J Clifford
Biographic Data
| ID | 13374 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J Clifford |
| GIVEN NAMES | J |
| FAMILY NAME | Clifford |
| SIGNATURE | CLIFFORD J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Santa Cruz |
| ORCID | 0009-0006-2446-3351 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 77 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2306 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 77 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1935 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
On Collecting Art and Culture (1988)
(I m)possible R ealism a counterpoint
Impossible Realism is a conversation, a textual counterpoint, that was triggered by some “difficult” archival photos Mollona found during his field research in a Brazilian industrial town. He asked Clifford to discuss these images, and the exchange soon revolved around the challenge of representing cultural and class differences in situations of rapid change. How to engage, non‐reductively, with multiple post‐Western histories? The authors discov…
On Ethnographic Surrealism
The coupling of two realities, reconcilable in appearance, upon a plane which apparently does not suit them....
A Complex Legacy - Andrew Garrett, The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall: Language, Memory, and Indigenous California (Cambridge Massachusetts, MIT Press, 2023, 472 p)
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(Im)possible réalisme
Que serait un réalisme en phase avec notre époque ? Un réalisme qui ne renoncerait pas à viser le réel, tout en tenant compte de l'impossibilité de sa totalisation depuis un point de vue et une histoire uniques ? Un réalisme sans transcendance, qui dirait à la fois le présent et son altération par l'histoire, l'exigence de lucidité et son insuffisance, l'impératif de représentation et la tension entre visions irréconciliables ? Tout entière sous …
Spatial Practices: Fieldwork, Travel, and the Disciplining of Anthropology
Oneirography
A surrealist ethnography of decomposition, this piece is part of a special section of "hundreds" for Kathleen Stewart
Meretas Dilema, Ikhtiar Menemukan Cara
Berdamai dengan Keterbatasan Epistemologis: Dilema Metodologis pada Riset Etnografi di Ranah Virtual
Following the proliferation of digital media usage, the world has seen an increasing amount of digitally-mediated lives in everyday contexts. While anthropological scholarship has started to address this ever-growing subject, anthropologists are mainly preoccupied with human engagements in virtual worlds that have their own tangible and embodied sense of spatiality (e.g., online role-playing and gaming communities). In so doing, anthropologists h…
From the Edge through the Vā: Introduction to “Pacific Island Worlds: Oceanic Dis/Positions”
This special issue of Pacific Arts centers on the theme “Pacific Island Worlds: Transpacific Dis/Positions,” which was the topic of a two-day series of events held at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) in May 2018. This generative meeting explored Oceanic rootedness and mobility, grounded and expansive kinships, worlding, place-making, and colonial histories and their legacies. In important ways, it grew out of the “Native Pacific Cu…
Racial Discrimination and Alcohol Problems: Examining Interactions with Genetic Risk and Impulsivity among African American Young Adults
Remembering Jean Jamin: Notes from a Friendship
In Autumn 1973, I arrived in Paris to begin research for a doctoral dissertation in intellectual history. My proposed topic was a comparative treatment of three twentieth-century anthropological traditions, American, British, and French. I soon abandoned that over-ambitious plan (with a friendly push from George Stocking, who was in London conducting research for Victorian Anthropology and was clearly the one best qualified to write about British…
On Ethnographic Allegory
The specific accounts contained in ethnographies can never be limited to a project of scientific description so long as the guiding task of the work is to make the (often strange) behavior of a different way of life humanly comprehensible. To say that exotic behavior and symbols make sense either in &s;human&s; or &s;cultural&s; terms is to supply the same sorts of allegorical added meanings that appear in older narratives tiiat saw actions as &s…
Histories of the Tribal and the Modern
This chapter surveys a halfdozen, focusing on the most controversial: the major exhibition held at the museum of modem art (MOMA), ‘“Primitivism” in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern’. Travelers tell different stories in different places, and on West Fifty-third Street an origin story of modernism is featured. At the Museum of Modern Art an exact history is told featuring individual artists and objects, their encounters in s…
Notes on (Field)notes
Forum 36: From Fieldwork to Written Text
this edition of 'Forum' addresses the issues raised when anthropologists attempt to transform their preliminary records into an academic analysis. participants of the 'Forum' answer the following questions: What are the processes by which encounters and conversations with informants become a 'written source'? Is it acceptable to edit field notes? By what processes do these 'written sources' turn into the text of a publication? Is it acceptable to…
Discussion avec le public
De la salle Merci pour ces intéressantes communications. Nous sommes en train de nous interroger sur les apports du modèle du quai Branly, sur les différences et les ressemblances entre différents projets. Une m’est apparue et me semble tout à fait intéressante. À l’origine et en amont de ces projets, il y a presque toujours eu une discussion sur la réunion ou non des collections européennes et extraeuropéennes. Cela ne se pose évidemment pas pou…
Quelles perspectives pour les musées au xxie siècle
James Clifford(c) musee du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, photo Cyril ZannettacciM. Frederic KECKC'est un grand plaisir et un grand honneur d'accueillir pour cette conference inaugurale de notre colloque Le musee du quai Branly dix ans apres. Un musee a imaginer, le professeur James Clifford qui est un des observateurs les plus importants des musees d'anthropologie, des circulations d'œuvres, des revendications autochtones depuis une trentaine d'a…
Feeling Historical
On Ethnographic Allegory
In now classic article, James Clifford offers a novel perspective on ethnographic texts. Inspired by literary studies (e.g. Jacques Derrida's grammatology) he uses contemporary ethnographic works to question ethnography's claims of scientific objectivity and a clear distinction between allegorical and factual. If ethnography aims to keep its contemporary relevance, it should specifically focus on allegory as an intrinsic quality of ethnographic t…
Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century
Collecting ourselves
Collecting ourselves - 1
Feeling Historical
An experiment in "self-historicizing," this personal article looks back on Writing Culture after 25 years. It asks how these years can be narrated historically. It locates the book with reference to postwar experiences of decolonization and globalization, and specifically in a transitional moment between the radical 1960s and the neoliberal 1990s
Response to Orin Starn: “Here Come the Anthros (Again): The Strange Marriage of Anthropology and Native America
Après coup
Reading one’s words in translation is always an experience of estrangement. One sees, hears, oneself from a distance – another person in a different time. And of course any translation, however faithful, is something new, a performance for unimagined audiences. What could Writing Culture possibly mean, what work might it do, for French readers in 2011? In his astute introduction Emir Mahieddin suggests that the book, and more importantly the argu…
Diasporas
On Ethnographic Authority
Research Article| April 01 1983 On Ethnographic Authority James Clifford James Clifford Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Representations (1983) 2: 118-146. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928386 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation James Clifford; On Ethno…
The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art
James Clifford's groundbreaking work, "The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art," explores the complex relationship between cultural representation and power dynamics in the 20th century. Challenging traditional ethnographic practices, Clifford argues against objective and detached observation, highlighting the inherent biases and limitations of representing cultures as static and bounded entities. He examine…
Indigenous Articulations
Taking its inspiration from the thought and action of Jean-Marie Tjibaou, this essay proposes a comparative analysis of "articulated sites of indigeneity." It explores the advantages and limitations of translating North Atlantic cultural studies approaches into island Pacific contexts. Stuart Hall's articulation theory is proposed as a partial way beyond the stand-offs created by recent debates around the "invention of tradition." The dialectic o…
On Ethnographic Surrealism
André Breton often insisted that surrealism was not a body of doctrines, or a definable idea, but an activity. The present essay is an exploration of ethnographic activity, set, as it must always be, in specific cultural and historical circumstances. I will be concentrating on ethnography and surrealism in France between the two world wars. To discuss these activities together-at times, indeed, to permit them to merge-is to question a number of c…
Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century
Looking Several Ways: Anthropology and Native Heritage in Alaska
The ambivalent legacy of anthropologists' relations with local communities presents contemporary researchers with both obstacles and opportunities. No longer justifiable by assumptions of free scientific access and interpersonal rapport, research increasingly calls for explicit contract agreements and negotiated reciprocities. The complex, unfinished colonial entanglements of anthropology and Native communities are being undone and rewoven, and e…
Ethnography Without Tears [with Comments and Reply]
Quai Branly in Process
Viewed from the Seine, through its glass palisade, the museum looks like a capsized container ship ... in dry dock. Hoisted on pillars, the exhibition plateau seems exposed and incongruous. Red, gray, yellow windowless boxes protrude. Seen from the rue de l'Universite, on the opposite side, the long, scored body seems already to be rusting. Three smaller buildings are yoked to one end; a domed restaurant perches on top. Underneath, a garden, or r…
The Making of Ethnographic Texts: A Preliminary Report
Orientalism
The others: Beyond the ‘salvage’ paradigm
(1989). The others: Beyond the ‘salvage’ paradigm. Third Text: Vol. 3, Magiciens de la Terre, pp. 73-78
Fieldwork, Reciprocity, and the Making of Ethnographic Texts: The Example of Maurice Leenhardt
This essay explores the complex relationship between fieldwork, reciprocity, and ethnographic writing through a detailed examination of Maurice Leenhardt's missionary and ethnographic work among the Canaques of New Caledonia. Clifford argues that Leenhardt's prolonged engagement, deep emotional connections, and eventual conversion to Christianity shaped his understanding of Canaque culture and influenced his textual representations. The essay cha…
The translation of cultures: Maurice Leenhardt's evangelism, new Caledonia 1902–1926
of 'the missionary type' or of a 'missionary attitude'. The range of 'missionary occasions', to appropriate the title of Burridge's thoughtful essay,1 is broad, so broad that it is no easy matter to decide what essential set of orientations to culture change and to the religious life may be said to unite the intentions and experiences of a list like the following: fire and brimstone fundamentalists, con tributors to Missiology, intrepid young Mor…
Feeling Historical
An experiment in "self-historicizing," this personal article looks back on Writing Culture after 25 years. It asks how these years can be narrated historically. It locates the book with reference to postwar experiences of decolonization and globalization, and specifically in a transitional moment between the radical 1960s and the neoliberal 1990s
Person and Myth: Maurice Leenhardt in the Melanesian World
Originally published in 1982, James Clifford's analytical biography of Maurice Leenhardt (1878 - 1954)--missionary, anthropologist, founder of French Oceanic studies, historian of religion, and colonial reformer--received wide critical acclaim for its insight into the colonial history of anthropology. Drawing extensively on unpublished letters and journals, Clifford traces Leenhardt's life from his work as a missionary on the island of New Caledo…
Person and Myth: Maurice Leenhardt in the Melanesian World
After Writing Culture
After Writing Culture: Epistemology and Praxis in Contemporary Anthropology. Allison James. Jenny Hockey. and Andrew Dawson. eds. New York: Routledge, 1997. 274 pp
De l'ethnographie comme fiction. Conrad et Malinowski
On Ethnography Considered as a Fiction. About Conrad and Malinowski. This essay explores the modem predicament of an « ethnographie » subjectivity, a self situated as participant-observer in specific cultural and linguistic systems. The similar experiences of Joseph Conrad and Bronislaw Malinowski - cosmopolitan émigrés struggling into English identities and, as writers, into the English symbolic world - are taken as paradigmatic. The « made up »…
Paradise
Vérités partielles, vérités partiales
Le travail interdisciplinaire, dont il est tant question ces derniers temps, ne consiste pas à faire débattre des disciplines existantes (dont aucune n'est prête, en fait, à disparaître).Pour faire de l'interdisciplinaire il ne suffit pas d'isoler un thème et de rassembler autour de ce dernier deux ou trois sciences.L'interdisciplinarité consiste en la création d'un nouvel objet qui n'appartient à aucune d'entre elles.« Jeunes chercheurs » in Bar…
Après coup
Reading one’s words in translation is always an experience of estrangement. One sees, hears, oneself from a distance – another person in a different time. And of course any translation, however faithful, is something new, a performance for unimagined audiences. What could Writing Culture possibly mean, what work might it do, for French readers in 2011? In his astute introduction Emir Mahieddin suggests that the book, and more importantly the argu…
Response to Orin Starn: “Here Come the Anthros (Again): The Strange Marriage of Anthropology and Native America
De la réarticulation en anthropologie
Cet article analyse le processus historique du disciplining, à travers lequel des formations intellectuelles institutionnalisées se redéfinissent constamment – en particulier par le jeu de négociations à leurs frontières. Il est centré sur les développements qui sont apparus aux États-Unis pendant les dernières décennies, et qui se sont notamment traduits par l'émergence de projets interdisciplinaires comme les cultural studies, les feminist stud…
Documents: A Decomposition
New Light on the Origin of Eastern American Pronunciation of Unaccented Final 'A
Granite Industry of Quincy, Massachusetts
(1939). Granite Industry of Quincy, Massachusetts. Economic Geography: Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 146-152
Evolution of Shipbuilding in Southeastern Massachusetts
(1939). Evolution of Shipbuilding in Southeastern Massachusetts. Economic Geography: Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 362-378
Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs. Thrale)
Man Versus Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Six Points of View
Man Versus Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Six Points of View
Preface 1. Political Man J. H. Plumb 2. Man's economic status Jacob Viner 3. The Churchman G. R. Cragg 4. The artist Rudolf Wittkower 5. The composer Paul Henry Lang 6. The writer Bertrand H. Bronson 7. Commentary James L. Clifford Notes Index
Man versus Society in Eighteenth-Century Britian. Six Points of View
From Puzzles to Portraits
Samuel Johnson: A Survey and Bibliography of Critical Studies
Spatial Practices: Fieldwork, Travel, and the Disciplining of Anthropology
The translation of cultures: Maurice Leenhardt's evangelism, new Caledonia 1902–1926
of 'the missionary type' or of a 'missionary attitude'. The range of 'missionary occasions', to appropriate the title of Burridge's thoughtful essay,1 is broad, so broad that it is no easy matter to decide what essential set of orientations to culture change and to the religious life may be said to unite the intentions and experiences of a list like the following: fire and brimstone fundamentalists, con tributors to Missiology, intrepid young Mor…
Orientalism
Fieldwork, Reciprocity, and the Making of Ethnographic Texts: The Example of Maurice Leenhardt
This essay explores the complex relationship between fieldwork, reciprocity, and ethnographic writing through a detailed examination of Maurice Leenhardt's missionary and ethnographic work among the Canaques of New Caledonia. Clifford argues that Leenhardt's prolonged engagement, deep emotional connections, and eventual conversion to Christianity shaped his understanding of Canaque culture and influenced his textual representations. The essay cha…
On Ethnographic Surrealism
André Breton often insisted that surrealism was not a body of doctrines, or a definable idea, but an activity. The present essay is an exploration of ethnographic activity, set, as it must always be, in specific cultural and historical circumstances. I will be concentrating on ethnography and surrealism in France between the two world wars. To discuss these activities together-at times, indeed, to permit them to merge-is to question a number of c…
Person and Myth: Maurice Leenhardt in the Melanesian World
Originally published in 1982, James Clifford's analytical biography of Maurice Leenhardt (1878 - 1954)--missionary, anthropologist, founder of French Oceanic studies, historian of religion, and colonial reformer--received wide critical acclaim for its insight into the colonial history of anthropology. Drawing extensively on unpublished letters and journals, Clifford traces Leenhardt's life from his work as a missionary on the island of New Caledo…
Ilongot Headhunting 1883–1974: A Study in Society and History . Renato Rosaldo
Captain Cook's Final Voyage. The Journal of Midshipman George Gilbert
On Ethnographic Authority
Research Article| April 01 1983 On Ethnographic Authority James Clifford James Clifford Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Representations (1983) 2: 118-146. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928386 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation James Clifford; On Ethno…
A History of Anthropological Thought.Edward Evans-Pritchard , André Singer
Person and Myth: Maurice Leenhardt in the Melanesian World
Histoires de l'anthropologie: XVIe-XIXe siecles . Britta Rupp-Eisenreich
De l'ethnographie comme fiction. Conrad et Malinowski
On Ethnography Considered as a Fiction. About Conrad and Malinowski. This essay explores the modem predicament of an « ethnographie » subjectivity, a self situated as participant-observer in specific cultural and linguistic systems. The similar experiences of Joseph Conrad and Bronislaw Malinowski - cosmopolitan émigrés struggling into English identities and, as writers, into the English symbolic world - are taken as paradigmatic. The « made up »…
The Making of Ethnographic Texts: A Preliminary Report
On Ethnographic Allegory
Introduction: Partial Truths
Art (22 works) · History (22 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Anthropology (15 works) · Computer Science (15 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · History (12 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (11 works) · Cultural Identity and Heritage (11 works) · Ethnography (11 works)