This collection of essays draws in some of the influential thinkers in anthropological rhetoric from both Europe and America. What is new here is the focus on the chiasm of rhetoric and culture, the mutual constitution of persuasive means and the larger cultures that provide the values about which we are to be persuaded. Bernard Bate, Yale University

Among them, the contributors put the study of culture on a new, well-worked-out foundation in rhetoric. Their efforts reward close attention. Stephan Feuchtwang, London School of Economics

Although I...

"When Balambaras Aike Berinas, also called Baldambe, told me the story of his father, I felt very privileged to be the one to record and translate his exciting narrative, realizing it was a 'historic' moment: spoken words were being transformed into written ones, and a text with its own distinctive features and literary style was emerging." *** The drama of Berimba's Resistance was played out in the hot and rugged terrain of southern Ethiopia where, in the aftermath of the Ethiopian conquest, Berimba (ca. 1875-1952) was chosen by the Hamar tribal people to act as their spokesman. In this...

This festschrift is situated within the contexts of the 'Writing Culture' debate, the 'Rhetoric Culture' project, and the legacy of anthropologist Stephen Tyler's work on language and representation. While Writing Culture (1986) alerted readers to the power of ethnographers over their field, Writing in the Field alerts readers to the power of the field over its ethnographers. Rather than reprise familiar debates about writing and representation, the book's individual chapters elucidate how anthropological fieldwork is a highly fraught, provisional, and incomplete practice enmeshed in the gaps...