Danièle Saint-Ville-Leplé - entry n.5 (Marcus)

In this text, Georges Marcus focuses on “the uncertain identities of anthropologists during their own research in regimes of intervention”. Given the fact that anthropologists have to do research on field to become anthropologists, they have to deal with the academic traditions and expectations, even when they cannot help feeling engaged personally. Thus, they create three distinct social identities: the consulting expert, the reporter, and the witness. The main difficulty for them is to conciliate independence of thought on field and the respect of academic standing in their work.

The post-Cold War era, which started in the 1990’s, has reshaped the field of work of many anthropologists. They are now supposed to work in “regimes of intervention”, that is to say failed or weakened state undergoing the influence of international authorities, humanitarian organizations, or armed factions. What makes it even more difficult is the lack of a “macronarrative” authoritative enough so as to “yield a perspective for anthropology” which could embrace the variety of field researches. The concept of empire falls short at providing an intellectual reference on which anthropologists might base themselves to conduct a critical analysis on the field. In terms of production of knowledge needed about contemporary events, anthropologists are expected to provide analysis more insightful than the testimonies given by refugees, exiles, aid workers, NGO officials, and journalists. Sometimes they do not succeed: the example of David Stroll speaks volume about the inefficiency of the expert posture when it comes to work within regimes of intervention. As for the identity of the reporter, professional journalists already occupy it. The main dissimilarity between journalists and anthropologists is that the latters operate at a different tempo. Not surprisingly, most anthropologists do not see themselves as reporters.

The witness identity seems to be the more promising one in regimes of intervention.  Anthropologists seeing themselves as informed witnesses tend to use a wide range of resources available in their environment to establish their own contextual frame of interpretation. This identity is emerging through gaps in the type of production of knowledge. What is more, the new generation of researchers seems to be the most committed to the identity of witnessing in research. It appears to become a ‘self-characterized’ identity. Georges Marcus points out that social sciences in general are showing a propensity to produce ethical judgments. It has now become a major trend, a way of participating in major governing institutions.