10/05/10 19:24:03
The central theme of this book is the position of 'natives' in what I call the 'world system' of anthropology.
Since anthropology originally developed in the west mainly as a science of 'primitive' original developed in
the West mainly as a science of 'primitive'
people under colonial rule, scholars used to gater ethnographic
data and interpret it in books and articles without seriously
considering the reactions of the people they were describing. the
situation has changed dramatically in the postcolonial age, when
the traditional boundary between the colonier/researcher and the
colonied/researched has become increasingly blurred Not only do
today's 'natives' read what has been written about them, they have
also learned to write about their own culture in their own language,
from thieir own perspective. Since their discourse of outsiders,
especially those of researchers from former colonized powers. a
major task in contemporary anthropology, then, is the creation of
a 'dialogue space' between the describer and the the described, as well
as among all the people concerned with the culture studied, without
privileging one kind of discourse over another.