Category:Crisis of Representation

Moment of crisis in anthropology in the early and mid 1980s that led to:

Reflexivity: Understanding that the observer, and the observer’s theoretical language, is part of the frame being observed.

New forms of writing: Experimentation with ethnographic form to make it less objectivist.

Studying up and studying home: Moving away from the classic anthropological object of the foreign primitive, the indigenous or the oppressed minority, anthropologists begin studying their own society and people with power.

New forms of theory: Instead of the classic divisions between Hermeneutics, Marxism and Structuralism, new forms of meta-theory emerge (or theory about theory) which make anthropology a bit less accessible, and a bit harder to understand.