Tragedies and Celebrations: Imagining Foreign and Local Scholarships

Introduction

"Why are you Peruvians always studying other Peruvians?," a North American ethnomusicologist asked me in puzzlement when I told him about my future research projects. I remained speechless, because for a moment I thought he was right. My plans for the future seemed a sign of academic inferiority, typical of Third World intellectuals incapable of escaping from their origins to reach beyond their own frontiers, unable to transcend birthplace and national boundaries and fly freely around the world in search for original research. Later on, too late to answer him, I realized that I studied other Peruvians not only because I wanted to, but also because I had made a conscious choice. This choice was made using an element alien to the process by which many "foreign" scholars select a country, region, or locality to study: political involvement. But not "political" as in partisan politics, nor in the narrow sense of political activism, but as loyalty to a collective project by a group of people gathered around a town, a region, or a nation. I, as most Third World social scientists do, study our own countries not only to exercise intellectual abilities but in the hopes of contributing to social transformation. As Bennoune lucidly stated:

A Third World Anthropologist like myself cannot simply indulge in the luxury of studying the cultures, societies and especially human conditions of the powerless and marginal peoples either of the Third World or other regions of the globe for the sake of knowledge but rather for the possibility of changing and developing them. The anthropologist of advanced capitalist countries tends to think, subconsciously or consciously, that the underdeveloped nature of the communities they study, in relation to their own societies, is a natural and even normative acceptable condition. (Bennoune 1985, 359)

The sense of loyalty to a particular group of people can only be the result of a slow process during which researcher and subjects become one in terms of a common objective. It is only logical that most "native" scholars develop this allegiance early in their lives, while for the foreign scholar it is a factor that may or may not appear, especially if they only remain a year in "the field." Not all foreign ethnographers fall in love with their subjects of study (unless in cases of love at first sight, or during long-term fieldwork endeavors), but most native scholars are already in love by the time they receive their professional degrees. Is this a sign of poor scholarship? Is it an academic transgression to dedicate an entire life to the study of a single society, moreover, when it is your own?

In fact, many Euro-American ethnographers do dedicate their entire lives to the study of a single territory, and nobody thinks it is wrong. George Foster's Long-Term Field Research in Social Anthropology (New York, 1979) presents many testimonies of anthropologists who have been engaged for decades in field research sites in Latin America (like Allan Homberg's Cornell Vicos project in Peru, and Evon Vogt's Harvard Chiapas project in Mexico). In Peru, Euro-American anthropologists like Tom Zuidema, John Murra, John Rowe, and Jurgen Golte are renown "Peruanistas" who have been more than academically involved in, and with, Peru. And several younger scholars are following their steps. In the field of musicology there are also numerous scholars who, coming from different countries, are actively engaged not only in long-term fieldwork but also in supporting meaningful local initiatives. ¹ Notable examples are Robert Stevenson and Gerard Béhague, who have had a life-long commitment to the study and advocacy of Latin American music and culture.

Why is it then that when local scholars engage in long-term fieldwork in their own towns, regions, or nations they are considered by many as less worthy? ² Suddenly "our" Third World nations appear as homogeneous and monolithic entities; "we" are instantly categorized as...