The Partial Truths of Anthropolgy

James Clifford is Post-modern Anthropologist. Post-Modern anthropologists are mainly focused on meaning, language and power and they reject universal theories. Post-modern anthropology focuses on three major points: there is no unbiased knowledge, power is implicated in knowledge, and culture is a type of performance. Post-modern anthropological theory builds on the theory from symbolic and interpretive anthropology; Clifford is influenced by Geertz, a symbolic anthropologist.

Clifford’s article “Partial truths” focuses on a critique of ethnographies. He argues that ethnographies, to date, are not objective. He believes that ethnographies should be considered a type of literature and a form of art; he sees ethnographies as a fusion of literary theory and ethnography. Ethnographies are “situated between powerful systems of meaning” (424). Ethnographies are inherently subjective because they are interpretations of a culture by an anthropologist; therefore, they should not be considered scientific or objective. Ethnographies are not objective because the anthropologist is using their own knowledge of western culture in order to evaluate the culture.

Clifford discusses the differences in previous ethnographies and anthropology to post-modern ethnographies and anthropology. Previously, ethnographies clearly defined “the others”; now, ethnographies views itself as “the other” in comparison to the culture.  This is due to the construction of “every version of an ‘other’ wherever found, is also the construction of a self” (437). This statement by Clifford indicates that every ethnography written, no matter how objective the anthropologist attempts to be, is more a representation of the anthropologist than the culture they are studying. His critique of ethnographies leads up to his main point, how are cultural accounts evaluated as true? When studying in cultures, there is no way to know an all-encompassing truth. All ethnographies cannot begin to approach the Truth of the culture.

Clifford may come off as a pessimist for expressing the belief that there is no way to fully understand the Truth of a culture. However, by acknowledging the subjective nature of ethnographies, anthropologists can make their work more realistic. Though Clifford comes off as pessamistic other anthropologists have picked up where he left off and given multiple ways to improve ethnographies. All knowledge of another culture is biased by the anthropologist’s culture and background, so in order to change the way ethnographies are composed anthropologists can no longer present their work as whole or true. They should focus on the fragmented nature of the fieldwork, instead of presenting their work as a complete study of the culture. They must also explain their field work and the reasons why they completed the work they did. By accomplishing some of these changes, Clifford has helped to make anthropology more aware of its subjective nature.