Renato Rosaldo
(1941-Present, United States)
Renato Rosaldo is one of the Postmodern Anthropologists, who points out problems of conventional anthropological analysis and suggests different approaches. His work, Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage includes several important points of Postmodernism. Here is the summary of his essay:
The Ilongot tribe in the Philippines used to have a custom of killing a victim when a loved one died. Although the Ilongot no longer practice this old tradition, Rosaldo researched the custom during his fieldwork in the tribe. He asked older Ilongot men why they cut off human heads when they mourned the death of their loved ones. Their answer was simple: their rage, which was born of grief, impelled them to kill other people. Rosaldo had a hard time understanding this head-hunting custom. At first, he tried to explain the tradition by using an exchange theory, a classic anthropological model of population control. However, his explanation was absolutely unintelligible to the Ilongot’s point of view. Only after his wife’s accidental death in the field, did Ronado finally understood why the Ilngot men took heads for their loved ones. His unbearable sorrow led him to see what drove the Ilongot. At the same time, he realized why he previously misunderstand the Ilongot head-hunting custom: he attempted to apply a Western scientific model to the tribe, even though they did not share the same concepts.
Rosaldo’s work above includes the following points which are considered Postmodern approaches. First, rather than writing a conventional anthropological report, Rosaldo focuses on the process of doing fieldwork. He describes his personal experiences that lead him to understand Ilongot head-hunting. The Postmodernists value the process of understanding another culture and often write about their fieldwork experiences. This reflexivity includes the analysis of their own cultures, which is necessary to understand other cultures. Therefore, the Postmodernists see their fieldwork as the opportunity to reflect upon and analyze their own cultures as well as to analyze other cultures.
Secondly, the Postmodernists do not assume there are absolutely objective ways of analyses. When Rosaldo tried to apply the classic exchange theory to the Ilongot head-hunting, he realized this model was invalid under the local contexts of the Ilongot. Even though the theory explains observed behaviors, Rosaldo did not see it as absolute because its ideas were totally incomprehensible to the Ilongot themselves. Social scientists usually give special credibility to certain types of explanations and dismiss others in order to justify their theoretical positions. Reacting against this general trend, the Postmodernists argue that Western social science has favored a theoretical model used in physical sciences. This preference has led anthropologists to forcefully apply “objective” explanations to non-Western societies. In other words, the Postmodernists claim that anthropologists should consider local contexts of their fields and give legitimacy to explanation by the people.
Thirdly, the Postmodernists break the distinction between anthropologists and those who are observed by the anthropologists in fieldwork. In conventional situations, anthropologists’ interpretations have priority over the views of the observed. Rosaldo did not count on this kind of authority and left room for other interpretations by the Ilongot themselves. When anthropologists do not assume this authority, they are simply individuals who are trying to know certain things about another culture.
Source:
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McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.