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201 Con­ clu­ sion re­ becca har­ din and ka­ mari max­ ine ­ clarke In­ itially of­ fered as talks at Yale Uni­ ver­ sity, the es­ says in­ cluded here were orig­ i­ nally ­ prompted (and, at times, chal­ lenged) by ques­ tions from stu­ dents who were cu­ ri­ ous about eth­ no­ graphic prac­ tices and fa­ culty en­ gaged in the de­ vel­ op­ ment of a range of new field pro­ jects in­ volv­ ing trans­ na­ tional, multi­ sited, or new in­ sti­ tu­ tional pro­ jects. Their con­ cerns came from both ­ within and be­ yond the field of anthro­ pol­ ogy and were not only in­ tel­ lec­ tual but also pro­ fes­ sional and ex­ pe­ ri­ en­ tial in na­ ture. Many were seek­ ing anthro­ po­ log­ i­ cal knowl­ edge for pro­ jects be­ yond the con­ fines of ac­ a­ demic anthro­ pol­ ogy. They ­ prompted us, how­ ever, to re­ think what is under­ stood by eth­ no­ graphic knowl­ edge. Eth­ nog­ ra­ phy, as a major com­ po­ nent of “what anthro­ pol­ o­ gists do,” still ­ evokes what ­ MichelRolph Trouil­ lot (1991) has ­ called the “sav­ age slot” that dis­ tin­ guishes the topic of study for so­ ci­ ocul­ tu­ ral anthro­ pol­ o­ gists from those top­ ics stud­ ied by other so­ cial sci­ en­ tists. This is sur­ pris­ ing, given the new di­ rec­ tions ­ sketched in the es­ says in this vol­ ume. The per­ sis­ tence of prac­ tices in­ clud­ ing eth­ no­ graphic field­ work and pro­ duc­ tion of mono­ graphs ­ within the field of anthro­ pol­ ogy seems al­ most anach­ ron­ is­ tic, yet these are still cru­ cial cri­ te­ ria for mem­ ber­ ship in the “tribe of anthro­ pol­ ogy.” At the same time that such tra­ di­ tional eth­ no­ graphic stud­ ies and prod­ ucts per­ sist, anthro­ pol­ ogy has under­ gone un­ prec­ e­ dented ­ change in re­ cent ­ decades. Those trans­ for­ ma­ tions have been sum­ mar­ ized in this vol­ ume in terms of ­ ethnography ’s top­ ics, tech­ niques, and in­ creas­ ing ten­ den­ cies to inter­ ro­ gate its own ob­ jec­ tiv­ ity or ad­ vo­ cacy. As we have ­ argued in our intro­ duc­ tion and dem­ on­ strated in our chap­ ters, eth­ nog­ ra­ phy is now used more ­ widely and in more ways than be­ fore, be­ yond the con­ fines of ac­ a­ demic schol­ ar­ ship. This is true de­ spite its re­ cent in­ fu­ sion with re­ flex­ ive, crit­ i­ cal en­ er­ gies. These en­ cour­ age its prac­ ti­ tion­ ers to con­ sider its 202 rebecca hardin and kamari ma xi ne clarke­ far-reaching con­ se­ quences, even as they sur­ ren­ der to its em­ brace of in­ ti­ macy and im­ me­ diacy in re­ search de­ sign. Sid­ ney Mintz chal­ lenged us with humor and an in­ ge­ ni­ ous use of that most del­ i­ cate of prac­ tices, car­ i­ ca­ ture, to dis­ tin­ guish ­ between the ­ travels and writ­ ing of an eth­ nog­ ra­ pher, a TV re­ porter, a tour­ ist, and a nov­ el­ ist. What, in this day and age, dis­ tin­ guishes eth­ nog­ ra­ phy from other inter­ cul­ tu­ ral ex­ pres­ sions and en­ coun­ ters? Most ac­ a­ demic eth­ nog­ ra­ phers are ­ acutely con­ scious of the fact that their field­ places them out­ side of the emerg­ ing po­ lit­ i­ cal econ­ o­ mies of large ­ grant-driven re­ search and writ­ ing in so­ cial and nat­ u­ ral sci­ ence. Nor, how­ ever, are we gen­ er­ at­ ing the­ ory as we used to; de­ bates rage about ­ whether the­ ory ­ emerges at all from our ac­ tiv­ i­ ties, and from where. One such de­ bate, cat­ a­ lyzed by ar­ gu­ ments in the re­ cent book The­ ory from the South: How ­ Euro-America is Evolv­ ing To­ ward Af­ rica (Co­ mar­ off and Co­ mar­ off 2011), was pub­ lished in the Cul­ tural Anthro­ pol­ ogy on­ line forum.1 Its “bloggy” im­ me­ diacy re­ minds us of how often anthro­ pol­ o­ gists these days con­ trib­ ute to jour­ na­ lis...

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