Five Ethnographic Books that Every Anthropologist Should Read

[@ArmchairAcademics]

What ethnographic books would be in your list?! Let us know and we'll include them in a discussion in the future. 📖👈

[@politesse3914]

The ethnographies I find myself thinking about most often lately are Lila Abu-Lughod's "Veiled Sentiments", Anna Tsing's "Friction", Keith Basso's "Wisdom Sits in Places", and Tom Boellstorff's "Coming of Age in Second Life".

[@KuntoHaryo]

Clifford Geertz: Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali, Death without weeping by Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Tania Li: The Will to Improve and latest Plantation Life: Corporate Occupation in Indonesia's Oil Palm Zone, James Ferguson: The Anti-Politics Machine should be on my list!

[@ArmchairAcademics]

Great recommendations @politesse3914. Thanks! Coming of Age in Second Life was so interesting that I *almost reshuffled my research focus to do digital anthropology. And I'm definitely fan of Lila Abu-Lughod's work. It's just really solid, inspired ethnographic writing. I tend to recommend Veiled Sentiments, but Writing Women's Worlds is really good, as well. I've not read Friction or Wisdom Sits in Places -- definitely going to give them a look. 🍻👍

[@ArmchairAcademics]

@KuntoHaryo, thanks for posting! "Negara: The Theatre State" is very underappreciated in my opinion. I didn't read it until after my PhD (in fact, I didn't even know about it!), which is probably due to the work being eclipsed in the classroom by things like Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali and The Interpretation of Cultures. But it's an inspired theoretical work. Thanks for the recommendations!

[@harryrodgers_]

Thanks for such great summaries and discussion, as always! My favourite ethnography is an autoethnography, and is the book that really captured my interest in migration studies and anthropology as a whole. 'Illegal' Traveller by Shahram Khosravi (2008). He tells his own tale of journeying from Iran in the 1980s as a displaced migrant to avoid conscription in the Iran/Iraq war and his journey across borders to Afghanistan, Pakistan and finally Sweden, after much time. It's very well written, intimate, and offers an important critique on the naturalisation of borders, and those who are made 'illegal' in the process. I'm not really doing it justice but recommend it wholeheartedly!

[@PhaseAlign]

Excellent video, thank you. Utopia of Rules is a great entry point to get used to Graeber’s style. Have you checked out IN SEARCH OF RESPECT by Phillip Bourgois? It’s a wonderfully gritty ethnography. Also, a relatively little known book by Graham Fordham called A NEW LOOK AT THAI AIDS: Perspectives from the margins.

[@ArmchairAcademics]

Thanks for the thoughtful comment, WiseBlueGenie! I actually own Utopia of Rules, but I've shamefully never read it. I guess it's time to dust it off and finally dig in. I've been a fan of Graeber's for a while now and have always drawn a lot of influence from his style. In Search of Respect is a great recommendation, as well. Thanks for that! I remember having sections of it assigned as an undergrad. That's something I should revisit and re-asses for sure. And, if I'm being honest, I've never heard of A New Look at Thai Aids (and I'm not familiar with Graham Fordham's work). I'll check it out! Thanks again 🍻👍

[@DanielSerna-s7q]

Gracias por las recomendaciones y saludos desde la sierra Otomi, en Hidalgo, México.

[@srutikanasaha4100]

Thank you 😊 Please can you suggest some beginner level books in Anthropology.

[@ArmchairAcademics]

Thanks for posting! That's a great topic for a video -- I think that I'll make one on the topic of 101 level texts soon. But, off the top of my head, if I were going to recommend three things to read to absolute beginners, I'd suggest the following. (1) Clifford Geertz's "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture". That's a 30+ page article that exists on its own, but was printed as the first chapter in his book "The Interpretation of Cultures". It's about 50 years old, but is still one of the most concise introductions to the goals of research in socio-cultural anthropology. (2) For a history of anthropology, I would suggest Alan Barnard's "History and Theory in Anthropology," which I used to assign all the time back when I was teaching full-time. (3) And, finally, for a general overview of theory today and the way that it has changed over the past century, I would actually recommend a textbook: "A History of Anthropological Theory" by Paul Erickson and Liam Murphy. There's a wealth of good introductory material out there, of course, but it's sometimes difficult to pick out the good from the bad when the market is so saturated with texts and articles. Still, if you picked up any two of the three I recommended, you can't really go wrong. Good luck!

[@srutikanasaha4100]

@@ArmchairAcademics Thank you so much Sir for taking your time to write this. Will be extremely helpful for me. I am already searching for these books. Thank you very much again.

[@painterabc123]

I am sad to learn of the passing of David Graeber, author of book number five on your list. I became acquainted with Graeber’s research and writings while living in Madagascar. Graeber has a masterfully written and insightful piece on the Famadiana - the Malagasy practice of turning the bones of the deceased. I highly recommend the article.

[@ArmchairAcademics]

I was very sad to hear about his death, as well. I met him in London almost a decade ago and was extremely impressed by both his work and humility. He was a great writer to be sure, but I think his real gift was as an educator -- he had down-to-earth talent for science communication that I think would have flourished had he been able to continue working. It's a real shame.

[@painterabc123]

Merci beaucoup!

[@cosmobilling1749]

Haven't read it yet, but for my second year anthropology course I'll be reading the classic Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Hoping it'll be good, despite the fact that it will definitely have aged poorly!!!

[@ArmchairAcademics]

Thanks for posting cosmobilling! It... did age poorly *indeed*. But aspects of the work really do hold up and it's become an essential bit of reading that we often use to teach intellectual history and the history of research methods. It's also (for its time) incredibly well written. I don't think it'll disappoint :) Good luck!