Renato Rosaldo

About Rosaldo

He is one of the most renowned cultural anthropologists in today’s field, and a pioneering representative of postmodern anthropological study methods He analyzes his subjects both from the outside and, more importantly, introspectively. His most well known work, Culture and Truth (1989), captures Ilongot practice of headhunting brought about by grief, rage and bereavement.

Renato focuses many of his writings on the nature of globalization and its affect on culture and microculture

Additionally, he is an award-winning poet. He coined the term antropoeta to describe his movement between anthropology and poetry

Highlights

There are 3 main points in Rosaldo's article 'Grief and a Headhunter's Rage,

' from his book Culture and Truth (1989)

1. He focuses on the process of doing fieldwork rather than writing a conventional classic ethnographic report. He describes his personal experiences that lead him to understand Ilongot head-hunting; only through his experience with bereavement, was able to adequately explain the headhunter’s ritual in an understandable manor

2 He does not assume objective ways of analyses. When Rosaldo tries to apply the classic exchange theory to the Ilongot headhunting practice, he realizes this model was invalid under the local contexts of the Ilongot Instead, he focuses on the cultural force of emotions. His effort to show the force of a simple statement,

"“rage born in grief, impels him to kill his fellow human beings,

" goes against anthropology's classic norms of explicating culture through symbolic webs of meanings.

3 He breaks the distinction between the anthropologist and those who are observed by the anthropologist. He notes that "social analysis should grapple with the realization that the objects of analysis are also analyzing subjects who critically interact and interrogate ethnographer's writings, ethics and politics."

Renato told a truth that hadn’t been told in anthropology: that to know we must also feel.

Criticisms

Rosaldo anticipates and acknowledges possible criticisms to his approach He says that by invoking his personal experiences as an analytical category, he risks dismissal His article 'Grief and a Headhunter's Rage' can be seen as a report of emotions or personal journal of mourning

In general with the postmodern approach, a usual criticism is that this approach relies more on particular moral codes rather than empirical data. This moral code is dependent on the anthropologist who is doing the field work, structured by sympathy Additionally, the postmodern approach can lead to extreme relativistic views - it does not assume a common ground of understanding, and this can undermine universal rights and morals

Culture

Postmodernism states that it is impossible for anyone to have objective knowledge of another culture - we interpret the world around us in our own way according to our language, cultural background, and personal experiences Everyone has views based on their social and personal contexts Because of this aspect of human nature, postmodernism asserts that anthropologists can never be unbiased observers of other cultures Postmodernists argues that anthropologists should be sensitive to this limitation

Pictures arefrom RenatoRosaldo, fromhis firstfieldworkwiththe Ilongots, withhis late wife MichelleRosaldo, afellow anthropologist.

“The notion of [emotional] force, among other things, opens to question the common assumption that the greatest human import always resides in the densest forest of symbols and that cultural depth always equals cultural elaboration Do people always, in fact, describe most thickly what to them matters most?”

RENATO ROSALDO, CULTURE AND TRUTH (1989)