On the Edges of Anthropology: Interviews

by James Clifford

Since the publication of Person and Maurice Leenhardt in the Melanesian World , James Clifford has become one of anthropology's most important interlocutors. A key figure in theory and criticism, he has written seminal essays on topics ranging from art and identity to museum studies and fieldwork. This collection of interviews captures Clifford in exchanges with his critics in Brazil, Hawaii, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Portugal, offering a set of provocative reflections on an intellectual career in transformation.

Genres: Anthropology

144 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2003

About the author

James Clifford is a historian and Professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Clifford and Hayden White were among the first faculty directly appointed to the History of Consciousness Ph.D. program in 1978, which was originally the only graduate department at UC-Santa Cruz. The History of Consciousness department continues to be an intellectual center for innovative interdisciplinary and critical scholarship in the U.S. and abroad, largely due to Clifford and White's influence, as well as the work of other prominent faculty who were hired in the 1980’s. Clifford served as Chair to this department from 2004-2007.

Clifford is the author of several widely cited and translated books, including The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature and Art (1988) and Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late 20th Century (1997), as well as the editor of Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, with George Marcus (1986). Clifford's work has sparked controversy and critical debate in a number of disciplines, such as literature, art history and visual studies, and especially in cultural anthropology, as his literary critiques of written ethnography greatly contributed to the discipline’s important self-critical period of the 1980's and early 1990's.

Clifford's dissertation research was conducted at Harvard University in History (1969-1977), and focused on anthropologist Maurice Leenhardt and Melanesia. However, because of his impact on the discipline of anthropology, Clifford is sometimes mistaken as an anthropologist with graduate training in cultural anthropology. Rather, Clifford's work in anthropology is usually critical and historical in nature, and does not often include fieldwork or extended research at a single field site. A geographical interest in Melanesia continues to influence Clifford's scholarship, and his work on issues related to indigeneity, as well as fields like globalization, museum studies, visual and performance studies, cultural studies, and translation, often as they relate to how the category of the indigenous is produced.

Reviews

[sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of conversations with the legendary James Clifford elucidating his work both as a historian and thinker on modern American anthropology and early French anthropological thought. His work on the "Writing Culture" conference in the 80's is brought to bear, as are interesting details on his biographical work "Person and Myth," on the French ethnologist Maurice Leenhardt. Published by the Prickly Paradigm Press, a publisher of fine little books. Clifford is a historian, like Daniel Lord Smails, truly engaged in the task of exploring the function of disciplinary boundaries, and this slim book communicates that engagement vividly.