Perhaps the following will be of interest to those following the thread on
interpretation and narrative. ut
Geertz's account of narrative representations and "thick descriptions" in
his essay The Interpretation of Cultures does assume that the anthropologist
can record like a mirror. He says, though, that cultural analysis is always
incomplete because the semiotic interior--which we can narrate and analyze
by viewing cultural life as symbolic activity--is layered like the onion.
He uses an Indian creation myth to punctuate this view: the creation is an
elephant standing on the back of a turtle, which stands on a turtle, which
stands on a turtle. . . turtles, all the way down.
Fifteen or so years later appeared Marcus and Fisher's book ANTHROPOLOGY AS
CULTURAL CRITIQUE which openly engages the issue of perspectivism and what
they call the "crisis of representation" in the social sciences. This book
shook up the project in anthropology that cultural analysis could (or
should) try to appeal to a positivist "validity".
There is likely nothing new to anyone in these books, but they are useful as
keen articulations of these issues of representation and perspectivism in
qualitative analysis.
Scott Oates
3700 LNCO
University Writing Program
University of Utah 84112
801-581-7090