Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T09:02:45.408Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Best of Two Worlds, the Worst of Two Worlds: Reflections on Culture and Field Work among the Rural Irish and Pueblo Indians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Despite its title this article does not pretend to be or to offer a study in comparative ethnography, since my expertise in the cultures to be discussed is limited and uneven. I know somewhat more about the rural Irish of the Dingle Peninsula, among whom I lived during 1974–75, than I do about the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, among whom I spent the greater part of the summer in 1979 and again in 1985. Nor do these remarks have any pretense to social history, although it is to these peoples' collective responses to aspects of their histories that the article is addressed. Rather, it should be taken as a critical reflection on the vulnerabilities of the human spirit and on the vulnerabilities of a science that tries to pierce the meanings of that spirit. It is a tale of two cultures, and of the ethnographer as a teller of tales, and of the pitfalls of cultural interpretation.

Type
The Thin Line of Culture
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , January 1987 , pp. 56 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Andre, , James, M.D. 1978. “Alcoholism as a Health and Social Problem in the Albuquerque Area Indian Health Service,” in Indian Health Care, 1978. United States Senate, Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources, hearing held 11 November 1977, Isleta Pueblo, New Mexico. 95th Cong., 1st sess. Washington, D.C.: GPO.Google Scholar
Arensberg, Conrad. 1968. The Irish Countryman. Garden City: Natural History Press.Google Scholar
Benedict, Ruth. 1934. Patterns of Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Brody, Hugh. 1971. Indians on Skid Row: The Role of Alcohol and Community in the Adaptive Process of Indian Urban Migrants. Ottawa: Northern Science Research Group, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.Google Scholar
Brody, Hugh. 1973. Inishkillane: Change and Decline in the West of Ireland. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Clifford, James. 1983. “On Ethnographic Authority.” Representations, 1:2, 118–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clifford, James. 1986. “Rights of Salvage: Ethnographic Writing and the ‘Oral’ Other.” Paper presented to the Group for the Critical Study of Colonial Discourse, University of California, Berkeley, 11 02.Google Scholar
Conrad, Joseph. 1950[1910]. Heart of Darkness. New York: New American Library.Google Scholar
Cresswell, Robert. 1969. Une communaute rurale de I’Irlande. Paris: Institute de Ethnographie.Google Scholar
Fischler, Ronald. 1980. “Protecting American Indian Children.” Social Work, 25:5, 341–57.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archeology of Knowledge. New York: Harper Colophon.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Sheridan, Alan, trans. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1980. The History of Sexuality. Volume I: An Introduction. New York: Vintage/Random House.Google Scholar
Fox, Robin. 1967. The Keresian Bridge: A Problem in Pueblo Ethnography. New York: Humanities Press.Google Scholar
Fox, Robin. 1978. The Tory Islanders: A People of the Celtic Fringe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Freire, Paulo. 1968. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Seabury Press.Google Scholar
James, Wendy. 1973. “The Anthropologist as Reluctant Imperialist,” in Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, Asad, T., ed., 41–69. New York: Humanities Press; London, Ithaca Press.Google Scholar
Kenyatta, Jomo. 1965. Facing Mt. Kenya. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Kluckhohn, Clyde, and Murray, Henry. 1953. “Personality Formation: The Determinants,” in Personality in Nature, Culture, and Society, Kluckhohn, Clyde, Murray, Henry, and Schneider, David, eds., 53–70. New York: Alfred Knopf.Google Scholar
Kottak, Conrad P. 1983. Assault on Paradise: Social Change in a Brazilian Village. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Leeman, Larry. 1986. “Pueblo Models of Communal Sickness and Wellbeing.” Paper presented at the Kroeber Anthropological Society, University of California, Berkeley, 8 03.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1961. Triste tropique. New York: Criterion Books.Google Scholar
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1929. “Practical Anthropology.” Africa, 2:22–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1945. The Dynamics of Culture Change: An Inquiry into Race Relations in Africa. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1967. A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term (preface by Valetta Malinowska, introduction by Raymond Firth), Guterman, Norbet, trans. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.Google Scholar
Messenger, John. 1969. Inis Beag: Isle of Ireland. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.Google Scholar
Messenger, John. 1981. “When the ‘Natives’ Read and Respond: A New Projective Test.” Paper read at the 80th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Los Angeles, 5 12.Google Scholar
Metraux, Rhoda. 1968. “Malinowski, Bronislaw,” in The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, IX, 541–49. New York: Macmillan Company.Google Scholar
Mills, C. Wright. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. New York and London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nabokov, Peter. 1982. “Running, Power, and Secrecy at Taos.” American West (09/10), 20–29.Google Scholar
Ortiz, Alfonso. 1969. The Tewa World. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
O’Súilleabháin, Sean. 1967. Irish Wake Amusements. Cork: Mercier.Google Scholar
Parsons, Elsie Clews. 1936. Taos Pueblo. Laboratory of Anthropology, Santa Fe, Series in Anthropology, no. 2. Menasha, Wisc: George Banta.Google Scholar
Parsons, Elsie Clews.1939. Pueblo Indian Religion, 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Richards, Audrey. 1944. “Practical Anthropology in the Lifetime of the International Institute.” Africa, 14:289–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarracino, Victor. 1974. “Conference Proceedings and Discussion,” in Respect for Life: The Traditional Upbringing of American Indian Children, Morey, Sylvester and Gilliam, Olivia, eds. New York: Myrin Institute.Google Scholar
Sawyer, Roger. 1984. Casement: The Flawed Hero. London and Boston: Routlege and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1979. Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1981. “Reply to Ballybran.” Weekend, supplement to The Irish Times (Dublin), 21 02, pp. 9–10.Google Scholar
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1982. Introduction, Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics, 2d ed. (paperback), v–xi.Google Scholar
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy.1983a. “Deposed Kings: The Demise of the Rural Irish Gerontocracy,” in Growing Old in Different Societies: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Sololovsky, Jay, ed., 130–46. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth.Google Scholar
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1983b. “From Anxiety to Analysis: Rethinking Irish Sexuality and Sex Roles.” Women's Studies, 19:2, 147–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1984. “Infant Mortality and Infant Care: Cultural and Economic Constraints on Nurturing in Northeast Brazil.” Social Science and Medicine, 19:5, 535–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy and Stewart, D. 1983. “Curanderismo in Taos County, New Mexico: A Possible Case of Anthropological Romanticism?” Western Journal of Medicine, 139:6, 875–44.Google ScholarPubMed
Taussig, Michael. 1984. “Culture of Terror—Space of Death. Roger Casement's Putumayo Report and the Explanation of Torture.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 26:3, 467–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tracy, Honor. 1953. Mind You, I’ve Said Nothing. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Tracy, Honor. 1956. The Straight and Narrow Path. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Viney, Michael. 1980. “Geared for a Gale.” The Irish Times (Dublin), 24 09, p. 12.Google Scholar
Viney, Michael. 1983. “The Yank in the Corner: Why the Ethics of Anthropology Are a Worry for Rural Ireland.” Weekend, supplement to The Irish Times (Dublin), 6 08, p. 1.Google Scholar