ABSTRACT
Five years ago I would undoubtedly have written a different essay. Then the image of “anthropology” among non-anthropologists energized by the intellectual agendas and practices associated with “Cultural Studies” was not good, to put it mildly. Clifford and Marcus’s Writing Culture (1986) had become a canonical citation in critical depictions of anthropological tropes of realism, Marcus’s own anthropological training, affiliation, and location notwithstanding. Counterethnographic filmmakers, like Trinh Minh-Ha, were not shy about their antagonism. And while individuals like James Clifford and Janice Radway had made strategic sympathetic uses of anthropological debates and research techniques in print in The Predicament of Culture (1988) and Reading the Romance (1984) respectively, there were few degree-certified anthropologists in 1990 who did not feel that “Cultural Studies” was overwhelmingly critical of anthropology and full of stereotypes about anthropology and anthropologists.
