BLURRING THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN LITERATURE AND

ANTHROPOLOGY. A BRITISH PERSPECTIVE

Máiréad Nic Craith, Ullrich Kockel

Presses Universitaires de France | « Ethnologie française »

2014/4 Vol. 44 | pages 689 à 697

ISSN 0046-2616
ISBN 9782130628941
DOI 10.3917/ethn.144.0689
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Blurring the Boundaries

between Literature and Anthropology.
A British perspective
Máiréad Nic Craith
Heriot‑Watt University
Ullrich Kockel
Heriot‑Watt University

RÉSUMÉ
Effacer les limites entre la littérature et l’anthropologie. Une perspective britannique
En tant que discipline, l’anthropologie tend à être associée avec les sciences sociales plutôt que les lettres et l’on souligne rare-
ment l’interaction entre l’anthropologie et la littérature. Cependant de nombreux anthropologues ont dialogué de façon fruc-
tueuse avec des auteurs tels que Jane Austen et E.M. Foster, et de leur côté Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy et George
Eliot se font anthropologues dans leurs écrits. Puisque écrivains et anthropologues cherchent à peindre des portraits réalistes
d’expériences sociales, cet essai suggère, à partir du cas britannique, qu’il y a beaucoup à gagner à réexaminer et réduire la dis-
tance entre anthropologie et littérature.
Mots‑clés : Écrivains anglais. Littérature réaliste. Objectivité. Ethnologie du soi. Terrain.
Máiréad Nic Craith and Ullrich Kockel
Heriot‑Watt University, Edinburgh
sml‑lincs
Riccarton Campus
Heriot‑Watt University
Edinburgh EH14 4AS
Écosse
M.NicCraith@hw.ac.uk
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U.kockel@hw.ac.uk

In her 1947 address as retiring President of the
American Anthropological Association, Ruth Bene-
dict contextualized the disciplinary distance between
anthropology and the humanities at that time:
They are so far apart that it is still quite possible to ignore
even the fact that they deal with the same subject mat-
ter – man and his works and his ideas and his history.
To my mind the very nature of the problems posed and
discussed in the humanities is clearer, chapter by chapter,
to those in anthropology than are all the investigations
carried out in most of the social sciences [2011: 460].
Recognizing that this might be regarded as a heretical
statement, Benedict proceeded to explore the era when
the humanities, rather than the sciences, were regarded
as the basis of knowledge within Western civilization.
She argued that “one has only to read some of Mon-
taigne’s essays written in the fourteenth century to real-
ize their kinship to modern anthropology” [ibid.: 460].
While anthropology as a discipline had benefitted
from its location within the social sciences, Benedict
regarded its neglect of the methods and insights of the
humanities as a loss. Since human beings have intellects
and do not simply respond to instinct in their everyday
behaviour, the minds of people must be included in
the anthropological definition of culture. This, Bene-
dict argued, establishes the common ground between
anthropology and the humanities:
It is my thesis that we can analyze cultural attitudes and
behavior more cogently if we know Santayana’s Three
Philosophical Poets and Lovejoy’s Great Chain of Being and
the great works of Shakespearian criticism [ibid.: 465].
A published poet herself [1986], Benedict proceeded
to cite the importance of Shakespeare to her personal
development as an anthropologist:
Long before I knew anything at all about anthropology,
I had learned from Shakespearian criticism – and from

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690 Máiréad Nic Craith, Ullrich Kockel
Santayana – habits of mind which at length made me an
anthropologist [ibid.: 467].
Ultimately, she reasoned that:
Shakespeare’s imagery is another kind of study from
which an anthropologist can learn a technique useful in
the study of comparative cultures. It can reveal symbol-
isms and free associations which fall into patterns and
show processes congenial to the human mind in differ-
ent cultures [ibid.: 469‑70].
British
■■ Writers and Anthropologists
Many Victorian writers in xixth century Britain
engaged with anthropological themes. Walter Scott
had been the first writer to take account of theories of
cultural evolution in his study of Scottish folk culture.
“Under Scott’s influence, moreover, novels became
a unique medium that could integrate the poetry of
primitive cultural forms with the naturalistic interpre-
tive lens of the anthropologist, a productive fusion of
romance and scientific social analysis” [Noble 2010, iii].
Like anthropologists, Victorian writers such as
Charles Dickens, George Eliot, George Meredith
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and William Makepeace Thackeray endeavoured to
describe life authentically and without idealization.
These authors regarded their novels as objective (i.e.
scientific) accounts of human behaviour. In her novel
Adam Bede, George Eliot reflects on her desire to pres-
ent an accurate account of everyday life:
But you must have perceived long ago that I have no
such lofty vocation, and that I aspire to give no more
than a faithful account of men and things as they have
mirrored themselves in my mind. The mirror is doubt-
less defective; the outlines will sometimes be disturbed;
the reflection faint or confused; but I feel as much bound
to tell you, as precisely as I can, what that reflection is, as
if I were in the witness‑box, narrating my experience on
oath [Eliot 1859: 161].
Eliot recognized the difficulties in the basic art of
truth‑telling. Imaginary writing is easy. Writing the
truth is much more difficult. However, her intention
was always to remain faithful to the everyday reality.
“George Eliot’s scientific interests brought her, more
than any other novelist, to the point of anticipating the
notions and even the language of the social sciences
that reproduced the dichotomy between objectivity
Ethnologie francaise, XLIV, 2014, 4
and subjectivity” [Cohen, 2013: 7]. Eliot had been
attracted by the portrayal of reality in Dutch realist
paintings – a portrayal that was to influence her and
others to write about a way of life with which their
readers could empathize and identify.
It was precisely this ideology of social realism in lit-
erature that drew British anthropologist Nigel Rapport
to literature as a resource that would supplement and
enhance his own fieldwork. He argues that English lit-
erature in the xixth century had been directed towards
an ideology of social realism. Writings were modelled
on materials such as letters, diaries and biographies. In
common with anthropology, British literature endeav-
oured to portray a realistic social life experience. “In
short, the novel was expected, as Thomas Hardy
described it, to be exceptional enough to justify the
telling, but also reconciled to the average; the novel
was mimetic” [Rapport, 1994a: 17].
Rapport was particularly interested in the writings
of E.M. Foster. Rapport had previously conducted
fieldwork in a narrow rural dale in Northern England,
in a village he had called Wanet [Rapport, 1993]. Dur-
ing his fieldwork, Rapport focused on the develop-
ment and ambiguity of social relations between local
people as well as on the multiplicity of their world
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views. He was fascinated by the diversity of individual
perceptions as well as by the chaos which can domi-
nate our perception of social reality. Although we may
like to view social life as neat, authoritative and singu-
lar, the reality is that it is chaotic, farcical and contra-
dictory. This chaos was also implicit in the writings of
E.M. Foster. Foster’s novels were as true to reality as
Rapport’s fieldwork.
In fact, the combination of literature research and
fieldwork seemed essential to Rapport to provide a
holistic picture of English culture and society. Rap-
port adopted what he called a method of “listing and
zigzagging” to bring the two resources together. This
involved listing a range of relevant quotations from
the literary world of E.M. Foster and placing them
alongside quotations from his informants in the village
of Wanet. From such lists, he constructed an order
and then zigzagged from one to the other to create a
holistic picture. The combined approach worked well
for him:
Foster inspires me with his close observation, his wise
commentary, his stylish narration. Furthermore, he
attempts to make that imaginative leap with the heads
and bodies of those he describes so as to present an
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Blurring the Boundaries between Literature and Anthropology
understanding of how they, as individuals, as English
people interpret the world: whilst all the time admitting
that these seemingly general manifestations of “English
interaction” and the “English mind” are really the con-
structions of one individual Englishman. Anthropology
can do no more than this it seems to me and should do
no less. [Rapport, 1994a: 43]
In a similar fashion, American anthropologists Richard
Handler and David Segal were drawn to the writings of
the British author Jane Austen. Although not a profes-
sional anthropologist, it seemed to them that Austen’s
writings were clearly anthropological. Her literary
works offered a tremendous opportunity for the analysis
of nineteenth century English culture and society.
Our work looked backward at Austen not to announce
our distance from her and her world, but to rethink
certain aspects of doing anthropology by reading Aus-
ten as, so to speak, an anthropologist transposed. Our
goal was not to collapse or overlook the differences
between late‑twentieth‑century cultural anthropology
and Austen’s novels, but to recognize Austen as some-
one doing something like ethnographic writing in a
different time and place and to recognize courtship,
marriage and family in her world as something like our
“kinship” though again transposed [Handler and Segal,
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1999, xii].
Handler and Segal had been students of the anthro-
pologist David Schneider, who argued that relations
between people are always contingent and cultural
rather than obvious and natural. Schneider proposed
that there is nothing inevitable about our relatives and
categories of kinship. Drawing on the literature of Jane
Austen, Handler and Segal came to a similar conclu-
sion, arguing that “culture is not a thing with definite
sites of closures or boundaries and is thus neither a
system nor something that can be mapped on to any
social whole or unit” [Handler and Segal, 1999, vv).
The contingency of relations features strongly in
Austen’s narratives, and marital matches are a prom-
inent theme in her work. Characters are constantly
engaging in potential partnerships, and such scenar-
ios are complex. There are multiple criteria such as
wealth, attractiveness and rank. There is also an ele-
ment of irony such as that exhibited in the opening
dialogue of Pride and Prejudice:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man
in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of
a wife.
691
However little known the feelings or views of such a
man may be on first entering a neighbourhood this truth
is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families
that he is considered as the rightful property of some one
or other of their daughters [Austen, 1918: 1].
Handler and Segal praise Austen for her insights into
multiple realities – for the skilful manner in which she
inter‑relates different viewpoints, thereby enabling the
reader to learn the subtleties and range of understand-
ings of the British experience.
The
■■ Science of Anthropology
In its portrayal of the human experience, the notion
of objectivity has been highly valued in anthropol-
ogy. For much of the twentieth century , practitioners
in British social anthropology frequently referred to
the discipline as a science. The quest for objectivity
in anthropology was led by Bronisław Malinowski at
the beginning of the twentieth century. This Polish
émigré physicist who became a British anthropolo-
gist championed fieldwork as an objective, definitive,
neutral methodology.
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This detached attitude of British anthropologists was
parodied by the British novelist Barbara Pym in her
novel Less than Angels. From 1946‑1974, Barbara had
edited the work of anthropologists during the day. In
the evenings and during her spare moments, she wrote
many novels which featured the academic egos of
anthropologists. She regarded her day job as fieldwork
for her novels and endeavoured to cultivate precisely
that sense of detachment that she observed in those
anthropologists in her workplace. In 1978, she noted
the following in a BBC address reviewing her career:
After the war, I got a job at the International African
Institute in London. I was mostly engaged in editorial
work, smoothing out the written results of other peo-
ple’s researches, but I learned more than that in the pro-
cess. I learned how it was possible and even essential to
cultivate an attitude of detachment towards life and peo-
ple, and how the novelist could even do “field‑work”
as the anthropologist did. And I also met a great many
people of a type I hadn’t met before. The result of all
this was a novel called Less Than Angels, which is about
anthropologists working at a research centre in London,
and also the suburban background of Deirdre, one of the
heroines, and her life with her mother and aunt [Fulton,
2003: 92‑3].
Ethnologie francaise, XLIV, 2014, 4
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692 Máiréad Nic Craith, Ullrich Kockel
Physical distance between the anthropologist and
the field was a mechanism for achieving objectivity.
“The unspoken rule in British and American anthro-
pology was that one ‘went away’ to the field” [Collins
and Gallinat, 2010: 9]. The physical distance between
the anthropologist’s place of home and fieldwork
location symbolized the emotional distance between
the author and his or her subject. While anthropolo-
gists were encouraged to develop empathy with their
field of research, they were also standing at a distance
from what was being observed. American anthropolo-
gists engaged with exotic cultures at home (especially
Native American), while British anthropologists fol-
lowed in the footsteps of Radcliffe‑Brown and Mal-
inowski, who had ventured to distant fields in Africa,
Asia and Oceania.
This detachment from the humanity of those they
study was captured in the use of the term “anthrophag-
ists” rather than “anthropologists” in the following
excerpt from Pym’s Jane and Prudence [1953]. Here the
author implies that anthropologists inadvertently can-
nibalise those whom they observe:
“Who has she married?” asked Mrs Morrow.
“An anthrophagist” declared Miss Doggitt in an author-
itative tone. “He does some kind of scientific work, I
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believe”.
“I thought it meant a cannibal – one who ate human
flesh,” said Jane in wonder.
“Well science has made such strides,” said Miss Doggitt
doubtfully. “His name is Mr Bone.”
“That certainly does seem to be a connection, but per-
haps he is an anthropologist; that would be more likely.
They don’t eat human flesh, as far as I know, though
they may study those who do, in Africa and other places”
[Ch. 13].
In their conduct of fieldwork, there was a dichot-
omy between the anthropologist and the subject in
the field, between the observer and the observed. This
apparent sense of detachment created a sense of oth-
erness for the reader and generated a secure feeling
of scientific knowledge for anthropologists. However,
authors such as Barbara Pym gently mock anthropol-
ogists in their misguided quest for objectivity. In the
following passage from A Few Green Leaves, she depicts
a young anthropologist’s standing at the door of sur-
gery waiting‑room:
Peering through the half‑open doors of the sur-
gery, she was tempted to join in what seemed like an
Ethnologie francaise, XLIV, 2014, 4
enjoyable occasion from which she was being excluded.
But remembering her role as an anthropologist and
observer – the necessity of being on the outside look-
ing in – she crept away, meditating on what she had
observed. There was obviously material for a note here
[Pym, 1980: 24‑5].
In this scene, the anthropologist is endeavouring to
scientifically understand human behaviour, but there
is a hint that observation is not necessarily the right
approach. “To understand life one needs to experience
life, which means acting in a frequently unmethodical,
undetached manner” [Macclancy, 2005: 562]. Setting
oneself apart does not enhance empathy, and yet it was
the approach championed by generations of anthro-
pologists following Malinowski.
Rational
■■ versus Emotional
However, the posthumous publication in 1967 of
Bronisław Malinowski’s diary, covering his fieldwork
in 1914‑15 and 1917‑18 in New Guinea and the
Trobriand Islands, generated a storm of controversy
within the discipline. The champion of objectivity in
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fieldwork was revealed as a highly emotional individ-
ual whose relationship with those in field was far from
impartial. Of course, Malinowski had almost certainly
never intended that his diary be published. This was a
deeply personal record, written primarily in his mother
tongue (Polish), in which he recorded his feelings in a
manner intended for his eyes only. The diary provided
an insider’s view into the mind of the ethnographer in
the field. “In his personal diaries, Malinowski expresses
his feelings of confusion about fieldwork, his reactions
to people, situations and places, with the result that the
account reads like Joseph Conrad rather than a work of
social science” [Kilborne, 1990: 397].
The diary offers considerable insight into Mal-
inowski’s reaction to his encounters with the oth-
ers in the field, and certain extracts have been much
quoted. Throughout the volume, there are strong indi-
cations of a feeling of cultural superiority and Mal-
inowski’s reactions to the natives ranges from irritation
to anger. “At moments I was furious at them, par-
ticularly because after I gave them their portions of
tobacco they all went away. On the whole my feelings
towards the natives are decidedly tending to extermi-
nate the brutes” [Malinowski, 1967: 69]. Reactions
from academics in the field were generally less than
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Blurring the Boundaries between Literature and Anthropology
complimentary. Geertz [1967] suggested that the diary
revealed Malinowski as “a crabbed, self‑preoccupied,
hypochondriacal narcissist, whose fellow‑feeling for
the people he lived with was limited in the extreme”.
More recently, Rapport suggested that it demonstrated
a personality that was living in two worlds. “It is the
‛Mr Hyde’ of dreamed of beaches of Folkestone, mis-
spent moments in London, and promenages in Paris,
imprisoned in the ‛Dr Jekyll’ of Mailu, Samari and Kir-
iwina” [Rapport, 1997: 83]. Rapport argues that one
can only arrive at a holistic impression of Malinowski’s
fieldwork by reading the diary in conjunction with his
academic monograph [Malinowski, 1922].
A holistic impression of one’s fieldwork is not unu-
sual in a French context. In L’Adieu au voyage, Vin-
cent Debaene points to the double book tradition in
French ethnography [2010]. While initially many eth-
nographers write an academic monograph featuring
the insights gained from their fieldwork, some, such
as Métraux [1940, 1941] or Lévi‑Strauss [1948, 1955],
have also penned a more popular literary supplement
of their experiences, highlighting the intricate rela-
tionship between literature and anthropology.
It is interesting to note that while doing fieldwork
Malinoswki had escaped from the wretchedness of
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his condition by resorting to authors such as William
Makepeace Thackeray [Malinowski, 1967: 16], Rud-
yard Kipling (ibid.: 40), Joseph Conrad [ibid.: 41] and
Charlotte Brontë [ibid.: 200]. Indeed Clifford [1988]
suggests that Conrad’s Heart of Darkness [1899] had
considerable influence on the writing of Malinowski –
to the point where, in his diary, Malinowski “seemed
at times to be rewriting themes from Heart of Darkness”
[Clifford, 1988: 98]. Both Conrad and Malinowski
were Polish émigrés destined to live in a language
other than their mother tongue. According to Clif-
ford, both had “a difficult accession to innovative pro-
fessional expression” [ibid.: 96].
It has also been speculated that Robert Louis Ste-
venson’s writings may have influenced the British
anthropologist. Malinowski’s fiancé, Elsie Masson, had
introduced Robert Louis Stevenson’s writings to her
future husband. Malinowski identified closely with the
Scottish writer and felt that passages from Stevenson’s
writings could almost have been written by himself
[Wayne, 2001‑2002: 75]. Carlo Ginzurg has proposed
a tentative relationship between Stevenson’s short
story “The Bottle Imp’ and the Kula ring as analysed
by Malinowski. Since Stevenson’s story is a fictional
representation of the exchange of a highly valued
693
good subject to certain constraints, it may have served
as the catalyst for Malinowski’s holistic interpretation
of the kula. “Stevenson’s short story would have given
Malinowski not the actual content of his discovery, of
course, but the ability to see it, through a leap of imag-
ination, as a whole, as a Gestalt – to construct it, as he
wrote later, ‘very much as the physicist constructs his
theory from the experimental data’”[Ginzburg, 1999:
99]. The potential influence of Stevenson’s writings on
Malinowski is especially interesting when one consid-
ers that Stevenson’s own interest in anthropology had
informed his writings about Scotland and the Pacific
[Reid, 2005].
While the personality of Malinowski did not
emerge unscathed from the posthumous publication of
his diary, the implications for the discipline were more
serious. “The Diary disturbs, not because of what it
says about Malinowski…. It disturbs because of what
it says about ‘Being There’” [Geertz, 1988: 76]. The
scientific rigour of fieldwork methodology was now
under question and the notion that the anthropological
endeavour legitimised itself “from ‘being there’ so long
as evidence of ‘doing there’ was eradicated…”. The
publication of the diary had highlighted the problem
of anthropological discourse – how to move effectively
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from participant observation to participant descrip-
tion [Geertz, 1988]. The personality of the anthropol-
ogist could not be completely neutralised and there
“remains a painful reminder that doing ethnography is
inevitably intertwined with the rather subjective and
deeply human being in the field” [Collins and Gallinat,
2010: 2].
In the decades that followed the publication of
Malinowski’s diary, the impact of the anthropologists’
own personality on the writing up of their research
was increasingly highlighted by anthropologists based
in Britain. As early as 1984, a leading Cambridge
social anthropologist argued that the anthropological
observer inevitably projects his or her own personal-
ity onto their fieldwork. Moreover, their personality
also distorts the writing up of their observations in
whatever written form. All anthropologists are human
beings who have private as well as public lives. “What-
ever they did or said as anthropologists was simply a
‘structural/metaphoric transformation’ of what they
did and said in quite non‑anthropological contexts”
[Leach, 1984: 3]. There was an inevitability about
this, since the only ego that anthropologists know
first‑hand is their own. “When Malinowski writes
about Trobriand Islanders he is writing about himself;
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694 Máiréad Nic Craith, Ullrich Kockel
when Evans‑Pritchard writes about the Nuer he is
writing about himself. Any other sort of description
turns the characters of ethnographic monographs into
clockwork dummies” [Leach, 1984: 3].
In 1990s Britain, there were increasing calls for
use of self‑narrative and biography in ethnography,
as well as a heightened awareness of the role of the
anthropologist both as fieldworker and as writer
[Okely and Callaway, 1992]. This generated fresh
debates on the impact of nationality, age, gender
and personal history on the behaviour and writ-
ings of the anthropologist. “The autobiography of
the fieldworker anthropologist is neither in a cul-
tural vacuum, nor confined to the anthropologist’s
own culture, but is instead placed in a cross‑cultural
encounter” [Okely, 1992, kindle edition].
At the same time, there appeared to be consider-
able reluctance to depart from the “scientific” image
of the text and acknowledge the humanity of the
author. Okely [1992] complained that anthropologists
were reluctant to acknowledge their own personalities
in ethnographic texts and were generally inclined to
produce narratives from which their individual selves
had been divested. Using the “I” in ethnographic writ-
ing was perceived as naval‑gazing or indulging in an
ego‑trip. “That the anthropologist soon disappears
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from the text is [...] consistent with the belief that
autobiography is no more than the affirmation of indi-
vidual power or confessional self‑absorption” [Okely,
1992, kindle edition].
Explorations of the personal nature of fieldwork
were also accompanied by reflections on the context
in which fieldwork took place. Many anthropolo-
gists based in Britain queried the necessity for con-
ducting fieldwork in exotic, distant locations rather
than at home, and argued that physical distance was
not a prerequisite for objectivity. Detachment could
be achieved at home. Barbara Pym had parodied this
anthropological detachment from the home society in
her novel Less than Angels. A visiting anthropologist,
Jean‑Pierre, is regarded as the only one who can really
understand what is happening in British society – since
the locals are too close to the “truth”:
“There has been quite a lot of social revolution in Eng-
land, I believe,” said Jean‑Pierre politely. “The dynamics
of culture change.” “Such a pity,” said Rhoda, puzzling
over the end of his sentence. “In some ways, that is. Of
course one does want things to be shared more equally,
that is good….” “Provided one gets the larger share one-
self,” said Jean‑Pierre, rushing forward to open the gate.
Ethnologie francaise, XLIV, 2014, 4
“What a wonderful house!” “It is detached of course,’
said Rhoda, “which is an advantage.” “Yes, detachment
is a good thing. But one can be too detached, perhaps?”
[Pym, 2000: 82‑3].
Scientific
■■ versus Partial Truth
Acknowledging the contextual nature of fieldwork
required a fundamental re‑appraisal of the anthropol-
ogist’s claim to objective truth. In grappling with such
issues, anthropologists were facing the same issues as
realist writers. George Eliot noted the complexity of
such issues in her novel Adam Bede: “I am content to
tell my simple story, without trying to make things
seem better than they were; dreading nothing indeed
but falsity which, in spite of one’s best efforts, there is
reason to dread. Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult”
[Eliot, 1859, Ch. 17].
Although telling the objective truth where utmost
concern to realist writers, they also was engaged in
a process of selection and presentation of material,
which is undoubtedly influenced by their own person-
alities and emotions. In an interview about his memoir
Speckled People, the Irish‑German writer Hugo Ham-
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ilton offers an example of this scenario [Nic Craith,
2012]. Although Hugo’s parents were devout, if not
fanatical, Catholics, Hugo opted not to emphasize
that dimension of his family in his book. Instead, he
wished to focus on the issue of the language used in
the family home, which was highly problematic for
him. Although Hugo wished to communicate in Eng-
lish, that language was banned from the home, since
his father was a notorious fanatic of Gaelic, while his
mother only spoke German. Hugo explains:
Every story is a dramatization of the facts. The events in
my memoirs are true and my memories are true but they
have to be presented, so I am presenting my past, my
childhood, myself as the child I once was. It is important
for me to acknowledge that, for instance, my parents
were devout Catholics. They were almost showing off to
one another who could be the more Catholic, the Irish
or the Rhineland Germans. But I chose to de‑emphasize
the Catholic areas of my upbringing in order to high-
light the basic themes of language and homesickness and
cultural alienation (Hamilton, interview).
In Hugo’s opinion, an (over‑) emphasis on the reli-
gious dimension of his parents would have diluted the
language story he was trying to tell.
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Blurring the Boundaries between Literature and Anthropology
The process of interpretation is common to anthro-
pologists and writers alike. Clifford Geertz [1973: 16]
noted that “anthropological writings are themselves
interpretations, and second and third order ones to
boot… They are, thus, fictions; fictions, in the sense
that they are ‘something made’, ‘something fashioned’
– the original meaning of fictiō – not that they are
false, unfactual, or merely ‘as if ’ thought experiments”
[ibid: 15]. “Partial truths” is the term associated with
Clifford [1986] in this context. He suggested that to
“call ethnographies fictions may raise empiricist hack-
les”, but he was using fiction not in terms of falsehood
but as an acknowledgement “of the partiality of cul-
tural and historical truths”. Like creative writing, eth-
nographic pieces “can properly be called fictions in the
sense of ‘something made or fashioned’, the principal
burden of the word’s Latin root, fingere”. [ibid.: 6]
In this regard, creative writing and ethnographic
accounts suffer from the same flaws. Their truths are
“inherently partial – committed and incomplete” [ibid:
7]. What is at issue here is the blurring of the lines
between fact and fiction, between reality and imag-
ination. But this is not an opposition between truth
and falsehood. Instead, it is recognition of the human
reality of ethnographic work.
Anthropologists and realist writers are on a similar
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quest to represent the truth, but truth may be more
dynamic than static, more malleable than objective.
This is captured in E.M Foster’s novel Howard’s End
[2009: 350):
The business man who assumes that life is everything, and
the mystic who asserts that it is nothing, fail on this side
and on that, to hit the truth. “Yes, I see dear, it’s about
half‑way between”, Aunt Juley hazarded in earlier years.
No: truth, being alive, was not half‑way between any-
thing. It was only to be found by continuous excursions
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Blurring the Boundaries between Literature and Anthropology 697

❙❙ABSTRACT
Blurring the Boundaries between Literature and Anthropology. A British perspective
The discipline of anthropology is commonly associated with social sciences rather than humanities and the interaction between
anthropology and literature is rarely highlighted. However, many anthropologists have fruitfully engaged with authors such as Jane
Austen and E.M. Foster while authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy and George Eliot responded to anthropology
in their writings. Since these authors, like anthropologists, seek to render realistic portrayals of social life experiences, this essay argues
that there is much to gain from re‑examining and reducing the disciplinary distance between anthropology and literature.
Keywords : British writers. Realist literature. Objectivity. Fieldwork. Ethnography.

❙❙ZUSAMMENFASSUNG
Wie die Grenzen zwischen Literatur und Anthropologie überwunden werden können. Eine britische Perspektive.
Die Anthropologie hat sich als Disziplin eher mit den Sozial‑ als mit den Literaturwissenschaften verbunden und nur selten wird die
Interaktion zwischen der Anthropologie und der Literaturwissenschaft aufgezeigt. Dennoch sind viele Anthropologen auf fruchtbare
Art und Weise mit Autoren wie Jane Austen und E.M. Foster in den Dialog getreten und ihrerseits werden Robert Louis Stevenson,
Thomas Hardy und George Eliot in ihren Werken zu Anthropologen. Da sowohl Schriftsteller als auch Anthropologen versuchen,
realistische Portraits von sozialen Erfahrungen zu zeichnen, geht dieses Essai auf Basis des britischen Falls davon aus, dass die Distanz
zwischen der Anthropologie und der Literatur neu untersucht und verringert werden sollte.
Stichwörter : Britische Schriftsteller. Realistische Literatur. Objektivität. Ethnographie. Fallstudie.
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