CHAPTER 1

NEIL L. WHITEHEAD

ETHNOGRAPHY, KNOWLEDGE,TORTURE, AND SILENCE

The "Ethnographer's Magic" was the phrase used as a title byGeorge Stocking (1992) for a collection of essays that principallyexamined the work and influence of Franz Boas and BronislawMalinowski and anthropology's powerfully mythic qualities andpersistent romanticism, established precisely through the "incorporativeritual" and often obscure occult procedures of "fieldwork"(1992:13). The "magic" of the ethnographer then, as Stockingshows (1992:12–59), refers both to the way the experienceof fieldwork cannot be readily taught as a methodology and tothe way penetrating the culturally mysterious and occult is theguiding ambition of ethnographic activity. This founding myth ofanthropology has certainly become part of the popular culturalunderstanding of what fieldworkers do, and this volume has anumber of essays precisely examining how the military seeks tooperationalize that "magic" and use it to better understand thehuman terrain and cultural landscapes of those it would kill.

This chapter questions the basis of that "ethnographic magic,"unveiling the occult mysteries of "fieldwork" as rooted in a fardeeper and more troubling cultural tradition than that discussedby Stocking. It examines how the epistemological basis of ethnographicfieldwork is starkly revealed through its recruitment torecent military programs. In turn, this prompts questions as tohow ethnography, as part of social science, is rooted in a Westernview of truth and inquiry that is culturally validated through agonisticprocesses. For this reason, the convergence between ethnographyand torture is also explored, which entails a critical examination of themethodology of narration and translation in fieldwork itself, a better acknowledgmentof the persistent colonial role played by anthropologythrough its unsilencing of others, and a reevaluation of the resulting ethicalimperatives of the ethnographer's own subject position.

The "weaponization" of culture discussed in this volume and the waysethnographers engage with both sorcery and the burgeoning space of "virtualwar" necessarily provoke new questions as to the place of observationand participation in ethnographic practice. Equally, a pressing need is toexamine aspects of this relationship as part of the historical emergenceof anthropology as a distinct academic discipline and to set that processwithin the broader context of post-Enlightenment ideas of scientific epistemology.In particular, and because this a potentially vast and unwieldytopic, the focus here is on the nature of ethnographic practice.

The suggestion will be that certain ways of conceiving ethnography,specifically that of ethnography as an objective or neutral mode of "datacollection," represent an epistemological tradition that needs closer criticalexamination. Certainly, since its professional inception in the twentiethcentury, the colonial legacies of anthropology have been periodicallydiscussed before by ethnographers. In such discussions (Asad 1973; Boas1928; Bremen 1998; Dowie 2009; Fabian 1983; Herskovits 1938; Wolf 1982)varying degrees of unease as to the uses of anthropological knowledge anddata have been raised by many other anthropologists. Indeed, the "literaryturn" of the 1990s provoked by the analysis of such authors as GeorgeMarcus and Michael Fischer (1986) arguably led to a thorough reexaminationof the purposes and forms of ethnographic writing. So why returnto this topic now if it has already been repeatedly rehearsed within anthropology?First because the anthropological practice is engaged not justin the production of scholarly monographs but also in the production ofmore circumscribed and policy-driven forms of cultural knowledge in theform of "applied anthropology." However, as Melville Herskovits wrote ofapplied anthropology in 1938: "The uncritical tendency to see native cultureseverywhere forced out of existence by the overwhelming drive ofEuropean techniques; the feeling that these 'simpler' folk must inevitablyaccept the sanctions of their more efficient rulers as they do some of theoutward modes of Life of those under whose control they live; all thesereflect a type of ethnocentrism that should be absent from the scientificstudies of an anthropologist" (1938:32).

Second, this issue needs revisiting because Herskovits's critique of appliedanthropology remains very relevant, given the continuing expansionof such forms of ethnographic practice stimulated in large part bygovernmental and nongovernmental organization (NGO) enthusiasm for"empowering the local" as an appropriately liberal and humane developmentstrategy. Our ethnocentric values are still reflected in the continuingpolicies and practices not only of well-intentioned development agenciesbut also in military counterinsurgency programs that overtly seek to"weaponize culture" (González 2007).

In short, layered over the perennial issues of the ethical basis of ethnographicresearch as part of a still persistent colonial epistemology are thehighly topical issues of the...