As autumn term approaches and I try to finish up large chunks of summer reading and writing, I have been thinking a lot about clear, lucid prose. For some time, I have been irritated by the trend in anthropology to obfuscate and preen with words. Even some of the best analytical work I have read in the last decade is so loaded with gooey verbiage as to be worthless to anyone outside of the profession.
Not everyone in the profession agrees that this is a problem. I think it is.
Note well that I am not taking the approach that several colleagues in and beyond academia have taken—if the writing is not clear, they won't read it (one friend said that jargon-filled writing should be tossed into the dustbin of history). I agree with every bit of that sentiment except the not-reading implication. I want to read it all, even as much as it angers me to see a beautiful profession that used to be relevant—and read by everyone interested in the larger world—hijacked by a pack of academic poseurs.
I look at it a little differently from my friend. First, a few trips around the block of academic jargon teaches a reader how shallow most of the writing really is. Many of the writers have less to say than even they might imagine, and are often trying to cover up their shortcomings with verbiage. That it has never worked (it has been tried for centuries, in speech and prose) seems not to have occurred to them. Or maybe it does work—just long enough to be taken semi-seriously by advisers and hiring committees before their work is forgotten. If I sound more harsh than I usually do on Round and Square, it is because I think the situation is getting worse by the year. It's time for clear-thinking (and writing) anthropologists to save the profession.
I will have a good deal more to say about these matters in the coming months, since it is not going away for me as a topic. Any reader of Round and Square must know by now that my beef is not with theory and analysis (I love 'em); it is with bad writing. We in academia are becoming irrelevant in the wider cultures of discussion (from politics and travel to social analysis). This is deeply worrying for me. If academics don't wake up and learn to write to wider audiences, then (as is the case right now) generalists, journalists, and aficionados will dominate. Academics have a very bad habit (some say it outright and others imply it) of thinking that there is a complicated way to express complex ideas...and everything else is (I use the popular term) a case of dumbing it down.
Really? Are we sure about that? Isn't it possible to say something rich and complex...in beautiful, even elegant, writing?
I think so, but the larger argument is for another day. For now, I just want to provoke a few readers to think again about clarity. You see, when I teach introductory anthropology, I always use an old, classic ethnography called The Forest People. It has been in print since its publication in 1961. It is from a slightly earlier era of cultural anthropology, published a few years before the discipline took a number of significant turns—many of them enormously important, with a few others, such as bad writing, seemingly thrown in for good measure.
My first anthropology professor, Paul Riesman, always assigned The Forest People in Anthropology 10 at Carleton College. Even then, a few colleagues raised eyebrows when the elegant little narrative about the BaMbuti Pygmies of the Ituri Forest was mentioned. Today, colleagues scoff when I tell them I still assign it. I have my reasons, even beyond its great example of flowing, introspective prose. Younger anthropologists often just roll their eyes. Students love it (sometimes for what I think are the "wrong" reasons—they understand the prose without struggling—but that is another reason to assign it).
I quote from the middle of it here as an example (on the fiftieth anniversary of its publication) of a well-written ethnographic account that has led at least a few readers to deeper knowledge not only of the BaMbuti during a changing time in the late 1950s, but also of a way to blend narration and analysis that too many anthropologists have abandoned.
The Song of the Forest
Colin Turnbull
Not everyone in the profession agrees that this is a problem. I think it is.
Note well that I am not taking the approach that several colleagues in and beyond academia have taken—if the writing is not clear, they won't read it (one friend said that jargon-filled writing should be tossed into the dustbin of history). I agree with every bit of that sentiment except the not-reading implication. I want to read it all, even as much as it angers me to see a beautiful profession that used to be relevant—and read by everyone interested in the larger world—hijacked by a pack of academic poseurs.
I look at it a little differently from my friend. First, a few trips around the block of academic jargon teaches a reader how shallow most of the writing really is. Many of the writers have less to say than even they might imagine, and are often trying to cover up their shortcomings with verbiage. That it has never worked (it has been tried for centuries, in speech and prose) seems not to have occurred to them. Or maybe it does work—just long enough to be taken semi-seriously by advisers and hiring committees before their work is forgotten. If I sound more harsh than I usually do on Round and Square, it is because I think the situation is getting worse by the year. It's time for clear-thinking (and writing) anthropologists to save the profession.
I will have a good deal more to say about these matters in the coming months, since it is not going away for me as a topic. Any reader of Round and Square must know by now that my beef is not with theory and analysis (I love 'em); it is with bad writing. We in academia are becoming irrelevant in the wider cultures of discussion (from politics and travel to social analysis). This is deeply worrying for me. If academics don't wake up and learn to write to wider audiences, then (as is the case right now) generalists, journalists, and aficionados will dominate. Academics have a very bad habit (some say it outright and others imply it) of thinking that there is a complicated way to express complex ideas...and everything else is (I use the popular term) a case of dumbing it down.
Really? Are we sure about that? Isn't it possible to say something rich and complex...in beautiful, even elegant, writing?
I think so, but the larger argument is for another day. For now, I just want to provoke a few readers to think again about clarity. You see, when I teach introductory anthropology, I always use an old, classic ethnography called The Forest People. It has been in print since its publication in 1961. It is from a slightly earlier era of cultural anthropology, published a few years before the discipline took a number of significant turns—many of them enormously important, with a few others, such as bad writing, seemingly thrown in for good measure.
My first anthropology professor, Paul Riesman, always assigned The Forest People in Anthropology 10 at Carleton College. Even then, a few colleagues raised eyebrows when the elegant little narrative about the BaMbuti Pygmies of the Ituri Forest was mentioned. Today, colleagues scoff when I tell them I still assign it. I have my reasons, even beyond its great example of flowing, introspective prose. Younger anthropologists often just roll their eyes. Students love it (sometimes for what I think are the "wrong" reasons—they understand the prose without struggling—but that is another reason to assign it).
I quote from the middle of it here as an example (on the fiftieth anniversary of its publication) of a well-written ethnographic account that has led at least a few readers to deeper knowledge not only of the BaMbuti during a changing time in the late 1950s, but also of a way to blend narration and analysis that too many anthropologists have abandoned.
The Song of the Forest
Colin Turnbull
 |
| [b] Writing |
After about forty-five minutes we came to a stream that was larger than the others we had crossed, though it was only a few yards wide and very shallow. For the first time we slowed to a walk and stepped through the bubbling water, lifting our feet high so as not to splash. The forest was silent now, except for the evening chorus of crickets and frogs, and on the far side of the stream we halted while Ausu and Makubasi looked around and listened, to reassure themselves that we were alone.
I had no idea of how far we had come or in what direction, but I knew we had left the camp far behind. It was the first time I had known a group of Pygmies to be so silent. Normally, unless hunting, they are deliberately noisy, but now, just at the time that leopards would be prowling in search of food, they seemed unwilling to disturb the forest or the animals it concealed. Just the opposite, in fact. it was as if they were a part of the silence and the darkness of the forest itself and were fearful lest any sound might betray their presence to some person or thing not of the forest.
They stood there, quiet and still, and it struck me with a sudden shock that not one of them carried a spear or bow and arrow. As they peered into the dusk and cocked their heads first on this side then on that, satisfying themselves that we were really alone, it seemed that they felt themselves so much a part of the forest and of all the living things in it that they had no need to fear anything except that which was not of the forest. One of them said to me, later, "When we are the Children of the Forest, what need have we to be afraid of it? We are only afraid of that which is outside the forest."
We stood there, water from the stream still running down our legs, until they were satisfied that all was well. Then Makubasi nodded to Mdyadya and to another boy. They ran on ahead, and after a whispered discussion two others followed. The rest of us walked slowly on until we came to a small clearing nearby, the far side of which was only just visible as the last glimmer of daylight dwindled away into blackness. We stood there waiting, saying nothing. Ausu and Makubasi wandered about aimlessly, poking here and there from habit to see if there was any tasty fruit to be had for the picking, but it was too dark to see.
Just as I was about to ask where the others had gone they reappeared, announcing their presence with low whistles that sounded like the call of a night bird. They were in two pairs, each pair carrying between them, over their shoulders, a long slender object. Even at that moment I wondered if they would veer off into the complete blackness of the forest before I could see more closely, but they came on toward us. Madyadya was carrying the rear end of what proved to be a huge tube of some kind, fifteen feet long. He gestured proudly and said, "See, this is our molimo!" Then he turned and putting his mouth to the end of the trumpet, which it was, he blew a long, raucous raspberry. Everyone doubled with laughter, the first sound they had made since leaving camp.
I was slightly put out by this sacrilege and was about to blame it rather pompously on irreligious youth, when I saw something that upset me even more. I do not know exactly what I had expected, but I knew a little about molimo trumpets and that they were an object elaborately carved, decorated with patterns full of ritual significance and symbolism, something sacred, to be revered, the very sight or touch of which might be thought of as dangerous. I felt that I had a right, in the heart of the tropical rain forest, to expect something wonderful and exotic. But now I saw that the instrument which produced such a surprisingly rude sound, shattering the stillness as it shattered my illusions, was not made of bamboo or wood, and it certainly was not carved or decorated in any way. It was a length of metal drainpipe, neatly threaded at each end, though somewhat bent in the middle. The second trumpet was just the same, shining and sanitary, but only half the length.
Everyone was looking at me to see what my reactions would be. I asked, keeping my voice low, how it was that for the molimo, which was so sacred to them, they should use water piping stolen from roadside construction gangs, instead of using the traditional materials...
[1] Colin Turnbull, The Forest People (New York: Touchstone Books, 1968), 73-76.
Bibliography
Turnbull, Colin. The Forest People. New York: Touchstone Books, 1968.
Tomorrow
Displays of Authenticity—Ituri Forest Style
We'll discuss the matter of sacred objects and how we (anthropologists and other people) think about them. In short, we'll take the same material that Turnbull has written and look (as is writing encourages us to do) at our own assumptions about "authenticity."
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