Ethnographers complicit with the ideology of compulsory heterosexuality generally use two metanarratives to obviate the need to discuss same-sex desire from their texts. In the Utopian metanarrative, same-sex desire is simply absent from human interactions, while in the Arcadian, it is present everywhere, a simple part of the background that can be endlessly deferred. Classical, modern, and postmodern ethnographies of both Western and non-Western cultures are analyzed. It is suggested that future ethnographies might avoid the metanarratives to fully explore the fluidity and complexity of same-sex desire.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Abu-Khalil, A.1997. Gender boundaries and sexual categories in the Arab World.Feminist Issues15 (1-2): 91-104.
2.
Alpert, R.
1997. Like bread on the seder plate: Jewish lesbians and the transformation of tradition.New York: Columbia University Press.
3.
Atkinson, Paul
. 1990. The ethnographic imagination: Textual constructions of reality.New York: Routledge.
4.
Bakhtin, Mikhail
. 1981. The dialogic imagination.Austin: University of Texas Press.
5.
Bakhtin, Mikhail
. 1984. Rabelais and his world.Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
6.
Bartkowski, F.
1989. Feminist utopias.Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
7.
Blackwood, Evelyn
. 1995. Falling in love with an-other: Lesbian reflections on identity in fieldwork. In Taboo: Sex, identity, and erotic subjectivity in anthropological fieldwork, edited by D. Kulick and M. Wilson, 51-76. London: Routledge.
8.
Boesky, A.
1996a. Founding fictions: Utopias in early modern England.Athens: University of Georgia Press.
9.
Boesky, A.1996b. Milton's heaven and the model of the English utopia.Studies in English Literature 1500-190036 (1): 91-109.
10.
Boone, Joseph A.1995. Vacation cruises; or, the homoerotics of orientalism.PMLA110:89-107.
11.
Bourgois, Philippe
. 1998. Just another night in a shooting gallery.Theory, Culture, & Society15 (2): 37-66.
12.
Buring, D.
1997. Lesbian and gay memphis.New York: Garland.
13.
Caplan, Pat
. 1988. Engendering knowledge: The politics of ethnography.Anthropology Today14 (5): 8-12; 14 (6): 14-17.
14.
Carrier, J.
1995. De Los Otros: Intimacy and homosexuality among Mexican men.New York: Columbia University Press.
15.
Comaroff, John
, and Jean Comaroff. 1992. Ethnography and the historical imagination.Boulder, CO: Westview.
16.
Deleuze, Gilles
, and Félix Guattari. 1987. A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
17.
Donnelly, D.
1998. Patterns of order and utopia.New York: St. Martin's.
18.
Elliot, R.
1970. The shape of utopia: Studies in a literary genre.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
19.
Empson, W.
1992. Some versions of pastoral.New York: New Directions.
20.
Essig, L.
1999. Queer in Russia: A story of sex, self, and the other.Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
21.
Ferns, C. S.
1999. Narrating utopia: Ideology, gender, form in utopian literature.Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press.
22.
Fine, Michelle
. 1994. Working the hyphens: Reinventing self and other in qualitative research. In Handbook of qualitative research, edited by N. Denzin and Y. Lincoln, 70-82. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
23.
Foucault, Michel
. 1976. The history of sexuality, volume I, translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Random House.
24.
Foucault, Michel
. 1984. What is an author? In The Foucault reader, edited by P. Rabinow, 101-120. New York: Pantheon.
25.
Freeman, Derek
. 1983. Margaret Mead and Samoa: The making and unmaking of an anthropological myth.Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
26.
Freud, Sigmund
. 1994. Civilization and its discontents.New York: Dover.
27.
Geertz, Clifford
. 1988. Works and lives: The anthropologist as author.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
28.
Girard, R.
1965. Deceit, desire, and the novel.Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Green, J.
1999. Beyond carnival: Male homosexuality in twentieth century Brazil.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
31.
Haber, J.
1994. Pastoral and the poetics of self-contradiction: Theocritus to Marvell.New York: Cambridge University Press.
32.
Haraway, Donna
. 1988. Situated knowledge: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective.Feminist Studies14 (3): 575-599.
33.
Hawkeswood, W.
1996. One of the children: Gay black men in Harlem.Berkeley: University of California Press.
34.
Herdt, Gilbert
. 1981. Guardians of the flute.New York: McGraw-Hill.
35.
Jackson, P.
1995. Male homosexuality in Thailand.New York: Global Academic.
36.
Jacobson, David
. 1991. Reading ethnography.Albany: State University of New York Press.
37.
Khan, Badruddin
. 1997. Not-so-gay life in Pakistan in the 1980s and 1990s. In Islamic homosexualities: Culture, history and literature, edited by S. Murray and W. Roscoe. New York: New York University Press.
38.
Killick, Andrew
. 1995. The penetrating intellect: On being white, straight, and male in Korea. In Taboo: Sex, identity, and erotic subjectivity in anthropological fieldwork, edited by D. Kulick and M. Wilson, 76-106. London: Routledge.
39.
Kinney, C.1991. The masks of love: Desire and metamorphosis in Sidney's New Arcadia.Criticism33 (4): 461-490.
40.
Kulick, Don
. 1995. The sexual life of anthropologists: Erotic subjectivity and ethnographic work. In Taboo: Sex, identity, and erotic subjectivity in anthropological fieldwork, edited by D. Kulick and M. Wilson, 1-28. London: Routledge.
41.
Kulick, Don
. 1998. Travesti: Sex, gender, and culture among Brazilian transgendered prostitutes.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
42.
Levin, H.
1969. The myth of the golden age in the renaissance.Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
43.
Levinas, E.
1987. Time and the other.Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
44.
Levitas, R.
1990. The concept of utopia.Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
45.
Malinowski, Bronislaw
. 1929. The sexual lives of savages in north-west Melanesia.New York: Harvest.
46.
Manuel, F. E.
, and F. P. Manuel. 1979. Utopian thought in the Western world.Cambridge, MA: Belknap.
47.
Marcuse, Herbert
. 1974. Eros and civilization.Boston: Beacon.
48.
Mead, Margaret
. 1928. Coming of age in Samoa.New York: Morrow.
49.
Nardi, P.
1999. Gay men's friendships: Invincible communities.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
50.
Newton, Esther
. 1993. Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty years in America's first gay and lesbian town.Boston: Beacon.
51.
Olmsted, W.1996. On the margins of Otherness: Metamorphosis and identity in Homer, Ovid, Sidney, and Milton.New Literary History27 (2): 167-184.
52.
Parker, Richard
. 1999. Beneath the equator: Cultures of desire, male homosexuality, and the emerging gay communities in Brazil.New York: Routledge.
53.
Parrinder, P.1997. Eugenics and utopia: Sexual selection from Galton to Morris.Utopian Studies8 (2): 1-11.
54.
Peyser, T.1992. Reproducing utopia: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “Herland.”Studies in American Fiction20 (1): 1-15.
55.
Poggioli, R.
1975. The oaten flute: Essays on pastoral poetry and the pastoral ideal.Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
56.
Prieur, A.
1998. Mema's house Mexico city.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
57.
Rinaldi, A.1998. Gay? We don't have that here.New Statesman127 (4397): 17.
58.
Rosaldo, Renato
. 1989. Culture and truth: The remaking of social analysis.Boston: Beacon.
59.
Roscoe, Will
. 1995. Strange craft, strange history, strange folks: Cultural amnesia and the case for lesbian and gay studies.American Anthropologist97 (3): 448-453.
60.
Roscoe, Will
. 1996. Writing queer cultures: An impossible possibility. In Out in the field: Reflections of lesbian and gay anthropologists, edited by E. Lewin and W. Leap, 200-201. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
61.
Rosenmeyer, T.
1969. The green cabinet: Theocritus and the European pastoral lyric.Berkeley: University of California Press.
62.
Ruppert, P.
1986. Reader in a strange land: The activity of reading literary utopias.Athens: University of Georgia Press.
63.
Said, Edward W.
1978. Orientalism.New York: Pantheon.
64.
Schneebaum, Tobias
. 1969. Keep the river on your right.New York: Grove.
65.
Schneebaum, Tobias
. 1988. Where the spirits dwell: An odyssey in the jungle of New Guinea.New York: Grove.
66.
Scott, Joan W.
1992. Experience. In Feminists theorize the political, edited by J. Butler and J. Scott, 22-44. New York: Routledge.
67.
Seabrook, J.1994. Out in India.New Statesman and Society7 (320): 12-13.
68.
Seabrook, J.
1999. Love in a different climate: The meaning of men who have sex with men in India.New York: Verso.
69.
Shostak, Marjorie
. 1981. Nisa: The life and words of an!Kung Woman.Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
70.
Sinfield, A.1985. Power and ideology: An outline theory and Sidney's Arcadia.ELH52 (2): 259-277.
71.
Summerhawk, B.
1998. Queer Japan: Personal stories of Japanese gays, lesbians, transsexuals, and bisexuals.Auckland, New Zealand: New Victoria.
72.
Teunis, Niels
. 1996. Homosexuality in Dakar: Is the bed the heart of a sexual subculture.Journal of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Identity1 (2): 153-169.
73.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph
. 1991. Anthropology and the savage slot: The poetics and politics of Otherness. In Recapturing anthropology: Working in the present, edited by R. G. Fox, 17-44. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research.
74.
Van Maanen, John
. 1988. Tales of the field: On writing ethnography.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
75.
Vincent, Joan
. 1991. Engaging historicism. In Recapturing anthropology: Working in the present, edited by R. G. Fox, 45-58. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research.
76.
Wacquant, Loic
. 1995a. The pugilist point of view: How boxers think and feel about their trade.Theory and Society24(4): 489-535.
77.
Wacquant, Loic
. 1995b. Pugs at work: Bodily capital and bodily labour among professional boxers.Body and Society1 (1): 65-93.
78.
Walzer, L.
2000. Between Sodom and Eden: A gay journey through today's changing Israel.New York: Columbia University Press.
79.
Warner, Michael
. 1993. Introduction. In fear of a queer planet: Queer politics and social theory, edited by M. Warner, vii-xxxi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
80.
Whitehead, Tony Larry
, and Mary Ellen Conaway. 1986. Introduction. In Self, sex, and gender: Cross-cultural fieldwork, edited by T. Whitehead and M. Conaway, 1-14. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
81.
Williams, Walter L.
1996. Being gay and doing fieldwork. In Out in the field: Reflections of lesbian and gay anthropologists, edited by E. Lewin and W. Leap, 70-85. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
