Lost in Comparison: Cultural Imperialism and the Readership of Ethnographic Texts
By Gil Hizi (University of Cologne)
Although the hierarchies of value in the global academy are an enduring concern for anthropologists, the discipline also reproduces them through knowledge production. We are well aware of the strong association between influential departments and what counts as “progressive” critique, the dependence of precarious academics on the objectified ranking of journals, and the primacy of English as the dominant medium of communication. Arguably, the accommodation of this column in the journal American Anthropologist illustrates this impenetrable paradox. In this short piece, I wish to add to many familiar gate-keeping mechanisms that privilege the North American/European researcher a subtler form of exceptionalism—the imagined US-American reader.
One of the virtues of anthropology is its ability to undermine universalizing claims. Yet the professional impetus to communicate cultural differences across global networks becomes somewhat counterproductive when the target audience is homogenized. Ethnographic texts in US-based publications intended for an international audience often evoke a comparative dimension between the society at question and the United States, where the society of the latter is treated as common knowledge. “Unlike the case in America,” “similar to recent debates in the US,” are frequent statements that remain unelaborated, complemented by puzzling cultural references.
I grew up in Israel. Although this society is marked by strong regional influences, it is probably more exposed to US popular culture and language than most non-Anglophone locales (not to mention financial and military support). Unlike my friend, I have also lived in the United States for a couple of years. During my graduate studies, this experience helped me navigate some of the references in ethnographic texts, giving me an advantage over my peers, who struggled with statements regarding specific cultural phenomena in the United States (education, popular culture, politics). Nonetheless, I, too, felt lost in comparison.
When I taught briefly in Hong Kong and later in Australia and Germany, I noticed how students’ backgrounds enabled some to figure out these kinds of references in a manner that was not necessarily correspondent with their English proficiency. More than once, I wondered whether this invisible hierarchy should require that students prioritize US-related issues and events when fostering their “general knowledge” or whether as a teacher guided by the principles of anthropology I should encourage them to follow alternative paths.
As an author, I often receive peer reviews that request more clarity concerning the uniqueness or similarity of the phenomena I describe in relation to a US counterpart. When evaluating book manuscripts, this request is naturalized as a market-driven appeal to a wider “audience”; however, journal articles also are not immune to these demands. For example, when I wrote about the China Dream campaign it made sense to show how it differs from the US-American one, since this was a common question among politicians and intellectuals in China. But should this be the case when writing about public education? Familial relationships? Gender values?
Clearly, when engaging with global hierarchies of value ethnographically, anthropologists should not be ignorant of the loci of power. But when such correlations are less relevant for empirical analyses, their inclusion reinforces the unwarranted conflation between knowledge production and the US-American gaze, or between the US value system and anthropological merit. Unlike tangible aspects of “inclusion,” in terms of gender, ethnicity, and physical disabilities, imperialistic factors (and to some degree, their economic dimensions) tend to be invisible and unspoken, penetrating and directing our quest for “diversity.”
The “Liberty Bell” in Philadelphia. Photo by author.
Bio
Gil Hizi (PhD, University of Sydney, 2018) is a Humboldt postdoctoral fellow in anthropology in the Global South Study Centre at the University of Cologne. He studies social change in China, focusing on concepts of personhood, interpersonal ethics and emotions. His field research has been mostly based in psychotherapeutic centres and extracurricular programmes of personal development. His articles have been published in journals including Ethos, Social Analysis, Asian Studies Review, and HAU.