Toward an anthropology of American anthropology: An analysis of fieldworker ethnographies

Anthropological discussion since the end of World War II has included debate regarding the impact of the anthropologist's own cultural milieu on anthropological work. This work analyzes a specific form of anthropological practice, "fieldworker ethnographies," and the American and Anthropological setting (1960-1980) in which it was produced, as a means of examining how American culture mediates American anthropological practice.;The primary thesis has two parts: (1) fieldworker ethnographies take fieldwork to be the subject of anthropological research and reconstruct it as an experience; and (2) the form and content of these ethnographies reflect American constructs for interpreting social reality. Discussions and activities of the American Anthropological Association during the time frame in which these ethnographies emerged are examined as a means of relating these works to the broader intellectual, political and economic arenas of the Anthropological and American milieu. Data include interviews with anthropologists; texts in the form of books and articles; and professional newsletter of the American Anthropological Association.;Fieldworker ethnographies are analyzed as works in which the terms of the ethnographic encounter as asserted by these ethnographers are assumed as a generalized prototype of all fieldwork encounters. In these works, the reconstruction of experience is privileged over observation as a method; field interaction as confrontation is seen as part of global political encounters; and production of the written account is a means to reconstitute the personal and professional self. The analysis further links these terms to discussions and activities within the American Anthropological Association, focussing on (1) intellectual shifts from science to interpretation evidenced in professional works and meetings; (2) debate over the role and ethics of the anthropologist as citizen and scientist, engendered by the war in Vietnam and the funding and activities of American research and researchers abroad; and (3) fragmented career expectations in Anthropology in an American economic recession and changing demographics.;Finally, the analyses above are linked with American constructs through which fieldworker ethnographers interpreted their fieldworker encounters. Despite the politicized vocabulary of fieldworker ethnographies these works exhibited an American turn toward a constricted individualism which was both apolitical and ahistorical.