ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the relationship between the ethnographic text and the broader contexts that become part of its fabric, focusing in particular on one aspect: how arguments, concepts and theories capture within them the historical present that anthropologists are living out. By the 1980s, the specialist knowledge that anthropologists offered via ethnographic work had become a battleground. Post-modern strands of thought, centred in the writing culture group, emphasised the power relations created between anthropologist and informant in the process of cultural translation. Humphrey has written about how, for Mongolians, morality is best understood in terms of exemplars – exemplary individuals whose recognisably virtuous path provides a model to be followed. When reading ethnography, need to look beyond the description to the pattern of theoretical commitment – the authorial stance – that grounds it. Thinking through the text can envision a complex cultural situation that forms its background, the combat of theoretical assertions and counter-assertions, and the intellectual personalities involved.
