What first appealed to Rabinow about the “right of passage” into the anthropological field and doing fieldwork turned into, after his time in Morocco, the realization that “anthropology is not the experiences, only the objective data you have brought back” (Rabinow 4). The objective data, in Rabinow’s case, seems to include a more confused understanding of himself within the society he has returned to, based an idea that people begin to understand themselves only through interaction with those having different cultural beliefs and practices than oneself; in other words, “the comprehension of self by the detour of the compensation of the other” (Rabinow 5). Within Rabinow’s first week he stated, high off the excitement of arrival, “now that I was in the field, everything was field work”. This, among many other details within the book led me to view anthropologists almost as glorified travelers. This notion became especially apparent when Rabinow recounts his sexual experience. At the core of anthropology is the ultimate goal of beginning to try to understand a culture different than ones own, and since sex is a huge part of existence as creatures, it does seem important in Rabinow’s story. However, the story does not fit with the interplays of other relationships Rabinow describes, especially in his experience with Ibrahim. If an anthropologist is truly to be a “non-person” and “suspend disbelief”, in other words, stay neutral, then why should such an anthropologist allow his or herself to indulge emotionally as deeply as in the act of sex?
Response to Fieldwork in Morocco Overall, I thought the book was an interesting read. I really felt the imagery in all of its aspects. I know that I may say this a great deal in class, but its because I'm not originally a Lang student. I am in Parsons studying Design and Management. Its a completely different field all together. I am used to processing things using methodologies and terms. I haven't learned any special terminology in Anthropology yet, therefore, my interpretations may seem a bit different.
The book was very nice in the sense that I felt like I was in Paul Rainbow's shoes. I traveled as him in my imagination. I saw all that he saw. I interacted with all of the people that he interacted with. I saw all of the disturbing, yet interesting rituals take place. I was an Anthropologist for a few days.
The book has shed light on some interesting things. For example: the notion of putting yourself in an environment that is far different from your living standards for the purpose of observing the behavior of a race of people. The notion of having limited resources and interpersonal connections in the field but then changing all of that in order to survive and learn about the different people in Morocco. The notion of not giving into the pain of being looked at differently by a race of people. Indeed, looked at as an outsider and intruder.
Paul spoke much about the connections with people he had made during his time in Morocco. They all played significant roles in his field work. At times, they would bridge the gap between language barriers. Other times, it was information that needed to be given that only these allies had. These connections were important because they helped resolve some of the issues in Morocco.
As Paul become further aquatinted with some important figures in his field work, things began to fall into place. He got the opportunity to witness rituals in which involved sacrificing a cow (later in the book) first hand. There he learned that it is true. One is not considered an Anthropologist until he or she has gone out into the field, spend a long time there and record good field notes.
Paul gained a great deal through the experience. He got exposure to different demographics with different languages, (French, Arabic), a completely different set of norms all together where as his lifestyle back at home is completely different and a better sense of who he was. Paul leaned what it is to actually live under mother nature's roof.
Paul Rabinow offers informative narration of his journey in Morocco to enlighten and educate the reader both on Moroccan culture, as well as the importance behind his method of ethnographic fieldwork. While I was primarily put off by what was seemingly his overdone account of his own involvement in the society, rather than only about the Moroccan people themselves, I eventually realized that he was doing this in order to convey important qualities an anthropologist must have when studying a society. His book was overall successful in conveying both the lifestyle of the people and important tools in conducting fieldwork.
Starting with his first contact, Frenchman Maurice Richard, the reader quickly learns necessary traits for informants to have, as Maurice is quickly dismissed as serving this purpose due to his status as an outsider of Sefrou groups. The reader then learns how he primarily gains closer access to Sefrou as he strengthened his relationship with Ali, who was able to offer information include him in village happenings and eventually lead him to further informants.
Rabinow utilizes his narration to critique and clarify his own ideas of important qualities to have when undergoing ethnographic fieldwork. He sites observation as being the most important part of his work, and the catalyst of future participation and hypothesis building. He claims that participation only leads to further observation, while new observation changes his methods of participations (pg. 80).
Reflections on fieldwork in Morocco is exactly what the title states. This entire book is dedicated to Rabinow's exploration and attempt to define fieldwork. What is fieldwork? How should it be acquired? Is the anthropologist part of the fieldwork? He realizes that he cannot acquire facts without including his own cultural perspective on the information and without forcing his subjects/informants to question their own culture, possibly resulting in his acquiring of an altered explication of the culture he is researching. In the end, Rabinow's fieldwork comes across as "an ethical experience and quest."
As far as the writing, I enjoyed the emotional aspect that Rabinow brought; he not only showed others' indiscretions, but also his own. He writes of the tediousness of his work and of his work becoming "less immediately gratifying." That's that.
Rainbow's Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco is beneficial as a basic introduction to fieldwork and ethnography. Having read very little works like this, I found it helpful in the consideration of the role of an anthropologist. Because the book is comprised of Rainbow's 'reflections', I was able to understand the thought processes one goes through while entering into a foreign domain. In addition to some things we have discussed in class such as the amount of involvement of the anthropologist, bias etc., Rainbow's search for the Other leading to his discovery that he himself was being perceived as Other interested me. Instead of going to Morocco to observe Otherness in relation to his own norms, Rainbow had to learn to consider what it meant to be this Other. After he was asked by his Arabic teacher to pay for his hotel room he reflects, "This was my first direct experience with Otherness...Within Moroccan culture this is a standardized and normal thing to do, as I was to find out" (28). Here, Rainbow's recognition of his role as an anthropologist allows him the opportunity of important experience. In addition, Rainbow's consideration of one of his first interactions allows us to see the endless possibilities of interaction with a subject: a conversation, an interrogation, an interview, a comparison, etc. Rainbow is again very self-aware and says "...it seems self-indulgent to be chatting with Richard about his past," how do you decide where these lines must be drawn (18)? How do you interact with a subject? As the book continued, I saw how this "chatting as inquiry" idea can get tricky (while it may seem more natural. When the lines are blurred between a professional relationship and a friend relationship problems can arise (for example Rainbow's frustration with Ali when getting stuck at the wedding)). This leads him to discuss the role of the anthropologist as a 'non-person', if it is true that the informant should always be right (46). Another tactic I intriguing was the idea of outlining casual daily life occurrences in great detail in order to remove oneself from preconceived notions. When outlining tea as a ritual (36), Rainbow describes tea as something uncanny in Moroccan culture; something that is familiar but becomes ritualistic and foreign in an alternate context. Rainbow does the same type of analysis or removed observation after witnessing a curing practice (37).
While Paul Rabinow’s approach to anthropology is comparable to Jean Briggs’s in “Never In Anger”, I felt he was much more successful in addressing the conflicts surrounding the “problem of interpretation” and “comprehending the self through comprehending the other,” as well as the relevance of self-reflection. Throughout the text he discusses the doubts and difficulties of understanding one culture through multiple accounts, theories, beliefs, emotions, and experiences.
I enjoyed the language and tone of the book. It was descriptive, even poetic, but always informative. He also used this method to describe his subjects—using their histories, mannerisms and conversations (what they did and didn’t say) in order to illuminate larger social and political issues. His detailed description of Richard, (15), he focuses primarily on his loneliness and through this is able to portray his sense of cultural, racial, and economic alienation, as well as the emotional impact of feeling stuck between dying colonialism and neo-colonialism. Ali serves as another example of this: despite being a “good informant” it is months before he agrees to break the shroud of silence surrounding political issues. This validates Ranibow’s theory that the local people are extremely hesitant to share political information due to a divisive and crucial period 15 years prior, when the Moroccan Sultan was exiled by the French. (127)
Overall, this text can be seen more as anthropological guide book, rather than an informative study on a group of people. His segments describing the boredom of waiting, the frustration of language barriers and failed interviews, the problem of integration, the feelings of detachment from his own country all serve as important examples/lessons. Unlike Briggs, who (to me) often came across as whiney, over-emotional and absurd, Rabinow’s work examines the idea of the difficulties and benefits of intersubjective fieldwork and the interpretation of culture.
Rabinow went to Morrocco to study the culture of the Morrocan people. He believes most people think anthropology is a staight forward data gathering discipline, but he feels that analyzing the experience of the anthropologist is also important. Just gathering and reporting facts is not a good way to provide a complete understanding of a culture. Anthropology as a field needs to embrace other ways of understanding and analyzing a culture. The person who talks to the anthropologist (the informant) needs to break down his or her culture in a way that transmits the information accurately, otherwise the anthropologist will not understand the culture correctly. The anthropogolist should try to experience the culture as a participant by partaking in cultural experiences and even befriending members of the culutre. A system of shared symbols between the informant and anthropologist needs to be developed and the interaction betweeen them needs to be repeated in order for a better anthropological study to occur.
Anthropology is a study in which ethnographers and anthropologists are supposed to remain separate and detached from their subjects in an objective and scientific manner. That’s not to say that these researchers do not, or should not develop a rapport with their subjects, however, the deeper your involvement with them the more profound are your chances of allowing emotion to foolishly cloud your critique of an entire culture and not the individual. Although the text does somehow eventually achieve this anthropological goal, if only for the fact that, as Robert Bellah points out, the author ultimately feels dejected from both “his culture” and the “other Moroccan culture.” Yet as an educated white male of the west he should have had “available the totality of cultures for personal appropriation” (ix). Instead Paul left the states almost in the hopes of escaping the confines of his structured Western personae, in favor of the excitement and novelty of a “foreign land,” while the US, France, England and the whole of the hemisphere allowed itself to be rattled by the turbulent 1960s. What Rabinow didn’t count on was the potential ostracism he might face when diving into the Berber culture of Morocco as the “outsider,” the new western “other.” Because essentially he was an intruder, quintessentially anthropology does not seek to interfere in a new culture, but specifically to infiltrate said civilization and analyze it through our own structured and foreign perspectives. As for his brief encounter of sexual frivolity, that Tessia had mentioned earlier, I find it very within Rabinow’s character, he was simply put romantically and idealistically flighty, he met a girl in Paris, he met a girl in the field, he left his comfortable existence in Chicago for a world he knew nothing about out of boredom. Also he seems predominantly concerned with experience, experience to Paul Rabinow is observation, sex is an experience in every culture, perhaps his involvement in this act was no different than his involvement in the rituals, customs, and pastimes of the people of Sefrou, Morocco. Subsequently his tone was refreshing in the sense that it did not fit typical academic technique, Rabinow retains a vernacular and simplistic quality which illustrates his connection to his subjects.
I went into Rabinow's book wondering how anthropologists can contribute to a unified field of knowledge. As heterogenous as the field of science is, it seems that one of its defining characteristics is that the integrity of each discipline rests on the shared assumption that every researcher in the field is working to contribute to the accumulation and evolution of knowledge on a particular, more or less agreed-upon object of study. In mostly quantitative fields, like physics or economics, this principle is practically taken for granted, and even in “softer” fields, like history or sociology, the problem it presents can at least be answered by saying that the object of study is some abstract general concept, like human social interaction or the past. But cultural anthropology occupies a uniquely problematic relationship with this principle. How can a discipline devoted to the study of particular people living in particular cultural worlds, envisioned as separate not only from researchers but also from one another, hope to build some kind of accumulated field of knowledge from this study? In other words, how can we justify putting Malinowski’s study of people living on islands in the South Pacific, Briggs’s study of people living on the tundra of Northern Canada, and Rabinow’s study of people living in a village in the Atlas Mountains, all in the same category and asserting that these researchers are all working in the service of a single accumulated body of knowledge? Instead it seems that what unifies all of these endeavors, and cultural anthropology in general, is not their object, but the methodology of ethnography. Although he doesn’t formulate it in the same way I just have, Rabinow, much more so than the other ethnographers we’ve read, seems fundamentally concerned with this problem. His response to it is to make the methodology itself the object of study. To quote Bourdieu’s afterword, he “takes as [his] object the study of the object,” casting ethnography as the basis for a kind of metascience, focused on the relationship between the scientific self and the scientific other. This isn’t to say that the basic, first-order science that is ethnographic fieldwork, and the object of study that comes with this—the cultural world of a group of people—are absent from the book. In fact, the reader comes away having learned quite a lot about the worlds in which the people of Sefrou and Sidi Lahcen live.
(continued in next comment; sorry about the long-ass post)
However, there is a dual objectivity to the book. Rabinow starts from the traditional ethnographic relationship between the scientific self (a self which includes not just the researcher but also the readers and perhaps the text itself) and the “cultural Other,” and it is necessarily through this framework that the reader comes to understand, for example, the complex relationship of the hotel owner Maurice Richard to his original and adopted homelands, or the role of brinksmanship and aggression in rural Arab-Moroccan village life. This newly found appreciation and understanding of a people utterly foreign (at least as they appear in the text) to the author, reader, and the scientific mode of analysis itself is the limit of many excellent ethnographies. But Rabinow goes a step further by granting the reader access to what is normally behind the scenes of ethnography: the constantly shifting and ever-uncertain relationship between the ethnographer and his informants, the most important aspect of this being the extent to which the informants themselves come to play a decisive role in the production of scientific knowledge. Thus by examining the relationship between scientific subject and object—unavoidably always at least latent in the text—as it exists not in the text but in the field (i.e., in the process of the production of the text) Rabinow gives the reader a window into the order-resisting, indefinable reality on which the seemingly clearly defined scientific division between knowledge and object of study uneasily rests. It is telling that Rabinow ends the book not with a reassurance of stability, in the scientific spirit, but with movement: “we began a process of change.”
I really dislike summarizing the text since we're all reading the same thing. That sounded dickish, my apologies. Anyway.
I'd like to dedicate my entry not to anything textual exactly, but moreso to what makes this a successful piece of anthropology - and I'm inclined to think it is. For me it centers around a notion of accessibility. Of and for the audience. "Of" as it relates to jargon. I dislike jargon. Why should a U of Chicago sociologist have a different name for the same concept as say a sociologist coming out of the Frankfurt school would have. This is a fundamental break from hard sciences, in my opinion. I hate having to differentiate between, say, Foucault's notion of power structures vs. Bourdieu's, get it straight Frenchmen. "For" as it relates to the method and product the audience are, attempting, to attain - we've all heard, "It's not what you say, but how..." This is no different in text. Word choice as it coincides with a specific audience is of massive importance. Just because one knows an abstract concept doesn't mean its use is necessary. Branching from word choice - and I'll use Bellah's - is exhilaration. Even if you don't find Rabinow's cafe and wedding encounters fitting of such a strong word, one cannot argue that Rabinow understands story and pacing. It is extremely hard for anyone who invests so much time in experiential fieldwork to encapsulate to a reader the range of emotions and daily complexities. This doesn't mean the author shouldn't try. By making certain events more like a screenplay than an academic account he is able to engage us in small ways while leaving his "points" - for lack of a better word - for the intermissions between events. For anthropology, or better yet sociology for my purposes, to be accessible to the everyman it needs to at least attempt exhilaration. To have even greater success, I feel one must temper the storytelling aspects of one's study with simplicity/succinctness/straightforwardness or any other synonymous s. Rabinow does this well. But by far the most important concept I can attribute to accessibility - and without a doubt the one has an immense stigma to so many - is to not be pretentious. This is quite difficult when dealing with terms like "autonomous hegemonic polity". Condescension kills. These are but a few of the reasons Rabinow is still assigned.
Tessia wrote:
ReplyDeleteRabinow in Morocco
What first appealed to Rabinow about the “right of passage” into the anthropological field and doing fieldwork turned into, after his time in Morocco, the realization that “anthropology is not the experiences, only the objective data you have brought back” (Rabinow 4). The objective data, in Rabinow’s case, seems to include a more confused understanding of himself within the society he has returned to, based an idea that people begin to understand themselves only through interaction with those having different cultural beliefs and practices than oneself; in other words, “the comprehension of self by the detour of the compensation of the other” (Rabinow 5). Within Rabinow’s first week he stated, high off the excitement of arrival, “now that I was in the field, everything was field work”. This, among many other details within the book led me to view anthropologists almost as glorified travelers. This notion became especially apparent when Rabinow recounts his sexual experience. At the core of anthropology is the ultimate goal of beginning to try to understand a culture different than ones own, and since sex is a huge part of existence as creatures, it does seem important in Rabinow’s story. However, the story does not fit with the interplays of other relationships Rabinow describes, especially in his experience with Ibrahim. If an anthropologist is truly to be a “non-person” and “suspend disbelief”, in other words, stay neutral, then why should such an anthropologist allow his or herself to indulge emotionally as deeply as in the act of sex?
Daniel wrote:
ReplyDeleteResponse to Fieldwork in Morocco
Overall, I thought the book was an interesting read. I really felt the imagery in all of its aspects. I know that I may say this a great deal in class, but its because I'm not originally a Lang student. I am in Parsons studying Design and Management. Its a completely different field all together. I am used to processing things using methodologies and terms. I haven't learned any special terminology in Anthropology yet, therefore, my interpretations may seem a bit different.
The book was very nice in the sense that I felt like I was in Paul Rainbow's shoes. I traveled as him in my imagination. I saw all that he saw. I interacted with all of the people that he interacted with. I saw all of the disturbing, yet interesting rituals take place. I was an Anthropologist for a few days.
The book has shed light on some interesting things. For example: the notion of putting yourself in an environment that is far different from your living standards for the purpose of observing the behavior of a race of people. The notion of having limited resources and interpersonal connections in the field but then changing all of that in order to survive and learn about the different people in Morocco. The notion of not giving into the pain of being looked at differently by a race of people. Indeed, looked at as an outsider and intruder.
Paul spoke much about the connections with people he had made during his time in Morocco. They all played significant roles in his field work. At times, they would bridge the gap between language barriers. Other times, it was information that needed to be given that only these allies had. These connections were important because they helped resolve some of the issues in Morocco.
As Paul become further aquatinted with some important figures in his field work, things began to fall into place. He got the opportunity to witness rituals in which involved sacrificing a cow (later in the book) first hand. There he learned that it is true. One is not considered an Anthropologist until he or she has gone out into the field, spend a long time there and record good field notes.
Paul gained a great deal through the experience. He got exposure to different demographics with different languages, (French, Arabic), a completely different set of norms all together where as his lifestyle back at home is completely different and a better sense of who he was. Paul leaned what it is to actually live under mother nature's roof.
Lila wrote:
ReplyDeletePaul Rabinow offers informative narration of his journey in Morocco to enlighten and educate the reader both on Moroccan culture, as well as the importance behind his method of ethnographic fieldwork. While I was primarily put off by what was seemingly his overdone account of his own involvement in the society, rather than only about the Moroccan people themselves, I eventually realized that he was doing this in order to convey important qualities an anthropologist must have when studying a society. His book was overall successful in conveying both the lifestyle of the people and important tools in conducting fieldwork.
Starting with his first contact, Frenchman Maurice Richard, the reader quickly learns necessary traits for informants to have, as Maurice is quickly dismissed as serving this purpose due to his status as an outsider of Sefrou groups. The reader then learns how he primarily gains closer access to Sefrou as he strengthened his relationship with Ali, who was able to offer information include him in village happenings and eventually lead him to further informants.
Rabinow utilizes his narration to critique and clarify his own ideas of important qualities to have when undergoing ethnographic fieldwork. He sites observation as being the most important part of his work, and the catalyst of future participation and hypothesis building. He claims that participation only leads to further observation, while new observation changes his methods of participations (pg. 80).
Reflections on fieldwork in Morocco is exactly what the title states. This entire book is dedicated to Rabinow's exploration and attempt to define fieldwork. What is fieldwork? How should it be acquired? Is the anthropologist part of the fieldwork? He realizes that he cannot acquire facts without including his own cultural perspective on the information and without forcing his subjects/informants to question their own culture, possibly resulting in his acquiring of an altered explication of the culture he is researching. In the end, Rabinow's fieldwork comes across as "an ethical experience and quest."
ReplyDeleteAs far as the writing, I enjoyed the emotional aspect that Rabinow brought; he not only showed others' indiscretions, but also his own. He writes of the tediousness of his work and of his work becoming "less immediately gratifying." That's that.
Zuzu Wrote:
ReplyDeleteRainbow's Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco is beneficial as a basic introduction to fieldwork and ethnography. Having read very little works like this, I found it helpful in the consideration of the role of an anthropologist. Because the book is comprised of Rainbow's 'reflections', I was able to understand the thought processes one goes through while entering into a foreign domain.
In addition to some things we have discussed in class such as the amount of involvement of the anthropologist, bias etc., Rainbow's search for the Other leading to his discovery that he himself was being perceived as Other interested me.
Instead of going to Morocco to observe Otherness in relation to his own norms, Rainbow had to learn to consider what it meant to be this Other. After he was asked by his Arabic teacher to pay for his hotel room he reflects, "This was my first direct experience with Otherness...Within Moroccan culture this is a standardized and normal thing to do, as I was to find out" (28). Here, Rainbow's recognition of his role as an anthropologist allows him the opportunity of important experience.
In addition, Rainbow's consideration of one of his first interactions allows us to see the endless possibilities of interaction with a subject: a conversation, an interrogation, an interview, a comparison, etc. Rainbow is again very self-aware and says "...it seems self-indulgent to be chatting with Richard about his past," how do you decide where these lines must be drawn (18)? How do you interact with a subject? As the book continued, I saw how this "chatting as inquiry" idea can get tricky (while it may seem more natural. When the lines are blurred between a professional relationship and a friend relationship problems can arise (for example Rainbow's frustration with Ali when getting stuck at the wedding)). This leads him to discuss the role of the anthropologist as a 'non-person', if it is true that the informant should always be right (46).
Another tactic I intriguing was the idea of outlining casual daily life occurrences in great detail in order to remove oneself from preconceived notions. When outlining tea as a ritual (36), Rainbow describes tea as something uncanny in Moroccan culture; something that is familiar but becomes ritualistic and foreign in an alternate context. Rainbow does the same type of analysis or removed observation after witnessing a curing practice (37).
While Paul Rabinow’s approach to anthropology is comparable to Jean Briggs’s in “Never In Anger”, I felt he was much more successful in addressing the conflicts surrounding the “problem of interpretation” and “comprehending the self through comprehending the other,” as well as the relevance of self-reflection. Throughout the text he discusses the doubts and difficulties of understanding one culture through multiple accounts, theories, beliefs, emotions, and experiences.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the language and tone of the book. It was descriptive, even poetic, but always informative. He also used this method to describe his subjects—using their histories, mannerisms and conversations (what they did and didn’t say) in order to illuminate larger social and political issues. His detailed description of Richard, (15), he focuses primarily on his loneliness and through this is able to portray his sense of cultural, racial, and economic alienation, as well as the emotional impact of feeling stuck between dying colonialism and neo-colonialism. Ali serves as another example of this: despite being a “good informant” it is months before he agrees to break the shroud of silence surrounding political issues. This validates Ranibow’s theory that the local people are extremely hesitant to share political information due to a divisive and crucial period 15 years prior, when the Moroccan Sultan was exiled by the French. (127)
Overall, this text can be seen more as anthropological guide book, rather than an informative study on a group of people. His segments describing the boredom of waiting, the frustration of language barriers and failed interviews, the problem of integration, the feelings of detachment from his own country all serve as important examples/lessons. Unlike Briggs, who (to me) often came across as whiney, over-emotional and absurd, Rabinow’s work examines the idea of the difficulties and benefits of intersubjective fieldwork and the interpretation of culture.
Rabinow went to Morrocco to study the culture of the Morrocan people. He believes most people think anthropology is a staight forward data gathering discipline, but he feels that analyzing the experience of the anthropologist is also important. Just gathering and reporting facts is not a good way to provide a complete understanding of a culture. Anthropology as a field needs to embrace other ways of understanding and analyzing a culture. The person who talks to the anthropologist (the informant) needs to break down his or her culture in a way that transmits the information accurately, otherwise the anthropologist will not understand the culture correctly. The anthropogolist should try to experience the culture as a participant by partaking in cultural experiences and even befriending members of the culutre. A system of shared symbols between the informant and anthropologist needs to be developed and the interaction betweeen them needs to be repeated in order for a better anthropological study to occur.
ReplyDeleteAnthropology is a study in which ethnographers and anthropologists are supposed to remain separate and detached from their subjects in an objective and scientific manner. That’s not to say that these researchers do not, or should not develop a rapport with their subjects, however, the deeper your involvement with them the more profound are your chances of allowing emotion to foolishly cloud your critique of an entire culture and not the individual. Although the text does somehow eventually achieve this anthropological goal, if only for the fact that, as Robert Bellah points out, the author ultimately feels dejected from both “his culture” and the “other Moroccan culture.” Yet as an educated white male of the west he should have had “available the totality of cultures for personal appropriation” (ix). Instead Paul left the states almost in the hopes of escaping the confines of his structured Western personae, in favor of the excitement and novelty of a “foreign land,” while the US, France, England and the whole of the hemisphere allowed itself to be rattled by the turbulent 1960s. What Rabinow didn’t count on was the potential ostracism he might face when diving into the Berber culture of Morocco as the “outsider,” the new western “other.” Because essentially he was an intruder, quintessentially anthropology does not seek to interfere in a new culture, but specifically to infiltrate said civilization and analyze it through our own structured and foreign perspectives. As for his brief encounter of sexual frivolity, that Tessia had mentioned earlier, I find it very within Rabinow’s character, he was simply put romantically and idealistically flighty, he met a girl in Paris, he met a girl in the field, he left his comfortable existence in Chicago for a world he knew nothing about out of boredom. Also he seems predominantly concerned with experience, experience to Paul Rabinow is observation, sex is an experience in every culture, perhaps his involvement in this act was no different than his involvement in the rituals, customs, and pastimes of the people of Sefrou, Morocco. Subsequently his tone was refreshing in the sense that it did not fit typical academic technique, Rabinow retains a vernacular and simplistic quality which illustrates his connection to his subjects.
ReplyDeleteI went into Rabinow's book wondering how anthropologists can contribute to a unified field of knowledge. As heterogenous as the field of science is, it seems that one of its defining characteristics is that the integrity of each discipline rests on the shared assumption that every researcher in the field is working to contribute to the accumulation and evolution of knowledge on a particular, more or less agreed-upon object of study. In mostly quantitative fields, like physics or economics, this principle is practically taken for granted, and even in “softer” fields, like history or sociology, the problem it presents can at least be answered by saying that the object of study is some abstract general concept, like human social interaction or the past. But cultural anthropology occupies a uniquely problematic relationship with this principle. How can a discipline devoted to the study of particular people living in particular cultural worlds, envisioned as separate not only from researchers but also from one another, hope to build some kind of accumulated field of knowledge from this study? In other words, how can we justify putting Malinowski’s study of people living on islands in the South Pacific, Briggs’s study of people living on the tundra of Northern Canada, and Rabinow’s study of people living in a village in the Atlas Mountains, all in the same category and asserting that these researchers are all working in the service of a single accumulated body of knowledge? Instead it seems that what unifies all of these endeavors, and cultural anthropology in general, is not their object, but the methodology of ethnography.
ReplyDeleteAlthough he doesn’t formulate it in the same way I just have, Rabinow, much more so than the other ethnographers we’ve read, seems fundamentally concerned with this problem. His response to it is to make the methodology itself the object of study. To quote Bourdieu’s afterword, he “takes as [his] object the study of the object,” casting ethnography as the basis for a kind of metascience, focused on the relationship between the scientific self and the scientific other. This isn’t to say that the basic, first-order science that is ethnographic fieldwork, and the object of study that comes with this—the cultural world of a group of people—are absent from the book. In fact, the reader comes away having learned quite a lot about the worlds in which the people of Sefrou and Sidi Lahcen live.
(continued in next comment; sorry about the long-ass post)
However, there is a dual objectivity to the book. Rabinow starts from the traditional ethnographic relationship between the scientific self (a self which includes not just the researcher but also the readers and perhaps the text itself) and the “cultural Other,” and it is necessarily through this framework that the reader comes to understand, for example, the complex relationship of the hotel owner Maurice Richard to his original and adopted homelands, or the role of brinksmanship and aggression in rural Arab-Moroccan village life. This newly found appreciation and understanding of a people utterly foreign (at least as they appear in the text) to the author, reader, and the scientific mode of analysis itself is the limit of many excellent ethnographies. But Rabinow goes a step further by granting the reader access to what is normally behind the scenes of ethnography: the constantly shifting and ever-uncertain relationship between the ethnographer and his informants, the most important aspect of this being the extent to which the informants themselves come to play a decisive role in the production of scientific knowledge. Thus by examining the relationship between scientific subject and object—unavoidably always at least latent in the text—as it exists not in the text but in the field (i.e., in the process of the production of the text) Rabinow gives the reader a window into the order-resisting, indefinable reality on which the seemingly clearly defined scientific division between knowledge and object of study uneasily rests. It is telling that Rabinow ends the book not with a reassurance of stability, in the scientific spirit, but with movement: “we began a process of change.”
ReplyDeleteI really dislike summarizing the text since we're all reading the same thing. That sounded dickish, my apologies. Anyway.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to dedicate my entry not to anything textual exactly, but moreso to what makes this a successful piece of anthropology - and I'm inclined to think it is. For me it centers around a notion of accessibility. Of and for the audience. "Of" as it relates to jargon. I dislike jargon. Why should a U of Chicago sociologist have a different name for the same concept as say a sociologist coming out of the Frankfurt school would have. This is a fundamental break from hard sciences, in my opinion. I hate having to differentiate between, say, Foucault's notion of power structures vs. Bourdieu's, get it straight Frenchmen. "For" as it relates to the method and product the audience are, attempting, to attain - we've all heard, "It's not what you say, but how..." This is no different in text. Word choice as it coincides with a specific audience is of massive importance. Just because one knows an abstract concept doesn't mean its use is necessary.
Branching from word choice - and I'll use Bellah's - is exhilaration. Even if you don't find Rabinow's cafe and wedding encounters fitting of such a strong word, one cannot argue that Rabinow understands story and pacing. It is extremely hard for anyone who invests so much time in experiential fieldwork to encapsulate to a reader the range of emotions and daily complexities. This doesn't mean the author shouldn't try. By making certain events more like a screenplay than an academic account he is able to engage us in small ways while leaving his "points" - for lack of a better word - for the intermissions between events. For anthropology, or better yet sociology for my purposes, to be accessible to the everyman it needs to at least attempt exhilaration. To have even greater success, I feel one must temper the storytelling aspects of one's study with simplicity/succinctness/straightforwardness or any other synonymous s. Rabinow does this well.
But by far the most important concept I can attribute to accessibility - and without a doubt the one has an immense stigma to so many - is to not be pretentious. This is quite difficult when dealing with terms like "autonomous hegemonic polity". Condescension kills.
These are but a few of the reasons Rabinow is still assigned.
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