Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Culture and Truth argues for a new approach to thinking and writing about culture. Exposing the inadequacies of old conceptions of static, monolithic cultures, and of detached, objective observers, Renato Rosaldo argues that new ethnographic writing must come to terms with the dynamic nature of social reality - with history, spontaneity, and human emotions. To move forward, anthropologists and other observers of culture must describe human lives in their rich variety, as ever-changing, mysterious and unpredictable rather than rigid and fixed. In remaking social analysis, their work must therefore acknowledge and celebrate diversity, narrative, emotion, and the unavoidability of subjectivity. Rosaldo's vision of social analysis concentrates on borders - the lines along which different groups work and live with divergent understandings. Drawing upon his own background as a Chicano as well as upon the works of three Chicano writers, Rosaldo claims that cultures by their very nature are heterogenous and always working in the realm of borders.

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Library Journal Review

This work introduces readers to an array of contemporary anthropological theories and the debates on the validity of ``classical'' ethnographies, based presumably on detached observation. Using his own personal experience of grief as a vehicle to understand the intensity of Ilongot sentiments (particularly about headhunting), Rosaldo argues that most ethnographies have eliminated personal emotions and thus distorted and misinterpreted not only descriptions but also the key to analytical and explanatory modes. As a ``positioned subject,'' the ethnographer brings his or her unique ``angle of vision'' into the field, as do the ethnographer's informants. The ``translation of cultures'' is a complex, fluid process between ``ethnographers and natives.'' Written in a manner both accessible and compelling, this will be of interest to anthropologists as well as to informed nonspecialists; a wonderful addition to the growing body of critical anthropological literature.-- Winifred Lambrecht, Brown Univ. , Providence, R.I. correction: Diane Tong's Gypsy Folk tales, reviewed in LJ 4/15/89, costs $19.95, not $21.95, as the review stated. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

This lucid critique of cultural anthropology in its modern setting is both generous to its target and firm in its resolve. The book rests on a theme of anger that cries out for understanding, ranging from the anger of the bereaved to that of the socially deprived. Rosaldo, a Chicano scholar whose wife (and colleague) died in a fieldwork accident, draws on both kinds of experienced loss to provide potent metonyms of global hurt, inequality, and discrimination. (The book's heavily American focus in anthropology may strike some as an ironic evocation of what Rosaldo calls "imperialist nostalgia.") Anthropology's complicity in suppressing difference and emotion, argues Rosaldo, privileges hegemonic cultural normativity over experience, the "view from afar" over engagement. Wisely, however, Rosaldo disavows the total rejection of older work in favor of plural "repositionings," and skillfully shows us how to do this with an ethnoscience example that succeeds precisely because it is so improbable. This exemplary essay in cultural criticism, by evading cheap faddism as well as fashionable antifaddism, inspires thoughtful commitment and deserves a wide readership. Its breathtaking elegance never submerges a truly anthropological sensitivity to detail. Recommended for general readers and advanced students. -M. Herzfeld, Indiana University--Bloomington