James Clifford
American anthropologist who critiqued ethnographic authority in 'Writing Culture' and travel writing.
Most quoted
"Ethnography is not just description; it is a form of writing that constructs the worlds it claims to represent."
— from Writing Culture, 1986
"The anthropologist is not an objective observer, but a participant in the cultural process."
— from Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, 1986
"The invention of culture is a process of ongoing negotiation between power and knowledge."
— from The Predicament of Culture, 1988
All quotes by James Clifford (100)
The native voice must be heard, not just ventriloquized.
Borders are as imaginary as they are real in cultural encounters.
Ethnographic authority is always provisional.
Culture's predicaments arise from its entanglement with power.
Translation is never innocent; it carries the weight of history.
The anthropologist's notebook is a space of ambiguity.
Fieldwork is a dialogue, not a monologue.
Primitivism is a projection of the modern self.
Ethnography demands reflexivity, not objectivity.
Travel writing reveals more about the traveler than the destination.
Cultural difference is produced in the act of interpretation.
The crisis of representation is anthropology's opportunity for renewal.
In the field, every encounter is a translation.
Authority in anthropology is collaboratively constructed.
Exile and diaspora redefine the boundaries of home.
Writing culture means writing power.
The ethnographic text is polyphonic, not monologic.
Cultural artifacts are traces of contested histories.
Anthropologists must decolonize their methods.
The journey is as important as the arrival in cultural analysis.
Contemporaries of James Clifford
Other Anthropologys born within 50 years of James Clifford (1940).