These seminal essays place ethnography at the intersection of interpretive anthropology, cultural studies, social history, travel writing, discourse theory, and textual criticism. They grapple with issues of power and poetics in contemporary situations of globalization, post-coloniality, and post-modernity. Since its publication in 1986, Writing Culture has been a source of generative controversy and innovation in anthropology. It continues to inspire scholars and activists across the humanities, social sciences, and arts who are concerned with experimentation and ethics in cultural analysis.

This anniversary edition is augmented with a new foreword by Kim Fortun, Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, exploring the legacies of Writing Culture in the twenty-first century.

CONTENTS:

Foreword to the Twenty-fifth
Anniversary Edition
Preface

JAMES CLIFFORD
Introduction: Partial Truths

MARY LOUISE PRATT
Fieldwork in Common Places

VINCENT CRAPANZANO
Hermes' Dilemma: The Masking of
Subversion in Ethnographic Description

REN ATO ROSALDO
From the Door of His Tent:
The Fieldworker and the Inquisitor

JAMES CLIFFORD
On Ethnographic Allegory

STEPHEN A. TYLER
Post-Modern Ethnography:
From Document of the Occult
to Occult Document

TALAL ASAD
The Concept of Cultural Translation
in British Social Anthropology

GEORGE E. MARCUS
Contemporary Problems of Ethnography
in the Modern World System

MICHAEL M. J. FISCHER
Ethnicity and the Post-Modern Arts
of Memory

PAUL RABINOW
Representations Are Social Facts:
Modernity and Post-Modernity in
Anthropology

GEORGE E. MARCUS
Afterword: Ethnographic Writing and
Anthropological Careers

Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index

EDITORS:

James Clifford is Professor, History of Consciousness Department, at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

George E. Marcus is Chancellor's Professor, Department of Anthropology, at the University of California, Irvine.