Description
Book SynopsisThe Internet allows ethnographers to deposit the textual materials on which they base their writing in virtual archives. This work argues that virtual archives have the potential to shift the emphasis in ethnographic writing from the monograph to commentary. It provides a model of writing in the presence of a virtual archive.
Trade Review“
Ethnography as Commentary is a timely contribution to contemporary problems of anthropological knowledge-making. It is an argument about what ethnography has come to and an experiment about what it might still become more than two decades after the intense period of critiquing anthropology’s emblematic research practices.”—
George E. Marcus, co-author of
Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary“Johannes Fabian is one of the most prominent and original thinkers in anthropology. With
Ethnography as Commentary, he makes a significant contribution to debates about modes of writing in anthropology and adjacent disciplines and to anthropological knowledge of postcolonial Central African culture and society. Younger scholars especially will find it a very instructive close-up portrayal of intensive ethnographic work.”—
Ulf Hannerz, author of
Foreign News: Exploring the World of Foreign CorrespondentsTable of ContentsPreface vii
Introduction. Closing House--A Late Ethnography 1
Chapter 1. An Event: Closing the House 21
Chapter 2. A Text: Made, Not Found 39
Chapter 3. Kahenga's Work 55
Chapter 4. Kahenga's World 73
Chapter 5. Kahenga's Thoughts 91
Chapter 6. Endings and Ends 111
Notes 125
Works Cited 133
Index 137
