Walls and Bridges

Over the past decade, anthropologists have debated the politics of cultural knowledge development, questions of representation, and the merits of experimental texts that blur the boundaries of ethnography and fiction. For example, in their 1986 edited volume Writing Culture: The Poetics andPolitics ofEthnography, James Clifford and George Marcus challenged the dominant realist tradition in ethnographic writing,' questioning the ways in which textual representations often gloss over the complicated relations of power and intimacy between ethnographers and informants in the field. Instead, Clifford and Marcus called for more self-conscious, reflexive, and dialogical approaches to ethnography, sensitive to the politics and partiality of knowledge production in the field and the text.2 While earning praise for their advocacy of ethnographic experimentation, Clifford and Marcus were soundly criticized by feminist anthropologists for failure to include women's voices in their critique and for their neglect of the rich history of contributions by women anthropologists. Many of these women pioneered experimental approaches to ethnographic fieldwork and writing long before the subject was popularized by the postmodern turn in cultural studies dur

Mediation · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Multilingual Education and Policy · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

• The American Indian and the United States

  William T Hagan, Wilcomb E Washburn•Journal of American History•1974

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• Anthropology as Cultural Critique

  George E Marcus, M M J Fischer et al.•Anthropology as Cultural Critique•1999

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• The American Native Family

  Open Access•Roger D Herring•Journal of Multicultural…•1989

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• Ella Cara Deloria and Mourning Do ve

  Open Access•Janet L Finn•Critique of Anthropology•1993

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• Writing for Culture

  C Brumann•Current Anthropology•1999

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