Review: [untitled] Author(s): Mark Whitaker Source: American Ethnologist, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Nov., 1994), pp.

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graphic corpus. An entire chapter, entitled "Structural Ethnography"is devoted to a reading of The Nuer(Clarendon Press, 1940), from which Jacobson notes problems with the status of "tribe"in EvansPritchard's account. "Symbolic Ethnography,"the following chapter, deals critically with Geertz's celebrated analysis of the Balinese cockfight, which he finds "unwarranted by the evidence [Geertz] presents" (p. 54). This tough-minded conclusion would have been reinforced had Jacobson taken account of Hobart's evidence that-given Balinese taxonomic conventions-cockerels and genitals cannot be analogized in the fashion Geertz suggests and that the pun on "cock" can be made only in Malay-which a majority of Balinese do not speak ("Thinker, Thespian, Soldier, Slave? Assumptions about Human Nature in the Study of Balinese Society," Context, Meaning and Power in Southeast Asia, Mark Hobart and Robert H. Taylor, eds., Cornell University Studies on Southeast Asia, 1986, p. 146). The remainder of this chapter is devoted to Ortner's Sherpas through Their Rituals, which suffers similarly critical treatment;Ortner's account is found to be based on a claim "that is not grounded empirically" (p. 63). A chapter devoted to "Organizational Ethnography" finds Leach's Burmese ethnography and Barth's Pathan study enjoying far better press for their rigor and theoretical invention. More general considerations are promised in the chapter "Cases and Contexts." The use of the case study is well demonstrated by brief reference back to Barth's study and extended illustration of a case from Bailey's Tribe, Caste and Nation. Context gets more cursory treatment, and Geertz and Ortner attract further criticism: Ortner's argument "does not accord with the actualities of Sherpa life" (p. 11). A critical conclusion is relatively dismissive of rhetoric and unimpressed by reflexivity. Rabinow's reflexive account of fieldwork in Morocco is "unrelated to his interpretation"of "Moroccan ways of evaluating the world and their relationship in and to it" (p. 118); Renato Rosaldo's much cited article, "Griefand the Headhunter's Rage,""does not make sense" to Jacobson in terms of other literature on grief, and two of three instances of headhunting do not "fit the model" proposed by Rosaldo (pp. 121122). Jacobson concludes more generally that "recounting an ethnographer's experience is not an adequate substitute for a reasoned analysis of the feelings and actions of his or her informants" (p. 122). As my summary suggests, this particular manual of good practice is hardly a disinterested one, especially from the perspective of a nonintroductory readership. Older, positivistic works relying on notions of social structureor on processualism are read more convincingly by Jacobson than are newer works written from an interpretiveor symbolic vantage. Although Jacobson never uses the terms, the differences seem to correspond to those between an older "British"tradition (instanced in Firth, Leach, Barth,and Bailey) and a newer "American"tradition (inspired by Geertz and continued-sometimes reactively-by Ortner, Rabinow, and Rosaldo). Jacobson's argument begs oppositional terms of this sort, which are generally understood as anthropological

shorthand but correspond neither to the nationalities of individual writers nor, more than loosely, to the historical sources of their paradigms. Much recent, innovative ethnographic writing does not fit into either category. The impression of partisanship is reinforced by several critical references to the ideas of Clifford, Marcus, and their associates-starting from the observation that Marcus and Cushman in their seminal article significantly underplayed the degree of textual and theoretical experimentation in the ethnographies written between 1920 and 1960 (p. 2). While corrective is welcome, I wonder if the encounter is being staged on equal terms. While the "British"tradition seems to be fielding a first team sporting their most celebrated monographs, the recent "American"traditionfinds itself represented by some widely discussed but badly argued articles. Moreover, Jacobson's model of ethnography as argument is bound to apply more easily to works written in a tradition that envisaged its task in just such terms. The poor, dissenting hermeneut stands little chance of a fair hearing. Although Jacobson's brief text offers a reasoned introduction to clear argument for an introductory course, I would be less happy if "advanced" readings of his own argument served furtherto polarize a debate about theory and method that demands a more wide-ranging interrogation of ethnographic reporting and of the vocabulary of empiricism, verification, and evidence he employs.

Hermes' Dilemma and Hamlet's Desire: On the Epistemology of Interpretation. VINCENTCRAPANZANO. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1992. ix + 386 pp., notes, references, index. MARKWHITAKER University of South Carolina-Aiken It is fitting that Hermes, the Greek messenger god Crapanzano uses as his image of the anthropologist, was also the god of theft. For theft, albeit unconscious and somewhat encouraged by its victims, is what a disapproving Crapanzano finds at the center of conventional anthropology: the appropriation of the actions and objects of safely abstract ethnographic others for repackaging (via ethnography and "analysis")and redistributionto an anthropologist's peers. What makes this kind of theft almost inevitable, Crapanzano argues, is the peculiar dilemma of the anthropologist: Hermes' dilemma of being caught between two audiences and held responsible by each forthe content of the messages coming from the other. No wonder, then, that "interpretation" tends to temporize in one direction what the initial field exchange has already, dialogically, reworked (perhaps even simply created) in the other. It is Crapanzano's ambition in this collection of essays to gain the measure of this dilemma, and even to derive something of value from it by diligently picking apart what, in his view, are its linguistic and psycholinguistic elements, and by pointing beyond their ethnography to the role that such elements play in the understanding and misunderstandingthat are

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the creative stuff of cultural life. And while it is true The book rather demands this, for Crapanzano's that Crapanzano has, as he himself admits, been own explanations presuppose this knowledge rather rather "seduced" by his "linguistic tactic," he has than supply it. Then there is the curiously Burkean nonetheless used it to produce here an intriguing feel of Crapanzano's theory. Crapanzano argues, in mix of insights into the complex role interpretation his essay on Hamlet, that what is rotten in Denmark is semantic decay, an indeterminacy of meaning plays in the construction of selves and cultures. Crapanzano's argument-variously phrased in resulting from the immorality of its king. But if semantic order depends on elite morality, would not essays that range in topic from Moroccan possession and circumcision to Freud,Jane Austen, and Hamintellectual Tories argue (though Crapanzano wou Id let-contends that languages, especially Western not) against revelations of wrong-doing? Finally, languages, tend to hide their own inner workings although Crapanzano defends well his claim that when used for interpretation. Borrowing from (and interpretive anthropologists like Geertz often solve simplifying) the views of Michael Silverstein, Cra- Hermes's dilemma by using metalanguages to repanzano sees languages as "multi-functional,"that contexualize and, thus, obscure their informant's is, as organized for different purposes at different lives, he offers no real alternative. Indeed, his own levels. At one level, the "semantico-referential,"ut- "linguistic tactic" is another metalanguage, transterances can be seen to be just what any abstract forming what it describes, ravaging what it would analysis of their words, grammar, or logical form reach, suggesting, thus, the price of "knowing"anywould reveal them to be independent of any particu- thing. In this regard, Crapanzano has posed, maybe lar context (talkingto an old friend at the bookstore, better than he admits, Hermes's dilemma. And that, say) that might have produced them. At another in the end, may be the true contribution of this level, however, the "pragmatic function" of lan- sometimes witty, frustrating, always stimulating guage is revealed in the way utterances are "regi- book. mented" by defining contexts-either by a "speech act" to be performed, or by a relationship between those speaking of which an utterance is the index. The Savage Within: The Social History of Brit(Hence, the difference between "Hello!" as an abish Anthropology, 1885-1945. HENRIKAKUKstract ejaculation of greeting and that same "Hello!" LICK. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge between the above old friends.) Crapanzano's arguUniversity Press, 1991. ix + 325 pp., photoment, then, is that many Western formsof analysisgraphs, tables, notes, appendixes, index. Freudian psychoanalysis, Geertzian hermeneutics, Eliade's symbolic analysis-are, like many indigeELAZAR BARKAN nous linguistic ideologies, "semantico-referential" Claremont Graduate School and, thus, turnone's gaze away from how languages are being pragmatically organized. And this, for The Savage Within examines the impact "exotic Crapanzano, is the crux of the problem. For while peoples" had on British identity between the end of the static descriptions that people tend to view as the 19th century and the Second World War. Altheir "culture"are produced by such analyses, it is though the British experience of the "other" was the unseen, pragmatic "basement" of language influenced by the immediate colonial situation and (where contexts are struggledover) that accounts for responded to the relative import of Britain as an most of what we say and think. Hence, Freud saw imperial power, a deeper dichotomy persisted betransference as a psychological phenomenon aris- tween those who saw "natural men" as "brutish ing in his patients and, thus, missed how transfer- barbarians"and those who perceived them as "enence actually is an index of the struggle between joying 'comfortable, safe and peaceable living' " (p. patient and analyst. Hence, ethnographers, wran1, the quotes are from John Locke and Daniel gling with informantsto get some definition or idea Gookin). Kuklickfocuses on the attempts to bridge nailed down, note (and thus reify) the result, quite this metanarrative with the daily colonial policies covering over the negotiations between informant and anthropological theorizing about "savages"and and ethnographer, of which the result is the merest traces the way the British formulated their policies token. ForCrapanzano, really, most interpretationis toward indigenous peoples, mediating between imfog and wants a wind to blow it away. pulses to civilize them and the envy and urge to This ratherelaborate epistemological machinery, emulate their Edenic lifestyle. Kuklickreflectson the creaking at times under the load of too much half- irony embedded in the evolutionist's enterprise to civilize peoples who have reached (from an evoluexplained jargon, has both virtues and vices. All to the good is the power it grants Crapanzano to derive tionary perspective) an equilibrium coming from a fascinating conclusions about the cultural construc- society that was growing progressively more frustion of selves, the complex negotiations that pro- trated and pessimistic. The growing egalitarianism duce "data,"and the role that absent influences play in anthropology and the increased despair about the in the dialogues that make up much of expressive world areexamined by Kuklickthroughthe theoretilife. Equally fine is Crapanzano's notion of "ritesof cal shifts in the profession, from evolutionism to return,"a reworkingof an old concept in a way that diffusionism and functionalism as she contextualizes these in the Britishsocial and colonial policy. satisfactorilyaccounts for ritesthat are less processes of social transformationthan of self formation. Among the issues she addresses best and most inforBut there are problems generated by Crapan- matively are those about W. H. R. Rivers, whose zano's theory as well. There is the matterof access: legacy for Britishanthropology as well as psychology is amplified; the tension between the psychic anyone hoping to understandthis book had best also delve deeply into Michael Silverstein's linguistics. unity of humankind and the various theories of

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