M AT T I B U N Z L

Boas, Foucault, and the Native Anthropologist:

Notes toward a Neo-Boasian Anthropology

ABSTRACT This article proposes the possibility of a neo-Boasian anthropology conceived at the intersection of Foucauldian geneal-
ogy, Boasian historicism, and the epistemic rethinking of the disciplines Self/Other binary. Shifting from a perspective of posing the
ethnographic object as Other toward a Boasian conception of the past as the principal site of inquiry, the piece thus advocates an
anthropological project grounded in the history of the present. This conception, it is argued, can overcome several of the dilemmas
currently facing the discipline, the awkward status of native anthropology foremost among them. [Keywords: Boas, Foucault, native
anthropology, history of the present]

T O SPEAK WITH FRANZ BOAS, this article attempts a

triangulation of three concerns that have their unity
in the mind of its author: (1) the place of Foucaults work
thatalong with the colonially veiled constitution of cen-
ter and peripheryconstructs the archetypical fieldworker
as a Euro-American, white, middle-class male (Gupta and
in contemporary anthropology; (2) the affective desire for a Ferguson 1997:12, 16). Fieldwork thus becomes synony-
recuperation of a distinctly Boasian ethnology; and (3) the mous with a heroized journey into Otherness, the trope
dilemmas of the native ethnographer. I will tackle these that engendered and cemented Malinowskis mythopoetic
issues in reverse to arrive at a preliminary assessment of the charter of modern ethnography (Stocking 1992; cf. Clifford
possibility for a neo-Boasian anthropology, an approach 1988).
that would permit a Foucauldian perspective in place of As Gupta and Ferguson note, this normative construc-
the epistemological panopticism of classical ethnography. tion of anthropological fieldwork has been challenged most
At the core of this theoretical project stands a vision of an- effectively by those most threatened by it. Kath Weston, for
thropology as a history of the present, a mode of knowledge one, has eloquently written against the abject construction
production that represents a genuine alternative to what of the native anthropologist whose work is always one
has come to be seen as Malinowskis entrenched design of step removed from the real stuff and, therefore, divested
fieldwork as an encounter between ethnographic Self and of ethnographic authority (1997:164). Echoing Gupta and
native Other. Ferguson, she identifies the separation between native
and ethnographer, field and home, as the site of pro-
THE NATIVE ANTHROPOLOGIST AS SYMPTOM duction of the virtual anthropologistthe native and,
AND OTHER hence, lesser cousin of the real anthropologist (1997:174).
Over the last few years, anthropologists have turned to crit- In a similar vein, Kirin Narayan has questioned the imag-
ical evaluations of the field as the constitutive site of ined subject position of the native anthropologist, arguing
anthropological knowledge production. Akhil Gupta and that shifting identifications (of race, class, gender, etc.) ren-
James Ferguson have arguably been most trenchant in their der it inherently unstable (1993). Narayan calls for attention
critique, uncovering the hidden logic of what they, fol- to the hybridities that separate all anthropologists from an
lowing numerous other critics of anthropology, identify imagined native authenticity. As she puts it, The very na-
as the Malinowskian fieldwork tradition. This logic privi- ture of researching what to others is taken-for-granted real-
leges direct observation and links it to a radical separation ity creates an uneasy distance (1993:682).
between home and the field, which, in turn, creates Weston and Narayan have made seminal contributions
a hierarchy of purity of field sites. In this framework, to the critique of the concept of the native anthropol-
real fieldwork is conducted in a remote site, a notion ogist. What strikes me as peculiar, however, is that the

American Anthropologist, Vol. 106, Issue 3, pp. 435442, ISSN 0002-7294, online ISSN 1548-1433.
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436 American Anthropologist Vol. 106, No. 3 September 2004

program they enunciate fails to deconstruct the category discovery of phenomena that would otherwise remain
of native anthropology itself. Having diagnosed the in- invisible (1997:3637). Cultural differences between the
jurious effects of the ethnographer/native-dyad, Weston ethnographer and her people, it would seem, are still cru-
seems resigned to its reproduction. In this context, the na- cial to anthropological knowledge production, even in this
tive ethnographer can do little but function as a perpet- rethought and revitalized form of fieldwork.
ual reminder of the power relations that fuel the pro- James Clifford is even more insistent on the constitu-
cess of nativization, a service that comes at the price tive need for displacement and the consequent experience
of her continued abjection as a virtual anthropologist of alterity as foundational to the fieldwork process. Worried
(Weston 1997:179). Narayans scenario, for its part, is more that fieldwork might be dislodged, thereby leaving the dis-
upbeat, particularly since her argument about anthropol- cipline without a methodological core, he takes seriously
ogists inherent hybridity effectively evacuates the cate- the challenge posed by the virtual anthropologist. His rem-
gory of native anthropologist. Pragmatically, this seems to edy is to remind her that, she, too, often draws her ethno-
solve the problem: No anthropologist is ever really native graphic leverage from an experience with Otherness. In this
minimally because she operates as an anthropologist seek- vein, Clifford suggests that the title of native or indige-
ing to represent other people, more generally because she nous anthropologist might be retained to designate a per-
inhabits multiple identities that confound any essentializa- son whose research travel leads out and back from a home
tion of native status. Setting aside for the moment whether base, travel understood as a detour through a university or
such an argument would be accepted by the anthropologi- other site that provides analytic or comparative perspective
cal profession (and Westons analysis suggests that it might on the place of dwelling/research (Clifford 1997:206).
not), it leaves the concept of native anthropology un- In light of the explicit hierarchies anthropologys crit-
touched by constructing the practice of ethnography as its ics have diagnosed in the model of Malinowskian field-
always already operative Other. The idea of difference gov- work, such arguments do surprisingly little to offset the
erning nonnative anthropology is thus routinized as consti- foundational problems raised by the Self/Other distinction.
tutive of all fieldwork, a fact that reinscribes ethnography as Quite on the contrary, Cliffords conception, for example,
a site of encounter between a Self and an Other. In Narayans opens the door to a second-order logic, a hierarchy of dis-
framework, a Self can never be her own anthropologist. placement, in which the native anthropologists qualifica-
As Westons and Narayans contributions show, even tions would be measured by the educational distance at-
the most radical attempts to rethink the concept of na- tained from her place of dwelling/research. In this manner,
tive ethnography have fallen short of deconstructing the Clifford not only retains the figure of the native anthropol-
foundational Self/Other divide that organizes classical field- ogist, but he does so by reinscribing cultural alterity as the
work and produces the native anthropologist as a virtual privileged generator of ethnographic authority. Gupta and
member of the discipline. In the dominant tradition of post- Ferguson do something similar when they refigure field-
Malinowskian U.S. cultural anthropology, the epistemic di- work as a form of motivated and stylized dislocation
vision between ethnographic Self and native Other is simply (1997:37). While articulated as criticisms of Malinowskian
doxic, articulated with particular clarity by such luminar- fieldwork, such positions reaffirm foundational aspects of
ies of interpretive/symbolic anthropology as Clifford Geertz the paradigm they deplore, sustaining the ethnographic hi-
and Roy Wagner. For Geertz, person, time, and conduct in erarchy of Self and Other at the very moment they attempt
Bali are worth studying because from a Western perspec- to transcend it.
tive, they are odd enough to bring to light some general
relationships . . . that are hidden from us (1973:360361).
Wagner, for his part, is even more forceful, arguing that A PRESENTIST RECUPERATION OF BOASIAN
the production of all anthropological knowledge, which he FIELDWORK
glosses as the Invention of Culture, rests on experiences It remains a question whether the historical Malinowski
of radical Otherness that can render culture visible (Wagner fits his recent construction in the critical literature.
1981[1975]). But even if we accept that construction only in its ba-
What is more surprising is the degree to which such sic contours, it is clear that the critics have not gone far
sentiments are echoed by the critics of classical modes of enough. To offer a genuine alternative to what critics have
anthropology. To be sure, these scholars warn of the dan- come to think of as the Malinowskian field, we need to
gers of reifying Others and are thus wary of celebrating look for a conception of fieldwork that frames the ethno-
ethnographic fieldwork as an unproblematic encounter be- graphic encounter beyond the Self/Other dichotomy. We
tween Self and Other. In fact, much of Gupta and Fergusons might identify such a tradition by the absence of a native
critique is motivated by the fact that ideas about Oth- anthropologistthe abject symptom produced at the mar-
erness remain remarkably central to the fieldwork ritual gins of classical anthropology. And this is precisely what
(1997:16). But when they present their prescriptions for we can find in the Boasian tradition of fieldwork, in partic-
rethought and revitalized forms of fieldwork, they deem ular in the work of the early Boas, concerned with his-
self-conscious shifting of social and geographical loca- torical reconstruction and culture history. Ironically, Gupta
tion an extraordinarily valuable methodology in the and Ferguson note some of the qualities of that Boasian
 Bunzl Boas, Foucault, and the Native Anthropologist 437

tradition, praising its eclecticism and skepticism of en- was the totality of its multitudinous entities, each group
countering intact, observable primitive societies. But in needed to be studied in its individuality (Bunzl 1996).
their historical narrative, the Boasian approach is eclipsed In The Study of Geography, this tradition was
by the time American anthropology outgrew its salvage embodied in the cosmographical approach to phenom-
phase. And while they go on to praise Boass student Paul ena. Following Herder and Humboldt, Boas asserted that
Radin for ethnographic experimentation that is said to rep- cosmography . . . considers every phenomenon as worthy
resent an alternative to the Malinowskian paradigm, when of being studied for its own sake. Its mere existence enti-
it comes to defining a revitalized form of fieldwork, neither tles it to a full share of our attention; and the knowledge
Boas nor any of his students are mobilized as usable ances- of its existence and evolution in space and time fully satis-
tors (1997:2124, 3540). fies the student (1940[1887]:642). It is crucial to draw out
Yet the Boasian tradition offers more than experimental some of the implications of this remarkable statement that
methodologies; it offers a radically different understanding captures the essence of Boasian anthropology. For Boas, the
of the epistemology of fieldwork. This understanding does reason to explore cultural phenomena was not that they
not rest on a distinction between ethnographic Self and na- were Other but that they were there. This seems like a
tive Other but, instead, draws its analytic leverage from a rig- trivial distinction, but it has enormous epistemological ram-
orous historicity that refigures the question of Otherness in ifications. As an heir to the German counter-Enlightenment
terms of temporal rather than cultural alterity. Boass sem- tradition, Boas took the historical specificity of cultural and
inal paper, The Study of Geography (1940[1887]), is the ethnic phenomena for granted. But rather than focus on
best place to begin a discussion of the rationale of Boasian their inherent Otherness (in an act of reification), he sought
fieldwork. Boas published the piece shortly after his emigra- to understand them as the products of particular historical
tion to the United States at a time when he was making the developments. Ultimately, it was not their difference that
transition from geography to ethnology (Stocking 1968). made them interesting, but the fact that they contributed
While Boass famous opposition between the physical and to the plenitude of humanity. That fact entitled [them] to
cosmographical method was thus developed in the context a full share of our attention, which, in turn, meant the at-
of another discipline, it is generally accepted that the piece tempt to understand their history. As Boas put it, As the
represents the foundational statement of Boass anthropol- truth of every phenomenon causes us to study it, a true
ogy (Bunzl 1996; Stocking 1968, 1974). Boas included the history of its evolution alone can satisfy the investigators
early piece in the collection of his papers, Race, Language mind (1940[1887]:644).
and Culture (1940), because, he explained, it indicate[d] The degree to which the Other was not fetishized in the
the general attitude underlying [his] later work (1940:vi). early Boasian tradition becomes even clearer in Boass semi-
Most readings of The Study of Geography have con- nal lecture Anthropology, delivered at Columbia Univer-
centrated on the epistemological contrast between the aes- sity in 1907 and published in 1908. Echoing Herder and
thetic impulse, the desire to deduce laws from phenom- Humboldt, Boas defined the task of anthropology in terms
ena, and the affective impulse to investigate phenomena of two historical questions: Why are the tribes and nations
for their own sake. But implicit in this crucial distinc- of the world different, and how have the present differ-
tion was also an ethnographic research program that de- ences developed? (1974[1908]:269). For Boas, these ques-
rived from such German counter-Enlightenment figures as tions were not restricted to the worlds primitive peo-
Johann Gottfried Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt. In ples. Quite on the contrary, he argued that, in principle,
the late 18th and early 19th centuries, they had developed anthropology is concerned with the investigation of hu-
a Humanitatsideal (ideal of humanity) in opposition to such man types and human activities and thought the world
French Enlightenment figures as Voltaire. In contrast to over (1974[1908]:269); but in practice this was not fea-
the conception of a uniform development of civilization, sible, especially since other disciplinessuch as history,
they had argued for the uniqueness of values transmitted economics, and sociologyhave taken up anthropologi-
throughout history. The comparison of any given nation cal problems (1974[1908]:269). In this situation, the task
or age with the Enlightenment or any other external stan- that is actually assigned at the present time to the anthro-
dard was unacceptable. Each human group could be under- pologist is the investigation of the primitive tribes of the
stood only as a product of its particular history, propelled, world (1974[1908]:269). But Boas stressed that this lim-
in turn, by a unique Volksgeist (genius of a people). This itation of the field was more or less accidental, a func-
foundational emphasis on cultural difference as the prod- tion of the fact that other sciences occupied part of the
uct of historical specificity was articulated in a cosmopoli- ground before the development of modern anthropology
tan framework. The Humanitatsideal affirmed the common (1974[1908]:269).
bond of humanity but saw it expressed in diversity rather The implication of this position is, again, quite radi-
than similarity of human forms. In opposition to the French cal in that Boas defined anthropology in terms of human
Enlightenment, which based its universalism on the essen- history, conceived both in global and particular terms. If
tial sameness of human beings as rational actors, Herder anthropologists focused on nonliterate peoples, it was only
and Humboldt stressed the individual contribution of each because other disciplines were already concerned with the
cultural entity to humanity at large. And since humanity investigation of literate groups. These disciplines had the
438 American Anthropologist Vol. 106, No. 3 September 2004

advantage of textual material that allowed the reconstruc- In a Malinowskian framework, the production of
tion of culture history using the philological methods de- anthropological knowledge was a function of mere
veloped in 19th century Germany. In a radically universal- observation, as long as it occurred acrossand, thereby, re-
izing move, Boas sought to extend such philological work produceda cultural chasm between ethnographic Self and
to all humans, implicitly arguing that the domain of culture native Other. The two subject positions were constructed as
(conceived in a fairly traditional humanistic sense) was not irreducibly distinct through the very epistemological clar-
unique to literate groups. If other disciplines accounted for ity afforded the anthropologist in the ethnographic en-
the culture history of the civilized world, it was incum- counter. This classical conception of ethnography was pow-
bent on anthropology to do the same for the primitive erfully articulated in the methodological introduction of
part of humanity (Stocking 1992). Argonauts of the Western Pacific, easily the most widely read
However naive or problematic such a project may seem and influential primer on anthropological fieldwork and
from a contemporary perspective, Boass impulse in pur- the text most commonly used to define the Malinowskian
suing his research agenda was guided by an attempt to tradition. There, natives obey[ed] the forces and com-
overcome Otherness rather than cement it. Taking the his- mands of the tribal code but never comprehend[ed]
torical specificity of primitive peoples for granted, he them (1984[1922]:11). Only the anthropologist could dis-
was much less interested in documenting their strangeness cern their culture. The ethnographers magic Malinowski
than in showcasing their similarity, which, in a counter- evoked was thus a function of panopticism that revealed
Enlightenment framework, he viewed in terms of their cultural specificity through the prolonged observation of
specific contributions to the plenitude of humanity. These difference (1984[1922]:6). Malinowski was sincere in his
contributions could be located in the primitive seeds optimism that the production of ethnographic knowledge
of humanistic culturemythology, folklore, and language would raise understanding for the native Other. Viewed in
foremost among them (Stocking 1968). historical perspective, his work arguably did just that; but
It was in this context that Boass fieldwork consisted it came at the price of defining and fixing the ethnographic
largely of the collection of texts. He obtained them from object as very distant and foreign to us (1984[1922]:25).
individual informants, treating them as expressions of the This conception invariably generated the native an-
genius of a people. Whether they were myths, folk tales, thropologist as an abject figure of the Malinowskian field.
or other narratives, Boas saw these texts as a body of pri- In the theory of Malinowskis original formulation, the no-
mary materials that would allow the treatment of primi- tion of native anthropology was simply a contradiction
tive peoples with the methods of philological scholarship. in terms. If natives obeyed the tribal code without compre-
Boas stated this logic explicitly, commenting in a letter hending it, they were inherently excluded from the subject
of 1905 that no one would advocate the study of . . . the position of ethnographer. In suspension of his own theoret-
Turks or the Russians without a thorough knowledge of ical pronouncements, Malinowski actually trained a num-
their languages and of the literary documents in these lan- ber of native anthropologists. But in the context of a soon-
guages (1974[1905a]:122). Given that in the case of Amer- to-be hegemonic paradigm, suspicion remained about the
ican Indians . . . no such literary material [was] available for legitimacy of knowledge produced at the point in which
study, Boas thought it tantamount to make such mate- native and ethnographer meet. In the absence of cultural
rial accessible, . . . letting this kind of work take precedence alterity as the building block of anthropological knowledge
over practically everything else (1974[1905a]:122123; cf. production, the native ethnographer was rendered as the
Stocking 1974, 1992). virtual echo of Malinowskis constitutive foreclosure. Na-
Boass ethnographic style may have resulted in the tive ethnography could never be as real as real anthro-
fetishization of texts, collected with the naive idea that their pology, because it had no epistemological recourse to its
subsequent philological treatment would result in recon- foundational difference. Todays virtual anthropologists
structions of the culture histories of primitive peoples. But continue to bear the originary burden.
in line with his general counter-Enlightenment orientation, In Boass fieldwork, a constitutive epistemological sep-
it never resulted in the fetishization of native Otherness. aration between ethnographer and native was absent. To
Boas took the particularity of his informants for granted. be sure, Boas exerted various forms of power over his infor-
If he was interested in them it was not because they were mants. But this power was never figured in terms of epis-
Other, but because they were carriers of cultural knowledge temological privilege. From Boass perspective, neither an-
he hoped to preserve in the context of colonial onslaught. thropologist nor informant had immediate access to the
To put it differently, Boas drew no particular leverage from history he hoped to reconstruct. In this situation, anthro-
the different subjectivities of anthropologist and infor- pologist and informant were united in a common epistemic
mant. The former was not mobilized to produce objective position vis-`a-vis the real Other of Boasian anthropology.
knowledge through the panoptic surveillance of the latter. That Other, ultimately, was the history that had generated
In any case, the ethnographic knowledge Boas was inter- the present condition, a history that eluded immediate de-
ested in (i.e., history) was never so transparent as to afford scription due to the absence of written records.
either anthropologist or informant ready access to the issues In practice, this meant that Boas was just as happy if
in question. Native Americans generated ethnographic data themselves.
 Bunzl Boas, Foucault, and the Native Anthropologist 439

In fact, as the important research by Judith Berman has vided his students. That training would allow ethnogra-
shown, Boas was always eager to recruit literate informants phers to grasp languages and texts in a purely analytic
who would produce texts on their own, thereby adding to fashion, that is, without recourse to their own grammat-
the corpus of recorded Native American culture (Berman ical and conceptual categories (Boas 1974[1905b]:178; cf.
1996). While Bermans careful reconstruction of Boass re- Stocking 1992).
lationship with George Hunt reveals the complex inequali- While outsiders needed to overcome the problem of al-
ties that structured their association of 45 years, she notes ternating sounds, insiders were subject to epistemological
Boass trust in the ethnographic authority of Hunts texts. limitations as well. Central to Boass position in this regard
These texts, in fact, formed the basis of much of Boass pub- was the concept of secondary explanation, the ratio-
lications on the Kwakiutl; and while the respective roles of nalizations of customary behavior whose origins were lost
Boas and Hunt were not always clear from the published in tradition, but that were highly charged with emotional
product, Boas saw himself as rendering his informants cul- value (Stocking 1974:6). Boas continuously emphasized
turally authentic voice. If anything, Boas thought Hunt to the presence of secondary explanations among all human
be in an advantageous ethnographic position because he, at groups, a situation that rendered an insiders information
least, had some tacit knowledge of the culture history under regarding the history of any given text or custom inher-
question. ently untrustworthy. In light of the larger Boasian project of
Hunts lack of formal training never rendered him a reconstructing the histories of present conditions, anthro-
full-fledged anthropologist. But there was at least one Na- pologists, be they insiders or outsiders, thus had to reach
tive American who attained this status by way of formal beyond secondary explanations in order to discern true
training under Boas. William Jones, partFox Indian and history.
fluent in the language, received his Ph.D. at Columbia Uni- Insiders and outsiders were thus differentially posi-
versity in 1904, undertaking research on the Fox and other tioned at the onset of the ethnographic project. What is cen-
Native American groups prior to his premature death in tral in the present context, however, is that Boasian ethnog-
1909 (Berman 1996:225). And insider status did not prevent raphy not only did not rest on that distinction but also was
Robert Lowie, perhaps the most faithful early Boasian, from designed to efface it. Guarding against alternating sounds,
publishing two authoritative monographs on the culture outsiders would produce the same ethnographic data as in-
he considered his own (cf. Stocking 1974). His books The siders; at the same time, the critical awareness of secondary
German People: A Social Portrait to 1914 (1945) and Toward explanations would guide insiders (and the anthropologists
Understanding Germany (1954) are quintessentially Boasian who derived their information from them) toward the ac-
projects seeking to disentangle the domains of language, tual histories of contemporary ethnic phenomena. Concep-
race, and culture without any apparent anxiety about the tually, this meant that insiders and outsiders would generate
authors proximity to his object of study. the same kind of data and attempt the same kinds of histor-
It would be possible to rehearse additional examples, ical reconstructions. To return to the example of Lowie for
from Ella Deloria to Zora Neale Hurston, but they would a moment, this meant that from his Boasian perspective,
merely underscore what follows from the basic epistemo- there was no qualitative difference between his work on
logical premise of Boasian ethnography. In contrast to Native Americans and Germans. Whether he occupied the
the Malinowskian variant that came to be hegemonic in subject position of insider or outsider in regard to the cul-
the discipline, Boasian anthropology did not produce na- ture under study did not affect his epistemological stance.
tive anthropology as the virtual Other of real anthro- In both cases, he sought to recuperate a history that was
pology. More accurately, perhaps, it could be said that obscured by secondary explanations and, therefore, inac-
Boasian anthropology did not produce the native anthro- cessible to the immediate grasp of insider and outsider.
pologist at all. As Berman puts it, united in a common
project, professional anthropologist and native field-
worker were not mutually exclusive categories and the NEO-BOASIAN ANTHROPOLOGY AS FOUCAULDIAN
men and women who were [Boass] students, proteges, and GENEALOGY
correspondents combined these roles in various ways Where does this leave us in terms of the possibility for a
(Berman 1996:221). neo-Boasian anthropology? Much like its namesake, such
This is not to say that Boas was oblivious to the different an approach would be characterized less by a strict set of
locations of insider and outsider ethnographers. Much methodological presuppositions than a basic orientation.
of Boass work was, in fact, concerned with such problems as Central to that orientation is the Boasian understanding
alternating sounds, the culturally conditioned misunder- of anthropology as the history of the present. As I have ar-
standings that occurred in the attempt to apperceive un- gued, only this Boasian move can overcome a Malinowskian
known sounds by the means of the sounds of [ones] own fetishization of cultural alterity. In place of the generative
language (Boas 1974[1889]:76; cf. Stocking 1968). While opposition between ethnographic Self and native Other,
this problem rendered an outsiders recording of Native a neo-Boasian anthropology would thus posit a tempo-
American texts exceedingly difficult, Boas thought that it ral dimension of difference as the focal point of analy-
could be overcome through the kind of training he pro- sis. In doing so, it would identify a hidden history as the
440 American Anthropologist Vol. 106, No. 3 September 2004

principal object of anthropological investigation, thereby article, their systems of thought converge in crucial ways.
uniting insiders and outsiders in a common epistemic The projects of the early Boas and the late Foucault cen-
position vis-`a-vis the ethnographic object. Anthropological tered on the history of the present. Much like Boas, Fou-
knowledge would thus not emerge as a function of their cault developed this approach to interrogate and overcome
reified difference but on the grounds of their analogous the fetishization of difference. In place of naturalizing the
location. homosexual as a distinct species, to take his most famous
It should be clear by now that the enunciation of a example, Foucault sought to account for the historical con-
neo-Boasian anthropology is not an attempt to legitimize dition of his emergence (Foucault 1978). This approach
or privilege native anthropology. Quite on the contrary, was inherently nonpanoptic in that it refused to draw an-
it seeks to deconstruct the very category through recourse alytic leverage from the reified distinction of sexual ori-
to a critical genealogy that identifies it as a symptom of entation, accounting instead for its originary condition of
a hegemonic fieldwork tradition. That tradition not only possibility. In disrupting a regime of power that abjected
reproduces itself through the reification of cultural differ- certain bodies in terms of their reified subject positions,
ence but also polices its boundaries by rejecting as virtual Foucault was thus engaged in a project of epistemologi-
anthropologists those whose difference is in doubt. cal democratization that directly paralleled the Boasian at-
Here again, it is important to note that such a stance in tempt to efface the constitutive Otherness of the contem-
no way implies the denial of the existence and paramount porary primitive. Both Foucault and Boas realized that
importance of cultural difference. What it seeks to suspend, this could only be achieved if such Others as homosexu-
however, is the performative naturalization of cultural dif- als and primitives ceased to be produced as reified sites
ference as the constitutive element of ethnographic field- of difference, a stance that necessitated the imagination of
work. To do so, cultural difference needs to be dislodged discursive locations beyond the hegemonic field of power.
from its position as the enabling principle of ethnography Being constructed and interpellated to speak as a homo-
and turned into the very phenomenon in need of histori- sexual or native always already reproduced the binary
cal explanation. Boas phrased the anthropological project distinction of originary abjection. Only by suspending the
in just these terms when he noted that the disciplines task discursive reproduction of such distinctions as heterosex-
was to account for why the tribes and nations of the world ual/homosexual and ethnographic Self/native Other was it
[were] different and how these present differences devel- possible to escape the reification of difference whose inter-
oped (1974[1908]:269). rogation was the historical object of analysis.
In theory, Boasian anthropologists may have adhered In the hegemonic context of the Malinowskian
to this entirely contemporary antifoundational project; in paradigm, it has been difficult to mobilize a Foucauldian
practice, however, they often tended to naturalize con- framework as a constitutive aspect of ethnography. This
temporary differences through recourse to such transhis- should not be surprising given how uncomfortably Fou-
torical notions as Volksgeist and culture pattern, an ap- caults genealogical analysis of subjection as the product
proach characteristic of the influential second generation of of panoptic surveillance maps onto the foundational dis-
Boasians (cf. Benedict 1934). Contrary to a commonly held tinction between ethnographic Self and native Other (cf.
assumption, Boasian anthropologists working in this mode Rosaldo 1986). After all, in a framework designed to scruti-
never reified cultural boundaries as impermeable divides (as nize the production of knowledge as a form of generative
Bashkow notes, this issue); but some of them did come to power, Malinowskian fieldwork figures as a quintessential
regard them as given rather than made. While cultural al- site of constitutive Othering. Foucault, of course, sought
terity never figured as the enabling condition of Boasian to put this very process of reification under analytic relief
fieldwork, its reality thus often remained unexamined; it by unmasking its originary fiction. And it is for precisely
is at this point that the contours of a neo-Boasian anthro- that reason that Foucauldian genealogy cannot easily be
pology come into view. In regard to Boass original ques- incorporated into an ethnographic project enabled by the
tions on the origins and histories of cultural differences, a operative reification of cultural alterity.
neo-Boasian approach would be wary of taking recourse to Foucault does of course have his followers in anthropol-
a transhistorical notion of culture. In its place, the reality ogy. But it is symptomatic that the anthropologists whose
of cultural boundaries would emerge as the object of ana- work follows that of Foucault most closely have shied away
lytic scrutiny, requiring rigorous historicization in place of from the panoptic site of the Malinowskian field (Horn
ethnographic naturalization. Rather than finding cultural 1994; Rabinow 1989). In so doing, they have tended to
differences, a neo-Boasian anthropology would thus follow frame their projects away from immediate ethnographic en-
Boas in turning our attention to their historical production counters, producing genealogies that account for the his-
and ethnographic reproduction. torical conditions of the present while not focusing on
In rendering the Boasian project as an antifoundational the present condition itself. This mode of analysis repro-
history of present difference, an ally emerges in a surpris- duces the ethnographic blind spot of Foucauldian geneal-
ingly kindred analytic systemFoucauldian genealogy. The ogy, which is conceived as a history of such present phe-
joint invocation of Boas and Foucault may seem counter- nomena as the homosexual but finds its realization in
intuitive, but in regard to the theoretical concerns of this the account of his historical invention. What gets lost in
 Bunzl Boas, Foucault, and the Native Anthropologist 441

the processand the introductory volume of Foucaults The Any history disruptive of transhistorical essentiali-
History of Sexuality is the paradigmatic exampleis a system- zationthat is, any good Foucauldian historyfulfills the
atic investigation of the actual conditions of homosexual- theoretical precepts outlined in this article. Dealing with
ity in the present. There is every reason for such an ethno- the epistemological divides between past and present, more-
graphic investigation to take place, however, provided that over, rarely constructs historians as too close to their sub-
its operative principles accord with the genealogical project ject of inquiry (a pejorative category of native historian
at large. does not exist). The vision outlined here ultimately oper-
It is at this point that a neo-Boasian anthropology ates in analogy. Retaining anthropologys empirical focus
might emerge as the much-needed ethnographic dimen- on the present, it imagines scholars whose work produces
sion of a Foucauldian project. The Boasian framework shares neither native nor nonnative history but simply historyin
Foucaults constitutive goal of suspending the reification of this case the history of a particular present.
difference through its historicization. In dealing with the The recuperation of a Boasian paradigm for the present
fiction of difference, Foucault focuses his attention on the purposes is in some ways strategic. While the argument for
moment of its historical invention. In contrast, and as an in- anthropologys reimagination as a history of the present
herently ethnographic project, a neo-Boasian anthropology could be ventured from a purely Foucauldian position, the
would turn its analytic gaze much more decisively on the neo-Boasian approach sketched in this article promises a
order of difference in the present. In this sense, the present new anthropology deeply rooted in one of the disciplines
would never appear as a transparent entity, but as the very originary traditions. That tradition conceptualized anthro-
site of a critical investigation into ongoing processes of pologys task as a history of the present: a Foucauldian de-
historical reproduction. The seeming reality of difference sign avant la lettre that not only transcends the reified di-
would thus function not as the starting point but as the chotomy of ethnographic Self and native Other but also
explanatory telos of anthropological inquiry (Bunzl 2004). turns our attention to the historical processes that origi-
Central to such a move from historical to ethnographic nate and sustain such distinctions in the first place. The fact
genealogy would be the Boasian concept of secondary ex- that this tradition also identifies the concept of secondary
planation. Supplementing a Foucauldian account of the explanation as the phenomenon that continuously masks
homosexuals historical inventionto return to the pre- the production and reproduction of cultural difference only
vious examplea neo-Boasian anthropology would chart heightens its relevance for the present purposes. Ultimately,
the figures social and discursive reproduction as an ongo- this article envisions cultural anthropology as the historical
ing act of cultural mystification. Reaching beyond the orig- ethnography of secondary explanations. Rooted in various
inary moment of speciation, the reality of homosexual genealogical pasts but operative in and constitutive of our
difference and culture would thus become intelligible as the contemporary lifeworlds, it is their histories that account
function of secondary explanations, the historically specific for our present. Only a neo-Boasian anthropology can re-
fictions that have been articulated through and around the construct the history of that present beyond the difference
homosexual. between ethnographic Self and native Other and, in so do-
Such a neo-Boasian approach would neither demand ing, allow the discipline to surmount one of its most persis-
that the experiences of those constructed as homosexual tent dilemmas.
be discounted, nor would it suggest the dismissal of the
discourses circulating around them. On the contrary, those M ATTI B UNZL Department of Anthropology, University of
would be the very phenomena in need of investigation, re- Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801
vealing, as they do, the processes of secondary explanation
that reproduce the ethnographic reality of homosexual
Otherness. As a history of the present, a neo-Boasian an- NOTES
thropology emerges in this fashion as a genealogy of sec- Acknowledgments. Initial versions of this article were presented at
ondary explanation, charting the ethnographic reality of the 1999 Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Asso-
ciation in Chicago and to the Sociocultural Anthropology Work-
cultural alterity without recourse to its performative reifi- shop at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. On these
cation. In practice, much contemporary ethnography ac- and other occasions, I received helpful comments and encour-
tually accords with these principles in broad terms. After agement from Nancy Abelmann, Ira Bashkow, James Boon, David
Dinwoodie, Brenda Farnell, Alma Gottlieb, Richard Handler, Bill
all, the disruption of naturalized differences has become a Kelleher, Herb Lewis, Andy Orta, Lars Rodseth, Daniel Rosenblatt,
central aspect of anthropologys conceptual work. But while Dan Segal, Michael Silverstein, George Stocking, Adam Sutcliffe,
the avoidance of Othering has become a veritable clarion David Sutton, and Billy Vaughn.
call as the discipline has abandoned such traditional dis-
tinctions as primitive/civilized, that most foundational
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