The present volume is situated within the contexts of the Writing Culture debate, the Rhetoric Culture project, and the legacy of Stephen Tyler's work on language and representation. While Writing Culture (1986) alerted readers to the power of ethnographers over their field, Writing in the Field alerts readers to the power of the field over its ethnographers. Rather than reprise familiar debates about writing and representation, the individual chapters elucidate how anthropological fieldwork is a highly fraught, provisional, and incomplete practice enmeshed in the gaps between self and other. The editors' emphasis on the concepts of pathos, epiphany, and dissociation is developed through essays that are personal yet not merely subjective, for they draw on and contribute to deep traditions of thinking about culture and rhetoric.
"This fine collection of essays is a fitting tribute to the positive influence of Stephen Tyler, an original and influential anthropologist of protean gifts."
- E. Douglas Lewis, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne
Ivo Strecker is Professor Emeritus at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz.
Shauna LaTosky is a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale.
