Anthropology in Fiction: An Image of Fieldwork

Rosemary Firth

RAIN, No. 64. (Oct., 1984), pp. 7-9.

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 ANTHROPOLOGY IN FICTION

AN IMAGE OF FIELDWORK
In an early number of RAIN (4, 1974) Probably we should be Wset for some!) Material discussing coitus

John Davis noted 'the slowly growing ourselves that we are caricatured or interruptus as practised by the Tikopia is

number of novels with more-or- less trivialized, but I personally found the referred to in this novel also, but not their

anthropologists as protagonists: In a later demeaning picture of 'native' life and social ethnographer so reporting by name.

number (RAZN20, 1977) he reflected that Custom which usually accompanied it sadly In describing field data collected, the
anthropologists themselves must sometimes disturbing.There are commonest topics are sexual practices seen
have been tempted to turn to fiction 'to , imaginative literature besides the popular as bizarre, such as 'incest', clitoridectomy,
describe how they have been changed by novels, which fall into an uncertain category castration, and polygamy: 2, 8, 13, 14, 16,
fieldwork', or to capture imaginatively a J between factual record and fictional 21; infanticide, cannibalism, ritual killing
picture of the life of an exotic people for a representation. I may be tempted to return and violence in general are featured in
wider audience, 'to illustrate the universally to these in a later while. For the moment, let descriptions of the alien societies in 2, 6,7,
human in a strange guise'. Recently he me indicate my sources and how I found 8, 13, 14, 18; witchcraft, magic, myth, 'tabu'
suggested to me that I might write those works of fiction which seemed and variously identified 'superstitious'
something on fieldwork in fiction, or even relevant in the first place. practices are commonly caricatured: 1, 5, 7,
on anthropologists in fiction. As I have As an initial guide, I consulted three 8, 13, 16, 18. There are occasional mentions
myself said that a novel can provide the recent volumes of The C~mulative Fiction of the disruptive effects of modern
ordinary reader with access to another Index. As well as more commonplace technology on other societies: 8, 12, 15; and
culture which the anthropologist can get subjects, such as travel, detection, or a few indirect criticisms of the West as their
from his field experience (RAZN22, 1977), between 1960and 1980these corruptors and exploiters: 11, 15, 16,20.
and also that it can be used as a mirror to patient sleuths had identified some Seventy Frazer's Golden Bough is evidently the
learn about ourselves, I rather hesitantly novels dealing with psychiatrists and commonest source for legitimation of
agreed. As I had never read any of these analysts, twenty with archaeologists, twelve material in the earlier novels; probably
novels about anthropologists, I had to seek with ~olicitors,ten with historians, and only Malinowski's SexualLife of Savages (and
advice from those of my colleagues -- and Seven with anthropologists, while perhaps Margaret Mead's early work)
they seem to be many -- who enjoy playing sociologists received no Separate mention at suggested the sexual themes, and the
this reflexive game. In consequence, during all! While admiring the industry, few would popular and abbreviated English translation
the last few months, I have plodded through wish to attach great accuracy such a of Levi-Strauss's Tristes Tropiques might
about a score of novels taken from the census, particularly as no work by Barbara seem to authenticate some notions of an
shelves of my local lending library, and Pym came under that heading; but it did earthly paradise in strange unknown lands.
much as I was astonished at the magnitude help me to unearth several books which The first five novels on my list make

of the corpus, I cannot say that I enjoyed diligent enquiry among friends and straightforward references to Frazer's

the task. colleagues had failed to elicit. As a result of Golden Bough, and Tracy refers to his

The growth of literacy among the alien these somewhat erratic researches, I account of leaping over fires as a well

societies from whom we culled our material examined the novels listed here in which known fertility rite, but they are all quite

has accustomed us, in recent years, to either an anthropologist appears as a major coy about erotica, unlike the later ones. 1

receive indignant denials of the accuracy figure, or search' involving a and 5 are comical accounts of the reactions

and interpretation of our ethnographic

questionnaire or social participation in a of a small rural community to the

facts, as well as accusations of bad faith,

small group, or 'fieldwork' in an exotic blundering intrusions of well-meaning

and even exploitation, from some of those

setting, provides the basic scene. The folklorists, anxious to investigate rural

from whom we collected these facts. There

literary value of these works of course survivals of ancient sexual rituals. They are

is a certain irony in the present situation in

varies greatly, but I am more concerned here both well written and very funny, as they

which we, the professional observers of

with the image they project to the layman of follow each earnest but shortsighted

others, have now to accept ourselves the

social a n t h r o ~ o l o gand
~ its practitioners. fieldworker naively exposing the local

cool observation of another profession, the

The novels are referred to by number as habits, and falling into ever-deepening

novelists, because of the increased use of

listed in chronological order of date of first trouble as a result. In Sharp's book (1940),

literacy in our own society. We cannot

publication. Some are out of print and an elderly professor hopes to accomplish

argue, as we might about our own work,

difficult to find (Pym's novels were not well 'the most remarkable piece of research since

that a novelist owes us any obligation to

known until re-issued in the mid-seventies, Frazer' (1, p.66) by testing a story, 'old,

depict the profession accurately. His or her

but the American Three Sirens (71, has been Norse, and coarse' (p.9) that village girls
main aim must be to engage and maintain
reprinted ten times in the last eighteen who stumble in crossing a stream over a
the attention of his own public, and in
years). legendary stone will be shown to be
doing so, he will select or reject the bare
Geographical areas cited include Africa, unchaste. The professor's wife wears a
'facts' to use in accordance with quite a
most frequently: 2, 3, 5, 13, 21; then rural necklace adorned by scarabs, said to
different standard from those of the social
England and Ireland: 1, 2, 3,4, 5, 13; New represent 'seven phallic symbols'; a
scientist. Many of the writers, as I shall
Guinea: 12; the South Seas and Polynesia in methodist lady in the village 'did not know
show later, have gone to some trouble to
particular: 7, 8, 14, 16; America and an what a phallic symbol was, but instinct (or
give verisimilitude to their work by unnamed Arab state: 9, 12; Brazil: 1520; possibly a look in her son's eye) prevented
specifying geographical areas for local Japan: 6; and two imaginary countries for her from asking' (1, p.7). Incidentally, pym,
colour, scattering the names of well known science fiction settings: 10 and 11. bIamed writing ten years later (1950) confirms the
academic classics in this fieId for an anthropologists cited were Frazer: 1, 2, 3, 4, alleged ignorance in a mixed audience of an
authentic flavour, and occasionally using 5,7921; Malinowski and Levi-Stra~ss:7, 13, earlier decade by commenting on the
inaccurate plagiarisms from named 15, 16; Kroeber, Sapir, Talcott Parsons, !'itt- embarrassed laughter and clapping which
anthropologists to reinforce this. Whether Rivers and G ~ u c ~ K7,I8,~9,~ 12,21;: the showing of a tribal mask evoked from
we like it or not, it may be well for us to be additionally in one novel alone, 7, all of the some of the audience at 'the Learned
aware of the image the lay public is thus led following were referred to in a single Society'. It was discovered afterwards 'that
to form of us. With one outstanding chapter in the course of a lecture on the meaning of the word phallic was not
exception, however, it soon became clear to fieldwork methods which is supposed to be known to the Sunday school teachers' (2,
me that none of these novelists was mainly given by the team leader to a group just paperback ed., p.81). Both Sharp and Tracy
concerned with ethnographic fieldwork or arrived on an unknown island for six weeks (1 and 5) gravely recount the many
with the ethnographer's difficulties, but 'intensive investigation': Benedict, misunderstandings between researchers and
used him as a kind of lay figure on which to Durkheim, Cora Bois, Evans- Pritchard, informants and manage to make us laugh
build a romance, a thriller or a satire, Haddon, Linton, Lowie, Mead, Redfield, equally at each side. Tracy's account of the
against a highly exotic background. S l o r and Westermarck. (1 may have missed exasperating depths of incomprehension

7
into which the Catholic priests, Irish
lawyers, Irish landlady and the villagers all
manage to ensnare the young
anthropologist only anxious to record and
understand what he calls 'the facts', may
probably prove a wry reminder of similar
moments of exasperated incomprehension
which have assailed most of us in the field
at one time or another. The landlady
berates impersonally all who live by the
printed word, for either, like the journalists,
'they wrote lies and there was crossness all
round', or like the anthropologists, 'they
wrote the truth and then hell itself broke
loose' (S., ch. xvii).
P Yand ~ Iris Murdoch must both
have had friends among real
anthropologists, Pym through her editorial
work at the International African Institute,
Murdoch at Oxford. Each attracts different
readers with a distinctive style all her own,
but each depicts the anthropologist as a
strange, eccentric outsider, difficult to
comprehend. The 'curious Honor Klein is
well thought of as an anthropologist' but
she is 'always away visiting one of her
savage tribes .... She could inspire awe,
there's something primitive about her.
Perhaps it's all those tribes' (6, pp.9, 10).
The field of her knowledge can hardly be
tribal, for she demonstrates skill in Samurai
swordsmanship, and talks of Japanese
concepts of honour and power. She is never
shown from within, always from without, a
symbol of otherness perhaps. Maybe
Murdoch has some of the same drives that
anthropologists have, for in talking about
her literary art, she expcesses the desire 'to
cheer oneself UP by constructing forms out
of whatever might seem a mass of senseless
rubble' (Magee: Men of Ideas, BBC, 1978,
p.267). Later she says, 'great writers ... see
how different people are, and why they are
different. Tolerance is connected with being
able to imagine centres of reality which are
remote from oneself' (ibid, p.284). I must
confess that I am not sure I understand
Murdoch's novels; and one would certainly
not learn directly what anthropologists are
like from reading this one -- but one might
learn something about recognising familiar
aspects of humanity beneath a most
unfamiliar human exterior, which is one of
the tasks we set ourselves, by a very
different method.
Few people would say that they cannot
understand Pym's novels, but although
several of them are quite plainly 'about an
anthropologist' they are also about him as
he is observed by others. Less than Angels
concerns the relationships of three different
women to one home from the field 'writing
up his thesis'. To them all he is the outsider:
'taking up such a very odd career and going
out to Africa and living in such a strange
way' (4, paperback ed., p.30). 'She tried to
remember iffield was the right word, and
what exactly people did there' (3, p.13). 'As
dedicated human beings, like priests, should
they forgo alcohol, love and marriage, all
the urgent needs of lesser men?' (ibid,
p202). 'A fanatical light shines in his eyes
when he speaks of the Mother's brother!'
one of the women comments. And in
ruminating on the moral purposes of
anthropology, but speaking through the
mouth of a character who is a devout
churchwoman, Pym considers: 'Would the
anthropologist laying bare the structure of
society, or the writer of romantic fiction
covering it up, be the best guide to the
deeper or higher things of life?' (ibid,
p.191). So she foreshadows Iris Murdoch's
concerns with the relation of literature and
life, for despite her light-handed style, her
novels often suggest a deeper concern with
the meaning of personal pain than is made
explicit. She was far too well informed to
allow us to rest with the idea that modern
anthropology is mainly concerned with
strange folk customs or titillating erotica,
although one of her characters,
commenting on The Golden Bough,
exclaims 'How debased anthropology has
become since Frazer's day, mere kinship
jargon!' (2, p.206). Pym may not tell us
what it is like to be an anthropologist, but
she has painted an accurate picture of how
such a person was seen by those marginal to
the profession, thirty or forty years ago. I
know, because I was one of those marginal
people at that time, too. (Pym was nine
mopths younger than the writer.)
The authors of most of the other novels
on my list certainly do not present kinshiy
structure as the main concern of
anthropology! Many of them use the exotic
scenario as a peg on which to hang material
which ranges from the mildly salacious to
the distinctly pornographic. A rape features
in 7, 8, 11, 16 and 18, while 7, 13 and 20
each describe at length sexual encounters of
quite unusual explicitness and irrelevance to
the main narrative. in 7, 8, and 21, the
fieldworker is either caricatured or
denigrated; shown coolly recording for
publication what he observes without
emotional involvement (e.g. 13, 16, 18, and
20); despising his informants (13, 18), or
exploiting his work for personal gain (15).
The most outstanding example of the use of
an exotic scenario as a peg for erotica is the
American Three Sirens, the only example of
a novel wholly concerned with a team
actually at work 'in the field' (7). They are
represented as using the brief interlude to
work out their sexual and marital problems.
Wallace tells us that he interviewed eleven
'leading anthropologists in ,%'merica9, as well
as 'reading widely among the masters of
anthropology to create a foundation of
factual probability for my fiction' (7, 'An
afterword'). The bizarre effect is that of a
stage on which a number of puppets, each
visually representing some fieldworker as
accurately as a wax model at Madame
Tissaud's, are suddenly jerked into life, and
behave as no group of field anthropologists
ever behaved; the irony being that while so
many trivial 'factual details' are correct --
remember that dozen of named references
noted earlier -- almost everything else in the
thinking and behaviour of the characters is
implausible. (Compared with this, the
liberties taken with the ethnography of the
Trobriands (16), where kula exchanges and
millenary cargo rituals are conflated, and
hookworm in the local population is said to
be due to the recent wearing of shoes, is
forgiveable because accuracy is clearly
disclaimed in the foreword.) We probably
flinch when we find that the author of
Shark Island (8) has slyly inserted a broken
series of distorted quotations from
Gluckman's writings on Mau-Mau into the
heroine's mouth when she reports on some
'obscene and terrifying ceremonies' which
she calls 'a sort of reversion to African
rituals' that have been 'noted by
Malinowski and Gluckman'. Gluckman
actually observed that Mau Mau oaths were
'based on fantasies of what sorcerers and
secret societies in other parts of Africa are
reported to do, and are not a reversion to
pagan rituals' (Gluckman: Order and
Rebellion in Tribal Africa, 1963). But the
main thrust of this novel is the threat to a
fairly remote and stable society of the
introduction of an exploitative tourist
industry, and so, on the whole, we become
concerned, and convinced by the author's
picture of conflicting human interests and
the genuine tensions for Europeans of life
in a tropical country.
Hampton's play (15) and Le Guin's piece
of science fiction (11) are both indignant
political satires, using the image of the alien
society in order to expose the stupidities
and cruelties of our own. Hampton
acknowledges the help of an anonymous
anthropologist in giving 'richness and
authenticity' to the scenes of Indian life in
Brazil. 'But I have not hesitated: he adds,
'to sacrifice scrupulous anthropological
accuracy to what seemed to me most
appropriate dramaticallyl And he uses a
story of Kurt Unkel quoted by Levi- Strauss
(Le Regard Eloign;, 1983, p.26) but turns it
upside down. His Indians weep at the
departure of the anthropologist, instead of
on welcoming his return from strange
places, as actually reported. Le Guin is less
frank, or more naive, in her story of small
green furry creatures with a gentle, caring
culture based on mystical singing and
dream interpretation, who are invaded by
violent and exploitative 'yumens' (11). She
intended it, she says, partly as a protest
against American activity in Vietnam, and
based it on alleged data from the Senoi of
Malaya, a people whom she believes 'have
not had a war or a murder for several
hundred years'. Evidently she was as
ignorant of the assassination of Pat Noone,
as of the local ethnography.
The dominant theme of many of these
works rests on the comparison of imagined
or imaginary societies with our own, either
to show that utopia lies elsewhere, or that
our own society is as savage as that
traditional other. Sometimes we get the bad
report, sometimes they do. Occasionally,
the balance is less certain. The American
Lurie has a serious intent, to question the
moral basis of some kinds of participant
observation (9). Some sociologists join a
group of religious fanatics, called the Truth
Seekers, ostensibly as postulants, really as
'spies' in academic cloak. She examines the
effect on the team of such work, implying
that the assumption of the false roles
necessary to get inside such a group is
fundamentally dishonest and therefore
immoral. Unable as academics to maintain
their neutral stance 'about truth-seeking',
they find themselves trapped in a net of
their own weaving.
Another American novel, a fantasy
intended mainly to pillory inhumanity in
the West, has recently unexpectedly
boomeranged -- for it foreshadowed some
Nigerians' grim treatment of Alhaji Dikko
(20). Two anthropologists kidnap an Indian
from the forests of Brazil, drug him and
bring him secretly in a crate to New York
where he is kept half- doped for many days
by his 'keeper', with hypodermic needle
 always at the ready. They plan to use him in
an experimental comparison with civilized
Western city dwellers. He escapes and, to
their surprise, shows them that New York is
'a jungle' as savage as any other, but one to
which the Indian quickly adapts as
providing him with some freedom
preferable to the scientists' laboratory
tenement, especially after falling in love at
first sight with a young Spanish girl he
meets on the streets.
None of these novelists really use their
imaginative power in comparing East with
West, simple with civilized, 'them' with 'us'
to show the essential similarity of the
human predicament beneath the different
cloaks of culture. Only one comes near to
doing that, in my opinion, and she manages
long ago. Native artefacts found in the attic
of the house stimulate the girl's imagination
about different ways of living, in New
Guinea a century ago, in Oxford when her
aunts were young, and in her own life -- as
she grows up, meets a young anthropology
student from Africa, and other young
people of very different social backgrounds,
who join her as lodgers in her aunts' big,
rambling old house. It is a perceptive study
of ageing and of change, of growing up and
of growing old, and of the relationships
between people, both in different cultures
and different historical periods, all seen
through the candid gaze of a fourteen-year-
old. It is unsentimental, shrewdly observed,
both funny and sad. Of all the works I have
reviewed here, this one best gives the flavour
about the matter, and to what extent my
findings reflect my own age and
background.
Rosemary Firth
1. Sharp,M. 1940. TheStone of Chastity.
2. Pym,B. 1950. Some Tame Gazelle.
3. Pym,B. 1952. Excellent Women.
4. Pym,B. 1955. Less than Anger's.
5. Tracy,H. 1956. The Straight and Narrow.
6. Murdoch,I. 1961. A Severed Head.
7. Wallace,I. 1963. The Three Sirens.
8. Edelman,M. 1967. Shark Island.
9. Lurie,A. 1967. Imaginary Friends.
10. Cameron,I. 1972. Mountains at the Bottom oj

to handle anthropological material to of the anthropologist's vision, though the World.

compare different ways of living, without indirectly. 11. Le Guin,U. 1972. The Wordfor Worldis

exaggeration or distortion. Strangely I am saddened by the negative results of Forest.

enough, this is in a book written for young
people (12). Perhaps it is a mark of really
good books for children that the best of
them often appeal to adults also. Penelope
Lively's story is an imaginative mixture of
fantasy and reality. It concerns a young girl
living in Oxford, where she is brought up by
two elderly, well-educated but eccentric
maiden aunts, the daughters of an
anthropologist who worked in New Guinea
my search. I have deliberately excluded that
great classic, Return t o Laughter, which
Laura Bohannan wrote under another name
(E. Smith Bowen, 1954). In that book she
accurately recreates the exotic background
and recaptures the pleasures, difficulties
and anxieties of the fieldworker in what is
only nominally fictional form. It still seems
to me unique: I wish there were others. I
also wonder if my colleagues feel differently
., 1974. The House in Norham
12. Live1v.P.
Gardens.
13. Theroux,P. 1974. The Black House.
14. Dickinson,P. 1974. Poison Oracle.
15. Hampton,C. 1974. Savages. (Drama).
16. Halls,G. 1974. The Voice of the Crab.
17. David,D. 1974. Brides of Price.
18. Brain,R. 1977. Kolonial-Agent.
19. Pym,B. 1977. Quartet in Autumn.
20. Peters,A. 1978. The Savages.
21. Burgess,A. 1979. Earth& Powers.

I POT POURRI
A n occasionalseries contributed b y
Roy Willis

coming from an academic environment
where the clock seems perpetually set at five
minutes to midnight, the culture shock on
arrival at UC Santa Cruz is considerable.
' For here, in what is possibly the most
beautiful campus in the world, there is a
powerful sense of new beginnings: the talk
is of rapid expansion, of doubling the
student intake by the year 2004, if not by
2001.
On top of that is the surprising ferment
of socially-conscious student activism, an
atmosphere startlingly different from the
apathy and cynicism prevalent in Britain
and, so far as I have been able to discover,
elsewhere in North America. But in this
youngest offshoot of the University of
California hardly a day goes by without a
clutch of meetings protesting (the verb is
transitive in American) the nuclear arms
race, US military intervention in Central
America, or World Hunger. If there are
Reaganites on the Hill, as the pine-forested
university complex overlooking the Pacific
is generally called, they maintain a
prudently low profile.
However, and unfortunately for the
middle-aged visiting professor who, it may
as well be admitted, had nourished certain
wistful hopes, we are not back in the
sixties. Or at least not yet. Hedonism,
fantasy and ego-tripping are conspicuously
absent elements in this mini-cultural
configuration, dominated as it is by a rather
touching moral earnestness and heightened
sense of social responsibility. NO NUKES
IS GOOD NUKES and US MILITARY
OUT OF EL SALVADOR shout the
bumper stickers, while the somewhat
overpriced campus wholefood restaurant
(salad with or without sunflower seeds) without so much as smelling a joint; even
rather proclaims in an alcohol is consumed with noticeable
counter notice: This Business Opposes the decorum.
Siting of Cruise and Pershing Missiles in Such are the mores of a seemingly
Europe. Eventually the high moral tone
knds to become oppressive, at least to Your
emergent and, to be frank, rather boring
culture. 1 was informed that the ethos in
decadent correspondent, who restrained other campuses of the University of
himself with some difficulty from adding California is different from the
an irreverent 'e' the Santa Cruzan one. Berkeley, for instance,
the Poster advertising the Men's Rap Group was said to be associated with brilliant
on he was also scholarship and drugs, Davis with social
pleased that the name the lady optimism and high technology, while
teaching the course lesbianism in the UCLA and San Diego were something else
Studies Program was Grossman. again. If true, this local autonomy in
Personal images and behaviour mirror university cultures seems itself an
the neo-puritanical ethos at Santa Cruz. interesting social fact. The peculiarly Santa
Scantily dressed though the student body Cruz ideology of social and inter-personal
appears by British standards, that body is awareness might seem to be best
also surprisingly unerotic, presumably exemplified by the university's
because this micro- culture's suppression administrative practice of requiring detailed
of the anarchic and individualistic (odd to Narrative ~ ~ ~ as ~ are
l they ~ t iby ~ ~ ~
think that the late Gregory Bateson was a teachers on every student in place of the
member of the faculty) in favour former coldly abstract and starkly
of a ~ a r a d o x i c a limpersonal
l~ inter- competitive method of grading. Sadly, I
personal awareness. The attire of both sexes learned that the teaching staff have
is ostentatiously functional, and tries to be adopted a set of codewords
anything but fashionable. Similarly, student are ju~iciouslyinserted into the
and most professorial cars are carefully person-centred prose of the evaluations to
washed and unpolished, and proudly communicate to interested parties the
sport their idiosyncratic dents and corrupt old letter grades. Someone (Hegel?
scratches. Physiologically the men are Marx? Sartre?) once insisted that he could
generally lean while the women, more not be truly free until every other human
extreme than the males in this dimension at being on earth was liberated. hi^ noble
least*tend to be dominated by two polar sentiment would certainly go down well in
types: the skinny and the simply enormous. Santa Cruz.
Ever9 variety of sexual relationship is
theoretically acceptable, as long as it's
'serious'. Drug abuse appears to be
minimal, indeed a visiting academic may ROY Willis
well, as I did, go through his whole stint