44 pages • 1 hour read
Paul RabinowReflections on Fieldwork in Morocco
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1977A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Otherness as the Central Focus of Anthropology
The concept of Otherness is a central theme of anthropology. Rabinow goes even further, stating multiple times that Otherness is the core concept on which all of anthropology hangs. Throughout Rabinow’s work, it becomes clear that although he has contemplated Otherness intellectually, he has had no real experience with it firsthand before moving to Morocco. Key moments in the text help Rabinow understand the true depth of the concept, beginning when Ali performs a spontaneous and, to Rabinow, mystifying healing routine on a baby in the Sefrou medina. Although he had been starting to feel at home in the frantic streets as a native New Yorker, this everyday ritual for which he completely lacks context is the first of many situations in which Rabinow is clearly the Other. Some are specific religious or cultural rituals, but most are basic social interactions.
As these scenes occur, Rabinow delves deeper into what this means for him as an anthropologist, and for the discipline in general. When viewing events like the Aissawa night, Rabinow is doing what could be seen as traditional anthropology. These rituals are relatively easy to interpret because Rabinow’s Otherness is clearly defined; he has no direct relationship to what is happening, but he has an academic knowledge of the ritual’s context and is able to see the power that the ritual holds for both participants and observers. The most important kind of Otherness, of which the anthropologist must always remain aware, consists of the various differences in the standard practice of everyday life in his own culture versus his study culture.
Experiencing these differences directly clearly has a profound effect on Rabinow, perhaps proving that his fellow anthropologists are correct in saying that doing fieldwork will change his view of the world, make him a “real” anthropologist. The tendency toward discounting everything but data in fieldwork obscures these differences and, although it may have been promoted for noble means, ultimately reduces anthropology’s study subjects to an animal level. If the Other being studied is reduced to a uniform set of rules that define the study culture against the researcher’s culture, then the individual lives and choices of that culture’s members are erased.
Ultimately, Rabinow finds that being constantly aware not only of Other cultural norms but of how those norms are interpreted by individual informants is the only way he can confidently gather meaningful information. The best informants in this book, aside from Malik, are those who live on the fringes of their society. People like Ali and Richard are able to view their situations more objectively than others because they are accustomed to looking at their communities from the outside; they are always the Other in some way.
The Place of Fieldwork in Anthropology
Rabinow describes fieldwork as the “activity which defines the discipline” of anthropology (5). The scale of anthropology is huge; it is essentially the study of the human experience. The field draws its questions from a very wide range of social and natural sciences, including history, sociology, biology, and religious studies. Anthropologists draw from all of these disciplines when conducting their research to create a holistic picture of a certain cultural practice or type of community. Fieldwork is a crucial part of this process. However, until the publication of Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco there was little discussion about the goals and process of fieldwork.
When anthropology first became popular as an academic field in the 19th century, it was considered an offshoot of natural history, the study of human evolution and society. Anthropologists, almost exclusively from countries active in colonialism, would move to “primitive” communities to study ways of life that were considered precursors to the “modern” Western world. Outright primitivization eventually became taboo in anthropological circles. In some ways this made fieldwork more difficult and caused a dichotomy to arise between the experience of fieldwork and its value for research. As shown in the previous section, Otherness as experienced firsthand was and still is an invaluable asset to anthropological work; it not only allows the researcher to contextualize their work but also gives them insight into their own place in human society. Treating factual data as the only valuable part of fieldwork, just like taking informants’ Otherness for granted and not examining it, reduces the study culture to a homogenous group, with individuals assumed to act entirely within a pre-set cultural framework.
Since the release Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco, and largely because of its publication, fieldwork has been reconceptualized in a way that takes both scientific data and human individualism into account. Fieldwork will always be essential to draw the holistic pictures of cultures that anthropology is known for. Cultural sensitivity is promoted, but not in a protective, paternalistic way that does not allow deep inquiry. Informants’ individual lives are analyzed more fully, and their backgrounds, motivations, and Otherness within their own culture are taken into account when gathering data. This doesn’t mean modern fieldworkers are without flaw or that primitivization does not still occur. Anthropologists are trained to be aware of the points that Rabinow explores in this book, but it is still up to individuals to approach their study cultures in a meaningful, unbiased way.
Islam, Colonialism, and Women: The Keys to Otherness in Morocco
Rabinow is clear throughout the book that his work is to be read as a whole and the conclusions he makes are to be considered within the context of the specifics of the story. Just like individuals within a culture, different geographic areas may have similarities and cultural parallels, but that does not make them universally comparable. The Otherness that Rabinow finds is specific to Morocco in the 1960s. The main driving factors behind this Otherness appear to be religion, colonialism, and the role of women in society. Although Rabinow never gives specific examples, a running issue throughout the book is Moroccans avoiding him because they believe him to be a missionary. Europe had been attempting to Christianize Muslim countries for centuries, so this fear is not unfounded. To many of the devout Moroccans, the fact that Rabinow has sacrificed two years of his life to live in their communities is enough proof that religion is his main motivation. There would be no other reason, in their minds, for a rich American to move to their shabby, unknown village and try to integrate with their society.
Colonialism plays a huge part in Moroccans’ hesitance to speak about Islam. The French Protectorate promoted the idea that Moroccans could live life as they wanted under French rule, but the Moroccans understandably did not trust this promise. They hid many of the more esoteric Islamic practices from colonial view while carrying out a sanitized form of Islam within French view. For informants like Ali, their membership in ancient hidden religious cults like the Aissawa is much more important to them than their practice of “standard” Islam.
Women’s roles are a running theme in the book, although Rabinow admits that he was too nervous to get to know many female Moroccans due to strict taboos against gender integration in public. His informants’ wives are rarely mentioned, but he explores the ways in which the gender taboo is not as strict as it appears on the surface. Sex work is much more accepted in Morocco than in the culture that Rabinow is used to; the “honor” that women lose by becoming a sex worker does not mean they are Othered within Moroccan society. Instead, the loss of honor is viewed as a literal reduction in value: The woman’s bride price will be reduced, with no defined cultural meaning beyond that. The trip to Marmoucha shows that gender taboos are not universally accepted by all people in Morocco. Although the girls make a show of separating themselves from the boys while in view of other people, they are perfectly comfortable engaging in intimate behavior. Meanwhile, the American is too shy. He is the Other again, but in the opposite way he ever would have expected in such a conservative society.
