Writing Anthropology
Writing Anthropology
By Sofia Lesur Kastelein
Often, when reading for a seminar, I will spend fifteen minutes staring at the same sentence. I’ll rearrange sections of it in my head, in the hope that they might make more sense, or open a new tab to check whether a word means something other than what I think it means. Sometimes, this goes on for paragraphs. Sometimes it is the whole article. (I never get close to the point of whole books.) This usually happens when there is a lot of technical language, or a dense use of complicated words, or references to Deleuze. Conversations with friends reassure me I’m not alone in this. It then becomes easy to wonder, how many people are there who understand the reading in question? If a class-full of MSc students, most with an undergraduate degree in the social sciences, are stumped, do you need a PhD to get it? And, if the number of people who can understand a text is so small, why write?
Starting with my frustrations about understanding some anthropological writing, I was curious to hear from anthropologists about how they write, who they write for, and why they write. I approached some people in the department asking to chat about how they think about these kinds of issues. The following is a little of what I learnt from these informal conversations.
A common thread, when speaking to people about writing, is that their style changes distinctly depending on whether the intended audience is broad or specifically academic. For anthropologists employed at a university, publishing in peer-reviewed journals or with academic publishing houses is an unavoidable, if not central, part of the job. For some, it is primarily a way to contribute to knowledge about a region or theoretical debates among colleagues, contributions which may eventually change the way people think, speak and act about the world. However, there can also be a sense of institutionally-imposed obligation to this.
The “Research Excellence Framework” – a way for the UK government to audit universities and determine whether resources are being spent in a way it deems worthwhile – has certain publishing requirements for academics. Roughly every seven years, they are expected to put out “2.5” pieces based on their own research in well-respected publications. These pressures don’t seem too strong in the LSE Anthropology Department. Most people write more than the requirement in that period, so can choose the best four in terms of publications. There is also a stance among staff that anthropology doesn’t work that way, and that it is important to publish in journals that are regionally relevant but maybe less prestigious. However, there is still pressure from the university to look at where and how much someone is publishing when deciding on a new hire or promotion, which can create a greater sense of necessity or constraint for early-career academics.
When writing for other people within the academy, the writing-style is likely to resemble other texts by the same publication which, in part, may come from the editor’s expectations. This writing tends to be more dense – longer paragraphs, longer sentences, more specialised vocabulary unfamiliar to many – with more references to theories, authors and so forth which assume prior knowledge. Sometimes, using “plain English” and avoiding technical language can really detract from analytical precision and theoretical sophistication. However, often, it seems being widely accessible beyond other academics is not a primary, or even secondary, concern for people when writing for academic publications. As a consequence, no wonder a particular form of dense and self-referential style of writing is widespread.
“If you could write in any way you liked – with money, institutional standing, etc. being no object – who would you write for and how would you write?” When I asked this question, no one said their ideal audience would be readers of academic journals. Responses all expressed a desire to reach a broader audience, a desire which was encouragingly reflected in the practices of those I spoke to.
Mathijs Pelkmans shared that he writes for “people who want to understand the world” by reading. He explained that this was connected to a desire to tell stories – something anthropologists are well-placed to do – and that these stories can also be theoretical. Practically, this translates into structuring a text in a way that people become gripped by the unfolding of the narrative, such as by starting with something puzzling or controversial that will draw people in and make them think. Then comes the argument and “beautiful illustrations” which might allow the reader to relive the experience at some level. Afterwards, perhaps, he’ll complicate it, as he also writes to push the limits of the audience, to encourage them to think about the world in ways they had not before.
Besides structure, Mathijs expressed that clarity is also crucial for reaching a broader audience. Most people are not prepared to devote hours to reading so, unless anthropologists are willing to shorten what they have to say, they need to write extremely well. Sadly, a desire to reach a broader audience is not always enough. Writing well is a skill and writers can be limited by their own abilities when trying to explain complicated concepts in a straightforward way. Clear writing, although easy to read, can be incredibly difficult to produce.
Insa Koch, meanwhile, told me about how the broader audience of her articles for the LSE Policy and Politics blog results in different writing. The content and framing is somewhat different, with an emphasis on more poignant, shorter critiques and interventions, links to concrete, “relevant issues”, and more practical suggestions for action. This might require making more direct claims with fewer qualifications, and not being afraid to be a little polemic. Style-wise, this also means shorter paragraphs, less jargon and fewer references.
Speaking to Andrea Pia, he brought up how the conversation about writing for a broader public isn’t just an issue of writing clearly, but also one of access to the writing itself. Most journals are private and charge enormous subscriptions fees to access their articles, which some universities – often in the Global South – and most individuals without institutional access cannot afford. Similarly, books from academic presses tend to be extortionate. As a result, there can be a sense anthropologists from the Global North are “vamipirising” on communities in the Global South – who may not get any access or benefit from the work they helped produce – for the advancement of academic careers. One way Andrea works to overcome this obstacle to reaching a wider audience is through co-founding and co-editing the Made in China Journal which is “Open Access”, meaning it has a publication model which aims to make research available free of cost and without other barriers. (This year, Andrea is running a course on “Public Anthropology” which I sorely wish I were able to take.)
Another issue that came up in conversations was that, to reach a broader public, you need to go beyond just writing. Of course, anthropology has a long tradition of ethnographic film-making and photography, while public-lectures and podcast cameos are not unusual. However, alternatives to writing are not limited to these. Andrea’s The Long Day of Young Peng is a particularly exciting example. The Long Day is an “interactive digital ethnography”, something like a videogame, based on his fieldwork in Lingshui village, Beijing Municipality. Similarly, the beautiful comic adaptation of Alpa Shah’s article “Ethnography? Participant observation as a potentially revolutionary praxis” decorates some of the walls in our department and illustrates (very literally) another way of communicating anthropology to broader audiences. Some of anthropology’s constitutive questions – of translation, representation and understanding across difference – are reinvigorated by this experimentation with form and medium.
Just as the way in which someone writes is not separate from the question of who they write for, these cannot be separated from the matter of why they write in the first place. And, given that not all anthropologists chose to prioritise writing, really, the question underpinning all this is a much broader one: “why anthropology?”. The reasons that motivate us to engage with anthropology will determine who we want our own work within the discipline to reach and, as a consequence, what form we want it to take.
I avoided asking this last question directly, although I care about the answers profoundly. Precisely because there is so much at stake on it, addressing it publically felt daunting. Instead, as the vast majority of anthropological work I have been asked to engage with as a student has been academic texts, I tried to ground the discussions in the idea and act of writing.
However, talking about writing style without thinking about the point of writing feels shallow and depoliticised. The issues lurking in the background, unaddressed, are huge. There’s learning for the sake of learning, anthropologists’ troubled relationship to policy-makers (with echoes of cooperation with colonial officials) and the ethics of top- down decision-making, debates about anthropologists and advocacy, the production of work which is of use to the people it is about... The list goes on, the dilemmas are complicated and the discussions, with reason, are often heated.
As critiques of postmodernism in anthropology point out, debates around representation and writing are important, but far from the sole – or even the major – issue in anthropology. The contribution to these debates which most inspires me is the feminist one: “precisely because feminists move beyond texts to confront the world, they can provide concrete reasons in specific contexts for the superiority of their accounts” (Mascia-Lees 1989, 28).
Nonetheless, texts have been an ever-present part of my experience as a student of the discipline. I thus sought out conversations on writing, in which I learnt about people’s different styles and what determines them, about platforms for writing, and about alternatives to it. I conclude with the hope that our decisions surrounding such kinds of topics can be grounded in our personal stances on why we think anthropology is worthwhile, and not overly shaped by institutional constraints. To slightly adapt a comment made by Andrea during our conversation: “imagine what you lose if you don’t write the way you want to write.”
I thank Insa Koch, Mathijs Pelkmans and Andrea Pia for the time and thoughts they shared with me.
References
Mascia-Lees, Frances, Patricia Sharpe and Colleen Ballerino Cohen (1989). “The Post- modernist Turn in Anthropology: Cautions from a Feminist Perspective.” Signs 15: 7–33.