The anthropologist as jester, anthropology as jest?

Abstract

This article argues that anthropologists in the field are often attributed the role of jester. Anthropologists are transient figures in the societies they study, and they stand out in behaviour or in physical appearance. Society symbolically resolves their strange presence with humour: anthropologists involuntarily elicit joking remarks and laughter. Over time, the role of jester may shade into one of accepted outsider, and that promotes direct observation. There is, however, a false romanticism attached to anthropological fieldwork that overlooks the anthropologist's role as jester. Such romanticism is reproduced by the forces of rationalisation in higher education that threaten students' exposure to genuine anthropological fieldwork, and this compromises the depth of anthropological inquiry. Anthropology thus risks becoming the jest in the social scientific theatre: an exotic anecdote that is nice over drinks, yet without real scientific punch.