at the end of a colonial era in North Africa of parents in temporary residence there, which ensured that any link to my birthplace, including my birth certificate, would disappear promptly

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after my birth. Everywhere I am treated like a foreigner or, at best, a halfie, often with ambiguous consequences. O f French, Irish, German, Mauritian, and other miscellaneous descent, with a Calvinist, Catholic, and above all Theosophist background, I find nothing and everything to identify with in my own heritage. But then "hybrids are the art form of the time" (Iyer 1993, 14), and rootlessness can sometimes turn out to be a superb advantage. 10. In mid-1998, however, I was asked to make a legal deposition in the civil suit of a young woman who had migrated to New Zealand from another island of Tuvalu who was accused of murdering her husband in a fit of jealous rage. My deposition, which focused on the loss of self-control that Tuvaluans may experience in certain contexts, played a determinative role in the arguments of the defense in the case. The accused was convicted of manslaughter instead of murder and received a light sentence. The deposition was the object of some coverage in the New Zealand press, but it appears not to have provoked any negative reaction from any quarters, including Tuvaluan immigrants, who may have objected to the implications that they could be violent "by nature," or conservative segments of New Zealand society interested in eradicating ethnicity from the social map of the nation. I am aware of the possibility that the "cultural defense" stance I took in my deposition (mediated by the defense attorneys' and journalists' oversimplified renditions of it) could be turned against those whose interests it is designed to protect. It is in such contexts that "leaks" are most likely to occur from anthropological discourse to public discourse, to potentially damaging effect for the interest o f those represented, since one quickly loses control over public discourse. 11. These particular individuals subvert the prevalent image o f the outsider as incapable of inside understanding. In many cases they have come to know me well, which helps them realize that I may have greater insight into the inner workings o f Nukulaelae society than allowed by the general expectations. 12. I agree with the essence o f Trinh's comparison, although I do not share her simplistic assumption that gossip is inherently idle, wicked, and tainted, and thus that the comparison is denigrating of anthropology. 13. With the caveat that Nukulaelae gossipers sometimes render the identity of their victims opaque to force their audiences to partake in the gossip by asking who is being talked about (Besnier 1989). In ethnographic writing about a very small community, achieving complete anonymity is of course impossible, as the following anecdote illustrates. Having sent a copy of Besnier 1995 to a Tuvaluan friend, I was dismayed by his light-hearted report that his spouse and mother-in-law, both from Nukulaelae, had had a great time guessing the identity of the authors of the personal letters I cite in that work! However, the use of pseudonyms and other means o f blurring recognition does provide a useful distance between anthropological descriptions and real-life actors and events, even when it fails to achieve complete anonymity.

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14. Susan Brownell's characteristically perceptive comments on an earlier draft o f this paper are worth quoting in full: " I f we are really going to deconstruct the discipline o f anthropology, then we probably ought to confess that sometimes articles are only written with the tenure review in mind, the approbation o f our colleagues is more important than the approbation o f our informants, etc. What happens in the field is only half o f the picture (or less): we are highly constrained by the rules o f a g a m e that we are not at all free to change, and sometimes the anthropological rat-race actually forces us to act in ways counter to the ethics we think we believe in. But maybe it's better to leave ourselves some fictions to live by."

Chapter 3

On Not Knowing One's Place Michael Goldsmith The Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania (ASAO), while nominally restricted to discussions of research on a geographical area, has perfected a tradition in its meetings and publications that reveals a great deal about ethnography, its authority, and its audiences on a wider scale. This tradition, which is only an extreme form of a practice implicit in much areal ethnographic comparison, consists of the following: one or more scholars suggest a theme or topic that they and others then illustrate and analyze with material from the society or group in which each has carried out fieldwork. It is as though the conveners "own" the theme or topic, while fieldworkers (among whom may be counted the organizers wearing their ethnographic hats) "own" the society, village, or community about which they write. Some conference sessions now no longer fit this particular bill, but its effects linger and are seen to constitute normal practice. This continuity was confirmed with startling literalness at the 1995 ASAO meeting in Clearwater, Florida, when I observed a session in which I had an interest but no direct involvement. A senior member of the association saw that the symposium convener was wondering how to develop the topic at the next conference after a confusing welter of suggestions from the floor and proffered the following advice: "Don't be too dialogic—you own it" (emphasis added). Such an arrangement is grounded in complementary positions of intellectual authority; some participants are authorized to speak on theoretical or comparative matters, while others are authorized to speak on what those topics mean for the subjects whom they represent. However one defines the roles, a clear division of labor and responsibility exists. Indeed, from my observations, the session organizer's authority is generally welcomed by the other contributors. Taken to extremes, this division can lead to an untheorized kind of perspectivalism that defines and legitimizes knowledge by virtue of the (concrete) place from which the ethnographer speaks. Again, the same senior association member expressed this view with stark clarity during the session referred to earlier: "ASAO is not just about speaking to a common theme but also about comparable data." Despite the initial importance of the theory in topic selection,

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ethnography has a sovereign authority within its own jurisdiction, being called on to shed the judicious light of empirical truth on questions raised under other auspices. A topic is just an idea; fieldwork, on the other hand, provides material substance by speaking through substitutable observers. The field data have to be "comparable," which reintroduces by the back door the authority of the topic theorist as the one who selects the framework through which such data are to be viewed. It is true that at ASAO meetings, as in any other fora, these conventions of ethnographic staging have not been settled once and for all. Indeed at various times they have been negotiated, contested, or subverted by those involved— but they have never been ignored. This is despite the fact that most of the ethnographers involved know that they are by no means neutral collectors of facts to be analyzed by others, and despite the fact that their representations in other contexts explicitly recognize that they gather knowledge in social fields populated by competing interests. Hence I think the characterization sketched above has held true for most ASAO sessions and probably still does so. Where resistance to this kind of staging has occurred, it generally arises from within the dominant paradigm of ethnographic knowledge.1 This does not necessarily mean that such notions of ownership and authority consciously reflect or influence the ways that ethnographers treat the people whom they represent. Rather, the problem is inherent in the logic of an idiographic division of labor and affects all ethnographic work to a greater or lesser extent. Anyone who takes part in a formal paper presentation at an ASAO symposium, knows how hard it is to break out of the mold. As with any other formation of knowledge, ethnography inhabits a domain of disciplinary ties from which it cannot entirely escape. Does this mean, however, that it should supinely welcome the restraints? The ASAO system embraces a taken-for-granted but always elusive division between ideas and facts that disguises ethnography's role as a system of representation in both the political and semiotic senses of that term. Ethnography shares this duality with all other forms of social theory and research. Gayatri Spivak has drawn attention to an early example, Karl Marx's famous discussion (1970, 170-171) of whether the French peasantry constituted a class, in which he pondered the relationship between the political dimension of representation (Vertretung) and the symbolic (Darstellung). More recently, political theorists have developed the distinction and its potential for crossfertilization (Pitkin 1967; Shapiro 1988). Spivak's own use of the alliterative

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tropes of "proxy and portrait" to convey the same doubled meaning (Spivak 1988, 276) has exerted an influence in the field of cultural studies (e.g., Probyn 1993, 79). Increasing numbers of anthropologists, too, work under the banner of "the politics of representation," a rubric of special intensity within so-called postcolonial states (e.g., Beckett 1985; John 1989). I argue that anthropology can no longer avoid this entanglement of politics and meaning, if it ever could. Representation of the "Other" has become an increasingly problematic business, while description of the world is an ever more theory-drenched activity. To be fair, defenders of the ASAO approach can point to some extenuating circumstances and strengths of their system. Many, perhaps most, of the papers collected under this aegis at the annual gatherings have been useful and interesting. They have rung creative changes on a number of important topics, or at least on topics that the discipline currently acknowledges as fashionable. Furthermore, there are diseconomies of ethnographic scale in carrying out fieldwork among the small, dispersed communities and diverse cultures in this region of the world. These encourage a territorial division of labor. Arguably, no single fieldworker has, or could have, the detailed knowledge and firsthand experience to command the cultural variation required to carry out detailed intraregional comparison. Under the circumstances, an "additive" strategy of data accumulation that holds each ethnographer responsible for relating a "whole" society to the chosen dimension of analysis is a logical enough strategy. As a further incentive to stick to one's field site, the few scholars brave enough to attempt Polynesia- or Pacific-wide comparisons (most famously, Sahlins 1958, 1963; and Goldman 1970) have had to weather storms of criticism. Much of that adverse reaction, however, confirms my thesis on a larger scale. Dissent on theoretical grounds has been relatively rare. Rather, each ethnographic critic exercises a gatekeeping function by showing that the comparativist got the facts wrong on a certain point in a particular society at such and such a time. On a more positive note, the ASAO tradition has guarded against overly sweeping generalization and provided constant reminders of cultural variation. Behind this concern for empirical particularity, however (and perhaps even underpinning it), there are still strong echoes of the old-fashioned comparativists' fascination with Oceania as a "laboratory" of naturally controlled experiments. At the same time, the tradition has opened itself up to a converse kind of criticism by perpetuating a view of the inviolable separateness of societies

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and of ethnographers' experiences in them. The approach thereby reinforces the irreducibility of self-contained societies and assumes the equivalence of individual fieldworkers.2 This can lead to the trap of confusing the delimited authority that stems from actual presence in localized settings with the presumption that an ethnographer can mirror a whole society or even a whole village in direct proprietary fashion. For a generalist to represent through a comparative frame a whole culture area (Polynesia or the Pacific) is only an extension of this same logic, just as refusal to let one's ethnographic field site be the subject of comparison is an inversion of it. The "social whole" deemed suitable for comparison is simply framed within wider or narrower boundaries. AS AO's "third way" of limited comparison, in which fieldworkers control the right to represent but topic owners control the resulting theoretical and areal generalizations, merely masks the same epistemological problems behind an agreed division of labor. A collection of essays explicitly addressing the ethnography of ethnography goes some way toward questioning these conventions. To confront the issues of different interpretations of the same society and of the effect those interpretations have on the subjects of anthropological research raises difficulties for the model I have outlined. These difficulties cannot be resolved by the strategies of trying to heighten the rigor of comparative ethnography or increasing the amount of information available on which to make such comparisons. This impasse brings me to my title, which may require brief explanation. If the original ideal behind the inspiration for ASAO meetings was that ethnographic contributors should "know their place," I probably offend this disciplinary cartography in at least three senses: I disavow the notion of a field site to which I can claim some exclusive insight; I wish to question the basis on which such exclusive knowledge is generated; and I am rudely critical of an ancestral tradition. My discomfort with overly reified assumptions of fit between researcher and researched stems in part from an intermittent and fractured involvement in fieldwork and a sense that the stereotyped ethnographic division of labor does not reflect that kind of experience or the experience of those living in the societies at stake.3 Not everyone suffers from my "handicap," if it is one. Nevertheless, I am not the only ethnographer of the Pacific discomfited by the basic problem (qv. Marcus 1995). The fiction that societies are bounded cultural wholes and accessible as totalities to ethnographic representation is exposed by the crosscutting pressures of travel, migration, education, trade, regional elite

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formation, nationalism, and globalism. Of all the linkages and leakages between these, literacy seems crucial. It creates a focus that highlights the creation of old and new kinds of texts, the embeddedness of literacy in forms of life, the transmission of "traditional" knowledge in written form, the diffusion of such knowledge across cultural boundaries, and the construction of readerships. I will illustrate these issues with some vignettes from my own ethnographic career. I do so in the recognition that knowledge of one's place or of the gatekeeping that places you there is rarely as straightforward as academic discourse suggests. The following stories pose puzzles that go well beyond my limited attempts at interpretation; but they may serve the purpose of unsettling a few preconceptions.

Three Literary Episodes In March 1971 I arrived to do research in the largest Tokelau community in western Samoa, situated at Lotopa on the outskirts of Apia. 4 For most of the next six months, apart from a brief stay in American Samoa, I lived in the home of Penaia Kitiona and confronted the mysteries of fieldwork as an acolyte ethnographer. Penaia and his wife, Salani, were the recognized leaders of a community comprising a large household in their own two-storied residence plus several households in smaller dwellings on the same patch of leasehold land. Both had been born on the northernmost Tokelau atoll of Atafu but were long-term and well-regarded residents of western Samoa. At the time, Penaia, who was nearing fifty years of age, worked in Nelson's store in downtown Apia. To supplement their income, he and Salani also provided accommodation and support for people from the atolls who came to town for education, medical treatment, or kinship visits, as well as for people in transit between Tokelau and New Zealand. 5 About two weeks into my stay, Penaia came into my room and nonchalantly placed a book on my table. My diary entry for 29 March records the incident as follows: Penaia "just happened" to have copy of McGregor's [sic] Ethnology in his room; it will be useful as a reference. I wonder how much (if at all) it has influenced his ideas on TK culture. Gave him my copy of WHO report on Tokelau and Dakar studies (by A1 Wessen) & he seemed v. int[ereste]d; took it away to read.

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The book that Penaia showed me was Gordon Macgregor's Bishop Museum Bulletin, Ethnology ofTokelau Islands (1937), published on the strength of a two-month stay at Atafu in 1932. Like most of the Bishop Museum Bulletins of that era, notably those authored by the museum's roving ethnologist-atlarge, Peter Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa), it concentrated primarily on history, traditions, and material culture. Whatever its intrinsic merits, I felt then that it bore few direct links to my own study—although I had read it before embarking on fieldwork and was to dip into it again in Apia in lieu of other reading matter. It is only in retrospect that it has acquired a more interesting set of meanings as a token of an ethnographic relationship. What my brief diary entry does not convey was a contradictory mixture of surprise and déjà vu on my part. Surprise, it has to be admitted, at finding a moderately rare book in that setting, though I think Penaia expected me to show more interest in learning of the book's very existence than of his ownership of a copy; but also déjà vu because I already had a sense of the incident's banality from student folklore about the resigned bemusement of informants who read up about their own culture from monographs, practice their impression management beforehand, and perform for anthropologists' benefit. "Of course!" I rationalized at the time, "it makes sense for a self-respecting Tokelau community leader to have a copy of such a book." I treated the incident too nonchalantly. To begin with, the question posed in my diary is unanswerable. I really have no idea how much Macgregor's monograph influenced Penaia's "understanding of Tokelau culture," or even if the question makes sense. Though I do not generally believe that cultures are static, if there were resonances between what Macgregor wrote and what I or any other ethnographer observed later, would it even be possible to distinguish the authority of his influence from the accuracy of his account of Tokelau and the continuity of its culture?6 Moreover, the question was not only idle (I never followed it up because the book seemed to bear so little connection to the lives of Tokelau people I knew) but also naive. It assumed a kind of reified entity called "Tokelau culture," even though there could be no such "thing" without practitioners like Penaia to perform it. More pointedly, there could be no Tokelau culture for me to study without "gatekeepers" like Penaia to manage my access to it. To prefigure another part of my argument, I am inclined to think that an ethnographic monograph's chances of influencing the culture it describes are enhanced by two conditions: first, the receptivity of the local audience (a

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matter to be addressed later), and second, its reception in the outside world. These conditions also apply, it has to be said, to foreign academics' commentaries on larger societies, though the effect is magnified in smaller Pacific nations by disparities of scale. While a few monographs have had enormous impacts, such fame has clearly not accrued to Macgregor's effort. Few people outside the arcane fields of Tokelau studies or pan-Polynesian comparison are likely to have read it. The fact that Penaia owned a copy, however, indicates at least the possibility of some converse fetishization of the text in his world. The book was clearly a possession of some value, having been kept in a private room and protected from the depredations of climate and insects. It probably accompanied Penaia and Salani years later when they moved to New Zealand. The next vignette is a footnote, avant la lettre, to a controversy surrounding one of the classic texts of Pacific anthropology. It concerns an encounter a few months after the one just described. The setting was Manu'a, the easternmost island group of American Samoa, which I visited in June 1971 with the aim of making contact with the small Tokelau community in that neighboring territory. While there, I was urged to make at least a brief visit to the island of Ta'ii where Margaret Mead had carried out her famous fieldwork in the 1920s. I was actually more familiar with Lowell Holmes' later research in the same village, however, and even quickly reread his monograph (Holmes 1958) in the Pago Pago public library before my trip. Apart from the anthropological and historical interest of the setting, my justification for the trip was an opportunity to interview Panapa, a Tokelau pastor of the Christian Congregational Church of Samoa at the main village on the island. Unfortunately, things did not work out quite as intended. I caught the ferry to Manu'a, but, upon landing there, my inquiries produced a flurry of people pointing seaward over my shoulder. The good pastor and his family had stepped into the whaleboat I had just vacated and were being rowed out to the Lady Lata, the ferry that had brought me from Pago Pago. They soon vanished over the horizon. The purpose of their departure, I found later, was Panapa's mandatory six-yearly furlough of several months, during which time the village congregation would decide whether or not to invite him to resume his appointment. Consequently, I spent the two or so days before my return voyage to Pago Pago being passed around as a shipwrecked stranger. In that capacity, I stayed one night in the small neighboring village of Faleasao at the home of Fagamanu Unutoa, a schoolteacher who left the next day and handed me over to

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his wife's cousin in Ta'ii. The household in which I now found myself was headed by an elderly tiilafale (orator chief), holder of the Lauofo title. My diary entry for 18 June includes the following notes: [Lauofo] knew Holmes; didn't have v. much to say, tho he was given a copy of Ta'u [i.e., Holmes' monograph] wh[ich] someone took. But v. critical of Margaret Mead—"the first girl." Predictably his criticism] concerned what she wrote about sex: "girls and young men sleeping together and having carnal ways"—her book v. bad and v. w r o n g . . . . Lauofo also met J D Freeman [in] 1966—[he had] visited Ta'u. I recall, but I did not record, Lauofo telling me that Derek Freeman had advised the chiefs and orators of Ta'ii to sue Mead for spreading such calumnies about them. 7 We can safely assume that the "v[ery] bad" and "v[ery] wrong" book was Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), though the uncertainty or, more likely, the taken-for-granted nature of the reference is revealing. Compare the fame of Mead's monograph with the comparative obscurity of Macgregor's. Lauofo almost certainly expected me to have heard of the former and to have at least a passing acquaintance with its contents (or, what is virtually the same thing, with the contents as diffused through myth and oral tradition).8 As opposed to an exclusive or perhaps complicitous knowledge of the Tokelau Ethnology, which Penaia carefully regulated, Coming of Age had entered freely and spectacularly into the public imagination, a fame reinforced rather than diminished by Freeman's later attempt at a demolition job (1984). For Samoans to have two such strongly contrasting characterizations of themselves purveyed in anthropological literature simultaneously fosters a rather bemused pride in the amount of outside attention they have received and encourages the expression of an ironic attitude to those accounts (e.g., Rampell 1995, 36). Samoa, of course, is a larger society than Tokelau, has had a longer history in the European imaginary, and has been written and published about much more extensively. It has also produced more scribes who direct their attention to local concerns, including well-published novelists, poets, journalists, and academics. This does not mean that Samoans as a whole are necessarily more literate than Tokelauans (both societies have extremely high literacy rates by world, especially developing world, standards), but they do seem to accept their appearance in print and any resulting controversies with notable aplomb. More

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importantly, the books written about them have provided important material for their own self-description. Apart from Mead's work, a case in point is the interest shown in Samoa and by members of overseas Samoan communities in the recent retranslation into English and republication of the first of Augustin Krämer's volumes on traditions and genealogies and material culture (Krämer 1994, 1996; qv. Meleisea 1994, 1996). And for an anthropologist in Samoa, ever since Robert Louis Stevenson put the place on the literary map, there has been a default cultural slot available as a tusitala (writer, storyteller), a term that was even applied to me as I scribbled fieldnotes while among people some of whose identities were caught between Tokelauan and Samoan. Years later—and this is my third vignette—when I went to do doctoral fieldwork in Tuvalu there was a similar ready-made label for me, that o f f a i lautusi (secretary). This designation mirrored the role of the man who acted as my mentor, the Reverend Alovaka Maui, general secretary of the Tuvalu Church, the dominant Protestant denomination. 9 He and I spent many evenings together in his office working on our respective writing and occasionally collaborating on letters and reports for the church. In line with what I suspect is a fairly standard ethnographic transaction, I also produced a statistical summary of congregation membership figures for administrative use in exchange for access to church records. On those occasions, in effect, I was Alovaka's secretary just as he was the church's. But such an assumption of responsibility came after the transaction I am about to recount. In 1978, on the occasion of my first Christmas in Tuvalu, shortly after my arrival, I found myself short of gifts. It was a season when, because of the vagaries of shipping, the cooperative store on Funafuti was woefully understocked. I had foolishly omitted to cover my options by buying extra trade goods in Fiji on my way from New Zealand. Despairingly, I decided that a book I had brought with me, a hardback edition of Raymond Firth's The Work of the Gods in Tikopia (1967), might make an appropriate present for Alovaka. This hope rested on the fact that his postgraduate thesis on Bible translation (Maui 1977) had included a reference to D. G. Kennedy's classic study Field Notes on the Culture ofVaitupu (1931), which had recorded a "traditional" pagan ritual. Penaia handing me his copy of Macgregor may have intended his action to highlight his role as a cultural broker. Conversely, I could be seen as engaging in the same game vis-à-vis Alovaka, in the sense of acting as a conduit to another world of Polynesia (which I may be quite mistaken in assuming was

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new to him). That was not strictly my intention. I had a copy of Firth's work with me in the same way that one may take a copy of Tolstoi's War and Peace on a long trip where reading materials are likely to be in short supply—that is, in order to be forced to read something worthy that one ought to have read before. But I did genuinely wonder how the book would be received. As with Macgregor's Ethnology, however, I cannot say whether the book had any effect on its intended audience or what happened to that particular copy. In fact, I do not recall Alovaka ever mentioning it afterward. My own prestatory etiquette inhibited me from inquiring too deeply into the matter. Besides, he was usually busy on practical matters of church administration. I like to think, though, that eventually he would have found Work of the Gods' rich descriptions stimulating, just as he had clearly dipped into Kennedy's book and been influenced by it. He contemplated writing a doctoral thesis on religion and politics in Tuvalu and, as a brilliant concocter of fictions, he might have found in Firth a fruitful source for the (re)invention of local theological tradition. 10 These outcomes remain speculative because he died tragically young in 1982. The copy of Work of the Gods, if it survived the hazards of tropical pests, mold, and children, probably ended up in the church archives, where it may still be consulted by a curious pastor from time to time.

Reputations Whether consciously or not, ethnography is always an ethnography of the self who happens to be an Other to the Others with whom s/he engages in mutual scrutiny. My experience in both Samoa and Tuvalu tells me that fieldworkers are routinely compared with one another by the subjects of their research. It would be an interesting exercise to collect these comparisons as well as to monitor the strategies by which ethnographers present themselves to local audiences and paper over their deficiencies in front of their peer groups. If the myth of scientific progress is to be believed, later researchers should be able to supersede earlier efforts; but, historiographically, "earlier" has the connotation of being closer to the primary sources. Does this explain the curious anthropological obsession with ethnographic precursors? There are always hidden questions as to "my" abilities in the field compared with those of my precursors, or whether I will be remembered as they were. Put cynically, the vignettes suggest that there are at least three ways of making an ethnographic reputation. The first is by being first or, since this is

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virtually impossible, by being acknowledged as such. Bronislaw Malinowski's lines in his Diary about making the Trobrianders "his" are an example of this sort of ambition: "Feeling of ownership: It is I who will describe them or create them" (1967, 140). This strategy worked for him with the publication of Argonauts of the Western Pacific in 1922, just as it did with Mead's youthful work on Samoa. Secondly, there is the strategy of destroying the reputation of those who came before." Malinowski was not above using this strategy as well (viz., his debates with A. R. Radcliffe-Brown and the diffusionists), but in recent times it is probably best exemplified by Freeman's critique of Mead. Straddling the other two is the mediating model of apprenticeship and patronage, of receiving the mantle from the early explorer and shielding his or her reputation against later critics (a strategy also well represented in the Samoan controversy by Mead's defenders). The Samoa dispute became even more scandalous in the wider culture that had assimilated the myths created by Mead. It undermined the trust attributed to those supposedly interchangeable ethnographers whose task is to represent Others to academic and nonacademic audiences. However, among the discipline's practitioners, much of the resulting discomfort, I suspect, had to do with factors pertaining to the assumptions behind ASAO's way of arranging its symposia, as discussed earlier. Freeman's attempt to undermine Mead is the analogue in time of another ethnographer's invasion of a fieldworker's territory in space. Knowing one's own place means refraining from intruding on another's space, a violation that all ethnographic restudies imply. Yet to defend against it fails to recognize that such invasions have taken place constantly before, since, and during the heroic era of anthropology. In consequence, no reputation is secure. The options for making a reputation are only ideal types, of course, and people's motivations are inevitably more mixed or muted in practice. These days, the sheer weight of prior anthropologizing makes such strategies increasingly pointless, unless there are other simplifying factors at work: the size of the reputation one wishes to destroy (e.g., Mead); the degree of difficulty of access to the field site (e.g., Tikopia); the putative absence of previous ethnographers (nowadays a rare phenomenon indeed). Even though Tuvalu, the society where I wound up doing doctoral research, is farther off the beaten track in ethnographic and historiographic terms than Samoa, the list of social science researchers who have studied there is still impressive.12 It includes Gerd Koch, Arne Koskinen, Ivan Brady, Barrie Macdonald, Doug Munro,

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Niko Besnier, Anne Chambers, Keith Chambers, Peter McQuarrie, Jay Noricks, and Barbara Liiem. That is not counting, in reverse chronological order, the scattered writings of administrator-ethnographers like Robbie Roberts and D. G. Kennedy; Cara David's well-known sideline account of life on Funafuti as companion to her husband's geological expedition; Charles Hedley's ethnological studies from the same fin de siècle era; the occasional scholarly work of missionary observers like Archibald Murray, Stuart J. Whitmee (himself a contributor to the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland), the Georges Turner (father and son), and—delving indeed a very respectable distance back into the history of cross-cultural research in the Pacific—Horatio Hale, the word-list-collecting prodigy of the 1838-1842 United States Exploring Expedition. 13 In short, no contemporary ethnographer can claim to be first, and the "firstness" claimed by previous generations was always in part a socially constructed phenomenon, dependent on the suppression of others (travelers, missionaries, administrators, proto-ethnographers of all stripes). Penaia Kitiona made me aware not only of an earlier fieldworker but also of his awareness of my precursor and, by implication, of the likelihood of repetitiveness and unoriginality in my own work on Tokelau. In the second vignette, my position was that of bemused bystander to a dispute between another earlier fieldworker in Samoa and the subjects of her research, a dispute fomented by but probably not originating with a researcher who pursued her across the decades. The third story portrayed me as a smalltime cultural bricoleur in the domain of Tuvaluan church discourse and, potentially at least, a coinventor of tradition. The first two examples (Lotopà and Manu'a), in particular, are clichés, a failing for which I make no apologies. Banality is precisely one of the issues I am trying to highlight. The notion of ethnographers being confronted and supplemented by the existence of other ethnographers has become, as I mentioned earlier, almost a standard trope of anthropology. The cases I have sketched are not special. They could be multiplied endlessly from my experience and that of others. The phenomenon highlights the evolution of ethnography as a third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation enterprise, one in which we latecomers inevitably live in the shade of ancestors. This generational pressure is intensified by other developments: the complicity of indigenous subjects in the process of circulation; the sheer proliferation of ethnographers and their varying degrees of willingness to pass manuscripts around for commentary, to

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offer copies of their publications in reciprocity for fieldwork help, and to donate books or theses to local archives and libraries; and our growing willingness to retrospectively widen our inclusion of certain historical figures (explorers, governors, traders, missionaries) within the genealogies of anthropology. W h y , indeed, should w e single out previous ethnographers as especially influential? Were not all sorts of "others" relevant to later discourses, e s p e c i a l l y — g i v e n the importance of literacy—teachers and missionaries? A subtext of all three episodes that concerns me here, then, is the contingency of the collection and diffusion of knowledge through writing. This variability is, of course, linked to educational structures and power/knowledge relations as well as to the time depth of colonialization and missionization. The Pacific is a sea of literacy, but, like all seas, some parts of it are deeper than others. A n d not only is literacy structured by depth (especially historical) but also by societally differentiated access to knowledge. How important has the secondary and tertiary education of Pacific elites been in the diffusion of "Western" ethnographic knowledge to their region of the world? I suspect its influence is considerable. Coming of Age in Samoa is a classic example of the spread of anthropological views into school and college syllabi throughout the world, including the classrooms and lecture theaters where Pacific Islanders have tended to congregate. A l o n g the way, the subjects of culture have become textualized on a broad scale. Pacific ethnographies are on reading lists at regional universities in Port Moresby, Suva, and Mangilao. A t the University of Waikato, the tertiary institution in New Zealand where I teach, a substantial minority of the two hundred or so Pacific Island students on campus (not counting those with N e w Zealand residency or citizenship) takes courses in social science subjects. While this includes social anthropology, it has to be said that more people enroll in political science, history, and geography, and there is a general preference for law and management degrees. Essay questions for my undergraduate course in Pacific politics are discussed in late-night cheap-rate telephone calls to Fiji, Tokelau, and Solomon Islands where cabinet ministers and island council members deal patiently with the queries of their children and other relatives. None of this is meant to imply that the self-reflection of Pacific societies is a straightforward function of cultural transmission. For a start, it is generally children of educated elites w h o g o to university, but barriers to tertiary education are not the sole means of exclusion. A c c e s s to knowledge in both its "traditional" and "modern" guises has routinely been monitored and restricted in

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Pacific societies. I suspect, for example, that Penaia would not have shown his copy of Ethnology of Tokelau Islands to all members of his own community.14 Nor would everyone's English have been up to the task of reading it. Access is therefore affected by linguistic competence as well as by regulation and academic privilege. Lauofo's reaction to Coming of Age in Samoa may or may not have been based on direct acquaintance with the text, but if he had read Mead's book he undoubtedly did so in the most widespread elite Pacific lingua franca, i.e., English, a language that now also makes Kramer's work accessible to a new generation of young Samoans. It seems ironic that one of the most important issues surrounding the comparison and self-representation of Pacific cultures is the choice of which "international" language to carry out these activities in.15

Reforming Boundaries Alberto Melucci writes: "The particular form of action which we call research introduces new cognitive inputs into the field of social relations, derived from the action itself and from the observation of its processes and effects" (1992, 50). Melucci, Alain Touraine, and other observers of contemporary social movements have been struck by the need to see researchers as part of the social field they describe and to consider the subjects of the research as engaged in a reflective process of societal steering that may be influenced by the information that researchers can provide. The study of Pacific societies demands a like awareness of the reflexivity of research. Reflexivity, like ethnography itself in the ASAO tradition, however, can be interpreted in an unduly concrete way. Its demands are not exhausted by adding a personal or confessional dimension to ethnography or by ritually claiming a particular standpoint or sociopolitical identity, with all the subsequent advantages or disadvantages such positioning provides. Academic writing always reveals its auspices, which may or may not be those claimed for it. In this chapter, I have been trying to read my own words and those of others for what they show rather than what they say. My objective is not to provide definitive answers to the various questions raised by the editors of this volume but, rather, to address the issue of what might be adequate questions, theirs and mine, to bring to the study of the ethnographic study of ethnography in the first place. In dealing with this issue, we should beware of certain conceptual traps. In particular, I view with skepticism a tacit model of anthropological tradition, in which "descent" encompasses the sense not only of kinship with founding ancestors but also the notion

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of decline from an original pristine purity of ethnographic intention. B y contrast, I want to ask questions that suggest different boundaries to anthropology and the ethnographic enterprise. In short, I am intrigued by the limits imposed on the topic and by the interests or fantasies expressed and suppressed in its formulation. It should be apparent from my argument that I have a more relaxed view than many about those boundaries, if only because (1) I find it difficult to impose a foundational definition of ethnography that would neatly exclude other contenders for authoritative cultural knowledge, and because (2) in my view no ethnographer is able to trace with certainty the f l o w s of knowledge in any cultural domain. A

postcolonial ethnography that incorporates the flow, permeability,

and contingency of cultural traditions may or may not be possible, but it would be more faithful to my own experience of research. B y contrast, in Judith Macdonald's case study for this volume (chapter 6), the problem is to explain the Tikopia preference for an ethnographic image dating back to the colonial period. Perhaps their attitude allows them to " b e " Tikopia, renders them static and part of a stable classificatory system. It also clearly gives them status within a colonial jurisdiction, a status that might be threatened by majority rule in a postcolonial democracy. It seems that the tendency to atavism within anthropology is sometimes mirrored by its subjects. A m o n g the many lessons to be drawn from this is that anthropology cannot legislate its own reception. Ethnographers have described many cultural worlds of the Pacific with subtlety and energy, but those worlds were and are always more complex than most standard forms of ethnography have recognized. The A S A O model for the presentation of expertise, while an impressive vehicle for demonstrating ethnographic skills and thoroughness, has yet to reform the accepted boundaries of the discipline or the tradition of Pacific societies seen as "social wholes." It has depended on a division of labor that allocates theory and fieldwork to different roles, it has recognized ethnographic authority as accruing to those with a concretely territorial claim to represent others, and it has encouraged a static, monocultural sense of its audiences. I hasten to add that A S A O is not unique in this regard; these strictures apply to academic anthropology in general. Moreover, change is always possible as ethnographers strive to reinvent their discipline beyond the boundaries of the possible. But the historically closed and compartmentalized nature of academic knowledge means that challenges to its perceptual boundaries tend to result from the serendipitous recognition of moments where one does not "know one's place."

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Notes Besides the people whose hospitality and kindness I mention in the text, I would like to thank Antony Hooper and Judith Huntsman of the Tokelau Islands Migrant Study project and its medical director, Ian Prior, for my initial invitation to ethnography; the Spalding Foundation and the University of Waikato for Tuvalu fieldwork support; Cherie Flintoff for research assistance; Dorothy McCormick for providing access to student enrollment data at the University of Waikato; and Judith Macdonald, Marta Rohatynskyj, Sjoerd Jaarsma, and the anonymous readers of the University of Hawai'i Press for their critical acumen and encouragement. 1. An interesting e-mail discussion on ASAO process and the so-called three-year rule (which glosses the preferred trajectory of a topic from an informal development of ideas to the final presentation of formal papers over a period of three consecutive annual conferences) ran on ASAOnet in March and April 1995. While it never explicitly addressed the matters raised here, it indicated an ongoing concern for the format of ASAO sessions and for the conventions that have developed to justify that format. More to the point, it also showed the commitment of many members to practices that set the smaller and friendlier ASAO above the impersonality, hierarchy, and superficiality of American Anthropological Association meetings. An unwillingness to tinker with tradition is even more understandable in this light. 2. On the one hand, it seems to me that the (in)comparability of scale and the often radical incommensurability of the societies and case studies offered for ASAO scrutiny should be a matter for analysis; on the other hand, this incongruity may have been one of the few factors to destabilize the model I am criticizing. 3. This kind of personal history can be explored fruitfully in relation to the concept of "decenterering," which I examined recently in a paper on the subject of Pacific biographies (Goldsmith 1995). 4. I carried out this research as the most junior member of the Tokelau Islands Migrant Study team, the senior anthropologists being Tony Hooper and Judith Huntsman of the University of Auckland, where I had recently begun graduate studies. 5. There is insufficient space here to give full details of the situation of the Tokelau population in Western Samoa at that time. Suffice it to say that there were other smaller groups near Apia, as well as (part-) Tokelau families and individuals who had married into 'aiga throughout the Samoan archipelago. In fact, there had been considerable contact between the two island groups for decades, if not centuries. This interaction intensified under the aegis of London Missionary Society (Protestant) and Roman Catholic missionary activities in the second half of the nineteenth century. While New Zealand was the administering power for both societies (1914— 1962 in the case of Western Samoa, 1925-present in the case of Tokelau), Tokelau

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people had visited and found new lives among their high-island neighbors with comparative freedom. After Western Samoa gained independence, however, many Tokelau people began to be faced with a choice of remaining New Zealand citizens or more fully assimilating into Samoan society. At the time of my fieldwork, the Tokelau Administration was still based in Apia, though it was under the direct jurisdiction of Wellington. 6. Judith Macdonald highlights precisely this difficulty in her chapter on Tikopia in this collection (chapter 6). 7.1 may not have recorded this striking detail simply because of a filtering assumption that legal aspects of publication lay outside the "normal" realm of ethnography. A quarter of a century later, most fieldworkers would probably be far more conscious of the implications. See, for example, an interesting recent case study exploring the risks and implications of litigation by the subjects of one's research (Lee and Ackerman 1994). The authors attribute an increasing tendency for previously underprivileged groups to seek legal redress for past wrongs to a recent upsurge in "global embourgeoisement." I see it more as the globalization of certain kinds of cultures, including those tied to writing and other forms of media, which have been building to a political climax for centuries. 8. No putdown or great cultural contrast is intended by this assertion. Most ideas, in literate as well as nonliterate societies, are transmitted through oral tradition, in forms ranging from talkback radio to academic lectures. 9. For a fuller description of the background to my research on church and society in Tuvalu and of my relationship to Alovaka, see my Ph.D. dissertation and a recent paper (Goldsmith 1989, 1996). 10. Such ideas were clearly in the air at the time Alovaka was undergoing his theological education. See, for example, Garrett and Mavor (1973). 11.1 owe this barbaric formulation to Judith Macdonald. 12. Marta Rohatynskyj (chapter 9) notes that difficulty of access is not always as straightforwardly linked to the absence of previous researchers as one might imagine. Indeed, when the Tolai and the Baining are compared, the relation may even be inverse: the farther off the beaten track, the more researchers. 13. My list of references would stretch to unreasonable proportions if I were to cite even just the main works of these academics and commentators. Interested readers may consult the bibliography compiled for my dissertation (1989). 14. Penaia also gave me access to records of the Tokelau Association in Western Samoa. The information these contained would have had some political sensitivity in the occasional disputes between different factions of the Tokelau community, but the association (Fakalapotopotoga) was generally moribund at the time so the issue did not arise. 15. This raises the question of how much anthropological, historical, and social

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science literature published in "international" languages has been subsequently or simultaneously translated into local vernaculars. As far as the Pacific is concerned, there appears to be very little: a booklet on the Vaitupu Company (Isala and Munro 1987), translated into Tuvaluan from an earlier article (Munro and Munro 1985), and the bilingual editions of Kiribati: Aspects of History (Talu 1979) and Matagi Tokelau (Hooper and Huntsman 1991).

Chapter 4

A Question of Audience The Effects of What We Write Grant McCall This "ethnography of ethnography" commences at a typical performance of university professionals, of which most anthropologists are a part: delivering a paper at an academic conference. The novice anthropologist is brought by supervisor or senior friend to begin the process of professional initiation. The veteran anthropologist expects to attend such gatherings, whether national or international, on a regular basis and feels badly treated by an employing institution if not enabled to do so. The academic conference paper normally comes before the academic publication; we expose and discuss our new ideas and while we would prefer that our colleagues applauded everything we say, all learn to take criticism, even when not especially constructive. Facing one's professional audience,1 the conference-attending anthropologist wishes to demonstrate competence in data gathering and theoretical application. We produce diagrams sometimes of quite startling complexity to show how we have been able to make abstract sense of the data from our field encounters and reading. Just as the anthropologist of old searched the most remote landscapes to discover a new tribe—remember that Leopold Pospisil actually dropped by parachute (!) into his New Guinea village—so the modern, theoretically informed anthropologist ransacks literary theory and ancient philosophers or resurrects the genius of an overlooked scholar (Sangren 1988, 423) in search of a novel way of analyzing and displaying hard-won field data, performing with a kind of scholastic, if not rhetorical, dexterity. But mere research and analytical skills are not enough. As well, we strive to impress our audience of colleagues with our closeness to our people through the use of performance props. Some anthropologists wear or otherwise display emblems of their fieldwork travel stays in clothing and ornament. Each occupation has its range of acceptable costume style, with anthropologists typically at the "ethnic chic" end of the fashion scale (see Bakalaki 1997, 506). While we do not sport exactly our field-site garb, much less that of "our people," there is an informal group pressure toward the exotic—and, if not that, toward the

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field-hardened functional. As anthropological field sites become less remote, a funny or puzzling T-shirt purchased on site is a frequent conference favorite today. The linguistic virtuosi among us often include great slabs of vernacular text, with full diacritics, as proof that they know everything there is to know about the language of their informants. We display photographs of ourselves with our fieldwork friends at the research site itself and often tell stories about quite intimate aspects of people's lives, to prove that we really do know our stuff. Some of these anecdotes we would not dare recount if we were in the field, as they would betray local intimate confidences; but part of the conference corroboree, they serve to bond us with our audience peers. Our colleague people are distant from our professional colleagues, most especially at conference time. In an extreme statement of authenticity, some anthropologists even have brought bemused informants along to professional gatherings, to demonstrate undeniable veracity. Not only were we there but we have brought them here, a tradition going back in European traveler science to Joseph Banks and his touring in England with the Tahitian Omai over two centuries ago. The centrality of the ethnographic experience—the importance of Being There, as Daniel Bradburd (1998) called his book—cannot be overemphasized in anthropology, as people who have worked in the same part of the fieldwork planet swap stories about officials, about our nonpresent colleagues who have worked in the same area, and about common situations we have experienced. Some conferences, such as those of the (very American) Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania (ASAO), preserve a nostalgic figment of these encounters in photograph albums as documentary proof of us and our professional audience, demonstrating who was present and associating with whom. These albums introduce a sense of tradition and continuity to an otherwise transitory and partite event. Few ASAO members probably have the opportunity of attending the annual conference on a regular basis, but when they do, they become an event in themselves, part of the display performance context itself. More about the ASAO audience in a moment. I am concerned here with what we do with our data after the research has been completed. Although I begin this speculation by referring to the audience of anthropologists as consumers of anthropology itself, I believe that anthropology is primarily an ongoing dialogic between our discipline and the world. In this there is a "double hermeneutic" (Giddens 1984): what we write and publish after our fieldwork produces the contexts for our subsequent research,

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either at home or abroad. Even as we write up our notes from our last fieldwork, we are unwittingly setting the context for our next period of research. We create our subsequent contexts and, we should be forewarned, are created by just those contexts. I will explore this creation of anthropology (and of anthropologists!)'s "interior landscapes" (Moore 1997), using the concept of "audience"—the actual readers of and listeners to our work. To help the argument, I divide my discussion into five sections: aiming at an audience, appreciating audiences, imagining a professional audience, structuring audience, and envisaging audience. Later I will connect this diversity of audiences to questions of professional practice.

Aiming at an Audience The activities of specialist publications and collegial conferences are for our anthropological audience, for our colleagues. This world we know well; it is one in which we feel comfortable through the process of socialization we have undergone. What is expected and allowed we can observe through our professional interactions, and we learn to adjust to the tribal lores of our professional group, wherever we find them. I do not suggest that anthropology is a unitary world, but, subject to national and regional idiosyncrasies, there are basic understandings, and even some culture heroes, that we share. Where we may come unstuck is when an audience we had not considered reads our work or hears us formulate our anthropologese, which is more than just professional jargon, but includes a cast of mind in content and expression, as I try to portray in my opening paragraphs. Once an item is published—and by that I mean only made public in print or conference presentation, even media report, and increasingly on the Internet with even greater distribution—we cannot control who might come to consider our work, much less what turn of mind they might have when they turn our thoughts over in their minds. One genre of anthropologese is the telling of amusing stories about fieldwork, sometimes involving one's own foolish actions. One anthropologist, Nigel Barley (e.g., 1986, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1997), has developed a minor industry around this conceit. At other times anthropologists tell stories that highlight the positive side of their informants, while ridiculing those (usually in officialdom) who torment their friends. A recent account of fieldwork among Bedouins in Egyptian-occupied territory is a good example of this sort of advocacy travel writing (in the Hajj et al. 1993), although the author obviously

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views her amusing and skillful account as an authentic exemplar of the use of native voice, something to which I return in a moment. A personal example of misusing this kind of anthropologese about public officialdom took place in 1985 during my second period of fieldwork on the Polynesian island of Rapanui (Easter Island). At the request of a regional Pacific news magazine, I agreed to write the odd piece for the magazine from the field. The editor thought I could write something like his other on-the-spot columnists were doing at that time. In my first article, I chose to recount the amusing side of Chilean bureaucracy on Rapanui, highlighting the pompous character of outsider officialdom and their often-comic (to many of us on the island, including Chileans themselves) antics. While some Rapanui who came across the published article thought it amusing and in accord with their own feelings about their pretentious Chilean masters, others—including one very close friend—refused to speak to me for some time. My friend's specific complaint was that by mocking Chilean officials in print, I was in danger of making them angry, which would be to the detriment of Rapanui-Chilean relations. Moreover, to make the contrast between islander and metropolitan official, I had noted how a Rapanui appointee to office was serving food at a family barbecue on the weekend of her elevation to high office. Clearly, what was acceptable to my intended Australian audience, where prime ministers like to be photographed in everyday settings, pulling a few pints of beer for mates or throwing another prawn on the "barbie," did not go down well with some Rapanui and, my friend feared, Chilean official sensibilities. While my friend, too, found the antics of Chilean public officials the perfect material for quite amusing stories, he felt that exposing the officials in print would have an adverse and perverse effect. He was concerned in particular that Chilean officials might think the article represented, even distantly, Rapanui private opinion. The logic of this was that as I was on Rapanui studying the local community, and was known widely to have had sustained and intimate contacts with the islanders, the views I was representing might not be only mine, but also could be taken as those of the people with whom I was working. From a Rapanui point of view, I was retailing gossip that had been confided for private amusement. My once close friend told me frankly that in writing and publishing my little article I had betrayed his confidence and that was why he had cooled our friendship, actually until the present time, over a decade later. I had not guessed my audience. Or rather, I had not imagined more than

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one audience might be perusing my written production. My intended audience had been my largely Australian compatriots who, I thought, would find the antics of Chilean neocolonial petty officials amusing. Given the regional circulation of the magazine in which the piece appeared, I imagined that other Pacific Islanders might relish fun being poked at officials on a still colonialappearing island. If any of my professional colleagues had read my thousand or so words, they would have recognized such observations as conference stories of the kind I mention above. I had no idea that my piece would turn up on Rapanui itself, but it did. It would be a foolish anthropologist who imagines that work written and published in one place and for one audience might not be widely distributed in our globalized common community, even over a decade ago when this incident took place. In the end, my popular piece made its way to remote Rapanui through several paths over the year of my fieldwork stay, requiring me to explain on several occasions what the article meant and why I had written it the way that I did. A serious problem? In the long term, not really. I was able to explain to my Rapanui audience my intentions and discuss with them why I had written what I had. But the question of audience can have more important consequences. I spoke earlier of a Rapanui audience as though it was unitary with a singular point of view. There were Rapanui to whom I showed the article who did think it was amusing or, at least, told me they thought so. In the charged ethnic atmosphere of modern Rapanui, there are plenty of Rapanui who are prepared to laugh at Chile and Chilean ways to anyone who will listen. As well, and not necessarily the same audience, there are Rapanui who hope for autonomy, perhaps even independence of some sort, one day and make public proclamations about that desire. In fairness to my Chilean hosts, who have been the legal state authority on Rapanui since annexation in 1888,1 should say that in the press, social gatherings, and private conversation they delight in telling wickedly amusing and self-deprecating tales about themselves, Rapanui, and other Chileans. In Latin America, the Chilean sense of humor is regarded as being biting, if a bit on the robust, rough side. Another occasion when I misread my audience during my Rapanui fieldwork is rather closer to the more global character to which I referred above. One of my principal activities on Rapanui, as is the case with many field anthropologists, was the collection of genealogies. During my first fieldwork, I collected over three thousand names of living and deceased Rapanui, and I reckoned that my genealogies were complete from a church census of 1877 to

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1973, the end of my first fieldwork. To compile these genealogies, I had interviewed experts on old family lines, some of whom supplied excellent detail that allowed me to reconstruct where church and civil records faltered. A special feature of my research was that I interviewed most of the older adults and thus obtained not only genealogies of Rapanui born on Easter Island, but also of those residing elsewhere, about one quarter of the two thousand or so population at that time. One of my subthemes was adoption and marriage constraints. This led me to discover details of the parentage of virtually the entire body of Rapanui, including illegitimate conceptions, adultery, and the like, and even of relationships where offspring did not result. I made it clear to everyone during the fieldwork that this information was for the purpose of study and that I would not show the details to anyone other than the persons involved to check accuracy. While I am fully aware of the anthropological notion that kinship is a social construct, there was a high degree of agreement about these intimate details. Rapanui were very clear about "actual" birth conditions and often used such information to argue for rights to land and, sometimes, labor resources. People did not always agree on the use of a particular kinship fact, such as parentage, in an argument, but there were only a few cases where the actual kinship fact was disputed. So, people would agree that someone was not the offspring of their social parent, but would question what this meant in practical terms, particularly for marriage and inheritance. Where pluralities of possibilities existed, there was considerable agreement that these ambiguities in descent were a common and legitimate subject of debate and dispute. During my second period of fieldwork, from 1985 to 1986, there had developed in the interim a considerable interest among Rapanui to study themselves. Informal study groups devoted to the collection and analysis of language and history had grown up. One such group, rather more formal than the others, had been gathering genealogical data to support its case for an eventual turning over of all lands on the island to the Rapanui themselves. Currently, nearly 7 0 percent of the island's land is managed by the Chilean state. I knew various members of this group, and we spoke occasionally about the older genealogies. I was keen to encourage Rapanui to study themselves and, when requested, would work with them to obtain materials from archives off Rapanui that could be of use to their research. A few years after the end of my second fieldwork, the head of that land and genealogy study group wrote to me in Australia and said that they had

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assembled their research linking all Rapanui to ancient clan plots around the island and that they had a publisher for this material. I was flattered that they asked me to write a preface to their book, which I did, in both Spanish and English. Owing to the pressure to get the book out by the centenary (1988) of the Chilean acquisition of Rapanui, I did this without seeing the manuscript. Going back to the island for a short visit some years later, I was appalled to learn that a considerable number of Rapanui were annoyed with me for, they accused, betraying their deepest confidences. I now saw the completed book (El Consejo de Jefes de Rapa Nui et al. 1988) for the first time. In it extensive genealogies were displayed with great detail, although some of them clearly in error. People had assumed that I had shared my genealogies with the islander study group and found it difficult to imagine that thirty-five of their own people, themselves presenting themselves as representing all the kin groups on the island, could have researched and published this material without my help. The fact that I had written a preface to the book, praising the work, was proof that the original data was mine according to some critical Rapanui opinion. What my preface actually did was praise the idea of the work, lauding the fact that a group of Rapanui had organized themselves into a serious study group and, after almost a decade of interviewing their own families and consulting archive sources, had compiled such an exhaustive piece of research. For an anthropological audience, native work about native matters is a good thing in itself. For my Rapanui audience, the publication of names, dates, and details collected by one group of islanders about the entire population was an intrusion into privacy. The fact that the study group had tracked down dozens of lost land-boundary markers of ancient groups and linked those plots to the contemporary population was overshadowed by the intimate life details that were published. In the end—and this matter was recently mentioned to me again by a Rapanui—I question my own ethical position relative to my Rapanui data. I was eager to applaud a publication by a group of Rapanui that anthropological ethics would prevent me from doing myself (see McCall 1994). Audience and ethics, then, became lodged in my thinking as being unseverable, as I think the next more well known examples show.

Appreciating Audiences To drive home my point, I briefly turn to consider five examples of conflicting audiences and anthropologists, keeping in mind my eventual point about pro-

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fessional practice and our enterprise. The theoretical sophistication with which we imbue our data for our anthropological audience is not always appreciated by our native audience. A few years back, Haunani-Kay Trask (1991) reprimanded Roger Keesing for his lack of respect (1989) for Pacific Island traditions. Specifically, Trask charged that Keesing's (and other anthropologists') constructivist theoretical position questioned by implication the authenticity of Oceanic political movements by suggesting that they were of recent invention. Especially the very word "invention," she criticized, impugned a subject people's aspirations for legitimacy and self-determination. It questioned their authenticity. This was not merely a question of native versus outsider, which is how Margaret Jolly and Nicholas Thomas (1992) misunderstand it. It was a question of the anthropologist's work being taken as testimony against the very populations our profession historically has hoped to favor, support, even defend. If often we do not overtly take sides, at least we hope that our research and publications do not work intentionally to the detriment of those who have been our hosts and collaborators during fieldwork. While Keesing's anthropological audience admired greatly the novelty and ingenuity of his analytical work, at least one object of that research did not appreciate his intellectual endeavor for its potential negative, wider world political consequences. It is one thing to argue a constructivist line when analyzing the powerful, when studying up, as do the originators of this approach, such as Eric Hobsbawm (e.g., Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983), or the more sociologically oriented Edward Shils (1981). It is quite another thing ethically when that interpretive rhetoric is applied to subject movements for minority liberation. 2 Keesing (1991), in his rejoinder to establish his credentials as a critical anthropologist, referred to his family's missionary past in the Pacific, which did nothing to bolster his case. Quite the reverse in terms of the Hawaiian nationalist debate as launched against Keesing by Trask. Given the time of my first fieldwork, in the early 1970s, had I sought to analyze Rapanui political movements using such a constructivist line, very much in the vanguard then, I easily could have been a Keesing to a couple of Rapanui Trasks. Fortunately, such material was not my focus, although I knew Keesing well at the time as a student in his department. Fieldwork in the country where one is a resident citizen poses problems of another kind, as recent conflicts not only between Australian anthropologists and Aborigines, but also between Australian anthropologists themselves, over the use of ethnographic knowledge illustrate. Questions of audience can be-

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come very much more widespread and significant, as recent debates in Australia about the relationship between anthropological research and different (often opposed) audiences actually are mustered as evidence in court hearings, impinging upon land claims made by Aboriginal groups working with anthropologists. Ethics, audience, anthropologists, and Aborigines at this stage are the subject of informal discussion, conference papers, and advocacy articles in the popular press and professional newsletters.3 The first real crack in the anthropological integrity barrier centered around Coronation Hill, a counterpoised mine site and Aboriginal land claim (see Keen 1992). No doubt before the end of the 1990s and certainly in the course of the next few years, there will be wider professional discussion, particularly revolving around debates concerning the construction of a bridge at Hindmarsh Island (e.g., AAS 1995; Weiner 1996), with accusations and counteraccusations still being made (see for instance Bell 1998). Basically, the Hindmarsh story is about a local company wishing to improve its tourist business by promoting the construction of a bridge from the mainland to Hindmarsh Island, a tourist destination in South Australia, near the city of Adelaide. The company engaged consultants and seemed ready to proceed. Meanwhile, a group of female Aborigines claiming to represent the Ngarrindjeri, a group with cultural associations with the area, were interviewed by a female anthropologist engaged to counter the development application, who discovered "secret female business" that meant that the development would be on a sacred site. Before long, another group of Aboriginal women, also from the Ngarrindjeri group, declared the "secret women's business" a hoax. So, as was the case with my field encounter surrounding the publication of Rapanui genealogies for practical rather than scholarly purposes, the "native voice" was determinedly split and, in fact, diametrically opposed. But here there was not even agreement among anthropologists. The developers had engaged consultants from the South Australian Museum as well as other anthropologists knowledgeable in the Aboriginal field. Opponents declared their colleague's work faulty, while others were accused of not being anthropologists at all. Hindmarsh is not a matter of disagreement over a fine point of anthropological theory at a seminar or conference, but portends considerable economic consequences. More bad news: the audience for these and similar debates does not stop at South Australia, but includes matters before the parliament of Australia. Again, there has been considerable government and

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public discussion about Aboriginal native title in Australia, much of which depends on decades of anthropological fieldwork and advocacy anthropology of the present. Outside Australia, these are associated not so much with Hindmarsh Island, but with High Court decisions shorthanded as "Mabo" and "Wik," the former establishing the principle of native title and the latter the nonextinguishment of such claims. The enthusiastic advocacy for change, for returning anthropology to Sir Edward Burnett Tylor's original characterization of our discipline as the "reformer's science" (1871; see also Stocking 1996), is well presented by Peter McLaren (1992, 128) when he writes: "Ethnography in my estimation should help produce those forms of agency necessary for the transformation of historical forces and structures of oppression." One could almost add a paraphrase for such advocacy: that the point of ethnography is not to interpret the world but to change it!4 This openly activist stance very much characterizes and charges debates among anthropologists and Aborigines in Australia at the moment. There is serious argument in the field of Australian anthropology if the sole purpose of ethnography, especially of Aborigines, should not be for advocacy purposes. While these are matters likely to be settled by ambitious lawyers at courts and not by acrimonious anthropologists at conferences, I want to turn to something more in the control of anthropologists, which figures often in the stories we tell. It would be even more serious, I think on a fundamental level, if an anthropologist in producing an analysis for collegial consumption revealed too much about how informants coped with outsiders, including anthropologists. That is, in our eagerness to reveal all to our professional colleagues, to establish our credentials as knowledgeable and competent anthropologists, we could endanger our informants and the stratagems that they use to cope as Fourth World peoples (McCall 1980) with the nation-states in which they dwell. That is the real danger in moving from activism to what I would call hyperactivism: a forced, zealous stance of advocacy in print, but frequently lacking any accompanying practical action. Hyperactivism is in danger of being a mere simulacrum of the real thing. Anthropologists value what our ways of knowing can contribute to wider debates about human nature. Often it is anthropology's role to provide the exceptional case for a human practice, or to demonstrate the diversity of human experiments in living. The nature of human nature has been a recurring theme in anthropological inquiry, and several of our colleagues have had a go

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at using their fieldwork as the basis for such speculations. The audience here becomes a multiple one, but, I think, with little thought for what natives might say about having their lives used for this wider, however noble, purpose. A famous case in anthropology of this sort of informant betrayal is the revelation by Colin Turnbull (1971) of how the Ik dealt with those around them. Turnbull, by then an experienced fieldworker in Africa, seemed to have become unhinged by the sight of the dying Ik and told all, often with considerable and obvious disapproval. In his monograph, apart from its unpleasant and seemingly unsympathetic portrayal of a population in a desperate predicament, he showed, even in photographs, his informants conducting illegal activities in order to survive their desolate environment (see McCall 1975). There was little likelihood of an Ik audience for this monograph, which eased itself into prevailing 1970s debates about human nature, falling more on the side of Hobbes than that of Rousseau. The Ik became the exemplar of the selfish side of human nature or what human beings might do in the most extreme of circumstances, revealing what their underlying natures really were. A play arguing along similar lines was produced in various countries and languages, all based on the ethnography. A French edition of Turnbull's The Mountain People included even the script of the evocative and critical play about Turnbull's work, along with a reply written by that anthropologist's chief African informant during the Ik fieldwork (Turnbull 1987). 5 In a more legalistic turn, two anthropologists resident in their field area report how a charismatic sect and its leader actually took them to court in a dispute about interpretation (Lee and Ackerman 1994). The case was set in Malaysia and involved the study by the anthropologists of a local prominent religious cult leader. To do the study, the anthropologists had the complete cooperation of the leader and his followers; they were fully accepted into the community of believers, who shared secrets and confidences with them. As they affirm in their article, they believed at each step of the way that they were behaving ethically and respecting their informants/hosts. The dispute arose when the anthropologists began to make their work public, and major disagreements about interpretation erupted between the charismatic leader and the studious anthropologists. The situation is not unlike that of Toon van Meijl elsewhere in this volume. The purposes of anthropology had difficulty in dealing with the purposes of the subjects of study.6 On the other hand, one of the safest analyses of native action under colonialism that I have seen is that by Glenn Petersen (1993) of Pohnpeian notions

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of truth and explanation. Petersen positions his analysis in such a way that his informants could never be disadvantaged, for he observes that all Pohnpeians dissimulate, if not outright lie, in their day-to-day interactions. This coping strategy of kanengamah is part of Pohnpeian self-identity in their dealings with one another; it is how people there conduct their daily lives, including maintaining personal power and integrity. Petersen uses Simmel to show that the basis of Pohnpeian society is not in the transacting of information, but in its withholding. Concealment is far more important than revelation, even between friends, but especially between political rivals. If Pohnpeians are confronted by an outsider or an official about whether or not they are telling the truth, Petersen's Pohnpeians can always take the Cretan defense. If Pohnpeians declare that all Pohnpeians tell only part of the truth, then who are we to believe (see also Barnes 1994)? Petersen's analysis tells us a good deal about Pohnpeian society and culture, but without endangering the people with whom he has worked for so long.

Imagining a Professional Audience I return now to our main audience: our colleague anthropologists who, along with our students, are the ones most likely to hear our stories of fieldwork and analysis. The concept of audience can be as simple as the reference style we use when we write for different journals, i.e., smaller audiences within our broader professional audience. We shape our contributions according to who we think is likely to read the eventual work. If it is in our ethnographic area, we convey our material one way; if we are going for theory, another. Editors of publications have a very definite notion of their audience, although sometimes as authors we think that editorial vision extends not much further than the tip of a blue (or red) pencil! The very language of publication (Bakalaki 1997, 513-516) strongly determines audience and signals constituency. A social anthropologist from a country where the killer language English is not the official one publishing for an overseas audience will do so in English. Where s/he does not, language can become a major watershed for anthropological audiences, as Sjoerd Jaarsma indicates (chapter 7). Publishing in a local language, especially in a highly localized nonstate-endorsed vernacular, will indicate the localized audience to which the work is directed. While language does not determine audience, those not part of the intended target group who come across the text do so as eavesdroppers, as outsiders reading over the

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political shoulders of others, which is what happened to me with my jocular article about Chilean officialdom on Rapanui. As a discipline, we have our "imagined community," in Benedict Anderson's so useful phrase (1991), and like the examples in that very original study, it is created through print, the writing and reading of it. Anderson's now widely quoted text approached the development of nationalism and, as part of the analysis, how the spread of literacy supported this. People otherwise unrelated sensed a common bond through reading a common, sometimes constructed (e.g., Indonesian or Tagalog) language. Countries consolidated as nation-states by adopting one official language for an entire entity, for the most part. In the same way, the multiethnic country of anthropology (or any other knowledge system) is maintained as an imagined community (Anderson 1991) by print, especially certain sources of print, as there always is an evaluated hierarchy of printed sources. We all know that there is a league table of scholarly journals (and publishers also, of course), from the most prestigious to those of lesser standing. If something is published at one of the top locations, it acquires immediately a validating patina of prestige. If the print location is less prestigious, judgment may not be so favorable. This globalized communitas, barring language differences, of course, is fostered by those printed words in journals, in conference proceedings, and through book and monograph publishing houses. In the terminology we choose, we have in mind the people we hope to reach, even if the audience is generalized (Sutton 1991). We can sense the tone of our anthropologese, a familiar and comfortable rhetoric when we see it. And we train our students to do the same by exposing them to the sources we judge as being exemplary, requiring them, if they hope to achieve good marks, to even adopt, perhaps parody, the style. Print binds us to one another in our generation and to our students who will eventually replace us. When a new anthropological audience of scholars takes shape, its typical first act is a bonding conference. Indeed, I sought to bring my anthropological audience into this article by starting this essay referencing the familiar, conventional conference setting, which all of us know and easily can imagine. Conferences normally lead to further ones, and in time this social formation includes a journal or at least a newsletter, which often resembles a miniature journal, and a monograph series. All of us can think of examples, and for those who cannot, there is the succinct description by Adam Kuper (1996,

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192-193) of the formation in 1989 of EASA, the European Association of Social Anthropologists, complete with regular conference, monograph series, and journal (Social Anthropology). As a consolidating community, EASA took as one of its early core debates who could join and who could participate, establishing its boundaries and audience. In the case of ASAO, print preceded conference. The Newsletter was in its ninth number in winter 1972, before the first annual conference was held in April of the same year. Even the monograph series commenced prior to meeting as an organization, whose publication-oriented form was set early on, with only monograph-oriented symposia permitted. The overstructure was described by the Executive Committee (ASAO 1972, 8): "There will be a limited number of symposia (e.g., four). Discussions at these symposia will center around previously circulated position papers and will represent one stage of monograph preparation." Most recently, the tribal rules of ASAO annual conferences have been debated on its e-mail discussion list, leading to a further de jure codification of de facto organizational structures. In "Guidelines for ASAO Session Organizers and Participants," it is declared that the purpose of the annual conference is "the rigorous examination of data and ideas in ASAO sessions . . . designed to lead to high quality, publishable sets of comparative papers on topics in Pacific anthropology" (ASAO 1997, 5). To achieve this, the group permits only three types of conference meeting forms: informal sessions, working sessions, and symposia. The nature of each of these structures is precisely defined, and no variation is permitted. At the end of the annual conference, the session organizers recount solemnly the achievements of their group, with declarations on likely continuance and publication plans. Session organizers formalize these oral reports as notices in the Newsletter in due course. As a tangible symbol of continuation, the Newsletter employs the same red decorative banding on the left side of its first page from its early days. In contrast to EASA and ASAO, ESfO, the European Society for Oceanists, is an unbounded audience that began in 1992, as is usual, with a conference. Similar to EASA and the American ASAO, the linking language is English, but there are no restrictions on membership, participation, or meeting format. ESfO has a monograph series, published by different publishers, but no journal or even newsletter. Communitas is coaxed through a modern Web site and the Gemeinschaft of a conference every second year, the fourth one took place in 1999 in Leiden. 7

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Apart from the peculiarities of the specimens of anthropological audience just mentioned, in general we valorize our particular version of the anthropological vision because we believe in its prophetic voice, although I take that as metaphor (Hastrup 1992, 1993). The anthropological church, in the Durkheimian sense of community, is a very broad one, with many local chapters, each producing its own version of professional and disciplinary audience. Anthropology, while it might have certain organizational and behavioral factors to make it look like the part, is not a religion, as Raymond Firth affirms (see Quigley 1993, 215), in spite of the Luther-like (Martin, not Lex) professions that people are moved to publish from time to time (e.g., Geertz 1995). We do evangelize, though, and we think that our way of looking at things has practical, as well as moral, value. We anthropologize our anthropology (Hastrup and Elsass 1990).8

Structuring Audience All of the above so far permits me to propose that our discipline of anthropology is a non-lieu (Auge 1992). It belongs to and is possessed by no one, in spite of our proprietorial claims to the contrary. Anthropology, like any intellectual discourse, is a public, unowned ideological and especially intellectual space. From time to time, people may claim any camping furniture they might bring with them for their temporary comfort by way of copyright on individual production when they write their "persuasive fictions" (Strathern 1987b). The space as a whole, though, is a conglomerate of the partite that becomes the public. We cannot guard the borders of our non-lieu against invasion. This anthropological audience, as part of a wider social discourse space, is just one of several that we might address, as John Barnes (1980) pointed out two decades ago. Barnes followed his often-reprinted article on fieldwork ethics (e.g., Barnes 1963, 1967) with a thorough examination of what I am calling now "audience," but couched in the ethical idiom of Who Should Know What? (1980). Barnes paused about halfway through his study of ethics and social science to consider what he called "a diversity of interests." These interest groups, which I call "audiences," he conceived by their role in the research process as sponsors, citizens, scientists, and gatekeepers (1980, 73-88). As all of us must do, we prepare grant applications for sponsors and conventionally provide them with a prospectus of what we plan to do and a

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report of what we have accomplished. Ideally, these sponsors, if they are the state or a disinterested philanthropic body, do not impose on us strongly as an audience. If, though, the sponsor is hiring a consultant for a specific mission, this audience can be very influential, if not determinative. As Raymond Apthorpe (1997) shows especially in the tricky area of applied and policy work, our sponsor audience may urge strongly the very shape of the discourse we choose, along with its content (see Apthorpe and Gasper 1996). Citizens rarely call upon us to provide them with accounts of what we do, either because we shrink from the task of addressing them as vulgar popularization, or, more often, because nobody is interested. Anthropologists, like other professionals, have an inculcated fear of being labeled "popularizers," which epithet some of our colleagues of the past, such as the redoubtable Margaret Mead, rejoiced in. Engagement with a public audience for most anthropologists is limited to the odd letter to the local newspaper or a media appearance when one's fieldwork or field site becomes topical. Anthropologists remain largely in genteel obscurity so far as a citizen or public audience is concerned. Most of this chapter has been a discussion of how we tailor our work to our "scientist" (in Barnes' terms) audience, our anthropological colleagues. If you are an anthropologist reading this, I think you will find much of this familiar. I have made extensive use of "we" and "our" when discussing anthropological practice, for my intended audience is a collegial anthropological one, although I hope that some nonanthropological readers might find my remarks of some interest and, perhaps, some use. Finally, there are the gatekeepers who in the past often would have been colonial administrators, though today may be government officials or local authorities for particular communities. My account of audience disjunction on Rapanui was with the Rapanui (government-employed) gatekeepers who could have affected decisively the continuance of my fieldwork. Indeed, when I applied for my second season of fieldwork (1985-1986), I was shown photocopies of books and articles that I had written and questioned on particular passages, in particular my remarks about the Chilean rule of the island. I have no doubt that when I apply to do my third period of fieldwork on Rapanui, which I plan for 2001-2002, a similar scrutinizing process will take place, where maybe some paragraphs of this piece will merit highlighting and a "please explain." The gatekeepers that I encountered for my first fieldwork consisted of

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Chilean government officials who vetted my formal application as a young Ph.D. student. Although a few local Rapanui officials were consulted for my second period of fieldwork, the gatekeepers largely remained Chilean government functionaries.9 Given the lack of structural hierarchy in the Rapanui community, there are no island-wide leaders, but rather faction heads. These Rapanui gatekeepers could deny access to their particular group to an outsider such as myself, but they would have little influence with other overlapping groups and their leaders. Barnes' considered discussion of what we can now call "audience" has stood well the scrutiny of changing times. There is a certain canonization in his interest groups: that they think and act in a kind of Durkheimian mechanical solidarity; that they are of one mind. As Keesing (1987, 162-163) indicates, there is an uneven distribution of information in most societies, including those studied by anthropologists. We must recognize and succumb to this variability and offer our texts—that is, the ones that we write—without reification. This may have to be done at the risk of a loss of coherency in our interpretive quest, as Keesing (169) had it. What is meant here is that the typical anthropological description tends to declare that X group holds Y beliefs, with little room for difference, either of opinion or of knowledge. It is certainly more convenient and stylistically elegant to write like this. Audiences—whether sponsor, citizen, scientist, or gatekeeper—expect the anthropologist to know about a particular place, to be a knower of (usually) exotic facts. While some anthropologists might be living in postmodern fragmentation, most of the rest of the planet believes and lives in "high modernity" (Giddens 1990). Our "External World" audience (Moore 1997) expects us to know "our" people and for our knowledge to be unitary for a particular group. Our citizen and sponsor audience have very definite and unitarian ideas about how anthropology should be practiced. Our gatekeeper audience may demand more certainty than sophistication in the way that we present our data or how we propose to gather it.

Envisaging Audience Missing tellingly from Barnes' analysis of nearly a generation ago is a fifth constituency and, I am proposing here, audience, for our work: that of "our" natives. Lest I be misunderstood, I use "natives" as a shorthand for our friends and our informants/teachers. Natives are those who trusted us with their per-

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sonal stories during our research. Natives gave us a place to live and allowed us to stay as a friend, perhaps colleague. Natives taught us their language and other intimate details of their lives. Natives saw us as naive fools when we arrived and perhaps less foolish knaves when we left. For us to have succeeded in our fieldwork professional rite de passage, we had to have native cooperation, "rapport." Apart perhaps from the 1970s and 1980s "confessional" literature, there are few admissions of fieldwork failure in print. There would be little collegial audience for such accounts, although one anthropologist has managed to make late career capital of such an alleged case in a detailed analysis of the fieldwork of Margaret Mead in Samoa. 10 I do not present the native as a canonized category, as a unitary group, but think that some different sorts of natives can be distinguished in terms of their intentionality, I mean by this the form of persuasive rhetoric taken by their "voice," in contemporary terms, or interests, in Barnes' account. First, there are natives who demand an intellectual and epistemological priority for their voice. If you are not one of us, you cannot know us. Black natives, female natives, homosexual natives, and others have made such claims for intersubjective and privileged knowledge. If someone wants to have the definitive word on a particular category of social action, one must find someone who can lay claim to membership in, and intimate personal experience of that social and cultural group. Such natives are nativist, essentialists (see Jonathan Friedman in this volume, chapter 10), and guard zealously their barriers of difference. The Keesing versus Trask debate I discuss above is of this kind. Those who have encountered such natives and have failed to give proper deference will have felt the stinging rebuke that one is racist. I believe the debate between Gananath Obeyesekere (1992) and Marshall Sahlins (1995) turns very much on this kind of intersubjective nativism also. Second, there are less intellectual but very practical native claims that unless someone is consciously of a particular community—if their primary identity, residence, focus of action, in short their very being (cross to epistemology) are not there—they cannot legitimately speak for that identity because they cannot possibly know it. There is a belief that a native of a particular community has a continuing interest in its well-being. A farmer who resides in town cannot speak for farmers in the fields; neither can a Moslem in Britain for Moslems elsewhere, and so on. There is a certain practical essentialism to this argument, and it is based necessarily on very static and categorical notions of society and thought. Natives of this kind see solidarity in Durkheimian organic solidarity terms in that what one does is what one thinks. Action,

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especially habitual action, precedes and conditions thought, especially group thought. The practical claims of native community identity are most often found when the researcher targeted by such claims comes from distant parts, perhaps a researcher from another nation-state altogether, which often is the anthropological position. Finally, there are the native mobilizationalists: people who employ their particular characteristics for political action or for securing an improved economic position for their communities. This sort of native mobilizationist stratagem concerns itself not so much with "if you want to know about a native, ask one," but instead opts to employ what it considers to be native. This kind of native voice uses its position very often to make claims on the state and is frequently heard from nations of natives without a state; that is, Fourth World stateless minorities within a common nation-state (McCall 1980). The goal is to achieve a slice of the national pie and to secure economic and political gains. One might characterize this approach as a kind of millenarian epistemology or intellectual cargo cultism (see Sangren 1988, 408). Far from being a contradiction in terms (Hastrup 1993, 179), the notion of native anthropologists is at the core of Fourth World demands for recognition. The native anthropologist contends not only with suspicion from non-native colleagues, but from natives themselves (e.g., Bakalaki 1997). Most of the preoccupation, though, is not for being a native anthropologist, but a native professional, anthropology being but one of the specialisms that might be attractive. A native anthropological career usually falls rather low on a list of priority professions like medicine, the law, even politics and accountancy, as modern natives engage with high modernity technologies of scientific planning and bureaucratic administration. Some critics might collapse the three above characterizations into one, such as Albert Robillard (1992), who declares that all social science is a political act. Robillard demands that all who work with people must take a singular, ethical stand. There is no gray area, no compromise, as the world for him is structured in terms of contesting dyads, each of a singular character. Ethnic discourses (Hastrup 1993, 183) then are quintessentially political acts. Their purpose, both Robillard and Hastrup would agree—he in praise and she in critique—is the achievement of goals in a public arena; they are strategic discourses, not epistemological ones. Native and especially nativist essentialist approaches intend to debase realist ethnography and to privilege the subject, especially the intersubjective subject (cf. Sangren 1988, 417). I insist, though, that such dialectical instrumentalism is too great a simpli-

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fication of what natives are doing and what their actions mean to us and to anthropology as a continuing intellectual enterprise. This canonized position of "indigeneity" (Friedman 1999, 6-8) is as much a construction of the fearful anthropological vision as it is of the strident native voice. There is no practical evidence to take such a monolithic view of the native, even of the Other. A brief look at any politicized society, and most are, demonstrates the diversity of native views and the incommensurability of their voices (e.g., Hastrup and Elsass 1990, 305-306). We need venture no further for examples than my own areas of interest in Oceania, as I have illustrated above with personal examples as well as a few from others who have felt the bite of the native tongue. For every Hawaiian who yearns for a return to royalty, there is a Billie Beamer (1989) who sees the ruling ali 'i of old as being a dark flame of disdain and human disregard. Beamer, herself staking claim as an authentic Hawaiian, tells a story of an egalitarian Polynesian society that became enslaved by other invading Polynesians. She takes very seriously the common Hawaiian epithet that "[a] Chief is a shark that travels on land," a vulagi, an outsider (see Sahlins 1985, 78-79). With the exception of the intellectual politics of the famous Freeman-Mead controversy (i.e., Côté 1994; Foerstel and Gilliam 1992; Lowell 1987; Orans 1996), the most politicized debate in the Pacific Islands is that surrounding the two coups in Fiji, with insiders (Lai 1988 vs. Ravuvu 1991) and outsiders (Howard 1991 vs. Scarr 1988) making profoundly different sense of precisely the same material. On a more local level, Banabans, like many Micronesians, are known for their egalitarian social order (Maude and Maude 1994), but even they seem to have a queen in exile who claims redress for past deprivations (Hinz 1994; Penrose n.d.). On this basis, I cannot accept essentialist native claims for hermetic categories of us and them, whether made by canonizing natives themselves or fearful outsider sympathizers. Kuper (1994b) approaches this as a problem of what he devises as cosmopolitan anthropology. Kuper's interpretation of audience in terms of geography is indeed cosmopolitan, but it is positively parochial intellectually, as he urges us to narrow our audience and to restrict our constituency to our own anthropological colleagues. If Kuper were interrogating Barnes, the former would reject the audiences of sponsors, citizens, and gatekeepers, opting for a focus on our colleague scientists. Kuper certainly would reject my addition of a native audience, however conceived. Of four possible audiences Kuper (551) describes, he recommends one: "This final option is the one I want to empha-

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size. This is that ethnography should be written for anthropologists and only anthropologists." Kuper believes that to do anything else is pandering to political threat and distorting true anthropological Truth (inevitably written with a capital). The apparent "cosmopolitan" of Kuper is restricted to a cosmopolitan anthropological audience, and we are very diverse as a profession. But I cannot agree that it is realistic to adopt such a view, particularly if we look at the academic heartland of anthropology, the modern university where there are competing claims for attention among the humanities and social sciences. The claims of scholarly relevance of the high-modernist 1990s are not those of the soteriological sixties. For a discipline to be ruled relevant and worthy of support, both by students and the administration, it must offer a job to title holders and a solution to some social management ills. The offer of mere redemption of the past is not sufficient to justify support today. The contemporary context of anthropology is a world of competitors in a metaphorical and managerialist market, allegedly subject to judgments of economic rationalism. For anthropology to accept Kuper's shortsighted specialism would be professional suicide, intellectually, pedagogically, and practically. Kuper's cosmopolitan, then, is not only a state of self-address, but one of selfabuse. Undaunted and perhaps not reflecting on his own chronicles of the profession of social anthropology, Kuper (1999) continues his advocacy in a recent series of essays. In spite of Kuper's sylopsistic claims, the centrality of fieldwork and the necessary partner ethnography remain core to the anthropological enterprise, to our identity in anthropology country. However comfortable the armchair and comforting the well-stocked library, anthropologists value still Being There. What makes anthropology engrossing to student and citizen audiences—what makes anthropology attractive as a profession, I believe—is what loan Lewis (1999) calls the "fieldwork mode of production" of our knowledge. The act of directly dealing with the Other—our native colleagues—is what gives anthropology (and anthropologists) our unique cachet. Anthropologists are quintessential puzzle solvers (see Arhem 1999), not in the back pages of the daily press, but in the ebb and flow of daily life.

Summarizing Audience We need both the native voice and an understanding of the consequences of audience to work together in anthropological knowledge. Native knowledge

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can tell us how we are different, palpable experience, while anthropological knowledge can tell us of our common humanity. This appreciation of native voice in interpretation and native eye in perception must be a critical one. It is all too easy for a nativist critique to elide with primitivist pandering (cf. Thomas 1994, 178-190) as Herder comes out of the closet in a new dress (Kuper 1994b, 545). In several of the contemporary antirealist critiques, the ethnic particularist/nationalist Herder makes a not-so-strange bedfellow with the Nazi postmodernist Heidegger (see Windschuttle 1994), their essential attraction for one another, I would argue, being a mutual essentialism. The nineteenth-century Herder argued for the essential qualities of the nation, while Heidegger was attracted to his own essentialist qualities as a native German, a malaise he shared with many of his compatriots a few decades ago. Anthropology must accept critiques from its multiple audiences; we should be grateful, even, that there are audiences taking any interest at all in what we do. Anthropology is a public activity, and that public has expanded to include not only our cocitizens, but potentially all the citizens of the world, including "our" natives. This dissemination of knowledge through travelers and post bags accelerated with wired, then wireless communication and the fax, only to be in the process of being overrun in due course by the Internet (see e.g., Strathern 1999). If our audiences, with their diversity and concern, diminish, so too will our anthropology. Our discipline is not only a human science, or way of knowing, but must be a humane one. Our audiences are our ethical concern. We still have Barnes' sponsors, citizens, gatekeepers, and scientists. We can easily understand our ethical relationship to people who pay for our research (and livelihoods), to people with whom we share social and cultural space, to officials and leaders who permit us to carry out our research, and to our colleague scientists. As well, it is a rare anthropologist who has not felt the strength of the ethical tie to one's natives, as understood in the above paragraphs, during the actual fieldwork when dependence, perhaps even codependence, is a daily fact. Now, though, our natives are beside us in the research archive and on the intercontinental airplane. They can read our work, and they are part of our critical audiences. What I have tried to do here is to look at some recent conflicts in anthropology in terms of the concept of audience, at the same time strongly cautioning against taking our concerned audiences as the canonized and essentialized categories they might sometimes pretend to be. I do not think that anthropologists or anthropology can afford to ignore those who read our work, whatever their location relative to our work. We are perfectly entitled

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to write what we wish, believing our work to be of interest to only those whom we imagine are our constituency, but we must be prepared if other audiences, with different interests and premises, question us. I argue that rather than fear or be suspicious of our multiple audiences, as Kuper (1994b) seems to present himself, we should embrace them and value their reactions to our work. If there is any model of an anthropologist to native audience relationship that one might hope to emulate, the case of Professor Sir Raymond Firth is one that I would like to propose, based on my knowledge of his work and recent encounter with "his" people. Firth's association with the people of Tikopia goes back over much of this century to his first twelve-month fieldwork, from July 1928 to July 1929 (Firth 1963, 5). In the anthropological mind, Firth equals Tikopia, no matter his other field sites. For the people of Tikopia, whom I met in their settler village of Nukukaisi on Makira Island in the Solomons in June 1998, Firth equals Tikopia too. People told me personal tales about their encounters with him, of letters that they had received or that others had displayed. Some people claimed to have spoken to Firth by telephone, even during the time they and I were in Honiara, the Solomons' capital. During a conference of the Pacific History Association, which I was attending with a student group, references were made to Firth by Tikopian and historian alike in various contexts, personal and professional. A highlight of the conference was a performance by the Nukukaisi cultural group Mapungamanu, who mixed performance, old Firth slides (from the 1952 second fieldwork), and their own in a story of their association with the outsider whom they hold in such high regard. One of the chief Nukukaisi Tikopians in that group was Castro Muaki, whose ambition is to become an anthropologist. He has a letter of greeting (in Tikopian) from Firth and a copy each of We, the Tikopia (Firth 1963) and History and Traditions of Tikopia (Firth 1961) on which to draw for his studies at the University of the South Pacific. Most anthropologists can only hope to achieve the high regard in which Firth is held by all his audiences. Judith Macdonald (chapter 6) explores this relationship in greater detail, especially how Firth's ethnography has impacted upon the Tikopians themselves, a fact very much in evidence in Nukukaisi during my brief visit. In looking at the future of anthropology, the late Ernest Gellner (1993, 4) wrote about "elaborating a new map of our options, of the varieties of social life." I suggest that this can be done only through sustaining the diversity of social visions that has been always our stock and trade and by appreciating our many interested audience(s) as part of the ethical practice of our anthropology.

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Notes My research on Rapanui since 1972 has been supported by the Australian National University, the Australian Research Council, and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of the University of New South Wales. I am grateful to these institutions for their past and, where appropriate, continued support. 1. Anthropologists holding academic positions might argue that the most frequent venue for professional exposure is before students in lectures and seminar rooms, and that this context is the most direct, if restricted, occasion for conveying anthropological knowledge: students as our most abiding audience. However, a conference paper with a handful of colleagues present has a legitimate place in one's curriculum vitae; a lecture before five hundred first-year students does not. Moreover, increasing numbers of anthropologists are not employed in academia, but outside in a variety of places, which adds to the richness and strength of the discipline. It is for that reason that I say little about students as audience, but much about conference colleagues as audience. 2. Very much a side note, I cannot help but be struck by the postmodernist constructivist critique being applied to local populations in the anthropological world. Epistemologically, I think, we seek a salvation from the high modernist surveillance and control in which most of us live as citizens. That is, we analyze people making their own history in our research contexts, similar to the way we formulate ourselves as victim-citizens in the nation-states in which we all usually reside. Along with Tylor's (1871) reformism, another abiding strand of anthropology's life force has been to seek and find answers for ourselves from the Other. We might find it liberating to understand our daily-life world as constructed; others, in their quest for self-determination, may find such an analytic insulting, even threatening. 3. A comprehensive summary can be found in Weiner 1997. 4. This is a paraphrase of the famous quotation from Karl Marx's Eleventh Thesis on Ludwig Feuerbach: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world differently, the point is, to change it" (Fischer 1973, 158; emphasis in Fischer). 5. There is more to be said on the Ik case, with the recent re-edition of the Tumbull volume (1994), posthumously produced; Turnbull died in July of the year of his second edition's appearance. An unsigned obituary appeared in Anthropology Today in October 1994 (Anthropology Today 1994). John Knight (1994) touches upon the ethics of Turnbull's position, with a summing up of some of the debate surrounding the publication of such negative material about a population trying to survive under difficult conditions. I made a similar set of observations about Turnbull's work shortly after The Mountain People first appeared (McCall 1975). 6. Alex de Waal (1993) declares that the survivors of the Ik were considering making a libel action against Turnbull for his depiction of them. His death probably prevented this. While not a court case, the disavowal by one of Margaret Mead's Samoan

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informants of the information she provided seventy years before is an example of how previously remote anthropological subjects can requite ethnographic treatment they do not find to their liking (Freeman 1989). Fa'apua'a Fa'amu, an elderly Samoan woman living in Honolulu, permitted herself to be filmed denying her intimacies with Mead, which testimony is reported by longtime antagonist Derek Freeman, becoming a centerpiece in his critique of the very popular Coming of Age in Samoa. Without mentioning the egregious Freeman, Knight (1994, 3) links the Turnbull and Mead publications: "Ethnography has become more reflexive and hence more responsible. De Waal is right to say that The mountain people would be turned down by publishers today. Yet it is likely to remain as much of a cause célèbre in the history of anthropology as Coming of Age in Samoa." 1. ESfO was proposed at a conference in Nijmegen in 1992, where for the first time an attempt was made to bring together the European oceanists (membership was to be wider than just anthropologists, but in actual practice most members are either anthropologists or linguists). The society was officially grounded as ESO (European Society for Oceanists) at the next conference in Basel, 1994. At that time it was also agreed upon that Australians and Americans could participate actively, though they held no voting rights as members. The society's present acronym (ESfO) was agreed upon at the third conference in Copenhagen in 1996. The change in initials was necessitated by a legal complaint. 8. This is not to deny a certain Gnostic quality about some subareas of anthropology, where hidden wisdom seems to be contained in a few sacred texts, which, it seems, can be known only to the elected initiates. Kuper (1994b, 541-543) criticizes postmodernist anthropologists in these terms, but the accusation of canonized texts and restricted adepts could be applied to almost any anthropological approach over this century, depending upon one's orientation. 9. One such Chilean gatekeeper during my second period of fieldwork introduced himself to me as my "secret policeman," whose position I fortunately was able to use to my advantage in dictatorship-ridden Chile of the mid-1980s. When normal channels failed to obtain an exit visa from Chile, my invigilating colleague smoothed my way to obtain the precious document for me and my family in a matter of days. 10. Freeman's several titles (1984, 1989, 1997, 1998) belie the core similarity of his tale, which must by now have been stretched to the breaking point in terms of how much one can publish about so little. This is accomplished by the 1984 and 1997 editions being identical, except for a brief note by the author; the 1998 volume retraces the same ground, adding small details more appropriate for an article (e.g., Freeman 1989) than warranting a full book treatment.

Chapter 5

The Politics of Ethnography in New Zealand Toon van Meijl From the moment that social and cultural anthropology emerged as a new academic discipline, anthropologists have worked primarily among preliterate peoples in faraway places. In the history of anthropology, ethnographic authority was accordingly established without much controversy (Marcus and Fischer 1986). Normally no one but anthropologists, occasionally accompanied by missionaries, spent prolonged periods in the remote and exotic societies traditionally constituting the focus of anthropological concern. In consequence, the results of anthropological research as reported in publications have rarely been challenged. Over the past few decades this situation has changed dramatically (see Clifford and Marcus 1986). It is now not uncommon that a community is subjected to a reanalysis by other anthropologists conducting research several years later, which often leads to interesting debates about the aims and objectives of ethnographic inquiry. By the same token, the succession of different theoretical paradigms in the history of modern anthropology has begun generating debates about the legitimacy of ethnographic knowledge. Thus, some societies are subjected to a restudy conducted from a different theoretical viewpoint, inducing a new perspective on the same society. Recently the voices claiming and, in some cases, contesting ethnographic authority have again multiplied following the emancipation of the "traditional" objects of anthropological research, who have consequently been introduced as a new group of participants to the field of anthropological study. In the past the results of anthropological research were largely inaccessible to the people among whom anthropologists had worked. This was in part because the people studied were illiterate, in part because anthropologists used to publish the results of their research in a language unfamiliar to them. In recent days the distance between subject and object of anthropological scholarship has increasingly narrowed. Following decolonization, "traditional" objects of research by anthropologists often stipulate certain conditions under which social-scientific studies are to be undertaken. One of these is that the research findings are

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reported back to the research community in a language they are able to read before they are made accessible to the outside world. Thus, the audience of anthropologists has widened and the readership of our work has become more diverse (Brettell 1993b). This confronts contemporary anthropology with a number of ethical as well as political issues (Graves and Shields 1991). The multiplicity of voices claiming authority in the political arena surrounding ethnography has perhaps become most acute in the context of research among Fourth World peoples: indigenous minorities that have been eclipsed by a foreign majority on their own lands, and that now make up an underdeveloped enclave within modern nation-states, such as, for example, in the settlement colonies of the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (van Meijl 1991). Partly inspired by the successes of the American black civil rights movement in the 1960s, indigenous aspirations to political autonomy within the context of nation-states have become vocal throughout the world over the past two decades. The development of indigenous political aspirations has been paralleled by a revival of traditional culture in Fourth World societies. Whether this has also increased the interest of anthropologists in the study of indigenous cultures and traditions is difficult to assess. There can be no doubt, however, that anthropologists, as professional experts on culture and tradition par excellence, are nowadays frequently called upon by indigenous peoples to assist in the struggles to reacquire some control of a way of life that has gradually been lost in the course of colonization. In this highly politicized context of research, several conflicts of interest have emerged, which have invariably made urgent the question of for whom we are writing (Paine 1985; see also Grant McCall, chapter 4). I will discuss several dilemmas facing anthropologists who are working as advocates for indigenous peoples. They support indigenous political causes unconditionally, while at the same time they may not wish to lose their independence to engage in critical analysis. On the one hand, most anthropologists will agree that we have a responsibility to ensure that the cultural values of peoples who have been subjugated by Western colonial powers be respected. For many this moral obligation is not even questionable within the legal-political context of anthropological advocacy, which invariably implies supporting the interests of one particular group (Wright 1988; Scheper-Hughes 1995). From an academic viewpoint, on the other hand, anthropological observers seek to comprehend the multidimensional and often diverse context of local interests (Hastrup and Elsass 1990). This entails that anthropologists have a responsi-

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bility to support not only the weakest participants in colonial interactions. They also have to document different perspectives on the same reality (cf. D'Andrade 1995) and to deconstruct them all as only partial truths about the world (Clifford 1986a, 1988; see also Handler 1993; Hastrup 1995). However, in the contemporary climate of "deconstruction" in social sciences there is a danger to equate the postmodern version of cultural relativism with ethical relativism (Bauman 1993; Fluehr-Lobban 1991b). The epistemological need for uncompromising deconstruction of multiple perspectives on one and the same reality must nevertheless not lead to an allegedly neutral stance regarding the unequal distribution of power and resources. At the same time, it should be realized that the political spectrum in which our research activities are situated is more complicated than has long been assumed. Nowadays there is a consensus about the argument for an extension of anthropological discourse on "true realities" to both sides of the colonial encounter. It is presently widely accepted that power and control are not only unequally distributed in the relationship between our research communities and the outside world, but also within our research settings. The era in which the functionalist dogma of homogeneity among the "primitive isolates" dominated has long gone by. The actuality of cultural diversity and the plurality of political perspectives have been amply demonstrated for all types of societies, including Fourth World societies. As a result of the globalization of indigenous movements, among other things in the context of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, it has become apparent that the representation of indigenous peoples on national and international political platforms is far from unproblematic. Indigenous movements themselves appear highly diversified, which also raises the issue of the manipulation of anthropologists by indigenous factions in the context of anthropological advocacy (Messer 1993). The question of for whom we are speaking should therefore be preceded by the more critical question of to whom we are speaking when doing our research. Below I will address these questions by means of a review of my experiences with a shifting identification as advocate and anthropologist in the Maori field (cf. Narayan 1993,671). On the one hand, I have operated as development consultant for a confederation of Maori tribes on the North Island in New Zealand. On the other, I have attempted to remain a critical outsider. As such I am reluctant to perpetuate the constructions of Maori culture and tradition to which I contributed as advocate when supporting Maori political demands.

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In my view, contemporary representations of Maori traditions and cultural customs serve predominantly the construction of a distinct cultural identity in order to justify Maori claims to political autonomy. These in themselves legitimate claims and their validations in terms of tradition and distinctly Maori customs, however, are primarily expressed by a cultural aristocracy that is not always representative of all groupings in Maori society. The rhetoric about tradition indirectly also contributes to the further alienation of vast sections of the Maori population, which are based in urban environments and no longer identifiable in terms of the dominant discourse of tradition. To keep this underside of Maori society in perspective, I argue that anthropologists have a task not only to expose the predicament of Maori people at large, but also the political strife within Maori society. I shall exemplify my argument with a case study about the controversy surrounding the publication of my doctoral dissertation. In the cooperation between indigenous peoples and anthropologists who support their research communities in the role of advocate, the "objects" of research now often determine the agenda. Thus, indigenous movements have a strong impact on the formulation of research questions to be examined by anthropologists. In many situations, such as in New Zealand, there are few opportunities to carry out academic research without making a contribution to the political aspirations of the research participants at the same time. In this context anthropologists have also begun to draw on their experiences as advocate for more scholarly types of analysis. This, however, leads inevitably to conflicts about the nature of anthropological representations. Indigenous movements not only determine the research agenda of anthropologists who are working as advocates, but often they also aspire to control the results of anthropological research. Not only are anthropologists required to return to their research communities to negotiate their representation of indigenous customs and traditions, in some cases they are even called upon not to publish their findings as they are considered potentially subversive of indigenous aims and objectives. But should anthropologists be willing to lose their independence and grant their research communities, or in many cases particularly the leadership of those communities and their gatekeeping allies, a veto of their publications? After all, anthropological publications frequently represent a political reality in which multiple voices speak and in which local interests are highly contested not only from outside but also from within. Given the importance of the notion of context in anthropological research, there is, of course, no single answer to this question

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(Jorgensen 1971). Hence the reflection on these issues here will necessarily be based on one particular situation: the Maori field. I begin with a sketch of the background to my fieldwork in New Zealand.

Field Research in New Zealand In 1982 I elected to set up a research project among the New Zealand Maori for my master's degree in social anthropology at the University of Nijmegen. In view of the politicization of indigenous issues in New Zealand, I was extremely fortunate to be invited to stay in a Maori community in New Zealand to learn about Maori culture and history. Soon after my arrival in the Maori community, it appeared that I was one of several overseas scholars who had been given the privilege of living on one of the most distinguished marae in New Zealand. A marae is a ceremonial center consisting of a plaza or courtyard in front of an ancestral meetinghouse, which is invariably associated with a dining hall and sanitary facilities. The motivation behind the invitation to foreign scholars concerned the expectation that they would become ambassadors of tribal development strategies. Some people in the community were hoping, for example, that after I had left New Zealand I would plead the Maori cause and, as someone phrased it, "tell the world that we are suffering from depression in our own land." Obviously, however, the possibilities of a master's student are limited. I realized that as a novice to the Maori field I was ill prepared to conduct research, so I concentrated on learning the language and reading about Maori history and contemporary culture. My presence in the field was justified accordingly. I was regarded as a student of Maori culture, and the interaction between the community and me was considered a two-way exchange of knowledge and experiences beneficial to both sides. After I finished my master's degree, I was keen to make use of the knowledge I had gained during my stay in New Zealand. Hence I began applying for scholarships to set up a doctoral research project. In 1987 I was eventually able to return to New Zealand for long-term fieldwork, this time under the auspices of the Australian National University. My research project involved a study of the impact of tribal development projects on community life and "traditional" forms of culture. This project was formally approved by the council of the community to which I returned, while grant applications were endorsed and even cosigned by one of the highest ranking chiefs of the local tribe, who was employed as an anthropologist at a nearby university.

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A f t e r an absence o f four years, it was immediately noticeable to me that the large-scale development program that had been launched during the period of my first stay had progressed significantly. Maori demands to redress historical grievances, such as the illegal confiscations of vast amounts of land in the 1860s, could no longer be neglected in the political arena of N e w Zealand. Particularly under the influence o f the new labor government led by the charismatic David Lange, N e w Zealand had been transformed substantially. In consequence, I could obviously not do fieldwork in the traditional sense o f the term. Under the changed circumstances I could only make myself acceptable to the community by committing myself to tribal development and becoming involved in political activism. Since the literacy skills of many people were deficient in an increasingly literate society, my participation chiefly involved the writing of position papers, development reports, submissions to government authorities, grant applications, and so on. This way, I was in a position to observe the dynamics of contemporary politics, both in relation to external agencies and within Maori community life. A t the same time, I became good friends with the people alongside w h o m I worked. B y taking an active part in the efforts o f the community " t o make changes for the betterment o f the Maori people," I gained insights into the phenomena in which I also hold a scholarly interest.

The Reification of Maori Traditions In the course of my fieldwork I adjusted my research interests to the transformed situation I encountered. I decided to focus on the manner in which tradition and history are reinterpreted and reconstituted in order to justify the Maori aspiration to self-determination. T h e "reinvention" of Maori traditions must be seen against the background o f Maori encapsulation within the N e w Zealand liberal-democratic nation-state, where it forces Maori people to substantiate their claims on sovereignty in a culturally specific way (Sissons 1993). Since the sharing of a common colonial past plays an important role in uniting Maori people vis-à-vis their European counterparts, the desire to manage and control tribal development projects autonomously is validated by means of a discourse o f tradition. There was a clear irony to my research interest and my methodology o f doing fieldwork through action as a development consultant. M y way of conducting anthropological research required contributing to the reification and essentialization of tradition, for example, by reproducing the Maori perspective

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on health in a public relations report. In my dissertation and in an article that has since been published, I analyzed this Maori cultural perspective on health as a justification for the political aim of reacquiring control of the delivery of health services to Maori communities (van Meijl 1990, 141-148; 1993). By the same token, I wrote submissions to the regional Catchment Board about Maori spiritual beliefs in respect to water and fishing. In my thesis I situated those beliefs in the context of Maori antagonism toward the coal-mining companies, which had made redundant nearly five hundred Maori coal miners and later applied for a renewal of rights to use the water from a lake on which the Maori had historic claims. As a result of my activities as development consultant, there is a distinction between, on the one hand, the reports I wrote on behalf of Maori communities and organizations, and in which I sought only to reproduce the views as they were expressed to me, and, on the other hand, the analysis presented in my doctoral dissertation and subsequent publications. Views expressed in whatever I produced on behalf of the Maori community while I was in the field are not necessarily reproduced uncritically in my scholarly writings since in these I am not primarily concerned with acquiring support for Maori political struggles. Instead, in my academic publications I aim first and foremost at analyzing the historical and political context of the events and social practices that took place in my field situation. Although this inevitably situates Maori discourses and practices in a different, multidimensional perspective, it does not imply that I do not strongly support the unidimensional, political aspirations of the people with whom I worked. From the outset the people in the community were aware that I was primarily concerned with contextualizing the implications of their development program, and they have been kind enough to allow me to express liberally my relatively detached descriptions and contextual analyses. The leadership was deliberately asking for an "outsider's perspective" on its development strategy, which because of my European identity, as opposed to the European origin of nonindigenous New Zealand citizens, was assumed to be "unprejudiced." In their view this meant: supportive of development aims and strategies. At the same time, people at the grassroots level never put any constraints on my reporting of internal tensions and the widespread anxiety about the future of Maori "tradition." However, the permission to report, for example, on problems of the implementation of Maori development, was not qualified on the understanding that my research would be serving Maori actions and aims.

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The ambiguity about this has caused, now, enormous problems about the publication of my dissertation. In short, my thesis has become a study, not of development as such, but of Maori ideologies of development. Obviously, any critical anthropological analysis of ideology cannot contribute to the political perpetuation of that ideology, but instead invariably involves a dismantlement of that ideology. Consequently, a dissertation on the ideology of Maori political and economic development is likely to pose an argument contrary to the political aims of that ideology. In my thesis, too, I have not so much dealt with the interaction between Maori people and the nation-state, and the w a y s in which the latter constrains the ability of Maori tribes to develop in their own w a y and their own style. Instead, I have focused the analysis on Maori attempts to underpin the necessity for tribal development in terms of tradition in order to highlight cultural specificity and the paradoxes this evokes. In my view, Maori forms of traditional culture are reified in the contemporary discourse of tradition. Paradoxically, however, the objectification and reinterpretation of tradition takes place principally in opposition to a stereotypical representation of European values, largely because a major goal of the discourse of tradition is to counter European domination. A second paradox of the counterhegemonic reification of tradition is that it serves as a symbol of Maori survival and continuity in order to discontinue and transform the contemporary predicament of Maori people. In addition, it is important to clarify that my analysis of the mediation between the discourse of development and the discourse of tradition aims at showing a significant discrepancy between, on the one hand, positive affirmations of tradition in interethnic discourse and, on the other hand, the internal contestation and negation of tradition by factions that can no longer identify themselves in terms of the tradition-oriented model for a Maori identity. M y contribution to the debate on the politics of tradition in the Pacific, then, is primarily the argument that large groups of predominantly young Maori people resist the increasing attention for traditional culture with which they are unable to identify. The inconsistency between the varying valuation of tradition among Maori people and the uniform representation of Maori tradition in intercultural communication clearly indicates that the discourse of tradition is politically motivated. It does not require much explanation that any account of internal controversies surrounding Maori politics of tradition is far from welcome. This is

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particularly true of statements authored by outsiders and with a potential for contributing to postcolonial policies subverting Maori political strategies. The publication of my analysis of Maori politics of tradition is further compounded by the implication of my argument rejecting classical notions conceiving of culture and tradition as static. In the course of colonial history, this originally etic view of Maori tradition has been merged with indigenous conceptualizations of history and tradition as unalterable, as everlasting and timeless (Hanson 1989; van Meijl 1996). The point that traditions must not be reified, which implies that traditions are never simply lost, and even that they may be retained in a changed form, might seem obvious to some. However, the response to publications by other people on similar issues has demonstrated the persistence of objectified conceptions of culture and tradition. Allan Hanson's (1989) account of the "invention" of Maori culture was misrepresented in the New Zealand press (Freeth 1990), which in turn led to a public authentication of Maori culture by Maori academics (Nissen 1990). B y the same token, Roger Keesing's (1989) paper on re-creations of the past in the Pacific has evoked a fierce response by a Hawaiian nationalist (Trask 1991). The sensitivity of the discussion on the dynamics of culture and tradition caused Jean Jackson (1989) to wonder: "Is there a way to talk about making culture without making enemies?"

Negotiating Maori Representations of the Past Indeed, Jackson's rhetorical question reflects my own personal experiences with negotiations about the publication of my dissertation in the form of a book. In February 1991, just after I had submitted my thesis for examination to the Australian National University, I returned to New Zealand to present copies of my thesis to the community in which I had lived and worked for altogether more than two years. During this visit my thesis was received enthusiastically. Many community members showed a special sense of pride when receiving a "book" on their seemingly ordinary lives. The leadership appreciated that I had returned to report back, although they did express some skepticism regarding the frank representation of internal squabbles. They promised to send detailed comments on the contents of my dissertation once it had been carefully read and discussed within the community. This promise was made in view of the understanding that my dissertation would be published as a book.

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Several months after my visit to New Zealand I received notification from the Australian National University that my thesis was accepted. At that stage I was still waiting for the comments on my thesis by the Maori community and its leadership. Hence I took steps to formally advise the Maori community of my intention to publish my dissertation as a book. I reminded them that I was still waiting to receive their comments and suggestions for revision. Much to my surprise, I received a brief and formal response to my letter from an influential chief who conveyed that the leadership of the tribe could not extend permission to the publication of my thesis. First, it would not be in the best interests of race relations in New Zealand since in their opinion there was an unnecessary emphasis in my thesis on dimensions of community life that could only be interpreted in a negative way by the press and the general public. This objection alluded to widespread Maori anxiety that any information regarding internal Maori politics might be misinterpreted by malicious antagonists of Maori autonomy, who aimed at instigating a backlash to slow down the momentum that Maori development processes had gained during the 1980s, the so-called decade of development. A second, more important reason for not extending permission to publication of my thesis concerned the fact that many of the individuals and groups who gave information to me claimed to have been unaware of my intention to publish that information. The manner in which the disapproval of publication was formulated was remarkable for several reasons. First, it was assumed that I needed their permission for publication, something we had never discussed beforehand. I had certainly never ceded control over my writings to the tribal leadership. They must have been aware that I treasured my independence as a scholar given the fact that they cosigned my grant application and received copies of all my field reports. They knew that in spite of my activities as development consultant, I was ultimately aspiring to a more contextual analysis in a dissertation on internal Maori politics and the way in which tradition and history were implicated. Further, the leadership made it seem as though they spoke on behalf of defenseless individuals in the community whose permission to report of their involvement in the social practice of the community I would in their view never have obtained. Realizing that in the Pacific research participants are traditionally the greatest critics of anthropology (Hau'ofa 1975; Crocombe 1976), I entered into debate with this paramount leader with an extensive letter, copies of which I sent to key persons in the community. Following the criticisms I had received

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of the ethics of my data collection procedures, implying that I had misled individuals in the community, I focused my response on the issue of informed consent. I argued that there could be no doubt about the fact that there was not a single soul in the community who did not know that the prime purpose of my stay was writing a doctoral dissertation that would be made available to others to read in the form of a book. In addition, I argued that there could be absolutely no uncertainty regarding the consent of the participants in the community to my reporting of my experiences as development consultant in an open manner. I substantiated this statement on the basis of two extensively detailed accounts of my permission from the management teams of two major development projects in which I had been involved. Both allowed me to report frankly of my involvement in their projects, which as a result figured as case studies in my thesis. I selected these two projects as they were mentioned as examples in the letter by the leadership withholding permission to publication. In my response I also tried to redirect the discussion toward the contents of my dissertation since in my view there could be no argument about the ethical implications of my fieldwork methodology. This must also be regarded against the background of the permission I had been given to conduct research and the fact that in the field I had distributed copies of all progress reports that I had written to keep my academic advisers in Australia informed. Hence it could not be argued that people in the community did not know what I was doing. For those reasons, too, I emphasized that I had been aware of the political sensitivity surrounding the topic of my thesis. Exactly for that reason I made a very clear offer to revise my thesis for publication in cooperation with the community. The response to my long explanation was more amenable to the thought of publication, but the crux of the matter was still circumvented carefully. The leadership was clearly reluctant to negotiate about the ethnographic discourse presented in my dissertation and maintained instead the focus on the ethics of academic research. It was mentioned that the community appreciated my concern and would gladly work with me in the revision of my thesis. At the same time, however, it was suggested that I send them a copy of the revised version of my thesis so that the individuals mentioned in my letter had the opportunity to review and comment on the draft before it was submitted for publication. Thus it was agreed that I would be looking for a publisher, and the community was prepared to cooperate in the revision. However, it was incor-

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rectly assumed that I would revise my dissertation before submitting it to the community for approval. To this I replied that I could not revise the dissertation unless I had received detailed comments from the community and its leadership for which I was still waiting. Until today, however, I have not yet received a single comment regarding the nature of the ethnographic discourse in my dissertation, this in spite of my persistent requests for comments on the contents and at least for an indication as to the nature of the revisions desired by the individuals about whom the leadership of the tribe was concerned.

Multiple Voices: The Role of the Gatekeeper My repeated requests for constructive criticisms and suggestions for revision had remained unanswered when in the beginning of 1994 I returned to New Zealand and visited the community in which I conducted my field research. Again I left behind numerous copies of my dissertation for people to read, and I asked many people to send me their comments. This gesture was, I believe, appreciated by people in the community. The local leader of the community even told me he did not realize there was an argument about the publication and in his opinion I should just go ahead and publish it. Subsequently he confirmed this view by accepting my invitation to him to write an introduction. This way I offered him the opportunity to publicly disagree with—aspects of — m y ethnography of the community. Given the positive response I received in the community, I was surprised to receive indications that the tribal leadership was still unhappy with my intentions to publish my dissertation. However, this was transmitted to me by the residential anthropologist in the community, an American woman who had decided to commit herself to Maori development after she had spent her sabbatical leave in the same community as I had conducted my fieldwork. She worked alongside the paramount chief of the tribe and also argued to be acting on behalf of the tribal leadership. I was invited for a lunch with the residential anthropologist, the community leader who had given permission for publication, and another American development consultant. The purpose of this meeting was to suggest to the community leader that I might not have been ethical. In fact, I should consult each individual mentioned in my dissertation and offer them the opportunity to review my representation of their participation in the community. It was even argued to be the proper "Maori" way of going about things, referring to

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the need for community involvement in decision-making and the ideological aim to reach consensus. I both discuss and dispute the practical implications of these ideological values at great length in my dissertation (van Meijl 1990, 116-120). My response to the American advocates of research ethics was that I would be willing to listen to what each and everyone had to say about my thesis, but that I had obtained the necessary permission to do what I did from the appropriate authorities whom I had consequently approached for negotiations about the presentation of the results. The community leader emerged somewhat confused from this meeting, as a result of which he advised me to meet with the tribal leadership. The leadership, however, was unavailable to meet with me directly. My impression was that until then my dissertation had not yet been discussed publicly. The leadership still had to consult the individuals to whom it had referred in correspondence. After all, I had met most people with whom I had been concerned during my fieldwork, and none of them had made a negative remark about my dissertation. Nevertheless, the leadership commissioned the residential American anthropologist to organize a public meeting in the community to discuss my work. The organization of this meeting, however, took so long that it did not take place until after I had left New Zealand. Thus the controversy surrounding my thesis was reinforced only after my departure from New Zealand. Shortly after I had returned to The Netherlands I received a long letter stating that I had not offered the community the opportunity to review my findings before they were published. The status of the latest copies of my dissertation that I had left behind had caused confusion as they were no longer bound, while the name of my current research institution, which subsidized the photocopying to enable me to distribute my thesis in the community and to offer it to colleagues and friends, was printed on the cover. Consequently, it was assumed that my university in The Netherlands had published my dissertation as a book. Although I had explained explicitly to several key figures in the community, including the residential anthropologist, that this was not the case, the misunderstanding about the current status of my dissertation caused the leadership of the community to commission the American anthropologist to write a detailed critique of my dissertation. The main criticism concerned the fact that in their view I had refrained from obtaining written informed consent from each individual mentioned in my thesis. At the same time, the voices claiming to speak on behalf of the community continue to refrain from entering into a debate about the nature of

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the ethnographic discourse in my writings. The trustworthiness of the thesis has as yet not been contested and has, in fact, been confirmed by most key persons in the community. Instead, the focus of critique remains on the ethics of my data collection procedures. The focus on "ethics" by the tribal leadership in the debate about the publication of my dissertation is in line with the general aspiration of many Maori and other indigenous peoples to turn political rights into inalienable human rights. In November 1994 the tribal leadership also took the opportunity to discuss the so-called ethical implications of my work at an open forum on "Indigenous Voices" about "Anthropology and Human Rights" at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. The critique on the alleged "immorality" of my intention to publish my ethnographic representation of Maori discourses of tradition concurs with the dominance of a moral appeal in the political campaigns of Fourth World minorities turning their view of morality into an essentialized ideology of resistance against colonial dominance (Dyck 1985). However, it is beyond the scope of this chapter to analyze the political implications of this perspective on morality in any detail. Nevertheless, in my view the request to obtain written informed consent to publication from each individual figuring in any of the case studies in my dissertation is beyond the import of any codes of ethics ever formulated by an association of anthropologists (see also Fluehr-Lobban 1991a, 1994). In spite of my disagreement with the terms of debate and my sincere doubts about the extent to which there is community support for the actions of the leadership and its gatekeeping consultants attempting to reinforce the justification of their own position within a highly contested field, I responded in great detail to each item mentioned in the critique of my work. I spent four weeks writing my rejoinder and discussing it with colleagues throughout the world, including the ethics committee of The Netherlands Association of Arts and Social Sciences, but at the time of this writing, some two years later, I have yet to receive a response from New Zealand. Clearly, the ethnographic discourse on Maori power and the Maori discourse on the power of ethnography do not match. The various implications of this debate require elaboration.

Culture Contested from Inside and Outside First and foremost, it is important to realize that different concepts of culture are at stake in the debate between anthropologists and indigenous people about the nature and purpose of ethnographic discourses. Recently the anthropolog-

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ical notion of culture has been subjected to some of the most radical rethinking since the 1960s. In the past one of the main assumptions about culture in anthropology concerned the idea that culture is widely shared within a given society. In view of the recent critique of anthropology, this presupposition can no longer be sustained (Dirks, Eley, and Ortner 1994, 3). The revision that the traditional concept of culture has undergone in anthropology has been aptly summarized by Fredrik Barth (1994, 356). He distinguishes three new features of the concept of culture in anthropology: multivocality, multiplicity of possible interpretations, and what he labels transcience. First, it is now widely accepted that "all concepts are embedded in practice," as a result of which the meanings of expressions with which people relate to the external world, including anthropologists, cannot be taken at face value, but must be understood in the context of social practices. This proposition is tied up closely with the second innovation of the anthropological notion of culture, namely the idea that "all views are singular and positioned" (Barth 1994, 357). This consideration makes it necessary to take into account heterogeneous views and the diversity of interests associated with them. It forces anthropologists to examine who makes certain statements, in what way, and under what conditions (see also Dirks, Eley, and Ortner 1994, 3). Both the diversity of positioning and the multiplicity of views have, finally, far-reaching implications for the construction of meaning, which as a result of the new point of departures in the study of culture has become eternally contestable (Keesing 1987). The constant contestability of meaning, in turn, is partly responsible for the dynamics of our research settings: "what really happened" is continuously a subject of internal debate (Barth 1994, 359). Although a neomodern conception of culture has had a permanent influence in the social sciences and the arts (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992, 45), its impact on postcolonial political ideologies, which are frequently phrased in terms of culture and tradition, is still negligible. Thus, Maori society can generally not be regarded as receptive toward a perspective on its peoples and practices as multivocal, fragmented, positioned, and transient. After all, Maori political ideology, too, is chiefly constructed in terms of a uniform culture and a primordial tradition. This is a direct result of colonial history in which culture and tradition were essentialized and reified as political referents for the construction of a united front in a historically diversified society (van Meijl 1996). In view of the colonial legacy in New Zealand, then, it is not surprising that some Maori people are reluctant to accept views of their society from within that are authored by outsiders, and which do not necessarily replicate the uni-

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versal referents to sociopolitical unity that are so characteristic of contemporary Maori politics (Cox 1993). It should be understood, however, that this reluctance itself is positioned in view of, in this case, tribal interests in controlling and constructing political ideology in terms of culture. As mentioned above, these reinforce the alienation of many pantribal Maori people from their own roots. Given the pastiche of politics in postcolonial societies, it is absolutely essential that anthropologists do not identify themselves with one particular faction in a fragmented field. In postcolonial situations anthropologists must step back and attempt at overviewing a multidimensional context. In other words, in postcolonial situations anthropologists must not speak for others, but about others (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992, 9). This proposition does not permit "others" to control anthropological representations since it inevitably involves a political agenda that compromises subaltern interests. A second implication of the debate about the publication of politically sensitive research reports is specifically tied up with the argument in my dissertation about the reification of tradition. After all, it is ironic that criticisms, political or otherwise, of the invention of tradition discourse are themselves rooted in an organic model of tradition, which has been inherited from the bipolar paradigm that originated during the Enlightenment and in which tradition either survives or dies. O f course, the concept of invention is in itself deeply problematic, falsely de-authenticating distinctive lifestyles and social processes that people themselves represent as "traditional." However, the answer to that is not to counterpose tradition as static and everlasting. In this context I would argue that the focus of concern is to be shifted from objectifications of traditions to the internal dynamics of the societies of indigenous peoples. In a seminal paper on the politics of indigenous peoples' struggles, Terence Turner (1979) advocates liberating the anthropological as well as the political discussion on indigenous peoples' rights from the straitjacket of attempting to deal with ethnic groups, societies, or cultures as if they were static and internally indivisible. These preconceived ideas, he argues, ensue from the paradigm of cultural pluralism emphasizing the relative autonomy of traditional societies. Turner cogently argues for the displacement of the relativistic and exotic conceptualization of the Other as autonomous, implying a reification as well as a politicization of cultural differences and radical alterity between the West and the Rest. Instead, he advocates a multivocal perspective on the divergence of conceptions and views within indigenous societies. This would lead to a better understanding of their internal political strife and associated dynamics. The corollary of this shift is not just that in accordance with recent innova-

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tions in the anthropological concept of culture it automatically entails a conceptualization of tradition as continuously changing, but it has also important implications for indigenous peoples' struggles for political autonomy. Nobody would still have to portray indigenous societies as essentially static, which in turn would optimize "people's ability to control, create, reproduce, change or adopt social and cultural patterns for their own ends" (Turner 1979, 12). Ultimately, the rejection of objectified notions of tradition and a wide-ranging perspective on internal divergence and dynamics would enable indigenous peoples such as the New Zealand Maori to enhance their control over the ways in which they represent their tradition as well as the conceptualization of their culture and values, both within their own society as well as in relation to European society. In that sense, the ideology of politics would itself become depoliticized, and dissertations like my own would no longer be potentially subversive. The third implication concerns the validity of ethnographic authority as claimed both by insiders and outsiders. I would argue that in the 1990s nobody can still presume to have privileged access to a more valid knowledge of the authentic cultural past, which is one of the main arguments Maori people express in public about anthropological representations of their society. In the postmodern era, neither anthropologists nor indigenous academics can still claim privileged knowledge, and since Maori and other Pacific Islanders are entitled to question anthropological representations of their past, academics should also be enabled to put in perspective indigenous idealizations of the precolonial past. Thus, I agree with the late Roger Keesing (1996) who turned the outsider-insider debate inside out in one of his last papers (see also Munro 1994). In view of the postmodernist claim that no account of the past (or the present) can be held absolutely true, there are presently no grounds for rejecting any representation or privileging any account over any other (Hastrup 1993; Narayan 1993). For that reason, Keesing (1996) argues that the cultural nationalist argument that "insiders" have a privileged view that "outsiders" cannot attain, should also be subjected to deconstructive and political critique. Indeed, the proposition that indigenous—"insiders"—discourses of culture and tradition are to be privileged against political critique from "outsiders" can no longer be sustained, particularly since in many cases we are talking about a small group of leaders and their associated gatekeepers, who claim to be representative because they have a vested interest in the cultural arguments that are at stake in the contested field of representation. The cultural validation of polit-

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ical ideologies is invariably articulated by a small group of insiders who are in a privileged position to present themselves as representatives, but who simultaneously have a strong personal interest to be served by representing "their people." "Political critique has historically been the task of outside insiders and inside outsiders," as Keesing (1996, 176) phrased it, and this is clearly also the case among many indigenous peoples' movements, including that of the New Zealand Maori people. In addition, it should be realized that very often there are conservative political agendas at the heart of indigenous arguments criticizing anthropologists for their alleged claim on privileged representations. In New Zealand, for example, the leadership of the Maori people with whom I worked is undoubtedly unhappy with my dissertation, since I have analyzed the recent emergence of tribal development strategies against the background of a growing urban proletariat that no longer identifies itself in terms of tribal identity and that is consequently marginalized by the enhanced emphasis on the role of tribal organizations in the context of tribal development (see van Meijl 1997, 1998, 1999). Tribal development can only be understood as an attempt to restore tribal authority in those quarters of Maori society that for historical reasons are losing touch with their tribal origins. In view of these debates, therefore, it is important to leave the whole discursive field open to interventions from every direction, inside or outside (see also the essay by Niko Besnier, chapter 2). Anthropologists cannot be expected to write exclusively for their informants; they must also publish about their analyses in the interest of comparative research in order to avoid the "theoretical involution" of their mode of analysis (Kuper 1994b, 551). For that reason, too, contributions to discussions on the representation of the culture and traditions of indigenous peoples are to be judged primarily on their analytical merits rather than their origins (Friedman 1995,422). As in the past Western scholars have obviously had a hegemonic power to construct history and truth, the expression of counterhegemonic voices must be regarded as urgent. But since these voices are nowadays also heard from the "underside" of indigenous societies themselves, no voices in a multisided debate and a contested representational field should be silenced, privileged, or made sacrosanct.

Partii

Regarding Ethnography

Chapter 6

The Tikopia and "What Raymond Said" Judith Macdonald Once upon a time on my way to Tikopia, 1 the captain of the ship on which I was traveling changed his mind about going to that distant island and unloaded me on the island of Santa Cruz, hundreds of miles from my destination. Knowing that I would have some weeks to fill before another ship could rescue me, I introduced myself to everyone I met and let it be known that I was going to Tikopia as an anthropologist. I was told that one of the nurses at the local hospital was a Tikopia and that he was an expert on traditional childbirth practices. I contacted him, and he agreed to tell me all he knew about childbirth in Tikopia. After giving me an hour of organized information, which I taped, he finished by saying, "at least, that's what Raymond said." Such tales are increasingly becoming part of the folklore of fieldwork (see, for example, Clifford 1986b, 116): the shaman consulting the definitive ethnography, the chief with a degree in anthropology, and every Samoan with an opinion on Margaret Mead. In relating what happened in the field, they confirm the partial nature of both the occurrence and the resultant narrative. The partiality lies both in predilection and incompleteness: the story that we or they want to tell about ourselves, which necessitates omission and editing. Once upon a previous time, on my way to an undergraduate degree in English, I was diverted by the story of a small island that was as convincing as the best science fiction. The island was mapped, its people named, their everyday chatter reported, and their important statements recorded. The story had a beginning, a middle, and an end, which was equally the term of the ethnographer's visit, the yearly cycle of the island (the seasons of the different food plants, monsoon, and tradewinds and the ritual cycle), and a continuity of the people through birth, copulation, and death. So I changed course and became an anthropologist in order to see these small and perfectly articulated societies of ethnography. Renato Rosaldo (1989, 32) refers to the "classic period" of ethnography, which he mock-seriously situates between 1921 and 1971. The ethnographies of this period he characterizes as objectivist, portraying holistic societies where society was a system; culture had a pattern. Raymond Firth's writings about

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Tikopia, a small Polynesian outlier in the predominantly Melanesian Solomon Islands, and his fieldwork there in 1928-1929 belong to this classic period, and his elegant delineation of system and pattern informed the nurse of my first anecdote and seduced me from another career. For me, We, the Tikopia2 described a society that was encompassable by the human mind in its tidy organization and its neatly interlocking parts. Functionalist analysis is deeply appealing, both in paradigm and application, because it makes humans, and therefore us, seem reasonable to ourselves. However, tidiness is not next to omniscience, and the reason of anthropologists, what Trinh Minh-ha has called "the reign of worn codes," has been strongly challenged: On one plane, we, I and he, may speak the same language and even act alike; yet on the other, we stand miles apart, irreducibly foreign to each other.. . . what I resent most, however, is not his inheritance of a power he so often disclaims, disengaging himself from a system he carries with him, but his ear, eye, and pen, which record in his language while pretending to speak through mine, on my behalf. (Trinh Minh-ha 1989, 47—48) These are the extreme and oversimplified points of the debate: the classic academic ethnography, holistic and positivist, versus the reclamation of power-todefine by the insider alone. More interesting questions are asked in the continuum. Does any society find itself usefully represented to the outside world through ethnography or by ethnographers? Does ethnography provide a model for (re)definition of self and society and to what end? A worldly wise Samoan friend who lives in New York said that, if he had to choose an image for general consumption, he would rather be Margaret Mead's happy hedonist than Derek Freeman's rabid rapist. However, that reduces culture to a slogan rather than a representation. The Tikopia liked what Firth wrote about them. 3 While the literacy rate was low on the island, there were men who had read some of Firth's books. There were also people alive who had known Firth and been his informants, and consequently there was discussion of his work. I was told by Tikopia that Firth, called in song Te Ariki o te Tusi, "the Chief of Writing," had made them famous throughout the world and that he had rightly recognized their importance. By contrast, they said, no one had bothered to write about their Mela-

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nesian neighbors (pace Roger Keesing and other ethnographers of the Solomon Islands). I therefore had to ask, when Tikopia made statements to me that occurred in the same form in the ethnography, whether they liked the Firth version of themselves so much that they had adopted it or was the ethnography the "truth."4 Was this the persistence of culture or were they quoting? I also had to ask when they told stories about things that had happened previously and those stories differed from Firth's, whether they were redefining themselves for some reason or whether Firth had been incorrect. There was also the issue of how they judged and used the writings of James Spillius and Eric Larson, their subsequent ethnographers. I, too, had liked Firth's version of this island and knew it well from his writings before I ever saw it. This raised a further question: not only whether Firth had invented the Tikopia, but whether he also invented me as an anthropologist. 5 The first ethnographer produces in the studied population certain expectations concerning subsequent fieldworkers. Equally, the first ethnography draws later fieldworkers into a relationship where they are caught between the immediacy of their own fieldwork and the written record—each experience triggers a memory of the ethnography. In my case, each fieldnote became a confirmation or rebuttal of Firth as well as a contemporary record. This was an interesting dilemma. The clarity of Firth's descriptions was inescapably superimposed on the Tikopia in which I lived because, although fifty years had passed, the changes in that society and the impact of Western ideas were not particularly strong. Some of the traditional religious ceremonies still existed, the household and personal names were the same, the island looked the same. There are three interconnected issues I want to pursue. First, what is the relationship of the Tikopia to the ethnographies written about them? Have the Tikopia used ethnography to define or promote a certain identity? Alternatively, do their stories of significant happenings vary from the ethnographic record and, if so, why? There are stories that they tell about themselves and their place in the world that suggest a conscious creation of themselves vis-àvis the Other (European or Melanesian). The second issue is that of the role actually played by anthropologists in some of the Tikopia's dealings with the larger political and economic world of the Solomon Islands. That is, what was the effect of ethnographies and other representations of the Tikopia to outsiders? When the anthropologists acted as cultural brokers on behalf of the Tikopia, they sometimes depicted them in terms that were designed to communicate with an audience that was neither academic nor indigenous but rather

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represented a narrow sectorial interest. However, the outcome produced was to the advantage of the Tikopia. While these writings may not be strictly defined as "ethnographic," the material on which they were based came from traditional fieldwork. The third issue grows in part out of the second: new modes of representation have been developed in anthropology to communicate with the academy, for and with the subjects, and for interest groups. But also at issue is the effect of ethnography on later fieldworkers, both in their relationship with earlier anthropologists and in the expectations generated in the subjects. This is ethnography as recursive loop where the original is recycled with commentary that does not pretend to impartiality.

The Tikopia and Ethnography The title of Firth's first book about the island, We, the Tikopia, was not fortuitous; it was, he said, a translation of "a native expression which is constantly on the lips of the people themselves. It stands for a community of interest, that self-consciousness, that strongly marked individuality in physical appearance, dress, language and custom which they prize so highly" (1936, xxi). This suggests that the Tikopia had a sense of themselves in relation to outsiders before the first ethnography of them appeared. As Jocelyn Linnekin and Lin Poyer (1990, 1) point out, previous assumptions that the Pacific Islands were geographic isolates and culturally homogeneous are no longer valid (if, in fact, they ever were). The archaeological record shows that there were extensive trade and other networks in the Pacific long before Europeans arrived. Firth saw Tikopia in 1929 as "almost untouched by the outside world" (1936, 3). However, this appears to have meant relatively untouched by the European world. Certainly, Europeans rarely found the small island in the early days of Pacific exploration from the Northern Hemisphere, but this is a Eurocentric and passive reading of the Tikopia, which ignores their own extensive voyaging in the Pacific and the effect this had on their definition of themselves. To me in 1980, the appearance of the island and its inhabitants—the leaf houses, the barkcloth clothes, the canoes—also suggested an uncontaminated tropic idyll. However, the impression was not entirely accurate. Tikopia has been influenced by the wider world, but it has mainly been from a greater distance in time and space than more accessible islands, a distance that has given the Tikopia greater latitude to judge, choose, and assimilate change and, in the process, define themselves as individuals and as a society. Some of their defi-

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nition of themselves takes its authority from ethnography, as other elements of their accepted history differ from the eyewitness accounts of the original happening. I began this essay with a story about a Tikopia nurse quoting Firth's ethnography to me. He added that Firth had been given his information by elders w h o had direct knowledge of such matters and therefore the information was true. That Firth's informants included the ariki gave weight to what he had written. A chief does not make direct statements or give orders; his maru (executive officer) does this for him. To some extent, the anthropologist was seen in a similar role as amanuensis. Virtually no one on the island could read when Firth's books first were published, and even more recently only a few men and virtually no women can read this material easily. Nonetheless, there was a sense of Firth being the definitive authority and the authentic voice of the chiefs. A woman w h o is the granddaughter of the original Melanesian missionary told me to read Firth's account of her grandfather's coming to the island. She herself could not read, but she knew which book contained the story. A man whose line could be described as chief makers but not chiefs said that his family knew they were the "origin of the island," there before the chiefs. " W e do not say anything, w e just know and the ariki know and Firth knew and wrote it down." It was not simply that Firth wrote about claims to nobility or importance; he also wrote of families that carried the strain of albinism, and a person discussing a specific albino man said that he came from one of the lines Firth had identified. Similarly, an episode of insanity described in We, the Tikopia was referred to by a descendant of the brother of the mad w o m a n — " i t is known that there is madness in our family and Firth wrote it down." This was verification of history. There are certain sociocultural aspects or characteristics that any group chooses to prize and promote when it is necessary to define itself vis-à-vis another group. B y contrast, when there is a significant inequality in power, as in the impact of Western colonization, certain aspects of a culture are suppressed. A dominant Western invasion of a society was often supported by fiats against speaking the local language or using various customs defined by mission or administration as immoral or barbarous. Throughout this century the Tikopia did not, with the exception of Christianity, face a particularly powerful imposition of other rules and customs. Distance from the administrative centers of the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu muted external government. The small land area and population did not draw many labor recruiters

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or settlers, and missionaries were prevented from settling on the island until the early 1900s. There are still no Europeans permanently resident on the island. That meant that innovations (usually material ones such as the introduction of tobacco and cats) were often introduced by the Tikopia themselves returning from voyaging elsewhere. These innovations needed to be accepted by the chiefs and their executive officers. 6 For the Polynesian Tikopia, their sense of identity probably first developed during voyages among their Melanesian neighbors. Precontact, the Solomons did not constitute a political entity. In an area where more than sixty different languages are spoken, each island was to a large extent autonomous. This set the basis for a continued assertion of separate identity in postcontact times when some Tikopia permanently settled in other parts of the Solomons but continued to hold to their language, customs, and dress, 7 justifying their practices, not just as custom, but more specifically as Tikopian. This sense of autonomy also influenced their dealings with the introduction of some European institutions, which often came to them mediated through Melanesians. From this strong sense of themselves as Tikopia, all their contacts with other groups of people and other ways of life have been molded uniquely, and syncretically, into something of Tikopia. While some of their accounts of the adoption of new religions and technologies, of their response to overpopulation and migration, and of their relationship with the wider Solomon Islands and its administration may appear as post hoc rationalizations of the inevitable, these accounts illustrate Tikopia ideas about the ways in which they coped successfully with change while maintaining the integrity of their cultural identity. In these cases, my informants were not particularly bound by earlier written versions of significant changes, such as the conversion of the island to Christianity and migration. The latter not only had the potential for wage earners to amass and return money and Western consumer goods to an island virtually unable to generate either internally, but it also exposed traveling Tikopia to other ways of life. Of more minor impact, from the Tikopia point of view, are the bureaucratic structures, first of colonial government and then of the independence of Solomon Islands from British rule and the establishment of indigenous government.

Colonial Impact The Melanesian Mission (Anglican) first made contact with Tikopia in 1858, but a mission teacher was not allowed to live on the island until 1907.8 He was

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a Melanesian man from the Banks Islands who subsequently married a Tikopia woman and lived on Tikopia the rest of his life. Tikopia was never subjected to missionization by Europeans who in the early days of contact had a distaste for local customs and a tendency to extirpate them. As well, Tikopians did not in any way feel inferior to their Melanesian neighbors, and therefore Melanesian missionaries and later administrators, while bringing about change, did not do so with the full impact of a European colonial power. Because of its isolation, Tikopia also appears in the early contact period to have been exposed to only the one form of Christianity, and that mediated not through Europeans but first through Melanesians and later ordained Tikopia themselves. Lacking the pressure of competing doctrines, the Tikopia worked out an accommodation of Christianity that ultimately preserved many of their traditional practices. In some other Pacific Islands, Christian missionaries introduced the idea of competitive giving of money to the church and required members to wear Western-style clothing, practices that required the indigenous people not only to change their spiritual belief systems, but also required them to earn money and enter into nontraditional exchange relationships. The lack of any avenue for earning money in Tikopia meant that the Tikopia were not forced into a Western economic system at the same time they espoused Christianity, so the disruption caused by the introduction of new ways was minimized. In 1955 the entire island finally converted to Christianity when the remaining pagan chiefs decided that too many commoners had become Christian and that, for the unity of the island, all should share the same faith. The old chiefs thereupon called for baptism and made a final kava for their gods. Firth notes that the Ariki Taumako's action in dismissing his gods "was made in terms of a choice between alternatives; he did not intellectually reject the idea that his gods still existed, he decided not to worship them any longer" (1970, 391). Unlike Ariki Kafika, he did not bury his sacred objects but instead set them out in a small house to the seaward side of his living house. By 1980 this house was described to me (in English) as a "museum," and the fact that the old chief still made food offerings to the objects was tacitly ignored by the resident Melanesian Mission priest (a Tikopia and member of the Taumako clan). The Ariki Taumako, one of Firth's friends and informants, told me that Firth had described how sacred objects from other countries were matters of interest and respect when they were displayed in institutions called museums. To counter the usual missionary charge that pagan ritual objects were "of the darkness," the chief therefore renamed his sacred house a "museum." By 1980 the recounting of Tikopia's conversion to Christianity had been

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slightly recast. While the story of the conversion of the ariki was still told in the way Firth records it, in discussions about the general conversion of the island the emphasis had changed from one of the historical accident of initial contact by the Melanesian Mission to a story of choice. The story is now told that the chiefs had looked at the religions available in the Solomons and had rejected Catholicism on the grounds that it was unnatural to have unmarried priests. Seventh Day Adventism (adopted by another Polynesian outlier, Bellona) was rejected because their food prohibitions based on the abominations of Leviticus (which included shellfish and certain species of fish) would deplete their diet. The Melanesian Mission, it was said semijokingly, was chosen because it placed the fewest demands on the people. This assertion of free choice and perceived lack of doctrinal rigidity is not the same as Firth's experience of the pressures exerted by the missionary. He reports that, in the early days of conversion, reversion to pagan customs such as the young men growing their hair and taking part in the old dances was punished by suspension from the church for a period. Of even greater import was the largely successful missionary ban on informal sexual liaisons among the unmarried. These liaisons were not expected to result in children; reproduction was deemed appropriate only for married couples, and one method of population control was to limit the number of people who might marry. Missionary pressure removed this limit and encouraged marriage among the sexually active, which resulted in a later population explosion and the need for some permanent migration. But by 1980 the Tikopia firmly believed they had completely controlled their conversion. This version of events clearly had allowed them to take control of the language and priesthood of the church, revive several aspects of traditional ritual, and make some accretions to their Anglicanism that were indigenous. While the colonial (and later, independent) administration in Honiara had formulated laws and regulations for the government of the Solomons, Tikopia's acquiescence to central control was selective on their side and rarely enforced by regional or national authorities. In part this was because of Tikopia's small size and isolation—it was no threat to the internal stability of the Solomon Islands. However, this reinforced Tikopia belief in their self-determination and their sense of separateness from the Solomons. (Their habit of referring to trips away from Tikopia as "going to the Solomons" showed that they essentially believed, or at least acted as though, they were separate and independent.) All adult males in the Solomons were required to pay a tax to the govern-

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ment. In 1952 it was a few shillings a year (cf. Firth 1959, 125-126). Almost every island group, with the exception of Tikopia, paid this poll tax. The government had decided that, in view of the lack of resources in Tikopia, it was not necessary to pursue the matter for the time being. However, by the 1960s there were considerable numbers of Tikopia living and working in other parts of the Solomons, and they refused to pay taxes. Firth (1969) details the grounds for this stance, which he suggests was caused by a misunderstanding between chiefs and government. Matters came to a head in 1966 when Firth was on his third visit to Tikopia and the district commissioner came to the island to discuss the matter with the chiefs. Firth (1969, 366) reports that the chiefs ordered all Tikopia to come to the meeting dressed in traditional clothing: "[I]t was clear that they wished to have a gesture of solidarity made manifest to the government officer—that the people were pronouncing themselves to be Tikopia, marking themselves off from the white man's world, and so indicating their support for the chiefs, in concrete fashion." Firth left the island before the matter was resolved, but he later heard that the Tikopia in paid employment elsewhere paid taxes in subsequent years after some further discussion. The government, sensibly in Firth's view, had treated the problem as one of communication and the need for political education (1969, 374) rather than one that required them to challenge the chiefs directly. By the early 1980s there was a widely known and reworked version of this occurrence. The story was told to me by Tikopia and Melanesian alike, and the style of its telling suggested that it had become mythic and was part of the Tikopian view of their own autonomy. The story of Tikopia's exemption from paying taxes relates that in the time of the old Ariki Kafika the government decided the Tikopia must also pay a tax. The Tikopia refused to pay because, as they rightly pointed out, most families had no source of income. While the Tikopia working in other parts of the Solomons would happily pay taxes in their area, in Tikopia itself it was impossible. The government thereupon sent a boat to Tikopia with officials to tell the Tikopia that the law insisted they pay. The government, it was pointed out, gave the Tikopia a dresser and medicine for the clinic, it paid for the two teachers, and it sent a boat every several months to the island. Their taxes would pay for these services, which might otherwise have to be discontinued. The Ariki Kafika, to whom these facts were told, said that the government could take away its dresser and medicine, that the Tikopia had managed perfectly well with their traditional medicines in the past and would again. The

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government could, he said, also take its teachers—there were Tikopia, trained as teachers, who would return to the island and teach for nothing if their ariki required it. And as for the government boat—here the Ariki covered his head and body with a cloth, which cut off his beneficent power. Then three freak waves came up out of a still sea and smashed the superstructure of the government boat. The government officials hurried back to their ship and sailed away. And that is why Tikopia does not pay taxes to this day. The three items supplied by the government and the three waves suggest a story elaborated in the telling. (And the number of tellers who were on that ship and saw the waves with their own eyes suggests a government boat the size of the Lusitania.) Nonetheless, the Tikopia on the home island were still not paying poll tax in 1980, and their belief in their chief's superior powers (and the Melanesian confirmation of that power) has added to their sense of their own autonomy and their ability to withstand bureaucratic and political intervention. That Tikopia in other parts of the Solomons should rightly pay taxes is taken for granted in half a sentence, while in Firth's eyewitness version it was the central issue in a dispute that lasted for several years. John Shotter, in his essay "Rhetoric and the Roots of the Homeless Mind," discusses the way in which the stories we tell about ourselves create and recreate our lives: "a political ethics is in operation in which we are in contest with others for the very nature of our being, for the kind of person we feel we would like to be" (1993, 60). The Tikopia quite clearly define themselves as they would like to be and have, to an extraordinary extent, persuaded others to share that definition.

The Anthropologist as Cultural Broker Since the mid-1800s labor recruiters have visited the Pacific Islands looking for laborers for enterprises variously in Peru, Australia, and other parts of the Pacific. Tikopia was not a prime target for recruiters who wanted to fill their ships quickly, but the island was affected nonetheless. Some men were taken to Queensland in the late nineteenth century but few survived. Firth reports that, of a group of twenty who were taken to a plantation in Guadalcanal about the turn of the century, only one survived, although the manager of the plantation absolved them from plantation work when they became dispirited with homesickness. A similar proportion survived other labor recruitments, and children taken away to mission schools also pined and died (Firth 1936, 42).

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After this the government exempted Tikopia and other Polynesian outliers in the Protectorate from labor recruiting. In 1949 another attempt was made to use Tikopia as laborers in a Unilever plantation in the central Solomons. A large number died of malaria, some of unhappiness, and all disliked working with the Malaitans whose magic they feared. Neither did they settle easily to routine work with set hours and quotas to be met, and the whole enterprise was a failure. In 1953 Tikopia was in a poor state, recovering from the famine that followed two cyclones. If men could go away to work it would both relieve the pressure of population on the devastated island and also allow the absent workers to send food home to relatives on the island. However, Unilever staff, unimpressed by the Tikopia's past work record, were not enthusiastic about recruiting any more Tikopia. The local manager found them charming, pathetic in their innocence of the outside world, and hopeless as plantation workers, so the company decided, to the dismay of the people, to recruit no more Tikopia (Spillius 1957, 93). While Firth informally advised the Tikopia chiefs of his views on the payment of taxes and their relationship with the government of the Solomon Islands, James Spillius, who was with Firth on his second visit to Tikopia in 1 9 5 2 - 1 9 5 3 , intervened in this case, at the request of the chiefs, to explain the Tikopia to a multinational corporation. He described Tikopia work patterns and social and economic relations and asked for another trial. As a result of his intervention the recruiter agreed to take more Tikopia. They were given land to cultivate for their own needs, land for a church, and flexible working hours. They were not required to work with the Malaitans. Under the more liberal and understanding treatment the new workers received, their production outstripped the Malaitans, previously the best workers. The experiment was successful, and it set the pattern for Tikopia migrants to build an environment congenial to themselves rather than having to adapt completely to the conditions of their host area. No other labor group was accorded such privileges. Firth's anthropological record and direct intervention by Spillius helped explain the Tikopia to outsiders and alter the treatment they received. It was, to the Tikopia, another piece of evidence that convinced them that their traditional way of life was taken seriously, especially by Europeans, and that anthropologists and their information could be used to further Tikopian ends. Spillius did not write an ethnography, as such, about the Tikopia. His description of their customs and beliefs was made verbally to Unilever managers and

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perhaps exists in briefing papers to the company. His one accessible written record of this intervention was written for the Unilever house magazine, Progress. In this article Spillius (1957) uses the word "simple" several times: the Tikopia were taught simple techniques; they failed to grasp a simple idea. He wrote that their dances made a "frightful din," that they presented "novel and difficult problems," and that aspects of their behavior were "characteristic of many primitive societies, especially in the early stages of contact." Spillius explained his position: "The assistance I was able to offer as a social anthropologist lay in interpreting each side to the other, culturally as well as linguistically. Because of his technical knowledge, an anthropologist can provide on the spot information on aspects of native culture that are directly related to plantation work" (1957, 96). Despite its paternalism, this proved to be effective cultural brokerage, and it grew from a request by the Tikopia themselves. It was also couched in terms that are patronizing and stereotypical but comprehensible to European business managers. Trinh Minh-ha's criticism of the voice that writes the Other (1989, 47^4-8) can easily be invoked against Spillius. However, that is too easy an exercise against something written forty years ago, and more subtle analysis should be applied. While it is probably not a representation of themselves that the Tikopia would like, Homi Bhabha's concept of "stereotype-as-suture," provides more useful discussion, in this context, on the construction of discriminatory knowledges that depend on the "presence of difference" (1994, 80). Spillius gave Unilever management an understanding that stitched together a useful praxis. It also gave the Tikopia a presence in the labor market that was to their liking. Ten years after Spillius' intervention, Eric Larson, who worked with Tikopia now well settled on the Unilever plantation at Nukufero, wrote about TikopiaUnilever labor management relations from an economic perspective:

The present extension of accommodation to Tikopia labor. . . helps to create an image of liberal, enlightened, and beneficent enterprise. [However], [w]ill Lever's, for its part, continue to take advantage of Tikopia ethnocentrism and maintain a separation of the various ethnic groups now employed on the estate? . . . Lever's managers made it no secret that they trusted Tikopia laborers more than Melanesians, whom they saw (correctly) as more militant and sophisticated in their relationship with the company.... The Melanesians, themselves disgruntled by the special treatment received by their Polynesian counterparts, could be expected

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to reject them as collaborators in the struggle against management, and the continuing split in labor's ranks would enable Lever's to carry on indefinitely with a policy of divide and rule (Larson 1970, 208-209). The Tikopia's treatment by Levers, and in later matters such as their resettlement in Makira, confirmed to them that they were indeed separate from the wider Solomon Islands polity (both during colonization and after independence) and could negotiate to their own benefit in dealings with both multinationals and the government. If ethnography and ethnographers could be used to the same end, well and good.

Ethnographers and Ethnography Ethnography speaks to the subjects, to interested outsiders, and to other anthropologists, each audience taking something different from the same text. Tikopia has a clear lineage of ethnography beginning with a powerful ancestor: Firth, whose fieldwork was carried out in 1928-1929, and briefly in 1952 and 1966; Spillius, who was in Tikopia in 1952-1953; and Larson, who worked with the Tikopia in the Unilever plantations on Nukufero from 1964 to 1965. Firth, Spillius, and Larson over a period of forty years each represented the Tikopia through ethnography that must be recognized as "historically contingent and culturally configured" (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992, 9). Therefore, in accordance with the changing tropes of anthropology and their own theoretical perspectives, Firth records, Spillius intervenes, and Larson critiques. The Tikopia themselves say they are pleased with the way in which they have been portrayed by all these writers, but an increase in literacy and access to the many publications on them may (or may not) change this view. Rosaldo (1989, chap. 2) reports on Chicano dissatisfaction with most ethnography written about them and, in parodying the ethnographic style to write about American customs, points up what he calls the "problem of validity in ethnographic discourse [which] has reached crisis proportions" (49). But perhaps the central issue in ethnographic writing is not a search for validity or any other single accomplishment. Critics such as the Comaroffs have implied that ethnography is inadequate in its "naive empiricism, its philosophical unreflectiveness, its interpretive hubris" (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992, 8). However, the same authors argue, ethnography personifies, in its methods and models, the inescapable dialectic of fact and value to present accounts that are refrac-

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tory representations but nonetheless can be grounded in the social, cultural, and historical (9). There is also the creative tension that comes from multiple accounts and many audiences. All of these writers affected my fieldwork and interpretations. While some of Firth's records from his three periods of fieldwork differ from current versions of the same incidents, these are minor matters and common to all human groups who edit and retell their histories. More notable is the congruence of information between informants separated by fifty years. I collected statements about the position of women who leave their husbands, what constitutes beauty, why the Ariki Kafika is first among equals, the place of betel chewing on social occasions, and a thousand other details of Tikopia life. Time and again my recorded statements were almost identical in form and content with statements Firth had published in his ethnographies. 9 While I ask ironically in my introduction whether they had read the book, one must also take account of a history that was not as disrupted as many in the Pacific. Perhaps the stories of self, developed in a less confrontational environment, last longer because of continuing relevance and therefore remain to be transmitted to anthropologists over several generations. Or perhaps, in a society that respects the ariki and elders, if Firth said his information came from respected people it was deemed incontrovertible. Subsequent anthropologists—Spillius and Larson—dealt with specific problems such as the Unilever crisis and the new settlements of Tikopia. Neither they, nor I, have attempted the grand ethnography, in part because the changes were not so great that a new detailing of kin relations or land tenure (except in the settlements) was required. Instead, we followed administrative, economic, or feminist trails. In my case feminism put a subtle slant into the discourse between Firth's ethnography and me and the Tikopia transmitting Firth and their culture to me. At the time of my fieldwork, anthropology was examining its failure to represent women except through the eyes of male informants of male anthropologists. 10 Second-generation female anthropologists reexamining societies described by male anthropologists often found that the thoughts and activities of the women had been accorded less importance than they deserved. Before going to Tikopia I read Firth's work carefully, and I was also aware of the work on other Polynesian societies, especially descriptions of the role of women. It seemed to me that although Firth had described Tikopia women sympathetically, in comparison with other Polynesian societies they appeared to have less social and ritual importance. This, to my mind, was prob-

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ably the result of Firth as a male being excluded from women's groups, a deficiency I planned to remedy. Fieldwork and inclusion in women's groups (and exclusion from men's groups) soon showed me that Tikopia women of 1980 had even less social and ritual importance than Firth had suggested for earlier times. Many young men had left the island by 1980 for paid labor elsewhere in the Solomons. Often they married women of other islands, and the supply of potential husbands for young Tikopia females was dwindling; only one in three girls could expect to marry, a state that brought the only status to which a woman could aspire. The loss of young men to migration also increased the workload of the single women. They had to climb coconut trees, squeeze coconut cream, and occasionally paddle canoes—all activities previously forbidden to females. This assumption of male duties did not, however, include an assumption of male importance. Rather, it appeared to be provoking a tighter redefinition of the position of women (which, in Tikopia, is on their knees in the presence of males). My relationship with the ethnography of Tikopia was also paradoxical. To win my professional spurs I had to produce my own version of the island, tell my own just-so story. Mary Louise Pratt, in her delightful "Fieldwork in Common Places" (1986), suggests ethnographic roles—the Firthian scientistking, the Evans-Pritchardesque explorer-adventurer—that one plays after enacting the arrival narrative. My ship arrived at dawn, nature imitating art as it so often and elegantly does. Thus I could produce a creditable opening narrative. Thereafter, I rather liked the idea of being an intrepid Victorian woman traveler (the sort that rode through deserts with Bedouin), transcending my sex and conversing equally with men and women. The Tikopia however, having been anthropologized previously, had a much clearer perception of my role, first as a woman and second as a fieldworker, and they were firm in enforcing it. It also involved defining me. In this male-dominated society, a woman had to be under the care of family males, and I was often asked why my husband had let me out alone. It was also assumed that Raymond Firth was in a father relationship to me and that therefore the Tikopia had a responsibility to look after me. Consequently, I was attached to a family and a young married man in the role of my son-in-law technically could tell me what to do. He told me to stop wandering round the island" talking to everyone and said that if I wanted to learn to be a Tikopia woman (the anthropologist's opening gambit backfiring) I should stay in my house unless I was required to work in the family gardens. The directions of the other men were less domestically spe-

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cific, but they all included doing what men told me and getting information about the island from men because the women were ignorant. An interesting corollary of this was that they also said that everything Raymond had written was allegedly correct if I questioned it in any way. Tikopia women do not question the actions and statements of their men, always in ideology, usually in practice. There were also areas of knowledge that were regarded as being the domain of males only and not of concern to women. These included religion, politics, and public affairs. It was recognized that I knew more than I should about old ritual matters from Firth, but an explicit order went out from a senior man that I should not be shown any of the ritual paraphernalia kept at Uta, the site of many of the most sacred traditional rituals, and that it was inappropriate to discuss such matters with me, although some men did. A second problem arose in that my informants kept quoting Firth (or the ethnographic validity that Firth had inscribed). Pratt (1986, 28-32) also discusses the controversial work of Florinda Donner (1982), Shabono, in which Donner produced an ethnographically correct account of the Yanomamo, but there was some suspicion that it had come from the existing and detailed literature on that group rather than from Donner's own fieldwork. Would I therefore be suspected of writing another We, the Tikopia from a hotel in Honiara? Alternatively, would I be seen as a traitor to feminism in that I had not exposed a ferocious androcentrism? I pose my paradox ironically. In truth, I collected information for another version of a Tikopia fifty years on from Firth's first visit, I spoke to women and gained new insights from a paradigm undreamed in 1929. Then I wrote a thesis in a manner appropriate to my status in the discipline because, according to Paul Rabinow, one cannot be experimental without tenure. After that my representation of the Tikopia engaged with the symbolic and reflexive, seeking a voice to describe my perceptions of Tikopia. But under my voice was an imbrication of voices: Firth's, the Tikopia's, the Tikopia quoting Firth, and a discipline trying hard to get it right.

Notes I would like to thank all the participants in the "Ethnography of Ethnography" sessions at the ASAO meetings in Florida and Hawai'i who commented on my paper. I am very grateful to Jane Fajans (Cornell), who sent me detailed and useful comments. I also thank my colleague Tom Ryan for useful references and discussion, and espe-

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cially I thank Michael Goldsmith who has read every draft of this paper, his erudition and insights contributing to each rewriting. I . 1 carried out fieldwork in the Solomon Islands in 1979-1980, first with a group of resettled Tikopia in Nukukaisi village, Makira Island, and later in Tikopia itself. 2. In this chapter I refer to the first edition of We, the Tikopia (1936). 3. Richard Feinberg writes that his fieldwork in Anuta was made easier by the Anutans' knowledge of Firth's sympathetic writings about Tikopia and the Tikopians' respect and arofa for Firth (Feinberg 1979). 4. Niko Besnier addresses the question of a "cover story" in chapter 2. 5. Tom Ryan has referred me to John and Jean Comaroff who report seeing in 1968 the following graffito on a lavatory door at London School of Economics: "Is Raymond Firth real or just a figment of the Tikopian imagination?" (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992, 9). 6. During my fieldwork in 1980,1 saw returning contract laborers bringing chairs to Tikopia. The tapu of the head makes it inappropriate for one person to sit higher than another. Therefore, it was made clear to the chair owners that these items could become storage shelves but they were not to be sat upon in Tikopia. 7. Tikopia women often continued to wear a skirt and no top in their settlements in other parts of the Solomon Islands. The skirt may have been of bought cloth rather than barkcloth, but the definition of which parts of the body should be covered continued to be traditionally Tikopia despite Melanesian neighbors referring to female bare-breastedness as samting blong bus, "something belonging to the bush," that is, primitive. 8. See Firth 1936 and 1970 for a discussion of the conversion of Tikopia to Christianity. 9. My thesis supervisor was well versed in the Tikopia corpus. Several times while reading drafts of my thesis she marked passages and said that I should acknowledge the quotation from Firth. With irritation, I replied that they had said it to me, too. 10. This is, of course, both a generalization and an oversimplification of the state of the discipline. Such a gross statement is used as a portmanteau to carry the discussion on rather than rehearsing all the details of the development of the anthropology of women or feminist anthropology. I I . He used the word takavare, which means to wander aimlessly like an adolescent.

Chapter 7

Will the True Ethnographer Step Forward The Asmat Case Sjoerd R. Jaarsma "Describing the Asmat" has been a discontinuous effort over the years, with ethnographers from a diversity of backgrounds adding both new information and new insights.1 Elsewhere in this volume Judith Macdonald shows how the ethnographic discourse on Tikopia is dominated by the work of one man, Raymond Firth. The reasons for this particular configuration can be found in the nature of Firth's ethnographic work, the context in which subsequent ethnographic work was done, and the way Firth's statements became embedded in Tikopia culture itself. For just the same reasons Asmat ethnography has a quite different configuration. I qualified the ethnographic discourse on the Asmat as discontinuous. We can, in fact, discern a number of seemingly independent discourses based on the background against which they were written and on the audience addressed. Thus we can discern between a Dutch and a later American missionary discourse; a Dutch administrative discourse; academic discourses in Dutch, Bahasa Indonesia, and the English language, each developing on its own premises; discourses on Asmat art; and lastly a discourse on homosexuality both on an academic and a popular level. West Irian: A Bibliography (van Baal, Galis, and Koentjaraningrat 1984), in evaluating Asmat ethnography up until the late 1970s, also states that no authoritative statement can be discerned. Still, there is an explicit assumption of authority in a number of discourses. Dutch academic anthropology locates such authoritativeness in a study by two missionary ethnographers published in 1955 (Zegwaard and Boelaars 1955, 1982). A recent comparative study of cultures along the south coast of New Guinea (Knauft 1993) additionally attributes authority to the work of David Eyde (1967), an academic anthropologist who worked in the area in the early 1960s. To evaluate these different judgments we need to look more closely at how ethnographic discourses define authoritative ethnography. 2 The relation between the different discourses can for instance be seen as historical, in terms of their involvement in the pacification and the subsequent introduction of both market economy and state infrastructure in the same area.

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Similarly, we will see that Bruce Knauft's contribution to the overall analysis of Asmat ethnographic material is dictated by his focus on large-scale comparison across New Guinea. Again, we can perceive historical relations here, though in this specific instance owing to the development of anthropological method and theory, replacing the call for holistic description in academic anthropology with more sophisticated procedures. If we wish to retain an overview of what is said on the Asmat, we will have to make sense of these differential "connections." It is obvious that there is not one single, right way to go about this. Given the context of this volume, I am electing to focus on what I consider to be an essential part of any ethnographic discourse: the assumption or attribution of ethnographic authority. Marilyn Strathern states: "The very activity of 'representation' [as takes place in ethnographic writing] is . . . queried in the current critique that no more nor less than the people he or she studies can the ethnographer occupy a position outside his or her productions . . . the ethnographer can no longer pretend to be a neutral vector for the conveying of information; her or his own participation in the constructed narrative must be made explicit" (1991, 7). It is only through such explicitness that we may become aware of the angle at which we are looking at society and the differences this may provide in our interpretation of the available material. Paraphrasing Stephen Tyler (1986, 128), Strathern states that the ethnographer does not "represent" a society, but provides a reader with a connection to it, a possibility to conceive it. She shows that such connections cannot be but partial, that they show the focus with which the researcher looks at his or her object of study, and the shared ideas or interests that took her or him into the field. In fact, we should take this where possible one step further and indicate how the researcher/ethnographer himself "connects" to the people studied. 3 Operationalizing this in terms of a search for ethnographic authority may not quite convey the meaning that Strathern gives to the concept of connecting, but it does convey the dynamic nature that exists, or should be seen to exist, among researcher/ethnographer, audience, and people studied.

Authority In consequence, I do not see authority as an absolute phenomenon but as relative to a discourse resulting from the exercise or acceptance of power. 4 Here, I take a discourse to be the authoritative exchange of ideas concerning a shared

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interest in a certain topic or subject. As such it implies (1) a set of persons exchanging ideas in a specific context of relations, (2) an amount of knowledge and/or information shared, and (3) a possible relation of power (authority) either between the persons involved or between them and the knowledge and information contained. We can approach authority then in a number of different ways that are not necessarily distinct, but that can be distinguished analytically. We can distinguish authority as being given to, or taken by one or more actors, or perceived to exist by participants and/or subjects. Authority as "given" in the context of a research situation can be distinguished in two different forms. Authority can be given by the people being studied, or by persons acting on their behalf (advocates), to the researcher. In a more general sense we speak here of something that has been described by John Barnes as "gatekeeping" (1980, 13-15), the ability of certain persons or institutions linked to a research situation to allow or deny the researcher access to sources of information. This should in my eyes not be seen as a role in the way Barnes does, but as a general behavior pattern that is part of research. All involved in this process will, where possible, try to influence access to information, thus attempting to define what is appropriate to be studied and what not. In this sense the researcher is given authority to report on certain aspects of that to which he has been given access. This "giving" of authority might even be taken one step further, in which the researcher is actively used by the people he studies (or by third-party interests) to report on what he observes in a certain way. In this sense he might begin to play a role in redefining the identity of the people studied to the outside world. The discussion on reinventing tradition indicates that this is in fact an increasingly common occurrence. This is probably one of the types of authority that is hardest to track down, especially in older ethnographic material. While it will have played a role throughout the history of ethnographic description, indications of researchers having been manipulated in the field have only begun surfacing in the "confessional" literature of the 1960s. The researcher is, of course, not dependent upon others to assume authority vis-à-vis his audience. Most, if not all, ethnographies, certainly those within the academic discourse, are written in an authoritative voice. In this very specific sense George Marcus and D. Cushman (1982) indicate a number of mechanisms through which the author can add a veneer of reliability to his data and assume himself the role of expert. In itself this is what the audience expects

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and looks for in an academic text, so we can consider this part and parcel of the academic discourse at least up until the 1980s. Certainly the positivistic research efforts of the 1950s through 1970s show this kind of approach, and even today the use of these mechanisms is still fairly common. The "taking" of authority need not be limited, however, to the relation between researcher and audience. Certainly the positivistically oriented researchers of the 1950s also assumed authority while in the field, looking for a definite set of data based on a largely predetermined image of society (Holy 1987, 2-5). A special case of "taking" authority is the advocate. The advocate is an occasional role in the discourse on any given ethnographic field situation. Employed by the people studied, third-party interests, or simply self-appointed, he actively (often partisanlike) tries to realize a purpose, invariably represented as being for the welfare of the group in question (or a larger conglomerate of which this group is part or deemed representative). The advocate takes authority in addressing an outside audience. His authority is grounded in his claim to represent the people involved. Ethnographic texts or knowledge, in some cases reduced to imagery, are used in a power play for the attention and commitment of the audience. The means used here are the withholding or granting of authority to the texts involved. The advocate's strategies are interesting in the sense that he can draw in arguments from outside the original ethnographic field to "evaluate" authority. He can refer to the person of the researcher, his background, the context of the fieldwork, even the time frame in which the study was done. In this sense criticisms on the role of colonial anthropologists in providing legitimization to the relations between colonizers and colonized should be understood (cf. Asad 1973). While such evaluation correctly signals historically marked focus and specific interests, the denial of authority on such grounds is a largely rhetorical device, even though from a present-day perspective the population in question would have been depicted differently.5 The "perception" of authority is a function proper of an audience. Here we can discern between an intended audience and a self-appointed audience. The intended audience is that which the researcher has in mind when he writes his report. The text is fully aligned to an image that the author has of his audience and is intended to give the author an authoritative voice. It is in the nature of the relation author/audience that the author will have a prior knowledge and perception of "his" audience and will use any means to convince it

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of his standpoint and authority. Any given audience will take the "author" of the "text" they read or study to be authoritative unless they have or develop grounds on which to doubt him. 6 On the other hand, there is the secondary audience that comes along when the text has been written and applies it for its own purposes. It will perceive or deny authority to suit its own purposes, as it does not necessarily share focus and interests with the author and the intended audience (Latour 1987, 33^14). In fact, in using the text, a new situation is created in which the text may take on new meaning as it becomes part of a new discourse. In this sense, much of what I said earlier on giving and taking of authority is repeated on a new level and scale, and implying a new set of "partial connections." In theory, then, we should always qualify an ethnography as authoritative relative to a group of people sharing a set of shared ideas or interests and a common focus in describing a specific set of cultural phenomena. 7 This seems straightforward enough if we refer to a specific group among whom only one researcher has been active. In this case ascribing ethnographic authority may be relatively unproblematic. Describing how an area has been ethnographically described over a number of years by people from different backgrounds can, however, be quite as complex and involved as the ethnographic description of the area itself. General formulations in terms of author, audience, and object of study no longer suffice. The body of Asmat ethnography is far from a continuous whole, and I have certainly chosen it because its interpretation provides us with specific problems: There is not a single monograph on an Asmat tribe or subtribe which deserves to be called a full-fledged ethnography. There are a great many data available, but they are either too general or too specific and are insufficient for the compilation of an integral description of their culture. Towards that end two or three subtribal monographs are still badly needed. Nevertheless, the available data are so diverse, that they cannot but arouse the anthropologist's curiosity, (van Baal, Galis, and Koentjaraningrat 1984, 131) This statement made in West Irian: A Bibliography can itself be taken as highly authoritative. In denying the existence of one specific text that can be taken to be authoritative, it is cause for considerable speculation. While similar observations can be made for other areas in Irian Jaya, the oeuvre on the Asmat

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area is remarkable in at least two respects. First, unlike most areas in Irian Jaya, a relatively steady stream of ethnographies continued to appear even after 1962 when the Indonesians closed Irian Jaya to most expatriate personnel.8 Second, it is one of the few areas in Irian Jaya about which a considerable amount of material has been published outside The Netherlands, in a sense inviting the "cross-border" comparison made by Knauft (1993). Setting aside for now the language problems implicit in these developments,9 let us first look briefly at what is said on the area and at the way this description developed.

Describing the A s m a t . . . the Asmat Described The Asmat-Kamoro people live in an area of related languages and cultures stretching along the southwest coast of Irian Jaya (West New Guinea) from the Etna Bay to the Digul River. Only in the Central Asmat area does the culture area actually stretch inland, the peripheral areas of the Kamoro or Mimika and the Casuarine coast are limited to the coastal swamp areas (Knauft 1993; Eyde 1967). It is on the Central Asmat that we possess the most varied and diverse information.10 The Casuarine coast has been described only to a limited extent (van Kessel 1961). The Kamoro, which have been extensively described by Jan Pouwer (1955), are usually distinguished following the original Dutch administrative distinction between the Mimika area and the Asmat/Casuarine coast. Vincent van Amelsvoort distinguishes four main vegetation types, moving from the coast to the interior: mangrove swamps, jungle, grasslands or savanna, and foothills (1964, 32). The people living in the area largely refer to themselves as Asmat, which translates as "we, the real people" or "we, the tree people."" The staple diet of the Asmat existed of sago, supplemented by fishing, hunting, and the gathering of insects and shellfish. Fishing and gathering were considered women's work, hunting men's work. The rhythm of life was determined, however, by the availability of sago. The Asmat did not plant their own sago gardens, preferring to use the available growths of the trees. When the sago gardens became exhausted after three to six months, they used to move the village to other locations within their own territory (van Amelsvoort 1964, 37). 12 Throughout, the rivers crosscutting the entire area were the most important routes for transport, trade, and warfare, making the Asmat entirely dependent on canoes for their way of life. Any village consisted of a number of men's houses (jo), situated along a

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creek or river. Near every men's house the family dwellings of the men living in the jo were situated. As such the jo can be seen as the social center of the village: it is the place of residence of the men, it symbolized the social structure, and it was the main group in which marriages took place (van Amelsvoort 1964, 39-42; Zegwaard and Boelaars 1955). Leadership in the village fell to the head of the largest or most important jo.13 The rituals bound up with headhunting, and its symbolic representation in the cutting down of the sago tree, are central aspects of the Asmat culture according to several ethnographers (Zegwaard 1959; Gerbrands 1981; Knauft 1993, 188-195). The ideological structure basic to the headhunting complex has been extensively analyzed by Gerard Zegwaard in an article in American Anthropologist (1959). The article tells of the mythical origin of the headhunt as related to Zegwaard by his key informant, a big man called Warsekomen. Additionally he is able to describe the headhunting feast from his own observations and from talking to people, as headhunting was still practiced when he first entered the area in 1950. While Eyde subscribes to the ideological motivation for headhunting provided by Zegwaard, he also relates the practice of warfare to expansionism, especially the need to extend sago areas for a growing population. 14 In comparing several cultures across the Asmat-Kamoro area, he is able to suggest correlations between a number of ecological factors, ways of attaining prestige, and the practice of warfare by the different Asmat cultures (1967, 85-88, 132-148). Even though the Dutch administration visited the area in 1904 and patrolled it from 1926 on,15 the first patrol post was set up only in 1938. This post was closed down again in 1941 due to the threat of Japanese invasion. After the war, administrative presence was not immediately reestablished. Fierce intervillage wars, causing some six thousand Asmat people to seek refuge in the Mimika area and the estuary of the Digul River, forced the administration to pacify the area once again, initially patrolling the area from the Mimika subdivision (van Amelsvoort 1964, 65).16 In 1954 the patrol post in Agats was again opened up by the administration (van Amelsvoort 1964, 61-69; van der Schoot 1969, 87-92). The Sacred Hearts Mission (M.S.C.) visited the area from 1950 on and opened its first mission post in Agats in 1953. They were not the only ones to take an interest. The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM) opened its first post in Agats, too, which was by then the administrative headquarters for the area. The relations between Roman Catholic and Protestant missions were

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tense here, 17 and tinged with an element of competition in the opening of schools and placement of mission teachers and catechists in the villages (van der Schoot 1969, 198). From 1958 on, the Crosier Fathers (O.S.C.) gradually took over the responsibilities of the M.S.C. missionaries. 18 The attention given to the area was limited and one-sided. 19 Initially, the administration focused in the Asmat area on pacification, a task in which the missions fulfilled an important role (van der Schoot 1969, 94). Additionally, the Dutch aimed at improving the general state of health and availability of food (van Amelsvoort 1964, 94ff). While we may suspect a lack of interest in development among the administration and missions here, the limitations described are probably more indicative of a general caution in introducing change. While all parties were keen to open up the area, they were as keen to avoid unexpected side effects of the resulting culture contact (Wassing 1977, 10).20 A recurring theme in the conclusions of Hein van der Schoot's thesis on the development effort in the Asmat-Kamoro area is the reference to a lack of information and insight. Even though he refers mainly to Kamoro, his critical remarks are equally true of the Asmat area. While studies by Zegwaard, van Amelsvoort, and van der Schoot show that a lot of material on the Asmat was gathered in a relatively short period, conclusions like these show that ethnographic information does not necessarily permeate through the institutions collecting it. If we assume such permeation to be dependent on the ascription of ethnographic authority to one or more key texts, it becomes interesting to inquire what happened.

Availability of Information and Knowledge If we look at the availability of material prior to the end of Dutch rule, we will find only a handful of reports and publications, mainly provided by missionaries and administrative personnel. The publications quoted in West Irian: A Bibliography mostly date from the 1960s and 1970s, though much of the original fieldwork will have dated from the 1950s and early 1960s. Apart from the texts mentioned, we can discern a sizable number of publications on Asmat art and a number of articles and papers on other aspects of Asmat culture.21 The latter category appeared in one of three publications: the Asmat Sketchbooks, the Asmat Papers, and Irian: Bulletin of Irian Jaya Development.22 Much of the material gathered during the Dutch colonial period did not appear in print until well into the 1960s. Still, this does not preclude the avail-

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ability of information and knowledge, as we also have to account for the informal exchange of information, which could function equally well independent of published media. As I have shown in previous publications (Jaarsma 1990, 1993a, 1994), such informal patterns of cooperation and exchange of information played an important role, especially outside institutionalized channels. The formal exchange of information between institutions during this period was, however, more restricted, largely due to mutual conflicts of interest and competence. The most important ethnographer of the period is without doubt Father Gerard A. Zegwaard M.S.C. 23 Notwithstanding the fact that he provides us with a lot of ethnographic data, very little of Zegwaard's work has been published in journals or publications aimed specifically at an audience consisting of anthropologists or social scientists. His writing is characteristic of the missionary discourse and aims in part at a lay audience, in part at an audience of missionary personnel. Most of his publications can be found in missionary journals, aiming for a wider audience and transmitting a specific message for which the ethnographic data are largely illustrative. The missionary discourse on the Asmat area in general has a consistent character. Its participants show a definite interest in providing ethnographic data but overall limited continued interest in its analysis. The ethnographic material used and produced had a specific purpose in a discourse on the progress made in proselytizing the Asmat throughout the 1950s and 1960s. These days a continued interest in Asmat welfare provides the missions with a legitimate lease on life in presentday Irian Jaya society. Academic researchers were active in the area only for a very brief period.24 Adriaan Gerbrands and C. L. (Bert) Voorhoeve both arrived in the fall of 1960, there to stay and do fieldwork for one year and two years respectively. Eyde worked in the village of Momogo-Sagapo (Keenok area), but was forced to leave as his health failed. He later joined Gerbrands in Amenamkai (Central Asmat). Here too there is considerable discontinuity in the resulting work, mainly because the initial efforts had no common denominators to begin with. Voorhoeve, who made a linguistic study of the language spoken in the Flamingo Bay area (1965), only resumed his work in the Asmat area in the 1980s. 25 From Gerbrands' work on Asmat art26 as well as his work on New Britain, a discourse has evolved on New Guinea art. This discourse mainly aims at studying the material culture and its symbolism.27 The publication of administrative work concerning the Asmat subdistrict is

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limited but provides extensive data. Van Amelsvoort worked as a government medical officer in the Asmat area and wrote his thesis (1964) on the development of the health care system in the area. Additionally, he provides us with data on the contact history of the Asmat and general ethnographic and socialmedical information on its population. Van der Schoot worked as an administrative officer in both the Mimika and Asmat subdistricts. Though his thesis (1969) is an evaluation of the development policies applied to Asmat and Mimika (Kamoro) and no ethnographic study, it provides us with extensive ethnographic and historic material on both these areas. Apart from Eyde's study it is the only publication covering the entire Asmat-Kamoro region. In its focus on development evaluation, it is fairly representative of a number of studies based on administrative work that appeared between the late 1950s and late 1960s. While, again, this line of work does not address analysis of ethnographic data and, as such, must be seen as separate from specific academic anthropological discourses, it does provide ethnographic material and insights into the Asmat and other Irian Jaya cultures. The work done since the transfer of the area to the Indonesian republic is less well documented, and I will only give some examples. I will not go into either the discourse on Asmat art or the Indonesian discourse that developed in the 1970s. My material on both these discourses is not complete enough to give anything more than suppositions. The third discourse centered on the Asmat Sketchbooks. It is an important publication series as it provides access in English to parts of the preceding Dutch discourse. Notwithstanding this, Asmat Sketchbooks is by its nature an outlet for missionary writers aiming at a mainly missionary audience, both professional and lay people. While potentially introducing Dutch-language sources to a larger English-language audience, its focus on a missionary audience sets it apart from much academic ethnographic discourse. While people who are of old interested in Asmat ethnography know how and where to find it, ascription of ethnographic authority based on texts in Asmat Sketchbooks has the character of relying on an informal network. In recent years there have been two remarkable contributions to an otherwise fairly low-key oeuvre on the Asmat. The first is a book by Thomas Schneebaum (1988) describing his experiences while working as a collector of Asmat artifacts and as curator at the mission-run ethnographic museum in Agats. The book is interesting as it provides extensive material on Asmat homosexual practices. If we look at what we know of Asmat homosexuality

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from previous sources, we can only voice suppositions on its existence based on Zegwaard and Boelaars (1955,294). 28 Schneebaum's book is also, however, very much an example of the contextual nature of authority. As the main source on Asmat homosexuality, its "claim" to ethnographic authority is linked to the specific and unique nature of the topic. Yet, in what he writes and the way he addresses the subjects he writes on, Schneebaum himself is an example of what I have previously called an advocate. His book authoritatively addresses two very different audiences on two distinct topics. He is clearly disturbed by the way the Asmat are being used and abused by the local Indonesian authorities and timber industry. He is very definite in stating that this is a wrong that needs to be righted. In his second argument, his audience again is American but—dictated by the subject—of a very different nature. Even though he extensively describes Asmat homosexuality, there are limitations to what he writes.29 His message has little to do with Asmat ethnography in a specific sense or New Guinea ethnography in a general sense, but aims to increase understanding and tolerance of homosexual relations. Asmat ethnography—"portraying" a way of life uncontaminated by moral prejudice—is used here for purposes of criticizing American society.30 The other recent contribution is a book by Bruce Knauft (1993) in which he compares cultures along the southern coast of New Guinea. In his book Knauft adds a new dimension. He is a self-appointed audience of previous Asmat literature and has no personal experience of the Asmat. His focus on the headhunting complex along the southwest coast of New Guinea and the general orientation of his study toward Papua New Guinea set his objectives apart from what was previously done on the Asmat. He uses the Asmat material as part of a more general comparative argument, which has a twofold purpose. His main concern is to address the implications of ethnographic comparison across larger areas and using material from different time frames. He develops this argument against a critical evaluation of a complex of headhunting practices that shows nearly as many different forms and ideologies as there are cultures being discerned along the south coast. The Asmat are but one specific example among a handful that Knauft looks at in more detail. It is then interesting to look at the way Knauft ascribes authority concerning Asmat ethnography, which he does very specifically on only one occasion. Speaking on the available material on homosexual practices among the Asmat, Knauft gives the following evaluation of the researchers (Zegwaard, Eyde, Gajdusek, and Schneebaum) he quotes throughout his work:

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All of these persons lived among Asmat during an early period of their culture contact history with Westerners. Zegwaard and Eyde had extensive experience in Asmat and appear to have had no interest in downplaying the existence of homosexuality, and Schneebaum and Gajdusek appear to have had special interest in documenting homosexual patterns. The Crosier Missions' tolerance of homosexual orientation is evident in their continuing affiliation with Schneebaum in curating Asmat art and their sending out information (along with their other publication notices) advertising the existence of his recent book. (1993, 237) While speaking of the interest in documenting homosexuality, 31 Knauft indicates at least two general parameters for the ascription of authority: presence during an early period of culture contact, and extent of experience. Both these parameters can of course be applied beyond this one specific subject and can thus be of use to my argument. There is in fact a third parameter relevant here, though not specified, and that is the language used. Earlier on I set this problem aside, and Knauft's book provides a good setting to deal with it. Leaving aside Knauft's own ability to read Dutch texts, we may be sure that most of his audience will not be able to, and thus it is a relevant issue for the discourse involved.32 Where possible Knauft quotes from and refers to English translations or versions of ethnographic descriptions of the Asmat. Most of the material on the Asmat is written in Dutch, and prior to the mid-1960s virtually the entire discourse on Asmat was formulated in Dutch. Using this material in an English-language discourse either limits the number of sources that can be used, or necessitates translation or use of translated sources. Either way, this may influence what we take to be authoritative. The point as such is obvious; if we cannot read or gain access to the original texts, we tend to view people who have done so as authoritative. As we rely, then, on interpretation, we may in fact be introducing bias without knowing it.33 Translation here cannot occur without shifts in meaning, as it is done from a different focus and set of interests.

Intermezzo: Appreciating Authority The studies by Knauft (1993) and Schneebaum (1988) are in fact useful cases for addressing the issue of appreciation of ethnographic authority. The two studies are in many respects as different as chalk and cheese. They address

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different audiences, represent different agendas, and use ethnographic material on the Asmat in different ways and to different purposes. Knauft's study is an academic publication pur sang. It is a highly technical work with an erudite treatment of the ethnographic material involved. Schneebaum's book, on the other hand, is written along the lines of a popular travel account and probably touches upon all the stereotypes that a Western audience wishing to switch off its daily reality is looking for. The book certainly conveys a grim message on the reality of Asmat life, but it leaves most of the available stereotypes on the "Other" untouched. As a book written for a popular audience, its readership and circulation is much wider than Knauft's study, leaving aside the chances that the latter will ever be translated into another language like Schneebaum's book (1989, in Dutch). Can we conclude then that Schneebaum's work is more authoritative as an Asmat ethnography? That would definitely be oversimplifying the issue. Despite being marketed for a mass audience, Schneebaum's book addresses two very specific subjects—homosexuality and human rights abuse—that carry messages relevant largely outside anthropological discourse on the Asmat. The ethnographic material used is—as I have indicated—largely incidental to the messages conveyed by the book and hence hardly likely to remain authoritative in the long run. Neither is Knauft's study destined to fulfill this role. Knauft uses a wealth of ethnographic material on the southern coast to critically reappraise the use of regional ethnographic comparison in anthropological discourse. The Asmat material is only a minor case that Knauft uses to make his comparative point. As such, ethnographic authority is not what he aims for, nor is what he says on the Asmat in all probability appreciated as such by his audience. We can subsequently look in more detail at the relative appreciation by an academic anthropological audience by looking at the book reviews of both publications. As we might expect, Knauft's study has received considerable attention in various anthropological journals. 34 While challenging many of Knauft's ideas, the reviews are invariably appreciative of his work. I will not dwell upon the issues raised, as they follow the main lines of anthropological discourse on New Guinea fairly closely. The complexity of the issues that Knauft addresses is best appreciated in the extensive book review section of Pacific Studies (18, no. 4, 1995) where Gilbert Herdt, Pierre Lemonnier, and Andrew Strathern review the book and Knauft provides an in-depth response to their suggestions (Knauft 1995).

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Surprisingly, Don Kulick's review (1990) of Schneebaum's book is in many respects much more interesting, as it is very indicative of anthropology's selfperception both as an audience and as a forum producing knowledge. It is not only of interest because it is the only review that I could trace in an anthropological journal (Ethnos), but also for the nature of the review. Kulick condemns the book in no uncertain terms: Where the Spirits Dwell should not be read. More to the point, the book should not have been written. Writing it undoubtedly satisfied Schneebaum's clearly gargantuan need for self-gratification, and anthropologists who read the book might find some academic interest in the details which Schneebaum provides about Asmat sexuality. But none of this can excuse the fact that the Asmat will very probably suffer because of Schneebaum's voyeurism. (124) Kulick's criticism focuses on two aspects, none of which in fact relate to Schneebaum's potential authority as an Asmat ethnographer. In the first place, Kulick objects to this book being explicitly marketed as anthropological where it at best only pays lip service to what anthropology is all about. 35 Despite the fact that Schneebaum spent all of four years spread out over nearly a decade among the Asmat, Kulick points out that nowhere in the book does he really attempt to take the reader beyond the stereotype of the Asmat as "cannibals and headhunters." The book—as Kulick points out—is all about Schneebaum: "The book falls with a loud splatter into the I-went-among-the-savages-anddiscovered-myself genre" (1990, 123). More interesting, however, is his second and main point of criticism: Schneebaum's voyeurism. Schneebaum gives detailed descriptions of ritual sexual practices that have survived the missions' attempts to stamp them out. Kulick in this respect points out: At several points in his text, Schneebaum is at pains to stress the necessity of continued secrecy if these practices are to continue and the Asmat to remain unharassed. This being the case, one cannot help but wonder . . . why in the world he then goes and publishes detailed accounts of these practices in a book which surely will reach the missionaries and government officials in Asmat without any trouble at all. Greater insensitivity and contempt for one's friends and informants is difficult to imagine. (1990, 124)

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This, however, is not a criticism leveled only at Schneebaum. Kulick needs in fact not go far afield to mention several similar examples of (academic) voyeurism: Sexual practices such as the institutionalized homosexual behavior found throughout parts of Melanesia has recently emerged as a legitimate topic of discussion in anthropology.... For some reason though, nobody seems to mind too much that in writing about such practices where they still exist, anthropologists are betraying the secrecy in which the practices have been forced to retreat. They are in effect opening the door for local missionaries . . . to confront the anthropologist's informants with their detailed knowledge of supposedly secret knowledge and customs, and to use this knowledge as a means of pressuring the people to abandon these customs. (1990, 124) Kulick's criticism in fact cuts both ways. Where he is at pains to condemn Schneebaum on ethical grounds for telling on his informants' secrets, he is implicitly condemning similar practices among anthropologists. Ironically enough, none of this calls into question Schneebaum's authority on speaking of matters concerning Asmat ethnography. 36 What then does this brief intermezzo tell us? As Marta Rohatynskyj and I indicate in our introduction to this volume, we live in a world that is steadily growing smaller. Ethnographies are no longer being written for a limited audience; they can have a global audience so long as these ethnographic artifacts can be accessed by that audience. When the message being distributed by the ethnography is readily accessible, consistent, and comprehensible, a global audience will by and large share an awareness of ethnographic authority. While this may be true for the Tikopia, it is equally clear that this cannot be true for the Asmat. It is doubtful that there is even a consensus on authority anymore among a professional and academic audience, let alone among a wider one. This is what we need to be aware of when we speak of ethnographic authority: there is no accounting for its appreciation unless we can assess an audience's composition and the nature of the information it can access, in short the way ethnography provides an audience with an opportunity to "connect" with the society being described. In the Asmat case, even an academic anthropological audience is at a disadvantage owing to small, scattered discourses that—because of differences in research agendas, audiences addressed, and use of language—are relatively closed to one another.

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Ascribing Ethnographic Authority? Following Marilyn Strathern (1991,7), we can say that the ethnographer does not represent a society to an audience, but provides an audience with a connection to it, a possibility to conceive of it. In consequence, when we start evaluating a body of ethnography, like that on the Asmat area, we are not only asking for the total body of available data, we are also asking why this information has been deemed important at any one time in the specific form it has been presented. I have elected to come to terms with, to operationalize, Strathern's concept of "connecting" between ethnographer/audience and people studied through the concept of authority. This concept conveys the dynamic nature that exists, or should be seen to exist, among researcher (ethnographer), audience, and people studied. I have distinguished a number of different "images" of authority, ranging from the textual authority analyzed in depth by Marcus and Cushman (1982) to advocacy. All of these forms, with the exception maybe of the active role taken by the people studied,37 can be found in the oeuvre on the Asmat. Some of these, like Schneebaum's use of advocacy, I have looked at in some detail.38 Others, like the way and means of textual authority in the writings of the 1950s and 1960s, I have looked at only in passing. Given the contextual data we now have on the ethnographic texts, above and beyond the contents of the texts themselves, it becomes interesting to look at what this information tells us of how the different discourses on Asmat ethnography have become interlinked over time. Unlike the Tikopians, referred to earlier, there is no clear indication that the Asmat have at any time taken an active interest in their ethnographic description. They do not act as gatekeepers, and any interest in what is written about them and about their past is only of very recent date. The gathering and interpretation of data, and its writing down in ethnographic texts, then become largely an affair of the interchange between researchers and audience, though both are bound by their shared research interests to the Asmat themselves. We can distinguish the various discourses—according to their activity and present role relative to each other—as either defunct, veering away from Asmat ethnography, or still active. These distinctions are only analytical but will serve to qualify the trajectory of Asmat ethnography. First, we can simply consider the discourse defunct if there are no researchers active anymore and there is no clearly defined audience anymore. This is in fact largely true of the Dutch discourses dating back to the 1950s and 1960s, except maybe that

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of the missions. There is still some activity, but both researchers and audience have shifted their interests to other discourses. The discourse described earlier as centering around the Dutch administration effectively ended with a number of evaluative studies published in the late 1960s, of which van der Schoot's work (1969) is an example. 39 This is not to say that texts dating back to this period would convey no authority anymore, but there are some qualifications. Any authority these texts still have would depend on it being conveyed to them by an external, new audience. It is very unlikely that the texts would have any textual authority of themselves, as most techniques claiming authority at the time these texts were written would be dated. Most likely, texts would be given authority because of the uniqueness of the material contained in them. Finally, for compound reasons that will become more clear later on, even though some Asmat researchers are still active today, new audiences will tend to look to the texts and not the person for authority. Second, we can distinguish a situation in which the interest of the discourse veers away from Asmat ethnography. In this case both researcher and audience are still active, but at the very least the audience is not specifically interested in the Asmat on a long-term basis. This is not to say that such a discourse will not add to what we know of the Asmat, but any momentum behind such additions to Asmat ethnography comes from other considerations than the ethnographic discourse on Asmat itself. A particular example is the Indonesian discourses that were active in the 1970s. It is very likely that this type of discourse, focusing on economic and development-oriented research, continued in other regions, thus veering away from an interest in the Asmat itself. Schneebaum's book, too, can serve as an example here, as his messages both on homosexuality and on exploitation of resources in the Asmat area address audiences that overall have no interest in the Asmat specifically. Similarly, we can describe some of the missionary oeuvre this way. It is aimed at maintaining a link to the "home" church and has the additional purpose of raising funds for the mission's activities. While a link will exist between Asmat and the mission's audience, it will always be mediated through the local missionary activities, never evoking a direct interest. It is not inconceivable though that if these publications become readily accessible in the Asmat area itself they will eventually engender an indigenous audience. The discourse on Asmat art is more difficult to evaluate. The interest taken by museum ethnographers in Asmat art is of course still very much alive. Other more analytical approaches like that initiated by Gerbrands on the knowledge and techniques of Asmat artists have at least in part widened their interests

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for comparative purposes. The ascription of authority in this context will again depend on the uniqueness of the material presented. As the overt purpose of any text produced will more often than not lie outside Asmat ethnography, a later audience will be less inclined than in the first scenario to ascribe authority to such statements. The ascription of authority to researchers as persons will depend on their perceived activities. On the one hand, as active researchers they may very well be ascribed authority, even if their activities have little to do with the Asmat. On the other, if they are deemed advocates of some cause, there is bound to be some distrust mixed in with any authority ascribed to them. The third situation is the active discourse with both researchers and audience taking an active and productive interest in the Asmat ethnography. Still, here too, continuity plays a definite role, as we have to distinguish between a long-running interest and a recently developing one. We can readily assume that a continuous interest in the Asmat ethnography exists both as a spinoff from Dutch discourses that became defunct in the 1960s and from the continuing missionary activity in the Asmat-Kamoro area. Apart from the period that the Asmat Sketchbooks were published, however, this discourse has had only a limited audience, and very little is known on research activities (certainly recent ones). What is important about this continuing interest in Asmat ethnography since 1962 is the change of the language in use for publications to English. Asmat Sketchbooks not only published new research reports, but also made previously Dutch texts available to an English-reading public. Without these English-language publications it is hardly likely that the latest developments could have taken place. Knauft's use of the Asmat-Kamoro area as a case for his comparison of cultures along the south coast of New Guinea implied change. It again dragged the Asmat into the "spotlight" of mainstream academic anthropological attention. 40 Knauft's book potentially addresses a large audience through his attempt at comparing New Guinea cultures bypassing the usual regional focus. Whether this will stimulate increased attention to Asmat ethnography remains to be seen. When the attention engendered by Knauft's study does not veer away, it might mean a considerable change for Asmat ethnography. Previous discourse on the area has always tended to look at it in its own terms, the only comparison ever made has been between the Central Asmat and the Kamoro, and occasionally with the Casuarine coast. Even apart from Knauft's specific focus, the newly drawn-in audience has been trained against a background of Papua New Guinea studies, with only limited knowledge on and access to material on Irian Jaya. 4 1 The ascription of authority in this instance takes us along some unex-

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pected lines. It may be obvious that English-language texts have clear preference in this context. This means that much of the material from the 1950s and early 1960s will be accessed indirectly through translations. The risks of this were indicated at the end of the previous section. Above it was recalled already that Asmat ethnography has so far not, or only to a very limited extent, been based on comparison. Knauft's indication of the comparability of south coast cultures effectively opens up an entire vista of possibilities, not only in access to data but also in their interpretation. This is necessarily related to an equally wide range of authority issues. Last but not least is an issue of perception of the reliability of ethnographic data from nonanthropological sources. Since the 1960s, the image of missionary ethnographers within academic anthropology has been increasingly suspect. Much of the older material on the Asmat is in fact the direct result of missionary work. Academic audiences newly drawn into the discourse on Asmat ethnography will tend to follow existing trends and deny missionaries personal authority concerning ethnographic matters, perhaps even discarding parts if not all of the older material as unreliable. In essence this is a question not so much of ascription of authority but of its denial, of gatekeeping; however, it might have major repercussions. Again, much of this is speculation and might never come to happen. Less of a speculation is that the Asmat will be subjected to a new wave of researchers, if not as a result of Knauft's work then as a result of growing problems related to fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. If and when this happens, the Asmat will be more interested in the results than they were in the past. Ten years of relatively intensive Dutch rule and several decades of equally intensive Indonesian attention have of course changed the Asmat. A lot of their culture will these days be as unfamiliar to the Asmat as it is to their ethnographers, but there is an increasing interest in what has been lost. If there is any relevance to the fact that ethnography provides a connection to the people studied, a new generation of researchers will trace such a connection in different ways from previous generations. It is an interesting question what the Asmat will make of being part of a "universe" that might not only contain the Marind-anim and the Kolopom of Irian Jaya, but also the Purari, the TransFly peoples, the Kiwai, and the Elema of Papua New Guinea.

Notes This essay is based on research done since 1986, financed by grants supplied by the Foundation for Social and Cultural Sciences (SSCW, ref. 5 0 0 - 2 7 6 - 0 0 1 ) and the Foun-

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dation for Economical, Sociocultural, and Geographical Sciences ( E S R , ref. 510-76504), subsidized by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). The Research School o f Pacific and Asian Studies (Australian National University, Canberra) has kindly supported me with its resources while I was writing. Where quotations in this chapter have been translated from the original Dutch text, the responsibility for the translation is entirely mine. I am grateful to Jan de Wolf, Marta Rohatynskyj, Michael Goldsmith, Douglass St. Christian, and Toon van Meijl for their extensive comments on earlier versions. 1. There probably is more English-language literature on the Asmat area than on most other areas in Irian Jaya, but comprehensive studies are scarce in either Dutch or English. In his comparison of south coast cultures, Knauft gives a lot o f information on the Asmat (1993), and Eyde gives a fairly comprehensive picture o f both the Asmat and Kamoro cultures in his thesis (1967). Father Zegwaard remains the principal Dutch ethnographer of the Central Asmat area. His description of Asmat headhunting practices (1959) still belongs to the best analyses of their religion, while a lot of his other ethnographic material has been translated over the years and published in the Asmat Sketchbooks

(Trenkenschuh 1 9 7 0 - 1 9 7 7 ) . A relatively complete overview of the

literature on the Asmat-Kamoro area can be found in van Baal, Galis, and Koentjaraningrat 1984, 1 2 4 - 1 2 7 , 1 3 1 - 1 4 0 . 2. As a historian of anthropology I have no personal experience of the Asmat, only of their ethnographers. Hence, my argument will focus only indirectly on the Asmat themselves. A relative outsider, I do not claim that at the end o f this chapter I will have dealt with all the different ethnographic discourses on the Asmat. Also, as it is not my intention to be exhaustive in this respect, I will focus my attention on the main efforts involved in describing the Asmat. This way I will try to convey a sense o f the complexity that any body of ethnographic material can attain over time. 3 . 1 will in the rest of the text refer without malice of forethought to "researcher" and "ethnographer" as male-gendered concepts, except where it might lead to confusion. In a general sense I take it to be clear that researchers and ethnographers can be of either sex. In a specific sense it should be noted that all people I will refer to in the context of Asmat research are male, which has influenced the overall description of the Asmat, as I have indicated elsewhere (Jaarsma 1993b). 4 . 1 might seem to be moving off here at a tangent to what Marcus and Cushman (1982) have said on the evaluation of ethnographic authority in texts. While not challenging their argument, I find their restriction to texts too narrow. While the ethnographic text is certainly the locus o f authoritative statements, it is in itself neither the beginning nor the end of the process of ascription and acceptance o f authority. 5. Colonial anthropology's focus and interests did not provide for a consistent challenge of colonialism itself. Nevertheless, present-day reflexivity owes much to the effect of "decolonizing" anthropology and anthropology's objects of study. Were it not that anthropologists were thrown back on their own responsibility and sense of ethics

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in justifying their presence in the field at the end o f the colonial era, it is doubtful that self-reflexivity would have grown from a personal into a disciplinary preoccupation. 6. To some extent author, intended audience, and their relationship are described here as ideal cases. Many authors will not have any specific audience in mind when writing, and most audiences will be critical o f what they read as a matter o f course. On the other hand, there are situations that in fact dictate this black-and-white type o f relationship. One instance is the advocate described above, who—irrespective o f whether he can reach it—will address an intended audience. Also, reports provided for a specific purpose and audience can fixate the relation between author and audience. We can think here for instance o f ethnographic reports produced in and for an administrative or missionary context, but also much consultative work tends to predetermine how it should be read. 7. It is interesting that where we speak o f "authority," we most readily envisage a person or persons as having authority. Yet here as elsewhere, if I want to support a statement I make while writing, I will preferably use a reference to a text. This will, o f course, be a text by a person I endow with authority on the issue involved, but a text nevertheless. There is an ambiguity here when it is no longer clear whether I envisage the text as "having authority" or the person having written the text. I can still deal with such ambiguity relatively easily if I know him or her and am familiar with the research work on which his/her written statement is based. But what happens if s/he again quotes another person as authority? Somewhere along the line we will have to accept that as the written document plays a central role in our culture and in the way we discourse on knowledge, it inevitably becomes endowed with authority at some stage. Ignoring where textual authority originates does not solve its inherent ambiguity, but it allows us to "set it aside" as an apparent paradox. The nature of this paradox is obvious where Judith Macdonald (chapter 6 ) quotes the Tikopians quoting Firth to her on the proper way to interpret their culture. More insight in this matter is gained, however, where Michael Goldsmith (chapter 3) shows us some o f the interesting quirks the paradox o f the "authoritative ethnographic text" can present us with. 8. West New Guinea was retained by the Dutch as a colony after Indonesia became independent in 1949. The newly formed Republic o f Indonesia, however, continued to claim sovereignty over the area throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. The increasing polarization o f the conflict, both between the Dutch and Indonesians themselves and in international politics, eventually resulted in the transfer o f the area to the republic, o f which now it is a province. As a result o f the extremely tense political situation, the area remained closed for all but European missionary personnel until well into the 1970s. 9. While most o f the early ethnographic material on the Asmat was written and published in Dutch, from the early 1960s on texts increasingly began to appear not only in English but also in German and Bahasa Indonesia. Also a selection o f the

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original Dutch material was translated into other languages. As I will indicate later, this produces not only problems of access but also problems with subsequent (distortion of) interpretation. 10. Eyde (1967) and van der Schoot (1969) refer in their studies to the entire Asmat-Kamoro area, respectively to the Central Asmat and Kamoro. I will consider these comparative arguments where they touch upon the ethnographic discourse(s) on the Central Asmat. 11. Zegwaard points out that it is possible to give a better translation. Asmat-ow will translate to "people o f this place" (Asmat = place, location; ow = people), in the sense o f the people belonging to the land as well as the land belonging to the people (Zegwaard to the author, 4 Oct. 1989). 12. Eyde doubts whether this cycle of moving villages was actually that short and gives an estimate of two to five years ( 1 9 6 7 , 1 1 2 - 1 1 3 ) . He points out that either figure is only an estimate as, on pacifying the area, the Dutch administration forbade village moves (1967, 112). 13. For extensive descriptions o f the social structure of the Asmat, see Zegwaard and Boelaars 1955, 1982; van Amelsvoort 1964; Eyde 1967; or van der Schoot 1969. 14. Knauft notes that qualifications of South New Guinea as ecologically "marginal" or "precarious" may have been wrong, especially for the coastal regions. He quotes different sources on the Marind-anim, Trans-Fly area, Purari, Kiwai, as well as on the Asmat, indicating that these areas suffered no significant protein deficiencies and had in fact a sufficient and diverse diet (1993, 66). Asmat village size could apparently rise to more than a thousand persons (Sowada 1 9 6 1 , 1 6 ; see also Schneebaum 1988, 168; van der Schoot 1996, 431). 15. These patrols were mainly punitive expeditions in reaction to raids made by the Asmat on Mimika (Kamoro) villages in administrated territory (van der Schoot 1969, 8 9 - 9 0 ) . 16. Van der Schoot expresses his doubts about this specific interpretation. He prefers to look at the migration of about 20 percent of the Asmat population in terms of the mobility and expansionism particular to their culture. He does not deny, however, that population pressure might have caused tensions in the area, contributing to the large scale of the moves (1969, 9 0 - 9 1 ) . In this sense he closely echoes Eyde's argument on the basic causes of warfare and headhunting (1967, 7 9 - 8 3 ) , without by the way referring to this study. 17. Interview with Gerard Zegwaard and Jan H. M. C. Boelaars, 29 Sept. 1987. 18. More extensive information on the functioning and (ethnographic) interests taken by the missions in Irian Jaya can be found in Zegwaard 1982 and Jaarsma 1993a; Mary MacDonald's contribution to this volume (chapter 8) contains similar information on the Melanesian Institute, a major missionary research and teaching institution in Papua New Guinea.

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19. Interview with Vincent F. P. M. van Amelsvoort, 2 June 1987; see also van der Schoot 1969, 93. Economic attention for the Asmat area remained limited to some trading in animal skins and ironwood. The Netherlands New Guinea Petrol Company did some provisional drilling for oil in the foothills and was as such between 1957 and 1959 the main reference point for Western economic activity (van der Schoot 1969, 89). The contracting of men to work for this company's oil exploitation in the Bird's Head area, a practice that lasted from 1950 to 1957 (van der Schoot 1969, 89), probably had a more lasting influence. Overall, however, the main contact the Asmat had to the outside world were with administrative and missionary personnel. 20. Van Amelsvoort chastises the administration for ambiguity in its approach. In general the administration was very careful in dealing with Asmat traditions. While headhunting was strictly forbidden in administered villages, personnel working in the area were cautioned to avoid giving attention to headhunting trophies and other symbols of headhunting they found. Entirely in contradiction with this warning were the brief visits—often officially approved—by journalists, cinematographers, collectors of ethnographic art, etc., who often showed a biased interest in the headhunting practices of the Asmat. Concerning this and other examples van Amelsvoort is right in speaking of a bad synchronization or coordination between different administrative departments working in the area (1964, 99-101). 21. The latter papers are usually qualified by van Baal, Galis, and Koentjaraningrat (1984) as "academic essays." They are generally written in Bahasa Indonesia and were published either by the Universitas Cenderawasih (UNCEN, Jayapura) or the Sekolah Tinggi Teologi Katolik (STTK, Abepura). 22. Asmat Sketchbooks (Trenkenschuh 1970-1977) were published by the Crosier Fathers between 1970 and 1977 (8 vols.), all edited by Father F. A. Trenkenschuh O.S.C. The volumes contain material both from missionary and nonmissionary authors, in part translations from previously unpublished Dutch material. West Irian: A Bibliography describes the publication as "a compilation of missionary notes on various aspects of and the history of Asmat culture and society as well as those of some of their neighbors, including notes on the history of missionary activities in the area" (van Baal, Galis, and Koentjaraningrat 1984, 4). The general tenor of the publications is ethnographic, aimed at a general audience. Asmat Papers (2 vols., edited by M. T. Walker) were published by UNCEN and contain fieldwork reports by staff members. Irian: Bulletin of Irian Jaya Development was also published by UNCEN and contains a similar range of articles and field reports on the Asmat area, mainly social-economic in nature. Like the Asmat Papers, articles were published either in Bahasa Indonesia or English. Both the Asmat Papers and Irian were published in the 1970s. 23. Though not trained in anthropology, Zegwaard must be counted as one of the more able Dutch ethnographers of the period (cf. Jaarsma 1993a). Most of his work is written in Dutch and only partly published. Of his published work, one article (1959)

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straightaway appeared in English; other work was later translated for publication in the Asmat Sketchbooks. Most of the work is either ethnographic or historic in nature. Though this will probably differ from discourse to discourse, he can be seen as the main authority on Asmat ethnography. Yet, apart from the article he wrote together with Boelaars (1955), he has made no attempt to come to an integral description of the Asmat culture. 24.1 do not go into detail on the activities of the UNCEN here, as I have too little material to make even educated guesses. West Irian: A Bibliography points to the existence of a Rockefeller grant used to publish fieldwork reports (van Baal, Galis, and Koentjaraningrat 1984,4), but to what extent these reports resulted from a consistent project, I do not know. 25. Interview with Voorhoeve, 27 July 1987. Father Drabbe provided the first grammar and dictionary of an Asmat language (1959a, 1959b). He also studied three Asmat dialects in the period 1957-1959 (Drabbe 1963). This material was, however, not yet available at the time of Voorhoeve's fieldwork (Zegwaard to the author, 10 Oct. 1989). 26. An interesting aspect to notice may be the way the Asmat woodcarvers themselves have been drawn into this discourse as authoritative sources following the description of their individual work and lives in Gerbrands' Wow-ipits (1967). 27. Interview with Gerbrands, 7 Nov. 1988; see also Vermeulen 1985. 28. Zegwaard and Boelaars (1955,1982) point to the possibility of ritualized homosexual relations between older men and boys (imu mu). The authors are not specific about the consequences and extent of these relations, only indicating the exchange of gifts on ritual occasions. The relationship itself is expressed in terms of the older man being the "husband" of the boy. Schneebaum focuses on a different type of homosexual relationship existing between men of equal age (mbai). These men, who are partnered for life, exchange sexual favors not only directly, but also by exchanging their wives. There is a close resemblance and probably overlap with the papish relation, which refers to the exchange of wives both in a general way on ritual occasions and specifically between long-term male partners. The way Schneebaum describes the emotional bond between the mbai partners (1988,174—182) closely resembles what Zegwaard and Boelaars state on the papish relation between specific partners (1955, 286-287; cf. Knauft 1993, 228-237). 29. In the highly personal account Schneebaum gives of his work among the Asmat, he is very open about his homosexual preferences and the nature of the relations to some of his Asmat friends. The background Schneebaum gives on his informant and his description of the difficulties he faced in collecting information on both homosexual and heterosexual practices make his account both reliable and authoritative (cf. Knauft 1993, 228-289). 30. This argument, of course, strongly depends on stereotypes of Asmat and other cultures (cf. n. 35 below, as well as Kulick 1990, 123).

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31. There is an interesting duality in the description of male homosexuality among the Asmat. Where we know very little about ritual homosexuality among the Asmat, we have through Scheebaum's (and Gajdusek's) work some good information on homosexual relations between men individually. This is more or less the reverse of our knowledge concerning the rest of New Guinea's south coast (cf. Herdt 1984). While Murray (1997, 4) describes New Guinea as "[t]he culture area where non-lesbigay anthropologists have noticed, acknowledged, and analysed age-stratified homosexuality," he remains overall skeptical of the attention given to this issue. 32. In a response to a series of reviews in Pacific Studies, Knauft cautions that his use of untranslated German and especially Dutch sources was minimal (1995, 176). 33. A case in hand is Knauft's statement that ritualized homosexuality is absent among the Kamoro (1993, 49, 237). He refers here to both a Dutch source (Pouwer 1955) and an American one (Herdt 1984). Herdt is indeed very definite on this point, but I wonder whether Pouwer's material actually is. As I have pointed out elsewhere (1993b, 26), Pouwer does refer to the use of the term wife between a man and the elder male relatives of his wife (1955, 72), which might indicate the acknowledgment of homosexual relations on a symbolic level. Though this one remark gives us very little to go on, it is reminiscent of the comparable use of terms in the Asmat imu mu ritual indicated by Zegwaard. This may all be speculation, as Pouwer definitely never refers to witnessing homosexual rituals among the Mimika (Kamoro). Also, as indicated earlier, we do not know for a fact that the imu mu actually was a homosexual ritual. Counterbalancing this again is the fact that it is unlikely that Pouwer would have been allowed or have been able to see any homosexual rituals. The Kamoro had a much longer contact history than the Asmat at the time they were studied and were doubtless aware of what administration and mission would have thought of such practices. 34. Though this list is certainly not complete, see Breton 1995, Brown 1994, Busse 1995, Gustafsson 1994, Herdt 1995, Lemonnier 1995, Strathern 1995, and Wood 1994. 35. Kulick (1990, 123) specifies this to some extent in relation to what he calls "the obsession that some North Americans and Europeans have with the 'untouched savage.' " In his words the aim of anthropological writing should be "demasking and defetishizing the wild 'primitive' by trying to make us understand him in something approaching his own terms." 36. And in that respect Schneebaum is referred to in one way or another by different authors (Knauft 1993, xi, 237; van der Schoot 1996, 427). 37. The Asmat themselves are nowhere described in any terms that we might interpret as indigenous attempts to ascribe authority. They are not, however, depicted as meek participants in their ethnographic description. A clear example of this is Gerbrands' description of the Asmat woodcarvers (1967). He shows the woodcarvers to be keenly interested in making sense of the changes in their work resulting from the introduction of iron tools and an increasing outside demand for their work. There are

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no indications in the available texts, however, that the Asmat try to manipulate their ethnography or ethnographers. 38. While not unique within the ethnographic oeuvre on the Asmat area, Schneebaum's attempts at advocacy certainly are the most extensive and complex example of this use of authority. Most other examples are brief statements, usually straightforward illustrations of the Asmat way of life and possibilities for development. As part of the missionary discourse, they largely serve to create a link between a church-going Western lay audience and the Asmat as a missionary area. The missionary, as author, has a clear-cut role as authority both on the Asmat he describes and on the missionary success that has been achieved or is aimed for. Schneebaum's book is therefore interesting because he is on the one hand—when speaking o f the abuses o f the timber industries—clearly the well-meaning and interested outsider denouncing an obvious wrong. On the other hand—speaking of homosexual practices in the Asmat area—he is clearly also a participant. He denounces not the Asmat culture or local circumstances, but the moral sense o f his audience. In a sense he tries to emulate what Margaret Mead meant for female sexuality several decades earlier. 3 9 . 1 discount van der Schoot's (1996) contribution to a volume (Schoorl 1996) on administrative experiences in post-World War II Netherlands New Guinea, as its focus is only peripherally on Asmat ethnography. 40. Reference to cultures on the Irian Jaya side of New Guinea are certainly not new. In 1984 a comparison of cultures along the south coast, looking at homosexual ritual, similarly focused attention on Kopelom and the Marind-anim (Herdt 1984). Though the Kamoro were briefly quoted as a negative instance, little attention was given to the Asmat-Kamoro area at the time. Interesting in Knauft's book is the presence of an extensive appendix on homosexual practices among the Asmat. Here he brings together a lot of disparate material on such practices among both the Casuarine coast and Central Asmat. Though I can only guess at his reasons for doing so, it is probable that he seeks to fill a gap in the available source material on south coast homosexual practices. Interesting, too, is that Knauft extensively grounds the authority of the sources he refers to on this occasion (1993, 237; cited above). The lack of attention for the Kamoro area is based on the statement by Herdt (1984, referring to Pouwer 1955) that such practices are "definitely absent" there. As I indicated before, this statement might very well be true, but it takes little account of the focus and research interests of Pouwer's original work. 41. This is not a problem specific to the Asmat. Overall, the present-day study of Irian Jaya shows much less consistency than does the study o f Papua New Guinea. Even if one has the ability to access the different publications in different languages (Dutch, German, Bahasa Indonesia, English), an overview is hard to get. There is very little contact between different groups of researchers working in and on different areas.

Chapter 8

Writing about Culture and Talking about God Christian Ethnography in Melanesia Mary N. MacDonald

In the past hundred years Christianity in a wide range of denominational and regional forms has become a significant component of Melanesian identities. Christian missionaries were among the first to describe Melanesian cultures to outsiders, and Melanesian Christians, who learned to read and write in mission schools, have participated in the recording and re-creation of Melanesian tradition. They have written letters and sermons, journals and reports, which, when we manage to retrieve them from church archives, give us some feeling for Melanesian experiences of self, culture, and Christianity.1 Today many university-educated Melanesians who write about their cultures do so within Christian frameworks or in opposition to the Christian frameworks instituted by missionaries. 2 Church workers, whether they be the missionaries who introduced Christianity to Melanesia, missionaries who today work within the local churches of Melanesia, or Melanesian church personnel, many of whom promote a "Melanesianizing" of Christianity, write about culture because culture is the realm in which they see God at work. While Christian ethnography is in conversation with secular ethnography, it, nevertheless, has its own field of operation and its own presuppositions. Christian representations of Melanesian culture are not only ethnographic but also theological. They form part of the discourse of the local churches of Melanesia and part of the discourse of world Christianity. A primary work of churches is evangelization, a work that may be construed, in a narrow sense, as converting the unbaptized to the Christian faith. In a wider sense, it can be seen as converting the human community to a way of life consonant with the life and example of Jesus Christ. From the missionary point of view ethnography, the comprehensive description of cultures, serves to provide understandings of people and their lives so that the Gospel may be presented in ways that people will comprehend. Similarly, it allows services

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provided by the churches to be undertaken efficiently and respectfully within particular cultural contexts. For the church worker ethnography is, then, a tool of evangelization, an applied science. It is expected to accomplish something that its writers see as advantageous for the work of evangelization. This outlook is reflected, for example, in the fact that the journal now called was first called Practical Anthropology.

Missiology

The journal, in its first form, aimed to

put anthropology at the service of mission. While some missionaries and some church institutes in Melanesia have systematically written of culture, writings, such as reports and letters, that end up, not in journals or books, but in church archives are equally of ethnographic import. On the one hand, these writings instruct and edify by recording what, from their writers' perspectives, is the work of God. On the other hand, they report on, and make judgment about, cultural practices. Consequently, in materials that w e might consider under the heading "Christian ethnography" there is considerable blurring of genres, some of it tending more to the scientific and some more to the hortative. Theological discourse is a recognizable component. Writing about G o d may be found between the lines, or it may even be underlined as the declared purpose of the text. M y interest in the study of cultures by missionaries and local church personnel grows out of my own background. For eight years I was a missionary in Papua N e w Guinea, employed for four years as a teacher in a catechist training center run by the Catholic Diocese of Mendi at Erave in the Southern Highlands and for another four years as a researcher and lecturer with the Melanesian Institute, an ecumenical research institute at Goroka in the Eastern Highlands. In those positions I recorded information and made interpretations concerning the culture and religion of the South K e w a people of the Southern Highlands, and I collaborated in research on culture and religion conducted by the institute. Today I teach history of religions at a small college of liberal arts and sciences in central N e w York. Here I find something of the missionary ethnographer's situation reflected in the fact that my conversation partners tend to come, in about equal numbers, from the areas of anthropology and theology. However, employed as a historian of religions, I am less a participant in Christian ethnography and more an observer of it, as compared with my work in Papua N e w Guinea. A n y person w h o writes about culture is at the intersection of a number of discourses. S/he listens to, and participates in, the competing and complementary discourses within the community about which s/he writes—in the case of

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most ethnographers a host community rather than a home community, but for some Melanesian church workers their own community. S/he also listens to, and participates in, the varied discourses of the community from which s/he comes and that is one of the audiences for which s/he writes. A Christian ethnographer is necessarily in conversation with the church. The missionary writes for the church of her/his homeland as well as for the churches of Melanesia. Melanesian Christians, in seeking to justify Melanesian styles of Christianity and to make their contribution to the larger Christian community, address not only a local audience but also overseas supporters and the world church. Today it is common to find Melanesian Christians participating in international assemblies in which the denominational and ecumenical groups within the world church explore how to embody Christianity in contemporary cultures. For example, Melanesian Christians are presently participating in a Gospel and Culture project, sponsored by the World Council of Churches (Hiebert 1997). In the project, which will result in a considerable amount of talking and writing about cultures, Christians around the world are exploring how the gospel relates to different cultures. The goal of the project is to give direction to the work of evangelization in the twenty-first century, an application of the study of culture to the work of the church. The church is an institution that has more than its share of texts, a number of them produced out of controversy. The Bible, hymns, liturgical formulas, creeds, doctrinal and confessional statements, commandments, and rules inevitably enter into dialogue and dispute with the "texts" of people who are encountered, studied, and proselytized. If missionary talk has its desired effect, Christian texts become important to indigenous communities. The Bible has found a place within the corpus of Melanesian literature. Its stories are recounted alongside, or integrated with, traditional tales. It has assumed an authority in the negotiation of larger loyalties within Melanesian states. In Papua New Guinea, the Tok Pisin translation of the Bible has established a standard for the writing, and speaking, of Tok Pisin, much as Luther's German Bible established a standard for the writing and speaking of German. The Bible is employed not only in the preaching of Melanesian pastors but also in the oratory of Melanesian politicians. Religious and political discourse overlap in Melanesia, and religious and political offices are often vested in the same person. In this context the Bible has taken on an authority that may be compared to the authority of ancestral ways (pasin bilong tumbuna). Its stories and songs and moral prescriptions have gained an import not unlike that of tradi-

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tional narratives. Yet, unlike traditional tales and oral histories, Bible stories, in themselves "accounts of culture" as much as "accounts about God," are not only told. They are also read. Therefore, a significant part of the church's work has been the teaching of literacy. Moreover, the church has been an advocate of various kinds of book education and technical training. Missionary ethnographers do not only create written accounts. Neither do they diffuse information in only one direction. They bring "writings" about culture and religion, inscribed in their consciousness as well as in their books, with them to Melanesia. Missionaries of the mainline churches usually stay for longer periods in the field than do secular ethnographers. The longer time commitment on the part of missionary ethnographers may indeed contribute to the nature of their comprehension of indigenous cultures, as suggested by Marta Rohatynskyj (chapter 9). In the case of the Baining, the long-term work of missionary ethnographers seems to have belied many of the problems encountered by secular ethnographers working with these same people. The work of missionary ethnographers serves the purposes of a larger body that pays their salaries and approves, or refuses to approve, the initiatives they propose. Like many a secular anthropologist who works for a government, a development agency, or a community group, they will work at assigned tasks and lend their voices and writing to supporting the agenda of their sponsors. Missionaries engage in a variety of tasks and produce a variety of materials—Bible translations, newsletters for home supporters, hagiographies of fellow missionaries and local Christians, articles for anthropological and theological journals, dictionaries and grammars, educational texts. Moreover, what they say about local cultures in their preaching and teaching has ongoing effects. Stories are told about them by succeeding generations, and the causes they espouse are embodied in schools and clinics, sawmills and agricultural projects, church practices and institutions. They are, indeed, agents of cultural change. My focus here is on the Melanesian Institute and on research on healing systems in which I became involved while working with the institute from 1980 to 1983. In both the overall work of the institute and in my particular research project one can see an interplay of the interests of church, research institute, ethnographer, and informants, in the political situation of an independent Papua New Guinea. I discuss the institute's and my access to data and how the audiences for our research contribute to its shaping. These are matters that John Barnes (1980) describes under the rubric of "gatekeeping." First, then, I consider the impulse to write about culture in two early missionaries

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in Melanesia and the institutionalization of such impulses in the foundation of the Melanesian Institute. Second, I discuss my research on healing within the context of the institute's church-given mandate. Third, I reflect on the institute's relationships with its threefold audience of church, public, and academy.

Missionaries and Culture The Melanesian Institute, which celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1995, developed from the initiatives of missionaries concerned about the relationship of Christianity and culture. While most missionaries would say it is desirable to understand the notion of culture and to know about the particular cultures in which they work, a number of missionary societies recognize a duty to systematically study and write about culture. Among these is the Society of the Divine Word (S.V.D.) of the Catholic Church, which publishes the journal Anthropos. S.V.D. missionaries were key players in the establishment of the institute, which is popularly known today as M.I. The impulse of individual missionaries to write is usually, however, as much a matter of intellectual and emotional desire as a sense of duty. Moreover, a number of them with suitable academic qualifications will, after a term of missionary service, make their living in academic positions. The writing of culture and religion is a way to come to understanding. The two concerns, of culture and Christianity, inform the work of individual Christian ethnographers and of collaborative enterprises in Christian ethnography such as the Melanesian Institute. Christian writing that results from the study of culture and religion straddles the genres of ethnography and theology. When it is undertaken in a scientific manner it will be of use to anthropologists and historians who do not necessarily share the Christian commitments of its authors. In Melanesia there are many instances of secular anthropologists building upon the cultural observations and linguistic labors of missionaries. For example, Peter Lawrence acknowledges his debt to the Lutheran missionary E. F. Hanneman in the Madang area, and Andrew Strathern his to the Lutheran missionaries H. Strauss, M. Tischner, and G. F. Vicedom in the Mount Hagen area. However, it is generally recognized, as Garry Trompf points out in his review of three works of missionary anthropology (Trompf 1984), that while they may depend on each other, some level of suspicion prevails in the relationships between missionaries and anthropologists. The difference in their points of view is partly accounted for by the fact that the missionary's professional world view

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necessarily includes some notion of God. Even though the understanding of God may differ radically from one missionary to another, it provides a frame for her/his writing. The anthropologist's professional world view does not include such a notion, and even the one who personally subscribes to a Christian understanding of the world will not use it to frame a description of Melanesian cultures. The work of two well-known early missionary ethnographers, the Anglican Robert Henry Codrington (1830—1922)3 and the Calvinist Maurice Leenhardt (1878-1954), 4 exemplifies the purposes of Christian ethnography in the Pacific. In briefly reviewing their work we see the impulse toward a dialogue of Christianity and culture that is later made explicit in the work of the Melanesian Institute. The two men took the opportunity to write of Melanesian cultures to be part of their mission. Both taught writing and believed that literacy would eventually give Melanesians the opportunity to speak for themselves in the larger world. Codrington saw literacy as a step toward incorporating Pacific Islanders into full membership in the British Empire and the Anglican communion. Leenhardt hoped that literacy would not only provide access to the Word of God but would also be a tool in the fight against French colonial exploitation of native New Caledonians. In looking forward to the day when Melanesians would write for themselves, these missionaries cum ethnographers wrote of what they saw and heard, and concluded. Thus they created images of traditional Melanesia for the educated lay readers of their homelands. Their contributions have remained significant for the academic community, particularly for scholars of religion and culture. Similarly, present-day Melanesians turn to them in constructing their images of traditional Melanesia. One cannot study religion in Port Moresby or in Chicago without hearing of Codrington and mana, a term for which equivalents are sought in writing on other cultures and religions. Nevertheless, both their activities and their involvements in the field differ radically from those of today's academic ethnographer. Codrington and Leenhardt represent two different personalities, two versions of Christianity, two colonial contexts, and also two approaches to writing of culture. Codrington's approach is that of the recorder of facts, "facts" sometimes observed by himself, but more often, "facts" garnered from interviewing his students and coworkers. For Codrington it was important to be objective, important not to prejudge, important to record accurately and exhaustively. From his perspective Anglican Christianity was a fulfillment of the religious

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and moral systems of Melanesia. His sway among his missionary colleagues paved the way for the influence of other Anglican ethnographers, such as Walter George Ivens and Charles Elliot Fox, and for an autonomous Anglican Christianity in Melanesia. Leenhardt, working in New Caledonia, shaped his ethnography as a description of Melanesian personhood, and it appears that in doing so he reshaped his own Christianity. Like Codrington, he observed and interviewed and sought accuracy, but his emphasis was not so much on the details of cultural and religious practice as on the conceptualizations that embody the depth of lived experience. His attention to the lived myths and symbols of the Melanesians of New Caledonia accents human sensitivity and aesthetic sensibility as primary qualities of the ethnographer and missionary. Anglican and Calvinist, English and French, as they were, Codrington and Leenhardt shared the idea that Christianity and culture are not necessarily opposed. This notion, which is basic to the establishment of the Melanesian Institute, has been expressed in various ways in the history of Christian missions. We can trace it from the apostle Paul, speaking before the Council of the Areopagus about the Athenians' worship of an Unknown God (Acts 17:23), to today's advocates of inculturation5 and contextualization of the Gospel. It is an idea not without problems since Christianity also finds all cultures wanting.6 In 1659 the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide),7 a body established in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV to coordinate Catholic missions, advised its vicars apostolic: Do not regard it as your task, and do not bring any pressure to bear on the peoples, to change their manners, customs, and uses, unless they are evidently contrary to religion and sound morals. What could be more absurd than to transport France, Spain, Italy, or some other European country to China? Do not introduce all that to them, but only the faith, which does not despise or destroy the manners and customs of any people, always supposing they are not evil, but rather wishes to see them preserved unharmed.... Do not draw invidious contrasts between the customs of the people and those of Europe; do your utmost to adapt yourselves to them. (Congregatio de Propaganda Fide [1659] 1907, 42-43) The often repeated advice from Propaganda reflects a well-intentioned but unsophisticated view of the relationship of religion and culture and, particularly, of culture change. Even if missionaries were to suppress the biases of

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their own cultures, something hardly likely in Melanesia in the colonial period, it is unlikely that Christian faith could be transmitted as an isolated entity, a set of ideas and practices without connection to other ideas and practices. It is clear from oral historical accounts and from the experience of cargo cults that at first contact in Melanesia the indigenous peoples perceived Christianity to be the system of rituals and narratives belonging to the way of life of white people. This way of life was perceived to include structured patterns of social interaction, certain kinds of body covering and decoration, efficient tools, different foods, and so on. In the past five centuries missionaries of all denominations in colonial societies in Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific have taken the responsibility for introducing schools, health services, and projects for economic development. Some assert that the point of Christianity is to transform the way people live in the world and that where the conditions of life may be bettered it is the responsibility of Christians to work for the betterment. Such was Leenhardt's attitude in New Caledonia and Codrington's at the mission headquarters at Norfolk Island, even as both conceived of, and desired, a more spiritual Christianity. But who decides what is betterment? And who decides what is bad in a culture? Presumably all cultures, whatever their horizons, have ideals that an essential Christianity, if we could ever capture such a thing, would support and weaknesses that an essential Christianity would want to overcome. The instruction from Propaganda referred to above points out that the manners and customs to be respected are those that "are not evil." However, excising a thread perceived as "evil" from the web of culture may have even more evil consequences. Excise sorcery, for example, and you might unravel a network of kin support. It was the need for missionaries and local church personnel to have a better understanding of the process of culture change and of the consequences of piecemeal exorcism of cultural institutions that led some Catholic missionaries in Papua New Guinea in the late 1960s to propose the foundation of an institute in which missionaries new to the region would study Melanesian cultures. Churches and missions are collaborative enterprises. Much of the recording of languages and cultural practices done by missionaries, and more and more by personnel of local churches, is collaborative. Such work serves the personnel of mission or church—and sometimes of government and community agencies—through education, through provision of information, and through services of consultation. As a collaborative project the Melanesian Institute

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began with a group of Catholic missionaries who had worked for some years in Papua New Guinea. They discussed the need for new missionaries to better understand the cultural contexts of Melanesia so that they might be equipped to speak the Word of God in words and actions that would make sense to their hearers. The decree "Ad Gentes" of the recent Vatican Council II (1962-1965) lent support to their plans. That decree, concerning the missionary activity of the Church, states: Missionaries should complete their formation in the lands to which they will be sent. Thus they will gain more thorough knowledge of the history, social structures and customs of the people. They will ascertain their system of moral values and their religious precepts, and the innermost ideas, which, according to their sacred traditions, they have found concerning God, the world, and man. Let missionaries learn languages to the extent of being able to use them in a fluent and polished manner. Thus they will find more easy access to the minds and hearts of men. Furthermore, they should be properly introduced into special pastoral problems. (Flannery 1992, AG 26)

The Melanesian Institute In April 1967 the idea for a training institute for missionaries was brought to the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Territory of Papua New Guinea and the British Solomon Islands Protectorate in a letter drafted by Ernst Brandewie, S.V.D., a missionary who also held a Ph.D. in anthropology. The bishops agreed to the need for such an institute but said they could not move on it at that time. Several months later the Clerical Religious Superiors of the Catholic Church in Papua New Guinea (i.e., the heads of the various religious orders that had priests stationed in the region) studied the proposal and decided to supply the resources for implementing it. In 1968 four priests—Brandewie; Hermann Janssen, M.S.C., who became the first director; Gerald Arbuckle, S.M.; and Joseph Knoebel, S.V.D.—were appointed to begin the work of the institute. All were trained in anthropology; in fact, the first three held doctorates in the field.8 The need to systematically study Melanesian cultures was felt not only in Catholic circles but also among the other major churches (Anglican, Evangelical Lutheran, and United Church) in the region. It made sense for them to share their resources for this task, and the developing ecumenical climate made it possible. Within a few years all four churches were members of the institute.

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In 1994 Rev. Kasek Kautil of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Papua New Guinea), who was previously president of Martin Luther Seminary and whose training is in biblical theology, was appointed the first Melanesian director of the institute. Kautil served until the end of 1995 when he left to pursue further studies. He was replaced by Rev. Nicholas de Groot, an Australian Divine Word missionary, an ethicist with missionary experience in Papua New Guinea and the Philippines. Rev. Simeon Namunu, a former bishop of the United Church, who holds an M.A. in religious studies from the University of Papua New Guinea, became assistant director. The academic staff includes both Melanesians and expatriates. Their dialogue about culture and religion has a variety of voices and a variety of genres. The discussants are sociologists, theologians, anthropologists, economists. There is a theological underpinning, multivoiced as it may be, to their enterprise. The sociologist who works for the institute, whether s/he be Melanesian or German, understands that the institute serves the work of its four member churches, which are all promoting Christian religious and social values. The four churches are responsible for funding the institute, and they must approve the appointment of members of the teaching and research staff. The first work of the institute was conducting courses for new missionary priests. By the time I came to Papua New Guinea in 1973 the institute was on the path to becoming coeducational and ecumenical, and I participated that year in a month-long orientation course at Mount Hagen in which men and women missionaries from the four major churches (Evangelical Lutheran, Anglican, Catholic, and United) took part. That year, too, a Lutheran, Dr. Theodor Ahrens, a missiologist who had done research on cargo movements and Christianity in the southern Madang area, joined the staff. The Honorable John Momis, 9 then involved in the Constitutional Planning Committee's work of drafting the national constitution, spoke at the Mount Hagen course of the vision of integral human development, which today still echoes in his parliamentary speeches. Although institute staff provided the core lectures for the orientation courses, university anthropologists and government administrators often appeared as guest lecturers. As well as providing an introduction to Melanesian cultures for their participants, the courses of those years also had a wider influence. Missionaries returned to their stations more aware of local cultures and some of them committed to the systematic study of those cultures. Certainly the 1973 course was influential in my own work and led me on the path toward graduate studies in history of religions. For the first eleven years the institute printed "Orientation Course Notes,"

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bound volumes of the lectures given at that year's course. In later years the educational approach changed from lecture based to case study based. The "notes," which many would take back to their stations to reread and think about, were discontinued. From then on institute personnel sought to have participants bring written case studies to the course and to reflect on their own experiences in Melanesia, making use of the resources the institute offered to put them in a larger perspective. In 1984-1985 the institute published a trilogy, based on the orientation courses and consisting of introductions to Melanesian cultures, Melanesian religions, and ministry in Melanesia (Whiteman 1984; Mantovani 1984; Schwarz 1985). I contributed an article or two to each of the volumes and in 1988, at the request of the Melanesian Institute editor, prepared an annotated bibliography as a supplement (MacDonald 1988). The trilogy, which has been reprinted several times and has been translated in an abridged Tok Pisin version, has become a popular handbook for church workers. The institute was first called the Melanesian Social Pastoral Institute, but in 1971 the name Melanesian Institute for Pastoral and Socio-Economic Service was adopted. "Pastoral" underscores the concern for studying the cultural context in which the work of Christian ministry is carried out and for exploring pastoral options and strategies. There is a commitment to helping pastors in their work, but, at the same time, it is often said by pastors that the Melanesian Institute is too theoretical and not practical enough. This is probably an inevitable tension. "Socio-economic" points to a concern for analyzing works of social and economic development. In fact, this concern has played itself out not only in researching, and commenting on, development projects sponsored by the churches, but also in critiques of government undertakings and private enterprises. Over the quarter-century of its existence the Melanesian Institute has focused its energies in three areas: research, courses, and publications. It has generally drawn its academic staff—with qualifications in anthropology, economics, missiology, religious studies, sociology, theology—from its member churches. Among major research projects undertaken by the institute have been selfstudies10 of the Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran, and United churches; a study on marriage and family life; and a study on youth in Melanesia.11 The research done in these projects, as well as the individual research of the academic staff, has been presented in courses as well as in written accounts. The courses include both the orientation courses already mentioned and a variety of seminars and workshops. The latter have considered topics such as religion in

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Melanesia, religion and development, changing roles of Melanesian women, urbanization, ethics and development, and new religious movements. The institute publishes the results of its own research and also research by others that is relevant to its mission. For example, it was Catalyst that in 1991 published the report of the Starnberg Institute on development and the environment in Papua New Guinea, in which the devastating effects of the Ok Tedi mine were documented. Articles on culture and articles that reflect on the role of the churches in Melanesia, are published in the journals Catalyst and Point (in English) and Umben (in Tok Pisin), in an Occasional Papers series, and in a Working Papers on Marriage and Family Life series. These texts, which are directed to church workers more than to academics, tend to have a practical bent. Not only do they seek to inform, but they also encourage people to think about issues and to take action. The name Catalyst reflects this intention. These publications are intended to play a part in the shaping of Christian cultures. Simeon Namunu expresses what many Melanesian church leaders want from the Melanesian Institute when he says he has found it to be "a free and open forum for discussions where Christian Melanesian thinking is expressed and new indigenous theologies covering pastoral and socio-cultural themes and issues are explored" (Namunu 1995, 129). In other words, Namunu, now the assistant director of the institute, sees its work as helping the churches understand and appreciate Melanesian tradition and enabling them to relate to changing social situations. Certainly the churches perceive the work of the institute to be different from the work of the seminaries. Whereas the four mainline churches that sponsor the institute expect the seminaries to train the future ministers of the churches in accord with their denominational traditions and theology, the institute is regarded more as a think tank and is expected to attend to change in a way that the seminaries are not. Interviewed on the occasion of the silver anniversary celebrations, Brother Herman Boyek, a Marist brother from Kairiru in the East Sepik who lectures at Kaindi Teachers College, Wewak, said he considered the Melanesian Institute to be the "brain," challenging both traditional and new values. Continuing the image of society as a person, he characterized the church as the "conscience" (Boyek 1994).

The Anthropologist, Religion, and Tradition I worked with the Melanesian Institute from February 1980 to August 1983. During that time I lectured on Melanesian religions at the orientation courses,

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which by then were directed to local church personnel as well as to missionaries. I was involved in seminars, such as three on religious movements that were held at that time. While working with the institute, I returned regularly to the South Kewa area where I continued research on traditional and changing religious patterns. This included work in which my informants were traditional healers—some were Christian and some were not—whom I had known since I first went to Papua New Guinea in 1973. My writing and teaching reported on traditional healing practices and also on attitudes toward healing and approaches to healing in communities that were becoming Christian (MacDonald 1981, 1982). These matters were of concern to the churches in developing Christian ministries of healing. Many of the participants in courses conducted by the Melanesian Institute were nurses, among them Melanesian nurses trying to work out an accommodation between modern medicine and traditional healing. Some wanted to discourage patients from consulting traditional healers. Others, regretting that Christianity had often condemned indigenous practices without understanding them, and needing to be true to their own experience that the healing rituals of their ancestors "worked," wanted to explore the medical and symbolic dimensions of traditional healing. They desired a rapprochement between tradition and Christianity, and between tradition and modern medicine. In the years following the granting of independence in Papua New Guinea in 1975, discussions in Christian assemblies and workshops tended to be framed by the words in the preamble to the constitution in which the nation acknowledged, "our noble traditions and the Christian principles that are ours now" (National Planning Office 1975, 2). In workshops I conducted for catechists, clergy, and other church workers, at both the national and the local levels, participants expressed their intense desire that "noble traditions" and "Christian principles" be compatible. Influenced by this rhetoric, some of us saw it as our task to foster a discourse in which tradition and Christianity were compatible. We tended, therefore, to conceive of, and to speak and write of, Christianity as being in continuity with indigenous religious traditions. Some among us were more conscious than others of the negative aspects of cultures, but even so, the mainline churches and the representatives they sent to work at the Melanesian Institute tended to affirm cultures.12 It is difficult to say to what extent the institute was coopted by influential Melanesians, such as priest-politician John Momis, and to what extent the institute persuaded them. In any case, the dialogue of tradition and Christianity remains significant in contemporary Melanesia.

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In my research among the Kewa my informants were always people I had known since I first went to the area in 1973 or people who were related to them. Of those who were Christian, some were associated with the Catholic Church and some with the Evangelical Church of Papua, a church that grew out of the work of the Unevangelized Field Mission. They came from several different clans, and I was careful not to be exclusively associated with particular clans. I did the most research in Mararoko, a settlement south of Erave where I enjoyed the hospitality of a catechist, Ludwig Mangalo and his wife, Katarina Kauwanya. One of my principal informants was Tomas Soi, a traditional healer who had become a Catholic. Soi, who died in 1986, could neither read nor write himself but was a keen advocate for the recently established school. He had been a leader of a cult called keveta pamo (stone woman), which, in fact, was still active in Mararoko in the early 1980s, although he was no longer involved with it. Soi supplied me with information about the cult but asked that I keep the information to myself. Some of his information overlaps with that of other informants who placed no restriction on retelling it. Soi, who took a fatherly interest in my welfare, said that he gave me the information about keveta pamo because we had talked together about healing and he, therefore, wanted me to know about the role of the keveta pamo cult in ensuring the well-being of the community. However, Soi did not want me to disclose his information to the women, with whom I tended to spend a lot of time, and who traditionally were excluded from participation in the cult, or to other missionaries. I, of course, agreed to his restrictions. Since I did not ask whether I might tell his stories after his death, I still have a "Soi, restricted" folder among my South Kewa files. Although Soi restricted the retelling of matters relating to the fertility cult of keveta pamo, there were stories that he wanted me to write down so that others would know about them. Some of them I tape recorded, translated, and published (MacDonald 1991). At times Soi would send someone to summon me to the men's house in Menakiri so that he could tell me about his healing practices, have me accompany him to visit a patient, or pass on to me his stories, both humorous and tragic, about the coming of the first Europeans to his area. Knowingly or unknowingly, Soi imposed two responsibilities on me. One concerns how to treat the information he provided on keveta pamo. To date when I have written about the cult I have used material from others and have refrained from using what he provided. The other responsibility is to take time to write more fully about Soi's healing practices. Lest I fail in the latter task I have left copies of notes of interviews with Soi in the Southern

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Highlands Archives and in the archives of the Melanesian Institute. However, I have not felt free to include the keveta pamo material. It seems to me that the restrictions that Soi placed on this material reflects a conflict between two times—the pre-mission, pre-Australian administration era in which keveta pamo and other cults flourished, what he called "the old time," and the time of Christianity and nationhood, what he called "the new time." Perhaps Soi felt that a local cult restricted to men might be judged harshly by Christianity with its more universalistic outlook. However, he spoke freely of rituals intended to bring harm, which, he said, he had discontinued since becoming a Christian. As Niko Besnier observed in his discussion of the politics of representation on Nukulaelae (chapter 2), there may be beyond the cover story a community presents to the outside world a cacophonous discourse of local interests and intentions. Thus, it could be that in what Soi told me to write he was presenting a cover story, while in asking that the information he shared with me about keveta pamo not be shared with missionaries or the women of Mararoko, he was keeping what he perceived as discordant discourse from interfering with the cover text. I have observed elsewhere that the pledge of the preamble to the Papua New Guinea constitution to pass on "our noble traditions and the Christian principles that are ours now," holds both approval and disapproval of missionary endeavors and embodies an ambivalence about Christianity (MacDonald 1991, 272). The pledge affirms Christianity but expresses reservations, and even anger, at Christianity's denial of ancestral ways. The restrictions that Soi placed on dispersal of the information with which he provided me reflects such ambivalence, not only about the changing religious situation but also about gender relationships in his community. Soi, who had no sons, declined to train a daughter as a healer, even though some other healers had begun to train female relatives in their work. He was, however, training young men of his clan, the Kowikera. He was also instructing me, a woman, who did not belong to his traditional world and who was a representative of Christianity, but placed limits on what I might carry across the border between the old time and the new. During the time I worked with the Melanesian Institute, the Christian Medical Commission of the World Council of Churches was conducting regional conferences on "Health, Healing, and Wholeness." The conference for the Pacific was held in 1981 at Madang. At that time I had the pleasure of getting to know Yatiban Nail, an elderly Lutheran pastor from Siar, who was also a

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traditional healer. He did not speak English, and I became his translator for the duration of the conference. We spoke, one after the other, on the same day of the conference. In my presentation I talked of relationships with people, with land, and with spirits and of interventions to restructure these relationships. Yatiban gave particular examples of healing, then w e both responded to questions. Afterward Yatiban, very pleased with the way our presentations had gone, said to me, "You set the table very carefully and then I put out all the good food." A t the conference in Madang, as on other occasions, I was made aware of the influence of the Melanesian Institute on its local audience of seminarians, pastors, and other church workers. A local Presbyterian pastor from Vanuatu, with whom I had talked on the first day of the conference about the difficult political situation in his region, came up to me and said that when the members of his congregation asked him about traditional healing there was much he knew but that he felt overwhelmed and did not know where to begin discussing it. He said that the framework I had used would help him in his reflections. I hoped that it would, but I thought to myself that, if I were on the wrong track, we might be cooperating in the production of a distorted "tradition." One may observe, of course, that tradition is always in the process of re-creation. And unlike Soi, who was still very close to the life world of premission Melanesia, many second- and third-generation Christians — s u c h as the pastor from Vanuatu—are struggling to reinvent a culture and history that can integrate Christianity. They see the institute as a resource in promoting their cause. Some of my time at the Melanesian Institute was occupied with counseling courses in Tok Pisin that a catechist, Mark Kolandi, and I developed in response to needs felt by pastors and catechists who worked in Tok Pisin. Later we included prison warders and nurses in the courses. From this work emerged a small handbook for counselors, which I edited, and a newsletter, still in circulation, which Mark edited, and which was distributed to graduates of counseling courses. The six-week live-in counseling courses that we ran included input on culture and religion, training in helping skills, and supervised placements in the local hospital and jail. The work that began under the auspices of the institute has since gone its own way as a separate counseling institute, the Christian Institute of Counseling, currently under the direction of a Bougainvillean, Carl Elsolo. Mark Kolandi worked for the institute until recently, when he decided to return with his family to his home place in the Western Highlands.

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Part of the understanding that Mark Kolandi and I tried to convey was that the work of healing is basic to culture and that it is an area in which we find continuity between past and present ways of life. In the past, we would say, people looked to a variety of helping specialists in coping with life processes, with illness, and with misfortunes, while today they look to church workers, government employees, and various professionals for such help. Hence, we took an approach in which church workers could see their efforts to respond to sick and troubled people as in continuity with those of traditional healers. In what we taught and wrote, we promulgated the notion that all of us can use and improve our God-given skills in communication to help others. I had received training in counseling in Australia. Mark had undertaken in-service training with a missionary priest-counselor, Leo Brouwer, and was later to further his training in the Philippines. Our challenge was to find approaches to counseling that would be culturally appropriate. Working with course participants from all parts of Papua New Guinea, we tried to help people develop suitable helping interventions for their situations of work and ministry. In the counseling courses we had students write accounts of interviews with patients and prisoners they had visited. These accounts were then taken as starting points for exploring culture and communication. For example, when a course participant from Manus reported that a man from the Western Highlands in the Goroka Hospital believed that he had contracted leprosy as a result of borrowing his brother-in-law's shirt, and that he expected his brotherin-law to pay compensation, a scenario that the man from Manus found ludicrous, the twenty or so participants assessed the situation in several different ways. Some agreed with the Western Highlander's ideas of causation and retribution. Others wanted a modern medical opinion and, in any case, denied a right to compensation. The perspectives the course participants brought to bear on the situation embraced traditional religion and law, Christianity, and modern medicine. There was no analysis that would satisfy them all. In working with this case we considered such questions as: How did compensation work traditionally in the different parts of Papua New Guinea? What forms of compensation are appropriate today? What principles might Christians employ in judging this case? In 1991, while visiting Papua New Guinea, I was invited to speak at Martin Luther Seminary in Lae about research I was doing on Melanesian styles of Christianity. At the seminary one of the faculty members told me that students were still making use of articles I had written on counseling and healing in

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the early 1980s while I was with the Melanesian Institute. Some of the students also spoke to me about those articles. I felt a little embarrassed, and also anxious, at the reliance they placed on what I had written. For one thing, I wished the students could have more texts by Melanesians. For another, I was conscious of how a text, by its nature, gives only limited information and ideas. It can close off discussion of an issue and can restrict horizons. And, I was aware that, in the Melanesian church today, so few write that those who do may become authorities even if their grasp of matters such as traditional and contemporary healing is patchy and their vision limited. I did not want the seminarians to make too much of what I had written or to resort to what I said rather than think through issues for themselves. I also wanted them to be attentive to many voices, including the oral discourse in their communities and the written discourse of the hundreds of anthropologists who have written on Melanesian cultures. Yet I was conscious that on many occasions when I have recommended works of anthropology to church workers—both Melanesian and expatriate—I have later been told that the books were too difficult or too technical for the reader. In the "to and fro" of discussion with the seminarians I realized that people like me, and institutions like the Melanesian Institute, serve a role as interpreters between anthropology and theology and between academy and church. Usually an institute course or project grows out of a concern expressed by a member church or a situation brought to the attention of the churches by the institute. In studying the issue or preparing for the course, researchers or lecturers have access to current academic monographs and journals. They are in conversation with colleagues at the University of Papua New Guinea, the seminaries, and other institutes. Much of the writing published by the Melanesian Institute develops from courses and seminars. A lecturer prepares material, presents it, stimulates discussion, listens to the concerns of the audience, receives feedback. Then s/he writes and in the writing comes to further understandings of culture and religion. Usually the writing is available to readers without the immediate presence of the author and without directions from the author on how to read. In exploring matters of culture and religion, I myself prefer the role of facilitator and resource person, a role that a student audience is more likely to concede to a teacher than a reading audience to an author. Hence, part of my discomfiture in the seminary situation, which I otherwise found very stimulating and refreshing, was that they were holding onto texts that, since writing, I had unraveled and rewoven. What I experienced in

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Lae, among students most of whom were first- or second-generation readers, I have found also among American college students. My students at Le Moyne, for example, also invest what I would consider too much authority in the texts they read.13

A Question of Audience The sponsor and also the first audience for the ethnographic productions of the Melanesian Institute is the church in Melanesia, or to be more precise, the four denominational bodies that provide the personnel and financing for the institute. Those who research, teach, and write for the institute have in common with ethnographers who are employed by and/or coopted by other groups and agencies the fact that their expertise is used to further specific projects and that their work serves purposes other than the academic. Advocacy on behalf of particular interests may even, as Toon van Meijl describes in his contribution to this volume (chapter 5), place applied ethnographers in situations where the group coopting their services expects them to edit out any material perceived to be inimical to its image and purposes. As far as I am aware this has not happened to Melanesian Institute staff members, most of whom, most of the time, share the goals of their sponsor. In making its requests, the sponsor itself speaks in four denominational voices as well as in its ecumenical tone. Moreover, it does not "represent" in an official sense the plethora of small churches that are part of Melanesian Christianity today and something of a thorn in the side for the longer established mainline churches. It is now some years since I have served on the editorial board of the Melanesian Institute, but I have remained in touch with the institute, occasionally contributing articles and book reviews to its journals. There is a huge range in the academic merit of the materials published. The editorial board excludes some articles for lack of academic rigor. Others are excluded for lack of pastoral relevance. If any one criterion governs the selection of research projects and the solicitation of materials for publication it is pastoral relevance. At times I have argued myself that any good description of religious practice is of pastoral relevance and been advised by my colleagues that one should go the step further and add the pastoral application. Those who work with the Melanesian Institute accept the criterion of relevance even as they struggle to fulfill it. There is a negotiation of interests between the institute and its indi-

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vidual staff members. The governing board of the institute, in consultation with the research and teaching staff, sets the major research agenda. The decision to do major research on marriage and family life meant that during the four years I worked at the institute, whatever else I might do, that was a project on which I worked. While it would not have been my first choice, I accepted that it was important, just as the institute and church accepted that my research on healing was of value. Obviously, the anthropologist recruited to lead the marriage and family life research, Darrell Whiteman, was expected to commit a greater amount of his time to it than I was. Currently the board is asking that research on the status of women be undertaken. A suitable person will be recruited to direct it, and most of the officers will contribute to the research according to their particular areas of expertise. In reporting on the church of Melanesia and its concerns, the authors published by the Melanesian Institute not only speak to and for the member churches, they also connect the peoples and church of Melanesia with the world church, particularly with study centers and seminaries that subscribe to Catalyst and Point. The second audience for Melanesian Institute publications is the public or, more specifically, the educated citizenry of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. The institute both caters to concerns of the Melanesian public and also plays a role in representing contemporary Melanesia to itself and to outsiders, particularly, as mentioned above, to the overseas churches. From its first courses and publications to the latest issues of its journals, the institute has been a forum in which Melanesians in public and church service have explored traditional and contemporary Melanesian identities. Moreover, the churches that the institute serves are all involved in public service—in education and health services and in development works. The intention that the institute assist them in this work is reflected in the full name, the Melanesian Institute for Pastoral and Socio-Economic Service. Not only, then, is there a theological and pastoral application in the Christian ethnography that the institute produces, but there are also social, economic, and development applications. Of four major articles in the first issue of Catalyst for 1997, two are concerned with politics and mining, one with free education and the Papua New Guinea national elections, and one with Melanesian theology. The institute does not itself carry out development work, but its personnel serve as advisors to the churches on development projects and social issues, from time to time organize workshops on these matters, and lend their expertise to work-

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shops arranged by other groups. Occasionally the institute becomes embroiled in political matters, such as, in the case of the Starnberg Report, criticism of mining agreements and procedures in Papua New Guinea. On such occasions those members of the research and teaching staff who are not citizens of Papua New Guinea are placed in a vulnerable position. In fact, it is their connection to the churches, which are influential in Melanesian politics, that assures some security for their freedom of expression. The third audience is the academy. Although, as noted earlier, there are cooperation and overlap in the work of Christian and secular ethnography, there are also unease and suspicion in the relationship. Put simply, they serve different masters. In an article discussing the practice and purpose of missionary ethnographic research in Irian Jaya, and published in Anthropos— i.e., in a journal sponsored by a missionary society, the Divine Word Missionaries—Sjoerd Jaarsma has characterized missionary ethnography as "more pastoral than academic" (Jaarsma 1993a). This would be a fair characterization of the work of the Melanesian Institute, though I know that many who have worked for the institute would think rather of their work as "academic and pastoral." Those appointed to the research and teaching staff combine academic qualifications with church commitments and, most often, with pastoral experience. The secular academic reading Christian ethnography may find it contains presuppositions to which s/he cannot subscribe. Therefore, s/he needs to read it with regard for its context, recognizing its purposes. In the context of Melanesian Institute courses, where church and university academics often work together with pastors, there is, in fact, a reciprocity of pastoral and academic voices. Garry Trompf has suggested that religious studies, rather than anthropology, may be the most appropriate conversation partner for missionary anthropology (Trompf 1984). As far as the theological component of such ethnography is concerned, Trompf is correct that those whose academic discipline is the study of religion will be more sensitive to writing in which the author understands God to be revealed through the experience of culture. However, since "God" is part of the discourse of most Melanesians today, a case could be made that anyone writing about the cultures of this region needs to become attuned to theological language. In fact, most seasoned anthropologists working in Melanesia understand it, even if they do not agree with it. Christian ethnography is one of the genres that connects the people of Melanesia to the larger world. It is a voice modulated in the first place for theological discourse and that benefits by participation in a larger conversation.

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Notes I thank all the members of the 1995-1996 AS AO sessions on "Ethnography of Ethnographies" for their discussion of my paper and especially Sjoerd Jaarsma, Marta Rohatynskyj, and Judith Macdonald for their detailed comments and constructive criticism. 1. Jubilee and centenary celebrations provide the occasion for churches to dig into their archives. For example, when Lutherans in Papua New Guinea celebrated the centenary of their church in 1986, the Melanesian Institute devoted an issue of Point ("The Birth of an Indigenous Church") to Lutheran history in Papua New Guinea, making extensive use of accounts by local Christians (Fugman 1986). 2. Some adopt a middle way, using the rhetoric of tradition and also speaking and writing quite explicitly as Christians. For example, the Papua New Guinean lawyer and politician Bernard Narokobi, now the member for Wewak in the national parliament, tries to resolve the dilemma of choosing for or against Christianity by showing that traditional Melanesian values are local articulations of universal Christian ideals (Narokobi 1983). 3. Codrington, who was based at Norfolk Island and oversaw educational work throughout the Melanesian Mission, is best remembered for The Melanesians: Studies in Their Anthropology and Folklore (1891). The Melanesians of his title are peoples of the Solomon Islands, New Hebrides (Vanuatu), and Banks Islands. In this major work he discusses the structures of Melanesian societies, the concept of mana, ritual and magic, secret societies, and folklore. Codrington's studies of Melanesian cultures gave him a particularly important voice in the negotiations that went on within the Melanesian Mission of how Anglican Christianity should relate to indigenous religion. David Hilliard, in his history of the Melanesian Mission, observes: "More than anyone else, it was Codrington, the urbane Oxford scholar, who implanted in the continuing tradition of the Mission the idea that no religion was wholly false, that 'heathen' beliefs should always be approached with sympathy and respect" (Hilliard 1978, 191). 4. Leenhardt spent the first half of his career as a Protestant missionary in New Caledonia and the second as a professor at the Sorbonne. The quest for the authentic is the motif of his ethnography as of his missionary and academic life. Despite his respect for the culture of the local pastors with whom he worked, he worried that they tended too easily to blend Christian and traditional ways. They preached an immanent God and here-and-now ways to overcome the devastations of colonialism—do not drink, learn to read, write, and count. Conversing with them, Leenhardt, whose Christian formation had stressed the spiritual over the material, began to give greater attention to the materiality of human existence. In his European Protestant upbringing he had developed a notion of the person as an autonomous being whose dignity lay in the ability to make free decisions. In Melanesia he encountered a notion of person in which

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authentic identity partook of the social and the mythic worlds. He came to regard time spent teaching literacy or helping to build a house or attending a feast as just as important as time spent teaching the Bible or preaching a sermon. The title of his bestknown work, Do Kamo, means "the true or real person." It describes a person who is engaged with the social group, with the landscape, and with the mythic tradition (Leenhardt [1947] 1979). 5. Inculturation, a relatively new term in Christian theology, is based in the traditional Christian doctrine of incarnation. Inculturation refers to an interaction between the Christian message and culture, as a result of which a particular culture is transformed by Christianity, and Christianity, in its turn, is enriched by the practices and insights of the culture. The term has wider currency in Catholic than in Protestant circles. The first mention of inculturation in a major church document was in Pope John Paul II's 1979 letter on catechetics, Catechesi Tradendae (Flannery 1992, CT53). Advocates of "inculturation" see it as an approach that respects the diversity of cultures and promotes a pluralistic world church. However, some theologians see in it a danger of relativizing what they regard as perennial and unchanging in Christianity. 6. For the apostle Paul, Christianity's prototypical missionary, both Jews and Greeks were, as he wrote to the Romans, under the dominion of sin (Rom 3:9) and in need of the message of redemption. At the same time, both communities were capable of receiving and living by the Gospel. Although all might, as Paul writes to the Romans, "fall short of the glory of God" (Rom 3:23), all can be saved by God's grace (Rom 3:24). This Pauline position has informed the theological debate on the relationship of gospel and culture. In the mainline denominations the trend is to say that culture, as a pattern for living, is good and necessary, but that it inevitably falls short of what it might be. Hence, from the Christian point of view, cultures stand in need of redemption. 7. Since 1967 the official name of the congregation has been Sacra Congregatio pro Gentium Evangelizatione seu de Propaganda Fide, that is, the Sacred Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples or de Propaganda Fide. The modern usage of the word "propaganda," for the dissemination of information to influence public opinion, sometimes carrying the implication of brainwashing, derives from the name of the Vatican congregation. 8. An anniversary issue of Point celebrates the twenty-fifth year (Silver Jubilee) of the Melanesian Institute (Mantovani 1994). It includes four chapters: (1) "The Vision of the Founding Fathers," (2) "History of the Melanesian Institute," (3) "Activities of the Melanesian Institute," and (4) "The Future in the Eyes of Melanesians." In the first chapter Brandewie, Arbuckle, Janssen, and Gerry Bus, who was the S.V.D. Superior at the time, recount the vision they had had for the institute. Joe Knoebel died in 1990. 9. At the time, in addition to being regional member for Bougainville, which he still is, John Momis was a Catholic priest in active ministry. He was to leave the priesthood in 1994. As deputy chairman of the Constitutional Planning Committee he was

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its de facto leader because the chairman, Chief Minister Michael Somare, was preoccupied with preparations for independence. 10. The self-studies have been both data gathering and educational processes that have involved local church members in discussions of the life and work of the churches. They have provided information on which decisions as to pastoral priorities and allocation o f resources can be based. 11. The Young Melanesians Project (YMP), which began in 1991 and has recently come to completion, sought data on experiences, values, and problems of young Melanesians. A questionnaire used in the research covered the areas of education, marriage and family life, social problems, religion, livelihood, and social order and justice. The results of the research, an ethnography o f sorts on Melanesian youth today, have been made available to church and government agencies that are interested in using them for guidance in planning community programs in general and youth programs in particular. Moreover, church workers will not only try to shape their youth programs to address deficiencies and meet needs, it is likely that their awareness of the situation of youth will lead them to use whatever influence they might have to promote suitable public policies regarding youth. In 1995 I analyzed the data on youth and religion (MacDonald 1995). It came from 1,630 young people between the ages o f fifteen and twenty-five in four regions of Papua New Guinea. As I immersed myself in the data and felt some of the struggles and satisfactions of young people, I wanted to make a case for supporting them. In other words, in the process of writing I became an advocate for youth. I cast the Y M P report on religion in terms of a conversation about youth and religion and gave it four sections. The first, "God and the Ancestors," discusses the interaction o f indigenous religions and Christianity in Papua New Guinea as a backdrop to the situation in which young people find themselves today. The second, " Y M P Data on Religion," identifies trends in responses to the questions about religion that were put to the interviewees. The third, "Relationships Which Matter," looks at issues of identity and relationships. One could argue that the fourth, "Solidarity with Youth," is in the nature o f a sermon. It makes suggestions about how young people, the larger community, and Christian congregations in particular might support and challenge youth in their religious quest. 12. I am concerned here only with the four member churches of the Melanesian Institute. Since the 1970s hundreds of small missions, many of a fundamentalist inclination, have established congregations in Papua New Guinea. Their judgments concerning Melanesian cultures are often very negative. 13. Responding to such difficulties experienced by members teaching in tertiary institutes in the U.S. and Canada, the Eastern International Region of the American Academy o f Religion in 1997 sponsored a workshop on "Reading, Writing, and Religious Studies."

Chapter 9

The Enigmatic Baining The Breaking of an Ethnographer's Heart Marta A. Rohatynskyj There is no conventional ethnographic monograph of either the Baining or the Tolai people of East New Britain. By a conventional ethnography I mean one where an attempt is made to describe a cultural whole from the perspective of a localized community (cf. Marcus and Cushman 1982; Rosaldo 1989). There is a rather large body of ethnographic material on both Baining and Tolai culture, produced by amateurs and missionaries, dating from the German era to well into the post-World War II period. However, although providing invaluable documentation, these usually do not surpass in style and content what Terence Hays (1992) calls "customs reports." It seems remarkable that in the interwar period, when research was taking place on which many of the ethnographic classics of the area are based, no professional anthropologist was attracted to a comprehensive study of Tolai culture or its historical precedents. The ethnographic corpus of the Tolai and the Baining stands in contrast to that of the Tikopia described by Judith Macdonald (chapter 6). Neither the Tolai nor the Baining enjoy the privilege of being rendered larger than life by the efforts of a long-term chronicler. Indeed, the ethnography of both groups has more in common with that of the Asmat discussed by Sjoerd Jaarsma (chapter 7), where a variety of genres of ethnographic writing and several anthropological researchers have contributed to the corpus. However, the specific history of the development of each ethnographic corpus is inevitably tied to the political and economic conditions that determine the local and regional identities of each ethnic group. It was not until 1959 that research was undertaken in the Tolai village of Rapitok by T. Scarlett Epstein (1968) and in Matupit by her husband (A. L. Epstein 1969). A few years later R. F. Salisbury (1970) commenced work in Vunamami. Although both Salisbury's and A. L. Epstein's work are named after their village of residence, the ethnography based on the Rapitok research makes not even this slight concession to a traditional village-based study. The concerns of the researchers at Matupit and Vunamami were far from limited to the exploration of traditional village life. Epstein writes in his introduction

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that he was interested in studying urbanization in a different cultural setting from Central Africa and that "the present book might well be regarded as a study of urbanization viewed from the perspective of the village" (1969, 2). Salisbury (1970, 2) opens his introduction with the question: "Can the nonindustrial countries achieve sustained economic development using their own resources alone?" He offers the book as a positive reply. These ethnographies focus on one facet of the cultural whole. All three are complex works, structured in response to a set of questions generated at a particular moment in the history of the discipline. Although the Tolai were not able to attract a conventional ethnographer in the interwar period, the Central Baining did so in the person of Gregory Bateson. Bateson spent ten months in 1 9 2 7 - 1 9 2 8 among the Uramat speaking Baining of Latramat village. However, he found the Baining unstudiable because of their lack of any formulable culture or social organization (Fajans 1997, 3), and he considered his research among them a total failure (Pool 1984, 219). He published only one brief paper in the form of notes in Oceania based on this, his first fieldwork experience. Bateson's first ethnographic encounter with a New Guinean people thus proved unproductive, and years later he spoke of the Baining as having broken his heart (Fajans 1997). An anthropological apprehension of the Baining as possessing a culture somehow lacking in structure and communicability has remained until the present. Fieldwork conducted by anthropologists within the last several decades has yielded an estimation of their culture on a par with that of Bateson as well as levels of frustration equal to those experienced by him (Pool 1984; Fajans 1997). It is possible that Baining culture is of the extreme "egalitarian" type suggested by Ron Brunton (1989, 676) to have "no formalized bodies of knowledge and hardly any verbalized rules of behavior." This is the position taken by Jane Fajans, who worked in two northern Baining villages in the late 1970s, in describing the absence of normative structures of social grouping or overt forms of cultural consciousness (1997, 4 - 6 ) . At issue here is the disturbing proposition that there is a variance in the amount of "culture" among groups. Some, like the Baining, apparently do not have enough of it, or at least not in a form that can be clearly apprehended, to make the encounter with the ethnographer rewarding both in terms of personal satisfaction and in publications. Jeremy Pool, who worked in two northern Baining villages in the late 1960s, like Bateson felt that his fieldwork was a failure and published only an explication of that ordeal (Pool 1984). To under-

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stand why Bateson and Pool found their ethnographic encounter of the Baining so unproductive, we could see Baining culture as "a low-end extreme in terms of communication (rate of information flow), both individual and institutional" (Pool 1984, 219). Bateson (Lipset 1980), Pool (1984), and Fajans (1997) complain that the Baining were loath to answer questions and never volunteered information. Fajans writes (4), in reference to the spectacular Baining masks and dances: "I was unable to get Baining informants to come forth with exegesis or commentary of a nontrivial kind for these aspects of their lives." Given their particular low level of social differentiation, Baining culture may be of a particularly uncommunicative type. It was by accepting this possibility and indeed making it the central problem of her treatment of the Baining that Fajans extricated herself from the quandary described by Pool. But it may also be that the failure to communicate is located largely between the native and the researcher. Where natives provide little verbal data from which an indigenous system of meaning can be constructed, the researcher is forced back upon her/his own powers of inference and interpretation. The Baining would not be the only peoples in Papua New Guinea to be reticent or uncooperative in the process of ethnographic research. Nevertheless, in these cases the ethnographer is usually able to put together the essentials of a cultural description as required by the precepts of conventional ethnography without faulting her/his hosts with some lack. The anthropological problem of the Baining documented by several ethnographers, their distinction as having broken Bateson's heart, is paralleled by the perception of them as problematic on the part of their neighbors, the Tolai. Indeed, the predominantly Tolai East New Britain provincial government in 1991 commissioned me to undertake a study of the levels of development of what they called the "minor ethnic groups" of the province, with specific attention to the various Baining groups, in the hope of identifying cultural causes for their lack of economic development. This parallel evaluation of the Baining by our discipline and by progressive elements in the larger Papua New Guinean society invites an examination of the anthropological problem of the Baining within the sociological and historical context in which ethnographic research has taken place. I will limit myself here to trying to understand the circumstances that brought about Bateson's unproductive encounter with the Baining in the late 1920s. In doing so it will become evident that the understanding of the position of the Baining in the larger ethnographic universe can not be separated from that of the Tolai, their demographically, politically, and economically powerful

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neighbors. For example, the question of why the Tolai attracted professional ethnographers so late in their contact history has already been touched upon. One immediate response is that of simply pointing out that even in the interwar period the Tolai, or their various predecessors, were probably considered too acculturated to provide the kind of data about "primitive society" that was sought at that time. The various Tolai groups had, after all, participated in intensive contact with Europeans and others at least since 1875, when George Brown landed at Port Hunter on the Duke of York Islands. They simply were not considered appropriate candidates for study. David Lipset (1980, 126) notes that Bateson had undertaken work with the Baining as a result of a meeting with E. W. P. Chinnery, the government anthropologist, who dissuaded him from going to the Sepik as he had originally intended. Chinnery thought Bateson would find work easier with a tribe "closer to civilization." Clearly, the Tolai and the limits of European civilization, the road network of the Gazelle, were coterminous at the time, and "primitive" society existed beyond that boundary. It was not until questions having to do with integration into the larger regional and world economy and its political and social consequences became more relevant to the discipline, that Tolai were deemed worthy of study.

The Image of the Baining in Ethnography As is well known, the term Baining is of Tolai origin. According to G. Corbin (1976, 9), it is a Kuanua compound of bai, "to go inland into the bush," and nig or nig-nig, "a wild uncultivated area." He translates the term as meaning "wild, uncultivated people who live in the bush." In the present, it refers to the inland population of the Gazelle Peninsula, which I estimate as numbering over thirteen thousand (Rohatynskyj 1992). This population is comprised of six language groups: the Chachet living in the northwest; the Uramat and Kairak, referred to as the Central Baining; and the Mali, Simbali, and Makolkol inhabiting the southern and southeastern end of the peninsula.1 The representation of the Baining in the ethnographic literature is paradoxical. On the one hand, there are detailed reports of the day and night dances, carried out with a range of complex masks, headdresses, shields, and other structures made of painted barkcloth, leaves, and other traditional materials. These dances are still conducted in some villages to celebrate church fêtes and other important occasions of contemporary life. In some communities the dances are associated with

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male and female initiation. The night dance performed regularly at the Kairak village of Ivere, close to Bateson's field site, has become a tourist attraction under the management of a Tolai entrepreneur based in Rabaul. At the climax of the performance, and this was reported of performances in traditional contexts as well, the masked figures dance through a large fire. This sensational image of the Baining Fire Dance is depicted on an Air Nugini tourist poster. It is this spectacular ritual complex that provided the subject of Bateson's only publication concerning the Baining (1932). But even so, he was only adding a few notes and correcting a few details of a report published by W. J. Read (1931) in a previous issue of Oceania concerning the even more exotically named Baining Snake Dance. There is no indication what the occasion was of the performance Read witnessed, but he makes it clear it did not take place in a "mission village." Bateson (1932, 334) writes that he witnessed similar performances, in Methodist mission villages located on the border of Tolai settlements, which were "held with fair frequency to celebrate such events as the birth of a child or the completion of a new house or church." Some ten years later, also in Oceania, Mrs. Jean Poole (1943), wife of a Methodist missionary working in this same area, adds "still further notes" and gives details and illustrations of performances she had witnessed. Interestingly, all three reports are concerned with the survival of the ritual complex. Read (1931, 236), in the initial article of the sequence, speculates that the "ceremony will never again be celebrated in such a manner as has been described, because the Toriu River natives are gradually yielding to the call of their countrymen to settle in the vicinity of Latramat; and although the latter still retain their old institutions, they do so only under much revised conditions." Bateson (1932, 340-341) concludes his discussion by complaining about how uncommunicative the Baining are and goes on to say that should the performances cease as a result of European contact, "we shall have destroyed the only patch of color in the otherwise drab existence of the Baining people." Mrs. Poole (1943, 225) reports herself pleased that "the dances were still being celebrated with great enthusiasm by the Baining." The most comprehensive treatment of the various dances and associated art forms is provided by a student of fine art. Corbin (1976) conducted a study of the art of the masks, headdresses, and other display pieces using both published and unpublished material in German and English, the large collections of Baining art in German museums, and his own fieldwork. He provides an excellent summary of ethnographic descriptions of both everyday and ritual

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life found in these cumulative writings. From this material he is able to reconstruct traditional contexts within which to understand this unique form of perishable art. He uses extensively the writings of Father C. Laufer to this end, a Catholic priest who lived among the Mali speakers for fifteen years after the Second World War.2 Corbin also discusses at length the fascinating "monumental headdresses" called hareiga originating among the Chachet of the Northwest Gazelle (48-53). Some of the examples, found now only in German museums, are as tall as forty-five to fifty feet. When Corbin showed photographs of these headdresses to Chachet informants, they did not recognize them as belonging to their own cultural tradition and suggested that perhaps plantation workers from other parts of New Guinea had made them. Although interested primarily in the symbolism of this art form, Corbin concludes his study with a statement of its sociological function: "It is important to note that the daytime and nighttime art and ceremonies throughout the Baining seem to serve as a cohesive, binding force around which the traditionally acephalous, dispersed Baining congregate for a dramatic presentation and celebration, in artistic form, of their entire existence" (114). In the work of both Pool (Corbin 1976, 7) and Fajans (1997), reports and descriptions of the observed dances and associated masks provide an important focus. These rituals seem to supply if not the "only patch of color in the otherwise drab existence of the Baining people," then a solid area of structured activity in an otherwise entropic setting. It is this contrast between a colorful, complex, richly symbolic traditional activity and the reported dull formlessness of daily life that is paradoxical. Perhaps this lack of a formulable culture or social organization in daily life reported by Bateson was a product of the inability of his informants to communicate to him the meanings they attached to their mundane activity. I have suggested this as a possible alternate explanation to the one generally held that the Baining culture per se is lacking in form. Indeed, in his letters home to his mother, Bateson wrote that the Baining were secretive, that they resented his intrusion, that they often tricked him out of the village when something of social significance was going to take place, and that they said they would discuss their religion with him only once he had learned their language, which he found difficult to do (Lipset 1980, 127-128). After spending a half year in this manner, he lamented not being able to get a decent genealogy. Bateson left the Baining after ten months and spent some months in Sydney commiserating with A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, W. Lloyd Warner, Reo Fortune, and H. Ian Hogbin. He then returned to New Britain to

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work with the Sulka, a neighboring group on the southeast coast. It is interesting to note how Bateson contrasted this experience with that of the Baining research: Among the Baining, information had to be "dragged out of them a sentence at a time. Here I can say to a man, "What is such and such a ceremony like?" and he will sit and give me a long coherent account of it in pidgin—of course omitting such aspects as he wishes me not to know about but still what he says is true as far as it g o e s . . . . My difficulty is to keep informants quiet while I catch up writing notes." (Lipset 1980, 129) Of course, the problems Bateson encountered with the Baining as informants are not unusual in fieldwork conducted in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere. D'Arcy Ryan (1992) documents the same sort of lack of responsiveness, lack of interest in his project, and reluctance to volunteer any information among the Mendi of the Southern Highlands in 1954. But gradually and upon a return trip of some duration he describes the development of a common definition of the project in which he was asking the Mendi to participate and a working relationship that yielded the type of information he was seeking. In conventional fieldwork parlance, Ryan was successful in this fieldwork with a recently contacted group of highlanders because he achieved "rapport" with his informants. James Watson (1972) humorously recounts another example of "not 'good informants' " and the frustration and discomfort this caused him in his initial fieldwork among the Agarabi of the Eastern Highlands in 1954—1955. In contrast, upon his return for a brief visit some ten years later, he tells of being literally accosted by his former informants who now wished to act as his "teachers." In describing the process of reviewing the initially gathered data he comments, How retrospect had altered the view of my tutors! Every so often we would come to some matter where I clearly recalled a hard-won discovery, something I had either dragged out of people or composed almost entirely from unaided observation and inference. Now, however, it was: "As explained when you were here before . . . , " or "When we told you about that last t i m e . . . . " How incredibly casual! (176) Watson is further amazed to be greeted by an educated young village man volunteering to recount to him the whole process of male initiation in detail, day

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by day, stage by stage. His explanation of this transformation of Agarabi into the kind of natives who behave the way the researcher would want them to is basically acculturation, a product of the greater age of the community in the postcontact setting. Watson concludes his discussion: "No stranger, I had returned to find I could talk readily with the people, elicit once difficult information with unprecedented ease. They for their part knew much more about white men, surely magnifying the acknowledged advantage of the ethnographer's revisit" (181). This transformation of the Agarabi (Watson 1972), in a ten-year period, and the change in the Mendi, after Ryan's time away, can be seen as cases of "ripeness" described by the Dutch anthropologist J. W. Schoorl (1967). He writes of the "prerequisites for the success of a short-term investigation" (176-177) in reflecting upon anthropological research he conducted in Irian Jaya under the colonial governor-anthropologist Jan van Baal. He lists knowledge of the language, personal experience of the region, and access to all relevant records and documents. His fourth point is the more interesting for our purposes, and he notes it as the "ripeness" of the region for this type of inquiry. Schoorl refers specifically to the necessity of penetration of foreign influences into the region so that sufficient people have acquired "a certain openness towards the investigation" (178). Conceivably this openness on the part of informants would enable the ethnographic research to proceed smoothly and efficiently. The Agarabi, according to Watson's account of his two encounters with them, had attained that state by becoming familiar with the ways of thought and knowing of their interlocutor. It occurred to the younger generation through formal education and positive experiences outside the village setting. To the older it was simply a matter of longer exposure to the institutions and manners of the colonizer. But it is more than being able to see the relevance of one's knowledge to the project of the researcher that is at issue, it is also seeing the project itself as important and worthwhile. As Watson recognizes, the "good informant" has an interest in the success of the researcher's project. It is possible to argue that the Uramot Baining of Latramat village in 1927 were probably not acculturated enough to be able to act as good informants. My informants at Kainagunan village, the historical successor of Latramat, recalled tales of forced labor right after the surrender of the German administration to the Australian invading forces in 1914.3 Still under German overseers they built the very road that brought Bateson to his field site. Initial mission contact with Tolai pastors would have occurred shortly before Bateson arrived. It is doubtful that Baining informants had a very clear idea of Bateson's project,

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and one can imagine situations similar to those described by Ryan and Watson in their initial fieldwork in the newly opened areas of the highlands. But there is something more here. There remains a nagging discomfort with the lack of fit between the way the Baining dances and art are represented and the way the people themselves are written about. On the one hand, there is the ineffable display of structure, creativity, and symbolization; on the other hand, there are social formlessness and incommunicativeness. Further, the way the art and dances are singled out for detailed consideration and the concern expressed about their possible demise by all three writers in the Oceania series render the population that performs them somehow pathetic. Fajans (1997, 34-51) provides a detailed and thoughtful history of the Northwest Coast Baining. She pays particular attention to relations between the Tolai and the Baining and how the Baining were described by Europeans. She considers their characterization by Father Rascher, the Catholic priest who established the mission station on the north coast at Vunamarita in 1896. He did not record a positive image and describes the Chachet Baining as far inferior to other natives in terms of mental capacity, as fearful and untalented, as "mere cultivators" compared to the neighboring Tolai, and appearing as mere animals, creatures without a soul to their neighbors. The Baining image in the writings of various European observers did not improve with time. Other adjectives were added: hard working and well meaning but primitive and simple in all respects; timid and lackadaisical; apathetic, shy, dull, and stupid. This ugly caricature arises, as Fajans notes, in comparison with the Tolai and developed through the course of a traumatic postcontact history during which the very survival of the population was of serious concern. This image of the Baining was communicated to Bateson, and there is some suggestion that it was instrumental in his decision to undertake fieldwork with them. He seemed to have learned the current evaluation of them held by the administration, not to mention planter society and the various Tolai groups, possibly while in Melbourne, from E. W. R Chinnery. He wrote his mother prior to entering New Guinea that the Baining were "most accessible, most primitive, and fairly healthy" (Lipset 1980, 126). Thus he assuaged the fears of a mother for her surviving son by demonstrating the lack of threat to his wellbeing. He further explained, "By virtue of their 'sulky reticence and stupidity,' missionaries have been unable to convert them," vouching for their worthiness for scrutiny by an aspiring student of the primitive. What suggests itself then is that already by the time of Bateson's research the Baining had taken on in

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relation to their neighbors, the Tolai, the image of the uncommunicative, dull-witted savage. Bateson was mistaken if he thought he could study a pristine traditional culture. What attracted him to work among the Baining was a relative traditionalism compared with the highly acculturated and progressive Tolai. What directed him to his choice of field sites was an exaggerated image of the primitive; on the one hand, savage and brutal witnessed by the image of the Baining in European characterizations of their social life; and on the other hand, exotic, colorful, and sensational, as depicted in the numerous reports of the Baining Fire Dance, Snake Dance, and so on.

An Unbalanced Opposition In evaluating the contradictory evidence for the presence of Baining slaves among the northwest coastal and island Tolai groups traditionally, Michel Panoff (1987, 136) questions the all-too-perfect symmetry of the terms used in the early literature to describe the two ethnic groups. He remarks that the characterizations are so extreme and systematic that they seem drawn by a pedant as a demonstration of opposites. He traces this overdrawn opposition of differences in intellectual capacity, self-assertiveness, and adaptability to the writings of the members of the Mission of the Sacred Heart who brought Catholicism to the Baining at the end of the last century. In a complex and scholarly argument, he demonstrates that Father Rascher, for example, exaggerated and distorted accounts of events in order to make the Baining appear unable to cope with the purportedly slave-raiding Tolai without the aid of the Catholic mission. Panoff (147) notes that the word then used by the coastals in the Livuan area for the inland peoples was lunga, translated by various writers of the time as "animal," "bestial being," and "idiot." The image of a timid, simpleminded, passive, inland population at the mercy of the fierce, deviously clever, and adventuresome coastals was constructed to gain support, both financial and moral, from supporters in Europe and from the administration. This public campaign launched by the mission presented this part of New Britain as ravaged by the evils of institutionalized slavery that only Church intervention, in the form of setting up of mission stations and providing refuge for former slaves, could hope to alleviate. Following the ambush and murder of about twenty-five Baining at Lilinakeia and the capture of a similar number by coastal people in September 1896, Father Rascher received permission to institute first Vunamarita on the coast and then St. Paul a few hours walk inland.

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St. Paul was established as an "industrial village" where "slaves or orphans adopted and educated at Vunapope were gathered together with land and tools, and expected to function as cells of Christian peasant-farmers amongst their heathen compatriots" (Hempenstall 1978, 147). On the morning of 13 August 1904, a group of Baining led by To Marias, a former slave educated by the mission, killed Father Rascher, three brothers, and five nuns at St. Paul and a Trappist monk at the outstation of Nacharunep. This event is referred to as the St. Paul Massacre today and commemorated in a number of ways. Peter Hempenstall analyzes the event in the context of other incidents of armed resistance to colonial forces in the Gazelle during the German administration. He documents growing resentment against the "autocratic disciplinarian," Father Rascher, resulting in an offer by Governor Hahl of a police detachment just prior to the uprising (1978,48). Panoff (1987) sees the event as a reaction to the intensifying mission disruption of trade relations between the inland and coastal peoples. Reaction on the part of the administration was brutal. My informants at Lan village, located not far from St. Paul, recount the loss of many innocent lives. They say that in the search for To Marias authorities would bring the severed head of a Baining to people at Vunamarita for identification. Upon a negative reply, they would return to the bush only to reemerge with another head. When To Marias' head was successfully identified, it was buried at Vunamarita, say my informants. The site is unmarked, and the Baining elders at Lan have expressed the opinion that a plaque should be erected there. 4 Hempenstall (1978, 150-151) recounts that the massacre at St. Paul was the last major collision on the Gazelle Peninsula between indigenous peoples and the German administration. Government troops made a number of forays into the Baining mountains after this event, and reports of conflict and threat in the "industrial villages" take place until 1911. But, he concludes, "by and large the northwest Bainings were much more tightly organized by the time war broke out in 1914, and sufficiently 'pacified' for 200 local people to be working on government projects and private plantations" (150). Although Panoff (1987) demonstrates that the image of an institutionalized slave trade as portrayed by members of the Mission of the Sacred Heart was largely a propaganda tool, he does document relations of tribute, domination, and domestic slavery in favor of the coastals. What is of most interest here is that with the greater demand for plantation labor in the early part of the century, when laborers were less likely to willingly offer themselves (Panoff 1979), the Baining became the vie-

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tims of a European/coastal alliance for its supply. Panoff (1987, 154) ends his discussion by noting that ancient slaving raids could be seen as perpetuated well into the 1920s by coastal labor recruitment jaunts through the Baining mountains to meet the demand of European plantations. The image of the Baining as the primitive savage resulting from the exploitation of the question of slavery by the Catholic mission, and the subsequent massacre at St. Paul, has lasted to this day as Panoff (1987) and Fajans (1997) have noted. In my own work I have found evidence that this negative image has been, to some degree, internalized. In the Chachet village of Willembemki, informants suggested an inherent inability of Baining to compete with Tolai in terms of development, concluding that whereas the Tolai are naturally people of the town, the Baining are naturally people of the bush (Rohatynskyj 1992, 92). At Lan, one young man forcefully contended that it was the belief held by many Baining people that they are unable to succeed at business and other endeavors that kept his community from progressing (96-97). He felt that these destructive images had to be "cleared" from the minds of his people if the community was to improve itself. In the Mali-speaking village of Marunga on the south coast informants put forth that the Baining as a whole were not adept at verbalization and given an equal chance with the Tolai would perform badly (118). They stated that the Baining were, however, very good at physical labor. Looking at the levels of education and participation in the skilled work force of the Gazelle, all Baining villages surveyed performed less well than expected given the length of time educational opportunities have been available and the proximity of this population to the metropolitan centers of Rabaul and Kokopo.5 The visual impact of the economic differences between Baining villages, even on the road network of the Gazelle, and Tolai villages is indeed striking. I am not suggesting that once the image of the Baining as the primitive was set it remained intact for nearly one hundred years. It is possible to view the rendering of the inland population of the Gazelle as subhuman as having played a crucial role in the long-term economic development of the Tolaidominated region of the peninsula in terms of providing a malleable labor and land reserve. The Baining have played the "primitive" to the Tolai sophisticate in the struggles with exogenous powers over land and the distribution of other resources. One can speculate that what caused my informants to speak as they did some ninety years after the St. Paul Massacre was a constant reification of the ascribed Baining role through both colonial and independent regimes. The

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documentation of such a long-term process is too ambitious within the present context. But it is possible to show by looking at a discrete set of historical material how the Baining were perceived in the years leading up to Bateson's encounter with them.

The Historical Context Lillian Overall's book, A Woman's Impressions of German New Guinea (1923), is a fascinating work in itself. It is a combination adventure story, ethnography, and historical account framed by conventional women's concerns as defined in the immediate post-World War I period. It is tempting to compare it with Captain J. Lyng's Our New Possession (1919). He was a military officer and journalist who was with the invading Australian forces in 1914. Both books are gossipy, impressionistic, and personal, though the latter hides this under the guise of rational and impersonal discussion of important issues. Both works are used as historical sources and provide a detailed picture of the outlook of the expatriate community on the indigenous peoples. Whatever the differences between Overell's and Lyng's approach, they uncover a common evaluation of the Baining. Lyng in the midst of a detailed discussion of the various "races" encountered in New Guinea writes of how to recognize "natives" from the different parts of the territory. He explains, "If he is more than usually stupid and clumsy, we take it for granted that he belongs to the New Britain inland tribes known as Baininges" (1919, 162). Overell's discussion of the "natives" is as overtly racialist as that of Lyng. She sees the plantation society around her as composed of a number of castes. At the bottom are the "natives" who labor on the plantations; at the top are the Europeans who own them. She makes a special plea that half-caste children, currently cared for in a Methodist orphanage, should be given appropriate training so that they may fill the positions necessary to the running of a plantation found between the European owners and the native laborers (Overell 1923,19). The Baining in her estimation are not even encompassed by this hierarchy, for she sees them as "very wild people . . . very few of whom had been in any degree tamed" (87). She refers to them as "a very stupid race" and goes on to examples of how they were victimized by "the cleverer beach natives." Both Lyng and Overell recount the taking of Baining slaves echoing many of the elements of the earlier mission accounts, and Lyng presents a long and detailed version of the events of 13 August 1904 (1919, 199-217). He allocates the

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motivation for the St. Paul Massacre as follows: "It has often been pointed out that the Kanaka is void of gratitude and ready to slay even the hand that feeds him, and that he is treacherous. These traits in his character alone can explain that while Pater Rascher was labouring for their spiritual and material welfare, they were secretly plotting to take his life (212)." One has the sense that Overell's book is aimed at a female audience in her focus on marital relations among the "natives" and details of the lives of Mrs. Phoebe Parkinson and other women of the expatriate community. 6 There is a sensationalism in her writing, such as the constant concern with appropriate action should a "native" male appear in one's room in the middle of the night. Her recounting of a Baining attack on a plantation belonging to the Catholic mission on the south coast has this flavor and leads to an expedition with Mrs. Parkinson by sea in order to assure that her youngest son, Paul, manager of a nearby plantation, is well and able to cope. But Overell's presentation of the events of the uprising is factual, though it is enmeshed in a tale of a mother's concern for her youngest son and the daring of two European women who venture into a troubled area. A corroborating eye-witness account is attached to a report of a patrol conducted into the Wide Bay Census Division in 1965 (Davies 1965). Cadet Patrol Officer Michael P. D. Davies includes a narrative relating "the history of the area" provided by Mr. L. Aquiningo of Karlai Plantation. The narrator introduces himself by saying that he arrived from the Philippines at the age of fourteen in 1914 with his father who had been invited to clear and plant Karlai Plantation by Bishop Louis Couppe. The land for the plantation had been purchased from the Baining by Bishop Couppe in 1918 under the leadership of the Luluai Ansebo of a village some half a day's walk inland. Notwithstanding this, the Baining planned to attack a newly formed village of Mengens and Sulkas close to the plantation and presumably on unalienated Baining land. They also planned to attack Karlai Plantation itself as well as neighboring Kiep Plantation, which was managed at the time by Paul Parkinson. This plan was thwarted by Mr. Aquiningo with the help of some "Mengen and Sulka boys and some from Merai" (a Baining village). As Aquiningo recounts: We reported it to Mr. Kenny, A.D.O. Kokopo who sent down a party who took punitive action. Ansebo escaped to the bush so they went back without him. A few weeks later—one Sunday we heard singing and shouting while

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we were at lunch and saw the Sulkas and Mengens coming down the road with Ansebo and one other with hands manacled, whom they had caught in the bush. This rendition highlights the opposition faced by the inland people in trying to assert their interests in the face of the alliance of European plantation interests and those of coastal groups. Indigenous uprisings under the Germans were also suppressed with the help of coastal allies of the European administration. Stewart Firth (1982, 7 7 - 8 0 ) considers the controversy following the vicious punitive actions in retaliation for the murder of Mrs. Wolff, the wife of a German planter, and her baby, not far from Kokopo in 1902. The government was accused of organizing an indiscriminate massacre at Paparatava of the inland Tolai groups by the administration and its coastal allies. Firth points out: Without New Guinean allies, said Hahl, the Germans would not have been able to assert mastery over the inland peoples. Paparatava demonstrated the way in which the Germans were gradually to extend control over the villages of New Guinea, not simply by force of arms but by alliances with New Guineans who joined in punitive expeditions for purposes of their own, to defeat an enemy or just to enjoy the fight with the promise of rape and rapine. Where the conflict ended in the confiscation of land, the Germans kept the land for themselves rather than distributing it among their allies. (80) The killing of Mrs. Wolff and her baby is probably one of the best-documented confrontations of the German period in English. Despite the fact that I have found only two sources that tell of the disturbance at Karlai Plantation in 1918, I think that the same strategy applied here. In both areas the same attitude determined the goals of punitive action. Overell peoples her book with colorful, possibly overdrawn characters. She presents the personage of Captain S. as a cruel and inhuman administrative officer. Overell (1923, 1 7 1 - 1 7 2 ) reports a conversation that purportedly took place among her, Captain S., and Mrs. Parkinson at the Kokopo District Office: "Good-evening, Captain S.," began Mrs. Parkinson, "or perhaps I ought to say Major?" for there had been a recent epidemic of promotions. "No, the missionaries have stopped my getting promotion," he said bitterly.

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"How is that?" "Some of their absurd leniency with the natives. They think one should not punish a nigger, no matter how he deserves it." It was evidently a sore subject, so she began to speak of something else. "Where have you been this time?" "I went surveying in the North and we had some trouble with the natives. Bainings they were." "What happened?" "They began slinging stones at us. You know what that means. So we had to shoot." "Did you shoot many?" I asked. "Oh, we couldn't keep count," he replied indifferently. Being labeled a "wild Baining" in 1918, and probably for many years after had more serious consequences than just a verbal slur. This point is chillingly brought home by none other than J. K. McCarthy, the author of Patrol into Yesterday (1963) and a number of other books based on his long experience with the Australian administration. McCarthy first went to New Guinea in 1927 and was posted to the north coast of New Britain. In his capacity as district commissioner of New Britain, some quarter of a century later, he comments in passing on the census material collected in a patrol to the north-coast Baining at the end of 1950:7 Before the war the villages of the North Bainings had a population of over 2,000 persons, but through sickness and disease during the Japanese occupation, the Bainings were, in truth, decimated, until at the present time, the population is barely 600. These unfortunate people have been on the down grade for many years. In 1904 a few of the villages near St. Paul's Mission were concerned in an attack on the Mission Station, in which several Fathers and Sisters were killed. The German government exacted a heavy punishment and for many years afterwards the Baining villagers were hunted like animals. (McCarthy 1951,3 Jan.) It was in this climate that Bateson entered the field in 1927. The Australians formally accepted the mandate to govern New Guinea in 1921, setting up their own civil administration. The Methodist mission, established in New Britain

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fifty years before, extended its circuit to include some Baining villages on the fringe of the traditional Baining/Tolai battleground to form the "mission villages," among them Latramat. Tolai Methodist "teachers" entered the Baining hinterland to spread the gospel. The image of the Baining as dull, helpless primitives persisted for much the same reason the myth of primitive society persisted in social anthropology: it served groups with varied and sometimes conflictual interests (Kuper 1988, 239). That the Baining could not speak of themselves—objectify their practices, social organization, kinship structures, and so on—to suit the cerebral Bateson is not surprising. It seems to me that there is a further requirement for the ripeness of a community for ethnographic research. There has to be a context in which a positive objectification of one's cultural self is possible. In the context of the Gazelle in 1927 for the Baining, this condition did not exist. The Baining could not find a forum in which their objectification of their cultural selves would be illuminated by comparison with like entities. There was no equanimous display of cultural difference as I have argued existed in the Northern Province on the eve of independence, where the Australian administration provided a political framework for the relative display and comparison of cultural practices (Rohatynskyj 1997). The situation on the Gazelle was historically unique: a product of complex political and economic forces. The Baining suffered for having one significant neighbor, and only one, in comparison with whom they became a negative absolute. By contrast, in the ethnographies of the Tolai mentioned earlier, the Tolai tended to compare favorably, not necessarily just with the Baining, but with Europeans as well (Errington and Gewertz 1995). They were ascribed with a penchant for capitalism, both primitive and modern. In the one case, keeping faith with Baining culture as a Baining product re-flected badly upon them; in the other, keeping faith with the Tolai in the same manner was all to the good of the Tolai. It is for this reason that Sjoerd Jaarsma (1994) is right to interpret Schoorl's use of the term ripeness as implying some understanding on the part of the population under study of the very process of ethnographic research. In order to objectify one's practices and reflect upon them with a stranger, natives have to be at least partially taken with the liberal democratic premise of cultural equality and relativity. Perhaps at the point at which this occurs, "rapport" is achieved. Given the conditions under which the Baining were encountered, this was not possible. In retrospect, the list of befuddling tactics described by Bateson in his letters to his mother brings to mind J. C. Scott's (1985, 350) enumeration of "weapons

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of the weak" found "in ridicule, in truculence, in irony, in petty acts of noncompliance, in foot dragging, in dissimulation, in resistant mutuality, in the disbelief in elite homilies, in the steady, grinding efforts to hold one's own against overwhelming odds." One can see in Baining resistance to the efforts of the youthful Bateson their identification of him with the hegemonic forces that had defined them outside of human society.

Regional Identity Politics and the Shaping of Ethnography It is impossible to separate the image of the Baining as presented by both contemporary ethnographers and Bateson from their characterization as the underdeveloped neighbors of the politically and economically dominant Tolai. Their economic underdevelopment was a source of frustration for the handful of educated Baining leaders at the time of my research. Their public agitation for redress in various fora prompted the Tolai-dominated provincial government to commission an anthropologist to examine the nature of the "Baining problem" as they defined it. I was faced with a puzzle, attempting to understand the uniformity of the characterization of the Baining in different genres of writing and in images held by various types of authorities. It is necessary to underline that my own research with the Baining was of a survey nature. I entered villages and convened meetings as a government officer. I spoke with self-selected community representatives, both "traditional" and those few educated individuals who moved in the larger Gazelle society. All of my research in the various communities was made possible by these individuals. I did not find the people I spoke with nor the daily life I observed boring, nor did I find the people remarkably different from other Papua New Guinean village people I know and have worked with over the years. I was met with courtesy and eagerness to help. Of course, it was well known to the host communities that my research could have serious implications for their futures. A t the time the idea of an allBaining community government was in the air, as was the notion of an Office of Minority Affairs. This examination of the historical conditions that generated the present subordination of the Baining in the politics and economy of the Gazelle Peninsula demonstrates that the ethnographic representation of the Baining by Bateson was shaped by these very conditions to the same degree that my interaction with them was shaped by Baining challenge of these conditions. In as much as we speak of techniques, methods, and fieldwork know-how, our subject matter

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escapes us and becomes entangled in the very history that frames our encounters. Bateson's "failure" with the Baining is not a personal failure but rather an instance of the inability of the researcher to transcend the power of the historical forces shaping the cultural identity of the native in the regional system. The Baining case may be a limiting case, perhaps found at the other end of the continuum to the Tikopia, smug in the glory of the words of their chronicler, Raymond Firth. The Tolai would perhaps have more in common with the Tikopia in having had identified elements in their culture that resonate positively with that of their chroniclers. If we accept Jonathan Friedman's (1992b) observation that ethnographers traditionally defined identities for the communities they studied, we can appreciate the gravity of Bateson's inability to outline a "culture" that could be called Baining. We can also appreciate the gravity of later researchers being equally challenged. Further, we can speculate on the impact of Fajans' recently published ethnography based on her long-term fieldwork among the Baining. It would be interesting to learn what significance(s) this particular ethnographic artifact takes on in the Baining struggle to assert their interests in the current power scenario of the Gazelle.

Notes I was a research officer in the Division of Planning and Technical Services of the Department of East New Britain from February 1991 to July 1992. I thank the then premier of the province, the Honorable Sinai Brown O.B.E., and the then first secretary, Mr. Ellison Kaivovo O.B.E., for their support of my research. I thank the Baining communities that cooperated with me in this work. Note that the situations I describe were current prior to the volcanic eruptions starting 19 Sept. 1994, which caused major population dislocation in and around Rabaul and the moving of government offices to the town of Kokopo. The archival research and the first formulations of the issues that underlie this chapter were undertaken from June to August of 1994 when I was a visiting fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at Australian National University. I thank Simon Harrison, Barbara Holloway, Sjoerd Jaarsma, Margaret Jolly, and Mary MacDonald for comments on various versions of this chapter. I also thank Jane Fajans for her friendship and interest in my work with the Baining and for sharing with me her understanding of the "Baining problem." 1. I estimate that there are seven thousand Chachet speakers, twenty-five hundred Uramat speakers, fifteen hundred Mali speakers, less than one thousand Kairak

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speakers, about three hundred Simbali speakers, and possibly one hundred Makolkol speakers (Rohatynskyj 1992,78). These estimates are based on the preliminary figures of the 1990 national census provided by Mr. N. Eremas of the Division of Planning and Technical Services. The Makolkol group has always been somewhat elusive, and it seems that they have been linguistically absorbed by the Nakanai of Wide Bay (Rosensteel 1988). 2. It is no accident that Catholic missionaries who spent long periods of time in a given set of villages were able to produce quite a rich ethnography of various aspects of Baining life. Father Laufer published extensively on the religious life of the Baining and their cosmology in journals such as Anthropos. This tradition has been carried on by the Fathers K. Hesse and T. Aerts who write about art (1979) as well as mythology and other beliefs (1982) among the Chachet, where they worked for long periods of time. These latter, Father Hesse is now Archbishop Hesse, built on the writings of the early missionaries to the area, including those of Father Rascher. Long-term research in a given community with obvious concern for the well-being of the residents seems to provide a more positive representation. Mary MacDonald (chapter 8) writes of this particular quality of missionary ethnography. 3. The location of these Baining Methodist villages referred to by Read and the site of Bateson's original research was said to be by my informants at Kainagunan on the edge of a "no-man's land" between the Baining and the Tolai. This was the area in which fighting took place, and informants recounted the history of some significant battles. Baining informants claimed that the two small Austronesian-speaking intrusive groups, the Taulil and the Butam, suffered as a result of being caught between the two opponents. The Butam language and people are said to be extinct, the few remaining Butam being absorbed by the Taulil in historic times. 4. The Germans were apparently keen collectors of heads of their enemies. Klaus Neumann (1992, 1-39) presents various historical narratives given by contemporary Tolai as to the fate of the head of To Kilang, the leader of the uprising that resulted in the death of Mrs. Wolff and her baby in 1902. Apparently the government officer who led this punitive expedition kept a photograph of the severed head of To Kilang that has been passed down in his family. Hempenstall (1978, 150) recounts that Governor Hahl sent the heads of three of the seven Baining he had publicly executed as a result of their participation in the St. Paul Massacre to Freiburg University for "scientific examinations." For this, he was "roundly condemned by almost the entire German press." 5.1 am using the term metropolitan in the sense of providing services of the metropolitan culture of Papua New Guinea, such as hospitals, government division offices, and institutions of higher education. 6. Mrs. Phoebe Parkinson was the younger sister of the famous Queen Emma, the daughter of an American father and a Samoan mother who established the first plan-

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tations on the Duke of York Islands and then in the Kokopo area. Phoebe was married to Richard Parkinson, a naturalist, ethnographer, and manager of some of Queen Emma's plantations. She is the subject of a sketch by Mead (1960). She represents both to Mead and to Overell a romantic period in the early colonization of East New Britain. 7. Under the Australian administration, patrol reports were forwarded from the District or Sub-District Office to the district commissioner, and from there on to the director of District Services and Native Affairs in Port Moresby. The superior officer at each stage discussed matters raised in the report as he submitted it to the next administrative level.

Chapter 10 Epilogue

Ethnography as a Social System Parts, Wholes, and Holes Jonathan Friedman The first time my wife and I went to Hawai'i I was told that the only things worth looking at as a researcher were the Bishop Museum and the libraries, such as the Hawaiian and Pacific collections at the University of Hawai'i, the State Archives, and the Hawaiian Mission Children's Society Library, as there were virtually no Hawaiians left. 1 Only a month after our arrival in Honolulu I witnessed the occupation of, and struggle over, Sand Island in Honolulu Harbor. There were, after all, Hawaiians, and they were kicking! The "squatters" were removed amid fire and bulldozers from Sand Island to make way for a "cultural park." Some time later I was surprised to hear people speaking Hawaiian at a bar one day in Kailua-Kona on the island of Hawai'i. "Did you learn to speak Hawaiian at university?" I asked. They laughed and we began a lasting relationship in which I was introduced to another world. There was a powerful Hawaiian movement in the making, and culture was part of the struggle. From 1979 until the end of the 1980s I followed the development of this movement. It necessitated moving from place to place, interviewing all sides and identities. Few of the Hawaiians I worked with lived in rural villages except for one distinct new rural squatter settlement. Others tried with varying degrees of success to establish settlements. There were, however, Hawaiians "on the land," and in the mid-1980s I began a new field study, more localized. At the time I went to work in a Hawaiian village for the first time, I had a complicated situation to deal with. The village was the only old, established local community on the island I was to work on. It had a reputation as a place where whites were not welcome; a tourist had been murdered there a few years earlier. I had an advantage as a representative of the International Working Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) and as someone who had been engaged in Fourth World issues in Hawai'i. But the village I was to visit was not part of the Hawaiian movement as such, and I had no clear idea what to

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expect. I had an archaeologist friend who had worked for one of the village families in a recent court case, and I was able to use this contact to get me into the place. I called from Kailua to Hilo, on the other side of the island, and introduced myself to G. and asked when he was going down to the village. I had no driver's license, which made matters difficult in a place like Hawai'i, where wheels are an absolute necessity. G. agreed to pick me up on his way down to the village. As we drove he inquired about my project and about what I really wanted to do down there. He was not happy with my intention to do fieldwork; he thought that the village did not need any publicity or anyone coming from the outside. There had been a team of anthropologists there ten years earlier, but nothing published had come of it other than a few articles. I had also discovered a thesis that the village family who had housed the young student-author had not known about, and which they found insulting. The village was very much an enclave in a larger world, separated by five miles of difficult road in the heart of "Hawaiian territory." It was a poor fishing community whose population was also engaged in work in hotels, macadamia nut plantations, and coffee picking. They were dependent on welfare as well. They were not open to foreigners, although tourists did visit the village, which had a public "park" by the bay. Most visitors came, had a quick look, then disappeared. The villagers were friendly but not interested in outsiders. They were engrossed in their own very busy world. It took quite a few years before I and then my wife really got into the community, and this was partly a result of our practical engagement in the village struggles with the state, the police, and developers. We were able to gain access to people's lives, to become integrated into those lives, not merely by "participation," but by being useful to them, a particular social relation. Field research thus depended upon their willingness to integrate us (Ekholm-Friedman and Friedman 1995; Friedman 1997). In Central Africa, Congo Brazzaville, the experience was the converse. Information was an instantaneous flow, and there was never a problem in obtaining materials and getting close to people. The status of the European in the Congo was an established part of the local structure, and it predefined a kind of social integration of a hierarchical nature. In this relation, informants identified themselves as dependents of the anthropologist, a relation that could change with time but that established immediate ties. Of course, this was not a general phenomenon but one that was very much class based, even if certain attributes seemed to characterize the entire gamut of relations that I encoun-

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p e r s o n — w a s an intruder w h o had to prove

that he was worthy of acceptance in the community before anything of importance could be divulged. Part of the difference is globally structured. Hawaiians had been building walls around themselves from the mid-nineteenth century and have elaborated their lives within the confines of such walls, facing each other with their backs to the world. To enter here is to make a sacrifice. The ethnographer must become part of another world and demonstrate loyalty to that world in order to proceed. C o n g o communities are structured in terms of a hierarchy of relations that lead upward and then outward to the centers of world power. Representatives from these centers are predefined as potential channels to higher levels of the same world, not a different world. This is the structure of political dependency but also personal dependency. The two are not separable. The ethnographer is already established within this hierarchy but not, of course, with respect to the entire society. Field research, the concrete practice of ethnography, is always enveloped in social relations. Even the most formal kind of interviewing implies social relations that establish the context for the communicative interaction. One of the crucial aspects of ethnography that is rarely made central is precisely the social context within which it must occur. It is a context that is not only a set of problems, but also a crucial means of understanding the forms of relatedness between the social group and the outside world, forms that might be revealing of internal structures of sociality as well. Thus the study of fieldwork as a social relation is itself worthy of serious research. The personal reflexivity of the ethnographer is obviously not sufficient in this kind of endeavor, which tends to produce observations of the type recorded above. However, the holistic understanding of the social relations of fieldwork ought to be a fundamental aspect of anthropological training. There are thus two very different kinds of problems involved in understanding ethnography as a social phenomenon. The first is the social context as such. The second is the methodological problem involved in acquiring ethnographic knowledge. The essays in this book touch on both of these problems in illuminating ways.

Authority as Moral and Method The recent discussions of ethnographic authority are a clear indicator of anthropological unease about the entire ethnographic project. The classic critique of

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James Clifford (1983) expresses a clear decline in this taken-for-given power to represent the Other, part of a more general critique of representability in the humanities and social sciences. The present here is contrasted to a realist past, represented by Bronislaw Malinowski and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, as well as much of American anthropology in which the so-and-so are described in general categorical terms, where individuals are unnecessary and particular events are reduced from the start to instances of general patterns. The disintegration of this authority is seen as a liberation of the multivocal truth of the Other, the establishment of a more dialogical approach to ethnography. This is both a moral and a methodological issue. As method, however, the authors who have tried to argue for the novelty of this new ethnography have forgotten their history. Paul Radin, in his Method and Theory of Ethnology (1987), wrote a forceful critique of Franz Boas and the Boasians for using categories that are generalizing from the start. For Radin, ethnography is a kind of microhistory of a social group. It consists of real people doing real things, and can not be turned into more general categories without being explicit about them. The fact that this penetrating work has been marginalized in anthropology says a great deal about the sensitivity of ethnographic nerves. An important premise, as indicated above, for understanding the ethnographic experience is that fieldwork itself occurs in a social relation, or set of social relations, that is the condition of the communication necessary for the research process itself. The impact of anthropologists on the field is part of the social process involved in research. If Raymond Firth had done decades of research in a small society, this would not be a mere fact of research itself, but a social relation that is extremely important. The fact that his work has become a symbol or shrine in Tikopia should be part of the contemporary ethnographic field, rather than a hindrance to further work. After all, life is still life, no matter what the ingredients. The principal weakness of anthropology has been its inability to rid itself of assumptions concerning the pristine as an ethnographic situation. The issue of this book is the relation between the anthropologist, the people among whom s/he works, and the place of her/his representations of reality in relation to her/his audiences and the representations of others, including her/ his own subjects. Can the anthropologist represent the lives of others at all, and what are the conditions under which this can occur? These questions require a serious look at the nature of ethnography itself. Is the latter a question of representation or of interpretation? How are the two related? Is all representa-

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tion interpretation, and if so, what is the relation between the anthropologist and the "insider"? These are the kinds of questions that lie latent in most of the essays in this book. These are all questions of ethnographic authority, something that has clearly declined steeply in the past decade. It should be noted from the start that these issues have arisen in a field in which method has been a relatively simple affair. Many standard method books in anthropology contain more about statistical methods than about ethnography itself. Sociologists, on the other hand, have taken ethnography very seriously, perhaps because qualitative method in sociology has always been under siege by the number crunchers. By and large they have not been shaken up, the way anthropologists have been, by the massive changes that have occurred in the global system. This may be because anthropological ethnography is engaged in the identification process of Western civilization in a crucial way, which sociological ethnography has escaped. Representing ourselves does not have the kind of repercussions on our social identity that representing others has. The latter is part of the very constitution of hegemonic identity, and as the power structures of the world have changed, as modernist identity has fragmented, the representation of the Other has followed suit. As I argued quite a few years ago (Friedman 1994), the destabilization of Western identity is part of the dehegemonization of the world system. The constitution of Western modernist identity includes the identification of its Other. The latter is said to have evolved from the primitive, the traditional, the libidinous, and the superstitions that we invoked, into our current civilized state of rationality and selfcontrol. This defined a process of development of society and culture as well as a socialization of the individual in which the adult subject could find resonance in identifying with the modern imperial center. Modernist identity provides the platform for authoritative discourse. Its decline has created a crisis of authority in ethnography as in other domains of self-representation, but this is not merely a crisis internal to the discipline. On the contrary, much of the problem lies in the rise of the voices of those that anthropologists study, a real social challenge to the ethnographic hegemony, in the emergence of a new kind of insecurity for the ethnographer who is now under the scrutiny, not merely of her/his own kind, but of those on whom s/he depends upon for material. This problem has not arisen in sociology simply because the social relation that lies at its base is of a different categorical nature. Sociological ethnography, on the other hand, has surely been affected by the more general crisis of representation that has brought on the confusion of postmodernist trends. Construe-

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tivism has certainly been rampant and has led to a proliferation of text analyses in all of the human sciences. On the other hand, the hard core of methods has managed to absorb much of this into its elaborations of conversation analysis and other developments of ethnomethodology (Potter 1996). This may have neutralized the impact of constructivism, but it has also rescued some of its basic tenets within the realm of standard empirical methods.

Ethnography as Sacred and Fragile Core One might say that anthropological ethnography is exposed to the outside world in a way that is unlike that of sociological ethnography. Ethnography is the heart of the subject, its central identity, its distinguishing feature, or so it has become with the gradual dissolution of its theoretical overlay. We need only recall Claude Lévi-Strauss' discussion of the structure of the discipline some decades ago (1958). Anthropology was the most general kind of knowledge of humankind. Ethnology was the structured analysis of ethnographic material, and ethnography itself was the field operation of collecting data for the basic enterprise of producing anthropological, not ethnographic or ethnological knowledge. This hierarchy disintegrated in the 1980s as theory in general became suspect and Geertzian textualism came to the fore. Not that there is any basic contradiction between thick description and elementary structures, just that the latter were classified as abstract and scientistic. All theory as an open process of hypothesis and falsification dried up, even if it had been more of a principle than a practice. At the end of this ordeal, ethnography emerged as not only the core but the totality of the subject. This is all the consequence of the decline of modernism, which was the social matrix for theoretical thought. The exposure of ethnography is thus a double one. Ethnography has become not merely the core of an identity but its entirety. It is much more than method, and possibly because of this it is also much less than method. And the onslaught on ethnography has not been methodological, but moral and political, as Marta Rohatynskyj and Sjoerd Jaarsma indicate in their introduction to this volume (chapter 1). From the beginning of the 1980s systematic reflections on the anthropological object became a major concern. Johannes Fabian (1983), James Clifford (1983), and I (Friedman 1983), among others, took on the problem from the point of view of the relation between anthropological subject and objects and their hidden conditions of imperial existence.

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This developed into a large body of literature indeed that began to question all aspects of ethnographic practice, and ended up in a major discussion of the key concept of culture, perhaps the most fetishized of all anthropological notions. Fieldwork was about culture in the differential sense, going to them and discovering who they were. If they were localized then so was their culture. But now with so many things transformed by globalization, culture became unbound. Fieldwork had to follow suit, or at least to recognize that we had moved from territory to de-territory. Others attacked the more fundamental issue of homogenization or essentialization. Following the critique first formulated by Roger Keesing (1974, 1987), culture was dissolved into an arena of competing interpretations of reality. This notion had already appeared in A. F. C. Wallace (1962), who criticized the culture and personality school for its understanding of culture as the replication of uniformity rather than the organization of diversity. But even this notion is too essentialist for the more extreme critics of the culture concept, who might question the existence of any organization of diversity. In all of this discussion, there is little in the way of methodological critique, although the deconstruction of culture certainly harbors a critique of the way in which the field is constituted. But this critique was made most powerfully by Paul Radin more than fifty years ago. From the Chicago School of sociology onward, to the more recent work of ethnomethodologists, conversation analysts, and others, this critique, hopefully, has been built into standard field methods.

The Mirages of Globalization A common argument concerning this issue is that globalization has dissolved our previous dogma of territorialized cultures. This is wrong on two crucial accounts. First, it assumes that culture was once a local affair that has become globalized in the past few decades due to technological change, migration, and media/communication revolutions. Second, it confuses the grounded critique of essentialism in the work of Keesing and others with a supposed real change in the cultural world. All this can be related to the shift of register that seems to have affected anthropological thinking. For structural functionalists, structuralists, Marxists, and even Geertzians, the purpose of anthropology was —in one way or another—the understanding of social life in its various mani-

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festations. The new interest in globalization breaks with this interest in order to return to an earlier interest, one embodied in diffusionism, in which the major questions revolve around identifying cultural things in terms of their origins. The entire problem of cultural globalization is reducible to the problem of knowing who it is we are looking at: what is the field, the territory, the culture? who are the people? It is stated in terms of the dissolution of a formerly supposed existing mosaic of ethnographic places in a world of stable relations in which place equaled people equaled culture. If the mosaic is an illusion, this is not owing to recent changes. Any serious analysis of any particular population or territory as a cultural place reveals a great number of external cultural forms and elements that are usually not recognized by locals. Nevertheless, they are present to the diehard diffusionist. So globalization did not begin yesterday! Hybridity, then, is as old as the species, but consciousness of hybridity and identification of mixtures come and go in various eras and are expressed in various ways. Hybridity is a reflex, I would argue, of the dissolution of modernist identity, and it takes the form of a descent to roots, to a rooting of descent, a renaissance of genealogical thinking. Ethnic essentialism and other cultural essentialisms—whether sexual, regional, class, caste, or tribe—are all expressions of the same underlying tendency. Hybridity is simply the crossbreed variety of this essentialism. The globalization of roots, their interweaving with the roots of others, a global rhizomic network: these are all images of this age in which construction of territorial identities is, for some intellectuals, no longer primary. The movers versus the rednecks, immigrants versus nationals, cosmopolitans versus indigenes are common representations in intellectual circles, not least those of the world's cultural elites. Roots + globalization = hybridity. I have argued that hybridity is cosmopolitanism without modernism. Working-class cosmopolitanism of the communist movements was not cultural but was based on the commonality of all the world's peoples, what they shared in terms of "species characteristics" and commonly supposed goals. This was universalism. The cosmopolitanism of intellectuals has also been focused on humanity as such, as in the motto of the Cosmopolitan Clubs, "Above all nations is humanity." This is not a question of the mixing of cultures but of a common noncultural denominator. In anthropological terms, the level of the cosmopolitan is the level of generic culture; the capacity for cultural production is a universal capacity without any particular content. And even this comparison is misleading, since the modernist cosmopolitan is not so much concerned with cultural particulars as with a

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moral universalism. The "postmodern" cosmopolitan is no longer a universalis!. Instead s/he is an encompasser of differences and concerned with the celebration of the totality of cultures via their embodiment in the hybrid vision, the notion of a storehouse of cultural specifics. It is for this reason that the basic contradiction between multiculturalism and hybridity passes unnoticed. The busy urban market street with its myriad differences fills the eyes of the contented hybrid. It is the whole that counts, not the crucial fact that the differences are largely maintained by social distance and the practice of separateness. The hybrid practices a gaze upon the other that becomes his consumed reality in a world in which intellectuals are increasingly reduced passive consumers of globalized images rather than participants in the realities represented in such images. The gaze is from outside, from above, from a safe location. The mirage of cultural globalization is based on the assumption that the intellectual's consciousness of the global is identical to its existence. The map does not create the territory, of course, nor does the emergence of the territory give rise to the map in some automatic sense. The global has been there all the time, while globalization, which is clearly a historical aspect of global systems, is to be accounted for by understanding the processes of its appearance. Technology has played an important role in this process, by providing an ever tighter network of communication, by time-space compression. More than this, the rapid globalization of capital (and this does not require global consciousness on the part of the intellectuals), which has created and been facilitated by this technology, has created networks of global class relations and elite identities. In all of this, the most important transformation has been that of the local. Cultural globalization is about the transformation of locality. In fact, the basis of the global mirage consists in identifying it as another place, like the local but somehow above it. Globalization, however, is no more than a reconfiguration of relations between localities. Any Internet user can vouch for this. Local access to the world has, in an important sense, reinforced the localization process by packing the world into smaller places. Time-space compression is about the localization of the world rather than the globalization of the local. It is about the territorialization of the nonlocal rather than the deterritorialization of local. Even in the most physically tangible cases, for example of migration, the novelty of this era lies not in the fact of being in two places at the same time, but in the ease of return and of contact, which may create the illusion of inter-

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locality. The changing materiality of the global system has brought the world home, rather than the converse. This is evident in the current fashion in ethnographic critique in which it has been "discovered" that the local is not as local as we thought it was. The work of A. Gupta and J. Ferguson (1997) testifies not to a de-territorialization of the field but to an implosion of the global into the local. What we thought of as separate territorially based cultures turn out to be the products of global processes, a point made with respect to colonialism by Max Gluckman many years ago (1960). Locality itself is a product of higher order relations, but these relations are not the same thing as a place, for example, a place where one can do fieldwork. The field site is not the whole, in other words. 2 This was one of the first points made by an emerging global anthropology in the 1980s (Ekholm and Friedman 1980). Not only places and cultural structures but social institutions and categories need to be understood in terms of the global-local articulations that constitute them. It implied that fieldwork in a single place could be an act of self-deceit created by the categories of the discipline. Global systemic anthropology was conceived as an attempt to rethink those categories in both spatial and temporal terms. When it is discovered that the place in which one is doing fieldwork can only be understood in a global historical context, then research must necessarily follow suit. When an old man in an isolated village in Central Africa took me into the jungle and scraped a patch of earth to reveal abandoned railway tracks, when another old man in another isolated village in Madagascar recounted his twenty-five years in the French military in the Middle East, we were not confronting a globalized world as such, but merely scraping the surface of a world of relations that lies beneath the surface of the ethnographic landscape. If it turns out that established ethnographic categories, like Kalahari hunters and gatherers, Melanesian big men, Amazonian egalitarian moieties, are historical products of global/ local interactions, then it is clear that our objects must be reconstituted methodologically as well, if our aim is to understand such total social phenomena. The work of Eric Wolf (1983), R. J. Gordon (1992), and many others has established the necessity of this kind of understanding. Now all of this is primarily about the importance of contextualization in ethnography or any other aspect of anthropological research. And the essays in this volume illuminate precisely the way in which context is part of the process of producing ethnographic artifacts. These contexts include the discipline itself, the various audiences for ethnographic products, and the people

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represented in the research. Historically speaking, ethnography is a part of empire, and ethnographers have been part of the social organization of empire, even if they have been very much more marginal than they have sometimes supposed. But as ethnography is only possible within the social relations that are established in the field, we must be aware that just as we are representing them, they are representing us; and, just as we may incorporate them into texts and films that circulate within certain global circles, they are assimilating our presences to their worlds. In this sense Rohatynskyj and Jaarsma (chapter 1) speak of ethnographic artifacts, not merely of ethnographic products. If Firth became a Tikopian ancestor (Judith Macdonald, chapter 6), thus establishing conditions for other fieldworkers, this is not merely a problem for research, but a new object of research for a truly reflexive subject. Captain Cook in Hawai'i, the missionaries and churches all over the colonized world, certain anthropologists and their representations, have become institutionalized into real social practices in ways that ought to be made part of anthropological research, as this volume shows. The relations involved in such processes are always complex and cannot be reduced to acts of imposition. On the contrary, as in the case of Firth, they can be parts of the reinforcement of local strategies, the replication of cultural forms and especially of social identity. The mapping of the "peoples" of the empire creates a problem internal to ethnography as well, as illustrated by Rohatynskyj (chapter 9), where the previous characterization, by none other than Gregory Bateson, of the Baining as impossible to study was part of a classificatory practice whose explanation lies in their particular colonial history and their political-regional relation to the Tolai within the larger colonial regime. Here the anthropological classifications interact with global power relations to produce a particular localized effect in the form of a "people" unfit for study. But what happens in the decline of imperial structures? Toon van Meijl (chapter 5) presents a case study in the shifting balance of power, the coming to voice of the formerly silent objects of anthropology. And, as it turns out, there is more than one voice involved here. If we see this in a broader perspective, then it is not so difficult to understand that the resurgence of indigenous politics in large parts of the world must lead to a conflict over the power to represent such peoples. And it is ethnographic authority that is bound to be the target of this struggle. The politics of identity are real politics, and at certain levels of representation the anthropologists who have clamored for their rights to represent the authentic were bound to get into deep trouble quite simply

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because by doing so they themselves entered into the arena of identity politics. Van Meijl details the conflict as an ethnographic reality of turned tables, i.e., where ethnographic representations by outsiders, anthropologists, were subject to the scrutiny of tribal elders. Niko Besnier (chapter 2) takes up a similar kind of problem, the relation between politically acceptable representations that tend to be quite homogeneous if they are to have any political effect, and the more contradictory situations of life in local communities. Grant McCall (chapter 4) elaborates on this problem by focusing on the question of the ethics of representation and the necessary relation between the native and the anthropological voice.

Contextualization, Reflexivity, and the Expanded Object of Ethnography If we were to summarize the framework that is elicited in these chapters, we might begin by dividing them into practices of representation and the contexts within which the latter circulate on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the social practices and institutions within which representational contexts themselves are formed and reproduced. Doing ethnography implies both of these practices, as well as the relations between them. The ethnographer moves out to the Other and is funded from home, a relation that was once encompassed by colonial hierarchies in which administration and classification went hand in hand, but which today has increasingly disintegrated, leading to a breakdown in both the classificatory assumptions and their accompanying concepts, from ethnographic "realism" to the culture concept itself. Ethnography is socially a more risky process, and its representational capacity is increasingly under surveillance by those represented. This is the core of the global transformation that I have delineated above. But there is much more to these relations, as demonstrated in this volume. Ethnographic texts can be integrated into local identities and sometimes practices. Institutional forms of ethnographic and/or missionary activity can become fixtures in the lives of those studied. They can become nodes that integrate populations into the larger world arena at the same time as their cultural content can become assimilated into local lives. This is clearly demonstrated by Mary MacDonald for the missionary ethnography of the Melanesian Institute (chapter 8). Ethnography itself is implicated in these interactions, since the history of the field is also the history of the way in which its subjects have been conceived. No aspect of

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this more complex interaction, neither the institutionalization of Firth in Tikopia, nor the view of the Baining as having no organization, nor the view that I encountered on arriving in Hawai'i, that there were no "real" Hawaiians left, can be excluded from our ethnographic understanding. Since such categorizations dictate the course of field research among upcoming generations, they are translated back from representational into institutionalized practices, funding schemes, and disciplinary structures. The representational can become realized both among ourselves and our subjects, just as the social organization of our field can become part of the world that we study. This is the fate of a science that roots itself in an ethnography. In order not to become merely part of these relations we must constantly strive to gain a perspective upon them, to see ourselves as part of our research, not as mere subjects, but as social beings in a socially structured context.

Notes 1. My wife, Kajsa Ekholm Friedman, and I have worked in Hawai'i since 1979. The following is drawn from our separate and common experiences there. 2. This is the old issue of "misplaced concreteness." It is quite common today to find that the global is treated as a field site. This is not to say that fieldwork does not always occur in the global arena, which is simply a larger locality, but that the relations between localities are not a place. Even the study of transnationals and the media can only occur in localities, even if there are several involved. The relations between them are not places but only relations. The image of the global place is created by a simple conflation of the experience of movement with the concept of place.

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Contributors Niko Besnier is professor in the Department of Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington. His published works concern issues in political and psychological anthropology, conflict and its management, literacy, oratory, gossip, and transgenderism and sexual behavior. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in Tuvalu and Tonga. Jonathan Friedman is director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Lund, Sweden. He has written extensively on issues of modernity, cultural identity, the anthropology of global systems, and globalization. He has carried out research on Hawai'i, ethnification and migration in Europe, and the contemporary transformation of the nation-state. Among his publications are System Structure and Contradiction in the Evolution of "Asiatic" Social Formations (1998) and Cultural Identity and Global Process (1994). Michael Goldsmith is director of the anthropology program at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. He received a B.A. in anthropology and history from the University of Auckland and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His main interests are Pacific history, politics, and society, and he has carried out field research in Tuvalu and among Tokelau in Samoa. SjoerdR. Jaarsma is a graduate of Utrecht University and obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Nijmegen. An anthropologist by training, he specializes in the history of anthropology and comparative ethnography of New Guinea. He is the author of "An Ethnographer's Tale: Ethnographic Research in Netherlands New Guinea (1950-1962)," Oceania (1991), and " 'Your Work Is of No Use to Us . . .': Administrative Interests in Ethnographic Research (West New Guinea, 1950-1962)," Journal of Pacific History (1994). At present he is attached to the Centre for Pacific and Asian Studies, University of Nijmegen. Judith Macdonald received her doctorate from the University of Auckland and is presently senior lecturer in anthropology at the University of Waikato in Hamilton. Her research interests include gender studies generally and in the

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CONTRIBUTORS

Pacific, health issues (in New Zealand and medical anthropology), writing ethnography, and oral traditions. She is the author of a number of publications dealing with health practices in the Pacific. Mary N. MacDonald began her career as an elementary school teacher in Queensland. She then worked for eight years in Papua New Guinea, first as a teacher in a catechist training center at Erave in the Southern Highlands and later as a lecturer and researcher with the Melanesian Institute at Goroka in the Eastern Highlands. MacDonald holds a Ph.D. in history of religions from the University of Chicago. Since 1988 she has served on the faculty of Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York. Currently she is visiting professor at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University. Her recent publications include Mararoko: A Study in Melanesian Religion (1991) and Local Religions (1999). Grant McCall is the foundation director of the Centre for South Pacific Studies at the University of New South Wales. His most recent publication is a Spanish translation of his Rapanui: Tradition and Survival on Easter Island (1994), published in Chile by the Foundation for Easter Island Studies (1999). McCall's current research is on Nissology (the study of islands), sovereignty, modernity, and Pacific regionalism from the perspective of world anthropology. Marta A. Rohatynskyj is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Guelph in Ontario. She has conducted extensive ethnographic research in Papua New Guinea both in the former Northern Province with the Ömie and most recently as a research officer for the former Department of East New Britain among the non-Tolai groups. She has also conducted research in Burkina Faso in West Africa and worked in community development projects there and in Swaziland in Southern Africa. Her recent publications include "Culture, Secrets, and Ömie History: A Consideration of the Politics of Cultural Identity," American Ethnologist (1997), and "Solicited and Unsolicited History: The Transformation in Ömie Self-Presentation," Oceania (1998). Toon van Meijl is a graduate of the University of Nijmegen and the Australian National University from which he obtained his Ph.D. in 1991. His doctoral dissertation, "Political Paradoxes and Timeless Traditions: Ideology and Devel-

CONTRIBUTORS

245

opment among the Tainui Maori, New Zealand" (1990), is based on twentyfive months of fieldwork. He coedited European Imagery and Colonial History in the Pacific (1994) and Property Rights and Economic Development: Land and Natural Resources in Southeast Asia and Oceania (1999). At present, he is senior research fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences at the Centre for Pacific and Asian Studies, University of Nijmegen.

Index Abemama, 27 Aboriginal land claims, 69-70 acculturation, 181. See also culture change Ad Gentes, 158 administration, 47, 111-112, 114, 129131,135,140,164,181-184,188190, 206 advocacy, 2, 6, 15, 63, 69, 81, 87-89, 92, 97-98, 126-128, 134, 139, 141, 153, 168; hyper-activism, 70 Ahrens, Theodor, 159 alienation: from mainstream culture, 89, 101 anthropological conferences, 12, 61, 7374, 83, 99, 164-165; conventions of, 46; corroborating authority, 62; division of labor, 43, 45; ethnographic legitimacy, 62-63; owning conference themes, 43; paper presentation, 44; representation strategies, 52; structuring, 63 anthropologists: advocacy, 2, 87-89, 92, 97; agency, 1-2, 17, 119; amateur, 25, 54, 82, 174; applied, 168; bad faith, 12, 99; critical, 68, 108; cultural brokers, 6, 51,109, 116, 118; development consultants, 88, 91-92, 95-97, 168; femaleness, 122; feminist, 120; and government, 133, 177; "halfie" anthropologist, 33; homosexual, 33, 130, 133-135, 137-138; identity, 5; independent scholar, 44, 87, 89,9192, 95, 102-103; indigenous criticism on, 29-31, 103; indigenous definition of, 121; "insider" anthropology, 32-33, 99-103,108,199; intervention by, 117; later generations of, 54, 86, 120-122, 144nn. 7, 9; maleness, 121; native, 79; neo-imperialists/neo-colonialists, 30-31; neutral collectors of facts, 5, 32,44,125; parochial intellectuality, 80-81; part of a political hierarchy, 197; personal reflexivity, 197; precursors, 52, 54; professional experts, 87; professional jargon, 63-64, 73; secular, 150, 153-154, 170; self-

justification, 61-62, 110; singleculture focus, 15, 46-48; social ostracism, 13, 22, 24; storyteller, 51,6162; understanding ourselves, 7, 137138. See also ethnography, lineage of; Trinh T. Minh-ha anthropology: academic reputation, 5253; academic tenure, 42 n. 14, 122; academy, 57,110,154,167-168, 170, 207; anthropological subject, 9, 86, 125-127, 139, 142, 206-207; boundaries to, 57; centrality of fieldwork, 44-45, 57, 61-63, 81,107-108, 197; comparative method, 43, 45-46, 124125, 129, 134, 136, 141-142, 182, 190; compartmentalization, 16; conflicts in, 82, 197-198; diffusionism, 202; distance object/subject, 86; division of labor, 57; dogma of territorialized cultures, 201; emancipation, native, 66,68, 86; ethical and political issues, 16, 64, 67, 87, 197, 206; ethnomethodology, 200; exotic, focus on the, 61; exploitation by neocolonialist/neo-imperialist, 30-31; feminist, 120; fetishized notions, 201; "halfie" anthropologist, 33; history of the field, 206-207; holistic description, 45,107-108,125,197; homosexuality, 33,133-135,137-138; imagined community, 73; immoral behavior, accusations of, 99; indigenous perception, 66, 121; as intellectual discourse, 75, 167, 207; interior landscapes, 63; intrusion, 10, 53, 67, 179; method and theory, 2, 12, 30, 43^15, 57, 61, 69, 72, 86, 89,103, 125, 197-200; postmodernism, 4, 33, 68, 75, 77, 82, 88,102,199; preoccupation with fieldwork, 5, 207; re-analysis, 86, 121-122; reflexivity, 4-5, 15, 56, 197, 206; "reformer's science," 70, 84 n. 2; regional focus, 1, 141; scientific progress, myth of, 52; social construct, 5, 38, 74—77, 206-207; social organization, 74-75,

247

248

207; theory versus fieldwork, 57, 207; traditional object, 86,107; trust placed in, 30, 34, 53, 141; truth in, 80-81; unease with ethnography, 154, 197. See also anthropological conferences; journalism, representation through Appadurai, Arjun, 7, 13 Arbuckle S. M „ Gerald, 158 ariki (chief), 108, 111, 113-116, 120 Asad, Talal, 127 Asmat, 15, 124-125, 128-142, 174 Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania (ASAO), 12, 4 3 ^ 6 , 56-57, 62, 74 audience: anthropological, 1 - 3 , 62-63, 6 7 68, 72-73, 75, 81-83, 87, 136, 138, 170; composition, 11, 167; concept, 72, 82; creating demand, 7, 26-27; critical, 13, 83, 170; ethical aspects, 67; ethical concern, 82; female, 187; image of, 37, 43, 63, 72, 127, 170; indigenous/native, 68, 77-81, 80, 83, 109, 119; intended, 9, 15, 52, 65, 74, 76, 1 2 5 - 1 2 9 , 1 3 1 - 1 3 5 , 139-142,168; lack of control, 63, 139-142; language, 72; local, 48, 65, 67, 152, 165; misreading of, 64—65; monocultural, sense of, 57; multiple, 71, 77-81; preconceived, 12; public imagination, 50; receptiveness of, 48, 167; secondary, 63, 128; structuring, 4, 12, 63, 7 5 - 7 7 authority: absolute phenomenon, 125, 167; ascription of, 1 3 4 , 1 6 7 - 1 6 8 ; authoritative voice, 126-127; challenged, 10; ethnographic, 2, 5, 9 - 1 1 , 14-15, 23, 28-29, 39nn. 3, 4, 4 3 ^ 4 , 57, 86-87, 102-103, 111, 1 2 4 - 1 2 8 , 1 3 1 - 1 4 2 , 152, 168, 197-199, 205; ethnographic expert, 107, 126; evaluation of, 127, 167; given, 126; indigenous knowledge, 81; perceiving, 127; public imagination, 50; session organizer, 43; taking of, 127; theorizing conference topics, 44 Baining, 15, 59 n. 12, 153, 174-187, 189192, 205, 207 Bakalaki, Alexandra, 61, 79

INDEX

baptism, 113 Barley, Nigel, 63 Barnes, John A., 5 - 7 , 31, 34, 72, 75, 77, 80, 126, 153 Bateson, Gregory, 175-183, 189-191, 205 Beamer, Billie, 80 Bernice P. Bishop Museum (Honolulu), 48, 195 Besnier, Niko, 15, 54, 109, 164, 206 Bible, 51, 153; as Melanesian literature, 152 Binoka, Tem, 27 Boas, Franz, 198 Boelaars M.S.C., Jan, 124, 130-132, 134 Brandewie S.V.D., Ernst, 158 Brettell, Carolyne B., 17 n. 1, 28, 87 Brownell, Susan, 42 n. 14 cargo cults, 157, 159 Carrier, James, 10 Catechesi Tradendae, 172 n. 5 Catholicism, 114, 130, 151, 154, 156-160, 163, 179, 182-183, 185, 187 Chicago School, 201 Chilean administration, 64—65 Chinnery, E. W. P., 177, 182 Christianity: and change, 111-112, 150152, 154-158, 160-168; and ethnography, 168-170; indigenization of, 113, 150, 152, 166; nationhood, 159, 164; syncresis (cultural/religious), 112, 171 n. 4; and tradition, 22, 25, 27, 150-152, 155, 161-162, 164, 166-167, 169. See also culture Christian Medical Commission, 164 Christian texts, 152 churches: Anglican, 1 1 2 , 1 5 5 - 1 5 6 , 1 5 8 159; Christian Congregational Church, 49; cooperation, research and education, 157-161; Evangelical Church of Papua, 163; Evangelical Lutheran, 158-160; indigenous/local appreciation, 113-114, 150-154; and missions, 157-158; Presbyterian, 165; United, 158, 159 citizens. See context of research, citizens citizens/natives, 1 - 2 , 4, 8, 10-11 Clifford, James, 3, 86, 88, 107, 198, 200

INDEX

Codrington, Robert Henry, 155-156 colonialism: colonial administration, 6, 64— 65, 111-114, 129-131, 135,140, 155-157, 181-184, 188-190, 206; decolonization, indigenous, 1, 2 8 - 3 3 ; ethnographic entanglement in, 8 - 9 , 26-33, 64-65, 204-205; gatekeeping, 64—65, 7 6 - 7 7 ; plantation society, 116-118, 179, 184, 186-188; resistance to, 115, 184 Comaroff, Jean and John, 5, 100-101, 123 n. 5, 119 comparitive method, 43, 4 5 - 4 6 , 124-125, 129, 134, 136, 141-142, 182, 190; language problems, 135, 144 n. 9 Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, 156-157 context of research: citizens, 1-2, 4, 6, 8, 10-11, 68, 7 5 - 7 7 , 80-82; gatekeepers, 2, 6, 9, 45, 7 5 - 7 7 , 80, 82, 89, 9 7 - 9 9 , 1 2 6 , 139, 153; natives, 1^1, 7 - 8 , 10-11, 13-14, 67-72, 7 7 - 8 3 , 206; scientists, 1-2, 6, 8, 10-11, 7 5 - 7 7 , 8 0 - 8 2 ; sponsors, 2, 6, 75-77, 80, 82, 152-153, 160-161, 168. See also citizens/natives; scientists/ anthropologists conversion, 112-113; indigenous control of, 114 cosmopolitanism, 80-81, 202-203. See also hybridity; universalism cultural brokers, 6, 51, 109, 116-119 cultural identity. See identity, cultural culture: change, 153, 156-157, 181; Christian influence, 150 n. 2 , 1 5 2 , 1 5 4 - 1 5 5 , 159, 162, 170, 172nn. 5 - 6 ; communication of, 176; conceptualized, 100; consciousness of, 110, 175; as criticized concept, 201; cultural and material tradition, 2; cultural aspects of healing, 1 0 7 , 1 1 5 , 1 5 3 - 1 5 4 , 1 6 2 - 1 6 7 , 169; cultural mapping, 205; cultural variation, 33-35, 45; deconstruction of, 201; egalitarian, 175; fetishized, 201; globalization of, 1-5, 11, 13, 16, 38, 73, 88, 138, 199, 201-206; hegemonic representation, 2, 5, 8, 10, 17 n. 1 , 2 9 , 3 1 , 3 5 , 38, 93, 103,191, 199; hybridization of, 202-203;

249

invention/reinvention of, 94, 111, 120, 185, 190; Melanesian, 150, 155, 157160, 162, 167; multivocality of, 3 3 35, 100,167; negative aspects of, 162; political ideologies, 102-103; representation, 10-11, 103, 118; struggle and resistance, 195, 205; traditional, 87, 93, 183; transmission of, 55; universalism, 202-203; variance in the amount of, 175, 179-180; writing of, 151-155, 162, 167, 170. See also Christianity, and tradition; culture, Christian influences; ethnography, cover story; ethnography, multivocality; invention of tradition; reinvention of tradition culture change, 1 5 3 , 1 5 6 - 1 5 7 . See also acculturation culture contact, 131, 157, 163, 181. See also culture change culture and personality school, 201 Cushman, D„ 126, 139, 143 n. 4, 74 deconstruction, 88, 201 discourse: academic, 47, 54, 7 5 - 7 6 , 167; authority in, 125-129, 135-136, 139142, 199; ethnographic, 9 6 - 9 7 , 99, 132-133, 139-142, 167; Melanesian churches, 150, 170; missionary, 132, 1 5 1 - 1 5 2 , 1 6 2 , 1 6 4 ; stereotypes, use of dominant, 25-26, 28, 34; of tradition, 89, 91, 93. See also Christianity, and tradition; culture, hegemonic representation; ethnography, cover story Donner, Florinda, 122 EASA. See European Association of Social Anthropologists East New Britain, 15, 174, 176, 192, 193 n. 6 ecology of warfare, 129-130 education, 1, 33, 55, 153, 155, 157, 159, 160, 169, 185; formal, 2, 181 emancipation, native/indigenous 68, 8 6 87, 89, 102 Epstein, Bill (A.L.), 174-175 Epstein, T. Scarlett, 174 ESfO. See European Society for Oceanists

250

ethnographic artifacts, 3-17, 138,192, 204-205 ethnographic authority: appreciation of, 39nn. 3,4, 111; changes in, 9-11, 3132, 86-87, 100-103; crisis of authority, 167, 199; decline in, 5, 197-199; establishing, 43-47, 57, 61-63, 111, 125-129,139-142,168-170; moral entanglements, 2, 28-29 ethnographic critique, 204 ethnographic knowledge: access to, 31, 55, 86; diffusion of, 47, 55; indigenous, 48, 121; indigenous scrutiny, 206; legitimacy, 86; native knowledge, as opposed to, 81-82; partial, 57, 107. See also ethnographic representation, legitimacy ethnographic material, restricted, 163-164 ethnographic representation: anthropologized, 121; challenging, 6; ethics of, 29,103, 206; ethnographic laboratory, 45; ethnographic realism, 46, 108, 206; indigenous restrictions on, 1213, 29, 34, 97, 99, 206; indigenous self-objectification, 103, 108, 190; jargon, 63-64, 73; legitimacy, 46, 86, 102, 122, 125, 198-199; myth of the primitive society, 107, 126, 174, 177, 190,198; negotiating, 88-89,96,190; objectifying, 4, 93, 190-191; political dimension, 38,44, 88, 205; politically acceptable, 94, 99,103,118; pristine, 110, 177, 191, 198; re-analysis, 86, 121-122; recursiveness, 2, 14-15, 110; reflexivity, 4-5, 56,127, 197, 206; self-justifying use, 61-62, 110. See also fieldwork, ethics ethnographic validity, 62, 102, 119, 122, 126. See also ethnographic authority ethnography: absence of, 53; administrative, 131-133, 177; aims and objectives, 70, 86, 168-170; amateur, 25, 54, 82, 146 n. 23; anthropological core, 44, 70, 121, 170, 200; appropriate/inappropriate subject, 15, 177, 191-192, 205; Christian, 150-152, 154-156,169-170; classical scope, 9, 198-199; comprehensive, 124, 174;

INDEX

constructivism, 68, 199-200; consumers of, 6, 62, 79, 87, 203; contextualization, 204; conventional, 15, 174,176; cover story, 37, 123 n. 4; dialogic approach, 198; double hermeneutic, 62, 200; enveloped in social relations, 16, 198-199, 205; essentialism, 78-82, 201-202; exposure of, 99, 199-200; fieldwork mode of production, 81; Geertzian textualism, 4, 200-201; gossip, 13, 25, 3537, 64; holistic description, 46, 57, 108, 174, 176; identification with, 83, 109, 111, 170; indeterminacy and contextuality, 7, 170; indigenous access to, 9, 47, 167; influencing culture, 48, 107, 192, 206; lineage of, 54, 119; long-term study, 33-34,90,153,179, 192,196; missionary, 25-26, 54, 86, 124,132,139, 154-155, 174, 179, 182; moral and political, 87,169-170, 198, 200; multiple language publication, 72, 131-133, 135,141,143 n. 1, 144 n. 9; multivocality, 167,198-199, 201, 205; native voice, 69, 79, 206; permission to publish, 97-98; postcolonial, 57; production of, 1-2, 6-7, 9,12, 37,128; questioning ethnography, 34, 138, 170, 198, 201; reading of, 1, 6-7, 48, 52, 55-56, 61, 72-73, 76, 110, 120, 141, 167, 170; realist, 7-8, 79, 198, 206; reception of, 1, 197-198; recursive loop, 2, 14-15, 110; representation literature, 3-4; representational capacity, 206; restrictions on access, 34, 163-164, 168; secular, 150,153-154, 170; of the self, 52; social construct of, 7, 9, 16, 44,197; social organization, 197; sociological, 199-200; subjects of, 1, 3-4,10-11,14,16,46, 50,52, 54-56, 71; under surveillance, 34, 97, 206; templates for representation, 6; travel description, 25, 54, 82; triadic configuration, 3,9, 11, 13; writing up, 6, 12, 167, 170. See also anthropologists, later generations of; anthropology, comparative method; culture, hege-

INDEX

251

monic representation; ethnographic representation, indigenous restrictions on; ethnography, Christian ethnomethodology, 200 European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), 74 European civilization, 177 European domination, 30,71, 93, 127,155, 204. See also colonialism European Society for Oceanists (ESfO), 74 evangelization, 150-152, 156. See also churches; mission Eyde, David B., 124, 130, 132, 134-135, 145 n. 12

205; ripeness for, 181,183,190; as social relation, 16, 196-198; standard ethnographic transaction, 51; traditional, 91, 110. See also ethnography, long-term study Firth, Sir Raymond, 14, 52, 75, 83, 108122, 124, 144 n. 7, 192, 198, 205, 207 Firth, Stewart G., 188 Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn, 34, 88, 99 Fourth World peoples, 8,29, 31,70,79, 88, 91, 99, 195; definition of, 87 Freeman, Derek, 14, 39 n. 3, 50, 84 n. 6, 85 n. 10, 108 Friedman, Jonathan, 5, 11, 16, 78, 103

Fabian, Johannes, 11, 200 Fajans, Jane, 175-176, 179, 182, 185 female audience, 187 fieldwork: accounts, 21,47-52, 65-67, 9091,121-122,163-164,191,195-197; betrayal of confidence, 36,64; central role of, 44—45, 57, 61-63, 81, 107108, 197; changing focus, 23-24; collection of data, 6, 36, 47-52; endangering informants, 64—65, 7072; ethics, 4-5, 16, 28-33, 35-38, 6467, 68-72, 87, 95-99, 127, 206-207; failure to communicate, 176, 182183, 190,192; field site, selection of, 45,47-52, 68-70, 182-183; good informant, 181, 183; holistic perspective on, 57, 197; by indigenous person, 32-33, 65-66; indigenous reflexivity on, 30-33, 97-99, 142, 175,190-191; informants as dependents, 196-197; informed consent, 34-35, 96-99; long-term, 196; mode of production, 61-63, 81; moral entanglement, 2, 28-29, 65-66, 108; "owning" the society, 43, 45, 53; permission, 29, 33-34, 76-77, 90; personalized accounts, 11, 61-63; rapport, 46, 78, 180, 190, 196; reciprocity and, 11,36-37,55,65-66, 83, 90, 97-98,119-122, 170, 191; relationships, 4, 9, 11-12, 36-37, 6163; representation strategies, 36,4752; reticent informants, 176,183,190,

gatekeepers/gatekeeping. See context of research, gatekeepers gay and lesbian anthropologists, 33, 133135, 137-138. See also "halfie" anthropologist Gebusi, 24 Geertz, Clifford, 4, 75, 200. See also ethnography, Geertzian textualism Gerbrands, Adriaan A., 130, 132, 140 Gilbert and Ellice Islands. See Kiribati, Republic of; Tuvalu globalization, 1-5, 11, 13, 16, 38, 73, 88, 138,199, 201-206 Goldsmith, Michael, 12, 14-15, 25, 27, 144 n. 7 gossip, 13, 25, 35-37, 64 Hahl, Albert, 188, 193 n . 4 "halfie" anthropologist, 33 Harvey, Penelope, 30 Hawai'i, 1, 29, 35, 68, 80, 94,195-197, 205, 207 headhunting, 130,134,143 n. 1, 146 n. 20 healing, 153-154,162-167,169 health, indigenous perceptions of, 92, 153154,162-167,169 hegemonic representation. See culture, hegemonic representation Herdt, Gilbert H„ 136, 148 n. 31, 149 n. 40 Holmes, Lowell, 39 n. 3, 49-50 homosexual anthropologists. See gay and lesbian anthropologists hybridity, 202-203. See also globalization

252

identity: cultural, 11, 13, 71-72, 112, 155, 160, 169,192; ethnography, role of, 4, 11, 13-14, 33, 56, 78-79, 90, 107112, 126,192,199-200, 202, 205206; politics of, 36-38, 89, 92-94, 100-103, 205; traditional, 71-72, 89, 92-94, 100-101; Western modernity, 77-79, 199, 202 inculturation, 172 n. 5 indigenous consent, 35, 96-99 indigenous criticism on anthropology, 103. See also Trinh T. Minh-ha indigenous movements, 88-89. See also emancipation, native/indigenous indigenous perceptions of health, 92, 153154, 162-167, 169 indigenous political demands, 68, 88-91 Indonesia, Republic of, 133-134, 142, 144 n. 8 informed consent, 34-35, 96-99 "insider" anthropology, 32-33, 102, 9 9 103, 199 insider perspective, 32, 68; as privileged, 102 International Working Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), 195 invention of tradition, 52, 68, 91, 94, 101, 108, 114, 165, 195 Jaarsma, Sjoerd R., 15, 39, 72,170,174, 190, 200, 205 Janssen S.V.D., Hermann, 158 jargon, professional. See anthropologists, professional jargon journalism, representation through, 13-14, 39 n. 5, 50, 94, 146 n. 20 Kamoro, 129-131, 133, 141, 143 n. 1, 148 n. 33. See also Asmat Kautil, Kasek, 159 Keesing, Roger M„ 10, 29, 68, 77-78, 94, 100, 102-103, 109, 201 Keesing-Trask debate, 10, 29, 68, 78, 94, 201. See also Trinh T. Minh-ha keveta pamo (stone woman) cult, 163164 Kewa, 151, 162-163 Kiribati, Republic of 21, 26-28, 59 n. 15

INDEX

Knauft, Bruce M„ 24, 124, 129-130,134136, 138, 141 Knoebel S.V.D., Joseph, 158 Kolandi, Mark, 165-166 Kulick, Don, 33, 134,137-138 labor recruitment, 111-112, 116-117, 183185 land claims, Aboriginal, 69-70 Larson, Eric, 109, 118-120 Lederman, Rena, 1 Leenhardt, Maurice, 155-156 Lever Brothers, 117-120 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 200 Linnekin, Jocelyn, 29, 110 literacy: cultural, 1-2, 7-9, 11, 50; deficiency in, 91, 108; and education, 55, 153, 171 n. 4; ethnography, access to, 7 - 9 , 4 7 , 5 0 , 5 5 , 1 0 8 , 1 1 9 ; spread of, 1, 55,73, 119, 153, 155 Lyng, Captain J., 186-187 Macdonald, Barrie, 27-28, 53 Macdonald, Judith, 14, 25, 48, 57, 83, 124, 144 n. 7, 174 MacDonald, Mary N„ 15, 145 n. 18, 193 n. 2 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 53, 198 Mantovani, Ennio, 160, 172 n. 8 Maori, 86-103; development processes, 92, 95, 97; perspective on tradition, 89, 91-94; tribal elite, 88-89,92,94-99, 103; urban proletariat, 89, 92-93, 103 marne (ceremonial center), 90 Marcus, George E„ 3, 23,46, 86,126,139, 143 n. 4, 174 marginalization, 22, 24, 103 Martin Luther Seminary, Lae, 159, 166 Matupit, 174 McCall, Grant, 14-15, 17 n. 1, 87, 206 McGregor, Gordon, 4 7 ^ 8 Mead, Margaret, 39 n. 3, 49-51, 53, 56, 76, 78, 84 n. 6, 107-108, 149 n. 38, 187 Mead-Freeman controversy, 39 n. 3, 4 9 51, 53, 56, 78, 80, 84 n. 6, 107-108 Melanesia, 138, 150-158, 160-162, 165, 168-170

INDEX

methodology: action, 91; comparison; critique of, 4, 31, 82, 99, 197-198, 201; moral decisions, 6, 10, 16, 28, 75, 87, 99, 198, 200, 203; standard empirical methods, 44-45, 200-201. See also anthropology, comparative method; anthropology, method and theory Micronesia, 21, 26-27, 80 migration, 2 8 , 4 1 n. 10,46, 112, 114, 121, 130, 201-203 Mimika (Kamoro), 143 n. 1,129-131,133, 141, 148 n. 33. See also Asmat millenarianism, 79 mission: and academy, 140-142, 170; acceptance of, 112-113, 130-131, 155-156; evangelization, 150-158; pressures exerted by, 114, 156-157; suspect ethnography, 140-142, 154, 170. See also ethnography, Christian; ethnography, missionary missionaries: agents of cultural change, 32, 55, 113, 131, 153, 161-168,205; gatekeepers, 9, 150-152. See also Christianity, and tradition; culture, Christian influence missionary institutions: Crosier Fathers (O.S.C.), 131; Martin Luther Seminary, 159, 166; Melanesian Institute, 15, 145 n. 18, 153-162, 164165, 167, 169, 171 n. 1, 206; Melanesian Mission, 112-114, 171 n. 3; Methodist Mission, 178, 186, 189190; Sacred Hearts Mission (M.S.C.), 130-132, 183, 193 n. 2; Seventh Day Adventists (SDA), 114; Society of the Divine Word (S.V.D.), 154, 170; The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM), 130 missionary journals, 133, 151, 154, 161, 170 missionization: aims and goals, 150-152, 156-157; and development, 113, 157 Mithila (Bihar, Northern India), 32 modernism, decline of, 199-202 Momis, John, 162, 172 n. 9 money, 112-113; introduction of, 113; taxation, 114-117

253

movements: cargo, 157, 159; religious, 161-162. See also indigenous movements Nail, Yatiban, 164-165 Namunu, Simeon, 159, 161 nation-states, 73, 87 natives. See citizens/natives; context of research, natives Nauru, 21-22, 30 Neumann, Klaus, 193 n. 4 New Zealand, 8, 28-29, 35, 41 n. 10, 49, 51, 55, 58 n. 4, 8 6 - 9 2 , 9 4 - 9 5 , 9 7 - 1 0 0 , 102-103 Nukulaelae, 15, 21-30, 32-37, 39, 164 Occidentalism, 10 Ok Tedi mine, 161, 170 Orientalism, 9. See also Said, Edward Ortner, Sherry, 30, 32, 38, 39 n. 4, 100 ostracism, 13, 22, 24 "Other," representation of the. See representation, of the "Other" outsider perspective, 68, 99-103; "insider anthropology"; as privileged, 103. See also insider perspective Overell, Lillian, 186-188 Pacific History Association, 83 Panoff, Michel, 183-185 Papua New Guinea, 1,15, 32, 134, 141142, 145 n. 18, 150-153, 157-160, 162, 164, 166-167, 169-170, 176, 180, 185 Parkinson, Phoebe, 187-189 paternalism, 118 perspective. See insider perspective; outsider perspective Petersen, Glenn, 71-72 plantation society, 27, 116-118, 179, 184, 186-188. See also colonialism; Lever Brothers Pohnpei, 71-72 political autonomy, 87, 89, 102 political dependency, 197 political ideologies, cultural validation of, 93-94, 9 9 , 1 0 2 - 1 0 3 politics of identity, 108, 205

254

politics of tradition, 93-94 Polynesia, 21, 2 6 , 4 5 ^ 6 , 49, 51, 64, 80, 108, 112, 114, 117-118,120 Pool, Jeremy, 175-176, 179 Poole, Jean, 178 postcolonialism, 4,45, 57, 94,100-101 Pouwer, Jan, 129, 148 n. 33, 149 n. 40 Poyer, Lin, 110 Pratt, Mary Louise, 121-122 professional jargon. See anthropologists, professional jargon Propaganda Fide, 156-157 Protestantism, 51, 58 n. 5, 130, 155-156 qualitative methodology, 199 Queen Emma, 193 n. 6 Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred Reginald, 53,179, 198 Radin, Paul, 198, 201 Rapanui (Easter Island), 64-69, 73, 76-77 Rapitok, 174 rapport, 46, 78, 180, 190, 196. See also culture change; culture contact; fieldwork Rascher M.S.C., Matthaus, 182-184, 187, 193 n. 2 recruiting labor, 111-112,116-117,183185 reification of tradition, 77, 91, 93, 101, 185 reinvention of tradition, 52,68,91,94,101, 108, 114, 165, 195 religion: Melanesian religions, 151, 160— 161; missions, the role of, 153-156, 159-161; study of, 52, 122, 151,165168, 170; traditional, 166, 179 representation: of the authentic, 205-206; Christian, 150; contested field of, 102; of conversion, 112-114; counterhegemonic voices, 103,190-191,195, 205; ethnographic legitimacy, 46, 86, 102, 122, 125, 198-199; "footing," 39 n. 4; indigenous appreciation of, 181, 183, 185, 190-191; the native voice, 69,79,206; negotiating, 88-89, 96,190; of the "Other," 4, 33, 80-81, 84 n. 2, 101, 109, 118,136,198-199, 206; of ourselves, 199, 206-207;

INDEX

politics of, 88-89,164,168,183,190; racialist, 186; reified, 46, 48, 93-94, 100,185; stereotypes, 28, 36, 71, 89, 93, 118,136-137,147 n. 28,183, 185-186, 189, 190-191; of tradition, 89. See also colonialism; ethnographic representation; ethnography, cover story research permission, 76-77, 96. See also fieldwork, permission; informed consent Rohatynskyj, Marta A., 11, 15, 59 n. 12, 138, 153, 200, 205 Rosaldo, Renato, 107, 119, 174 Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide), 156-157 Said, Edward, 10, 31 Salisbury, R. F„ 174-175 Samoa, 14, 28, 39 n. 3, 47, 49-56, 78, 84 n. 6,107-108 Sand Island (Honolulu Harbor, Hawai'i), 195 Schneebaum, Tobias, 133-135, 137-138, 145 n. 14 scientific progress, myth of, 52 scientists. See context of research, scientists scientists/anthropologists, 1-2, 8 self-reflection, 55 socialization, 63, 199 sociology, 2, 28, 160, 199, 201 Soi, Tomas, 163-165 Solomon Islands, 83, 112, 114-117, 121 sorcery accusation, 22, 35 Spillius, James, 109, 117-120 sponsors. See context of research, sponsors Starnberg Report, 161, 170 St. Paul massacre, 183-185, 187 Strathern, A. Marilyn, 125, 139 Strathern, Andrew J., 136, 154 syncresis (cultural/religious), 112, 171 n. 4 taxation, 114-117 tenure, 42 n. 14, 122 theology, 151, 154, 159-161, 167, 169, 172 n. 5 theoretical involution, 103 Third World peoples, 29, 31, 33

255

INDEX

Thomas, Nicholas, 3, 8, 27, 68, 82 Tikopia, 14-15,39 n. 3, 51,53,57, 59 n. 6, 83, 107-122,124,138, 174, 192, 198, 205, 207 Tolai, 59 n. 12, 174-178, 181-185, 188, 190-192, 205 tradition, (re)invention of, 52, 68, 91, 94, 101, 108, 114, 165, 195 Trask, Haunani-Kay, 10, 29, 30, 38, 68, 78, 94 Trinh T. Minh-ha, 29, 37, 38, 108, 118 Trompf, Garry, 154, 170 Turnbull, Colin, 71 Turner, Terence S., 33, 101-102 Tuvalu, 14, 21, 25-26, 28, 30, 32, 41 n. 10, 51-53 Tyler, Stephen A., 125 universalism, 202-203. See also cosmpolitanism; hybridity University of Papua New Guinea, 159, 167 van Amelsvoort, Vincent F.P.M., 129-131, 133 van Baal, Jan, 124, 128, 131, 147 n. 24, 181

van der Schoot, Hein A., 129-131, 133, 148 n. 36 van Maanen, John, 6-7, 12 van Meijl, Toon, 12-13, 15, 29, 31, 33, 35, 71,168, 205-206 Vatican Council II, 158 violence, 24-25, 27-28 Vunamami, 174 warfare, 129-130 Watson, James B., 180-182 Western civilization, 199 Wolf, Eric, 204 World Council of Churches, 152, 164 World Council of Indigenous Peoples, 88 World War I, 186 World War II, 149 n. 39, 174, 179 Yanomamo, 24, 122 Young Melanesians Project (YMP), 173 n. 11 Zegwaard M.S.C., Gerard A., 124,129132,134-135