Staging the Indian: The Politics of Representation

Staging the Indian: The Politics of Representation. The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College. February 2, 2002–June 2, 2002.     

Working Images: Visual Research and Representation in Ethnography

Working Images: Visual Research and Representation in Ethnography . Sarah Pink, László Kürti, and Ana Isabel Afonso. New York: Routledge, 2004. 224 pp.     

Political Violence and the Politics of Ethnography

The Sikhs of the Punjab: Unheard Voices of State and Guerrilla Violence. Joyce J. M. Pettigrew. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books, 1995. 212 pp.
Fighting for Faith and Nation: Dialogues with Sikh Militants. Cynthia Keppley Mahmood. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.314 pp.     

Behind the Statistics: The Ethnography of Suicide in Palestine

As part of the first anthropological study on suicide in the modern Arab world, statistics gathered from the Ramallah region of the West Bank in Palestine painted an apparently remarkably similar picture to that found in Western countries such as the UK and France. More men than women completed suicide, more women than men attempted suicide. Men used more violent methods such as hanging and women softer methods such as medication overdose. Completed suicide was higher in the older age range, attempted suicide in the younger. However, ethnographic fieldwork and detailed examination of the case studies and suicide narratives gathered and analysed within the cultural, political and economic contexts illustrated more starkly the differences in suicidal practices between Palestinian West Bank society of the 1990s and other regions of the world. The central argument of the paper is that although statistics tell a very important story, ethnography uncovers a multitude of stories 'behind the statistics', and thus helps us to make sense of both cultural context and subjective experience.     

Ethnography of Africa: The Usefulness of the Useless

The complex epistemological and methodological problems of data-quality control or ethnographer bias in anthropological research as they relate to the use of the native languages and/or the use of native-interpreter informants are critically reexamined. Summarizing the 1939–1940 Mead-Lowie debate, the paper suggests, on the basis of a close review of selected classic ethnographies of Africa, various ways by which the quality of comparative cross-cultural data could be meaningfully improved . [methodology of cross-cultural research, epistemological issues in anthropology, use of native languages in fieldwork, ethnography of Africa, history of anthropology]     

Film, Ethnography, and the Senses: The Corporeal Image

Film, Ethnography, and the Senses: The Corporeal Image . David MacDougall. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 274 pp.     

The Ethnography of Contradiction: Studying Post-Unification Germany

Crumbling Walls and Tarnished Ideals: An Ethnography of East Germany before and after Unification. Hans Baer. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998 155 pp.
Where the World Ended: Re-Unification and Identity in the German Borderland. Daphne Berdahl. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. 294 pp.     

The Trading Crowd: An Ethnography of the Shanghai Stock Market

The Trading Crowd: An Ethnography of the Shanghai Stock Market. Ellen Hertz. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 238 pp.     

Stone Men of Malekula on Malakula: An Ethnography of an Ethnography

This article examines the resonances of the voluminous ethnography, ‘Stone Men of Malekula’ (SMM) in contemporary Vanuatu. Anthropological research is politically charged in Vanuatu, in part because of how the weighty materiality of archival forms exercise significant local authority. However, alongside respect for this ‘evidential’ material is a healthy scepticism of anthropological authority. SMM, written by the maverick anthropologist John Layard in 1942 (based on fieldwork in 1914–15), has returned to Vanuatu in many guises over the years. It is used as formal evidence in land disputes and as a bone of contention within competing claims. Tracing the ways in which culture is written, read and materialized, exposes the paradoxes of knowledge and politics not only within anthropological critique but in Vanuatu villages.