Plotting the field
Fragments and narrative in Malinowski's stories of the baloma
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2402004 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Andrew Brandel (0000-0001-6201-1635, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, corresponding author), Swayam Bagaria (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 29-52 |
| Publication date | 2020-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Anthropological Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1463-4996 • E-ISSN: 1741-2641 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1463499619830480 |
| OpenAlex | W2919512677 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 17 |
Anthropologists have long relied on powerful concepts operant in the societies where they have carried out fieldwork to unlock the meanings of various, even seemingly disparate, practices and experiences, and which, in virtue of their sharing a name, are given coherence by ethnographic and ethnological texts. In this essay, we examine how anthropological icons like hau, mana, and the shaman, are created, and suggest that there might be fragments encountered during fieldwork that do not, in themselves, necessarily add up to a coherent whole, but which are fit into stories of these kinds because of the pressure of narrativity within conventional notions of anthropological theory. To illustrate this argument, we draw in particular on Malinowski's stories of the baloma, Trobriander spirits of the dead, reading his well-known fieldwork diaries alongside his published account, in order to show how life is always stitched across multiple registers of storytelling, some of which take the form of narrative and others that do not. Attending to the space between these modalities, or to their crossings, a different picture of theory begins to emerge, and which hews a bit closer to our ordinary experience of social life
Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis · Art · Coherence (philosophical gambling strategy · Epistemology · Ethnography · Field (mathematics · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Narrativity · Object (grammar · Parallels · Reading (process · Sociology · Storytelling · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Cambodian History and Society · Philosophy · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies
Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels
Women of Value, Men of Renown
Observers observed
Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande
A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term
The Philosophical Imagination
Rethinking Anthropology
Walter Benjamin's Grave
Introduction
Life and Words
Alive in the Writing
Engaging Anthropology
Political Systems of Highland Burma
History as Commodity
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,4 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2022 (2) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |