# Call to anthropologists: Make positive proposals


![](http://static.flickr.com/37/79458714_8629b8e281_m.jpg)I have long
had a very ambivalent relationship to anthropology, although it has been
very hard to put my finger on it. Although I realize that it is a very
useful discipline, and I have read a number of very good and interesting
works of ethnography (for example Golden Arches East, which I should do
a write-up of here), there was often something that just grated me the
wrong way.

I tried formulating this in my class on Tourism, environment and
development - a geography class, although many of the readings and
classes employ anthropological perspectives. One of our assignments was
to analyze a tourist brochure critically; to write about the “tourist
gaze”, the “othering”, and the colonial perspectives that are assumed to
be omnipresent. During my research, I read a number of critiques of
tourist descriptions, some of which I found quite inane. One quoted the
reports from a backpacker in Central Asia to a newspaper, talking about
bustling markets, women dressed in colorful headscarfs and selling
handicrafts etc; a report that I could have made myself when I was
visiting exactly the same area. However, this was attacked by the
author, who complained that the “colorful women” were caught in
capitalist infrastructures that forced them to work at that market, that
by describing them in this way without individual voices he was
marginalizing them and what not. I thought the author was exaggerating
quite a bit.

Now, I am doing research for a medical anthropology course on Chinese
immigrants’ perceptions of healthy foods, and I was just reading “Pilaf,
pozole and pad thai”, edited by Sherrie A. Inness, and the article
“Let’s Cook Thai” by Lisa Heldke. Heldke analyzes the concept of ethnic
cooking (by “White Americans”) as an almost colonial practice, where we
continue to assert our dominance and exoticize the other. Not only that,
she also discusses the case of Claudia Roden and her book “A Book of
Middle Eastern Food”, the result of “anthropological studies” in Middle
Eastern food cultures. The bone of contemption is that Roden takes
utmost care to cite written sources that she bases her work on, but the
numerous women that she interviewed are only introduced as profiles, and
sometimes not at all. As she says: *“She [Roden] tells “colorful”
stories about some of them in the body of the book, but the reader can
match their names to their stories (or their recipes) in only a few
cases - and then only with assiduous detective work.”* (p. 185)

![](http://houshuang.org/blog/files/platecucumber.jpg)Whether this is a
valid critique or not, I will leave to you. I am initially hesitant,
especially because I could easily imagine an “all-American cookbook”
with recipes from the Wild West with plenty of objectified cowboys and
housewifes in just the same style. However, the question I asked in my
tourism class, and which was perhaps not entirely comprehended (I might
have had problems wording it) was: Is there a “good tourism ad”?
Similarily, we could ask “Is there a good kind of ethnic cookbook?”
Because for me there are two alternatives. Either the
researchers/critics must unequivocally state that tourism / tourism
advertising and ethnic cookbooks / eating ethnic food is wrong, and
should not happen. Or they must be able to tell us how we **should** do
this. I want my tourism teacher to tell me how an ideal tourism ad would
look, one that did not other, or exoticize, lumpt together, or “gaze” in
any way. One that was beyond reproach. Similarily I want Heldke to show
me an ideal ethnic cookbook.

Heldke does give us some pointers in the final pages, stating that the
women that contributed their recipes should have been informed about the
use of their work, and perphas have been involved in a real
collaborative effort. She also lauds community fund-raising cookbooks,
where multiple members contribute similar dishes, but with subtle
differences. I applaud the beginning of something constructive, but much
more is needed. I wish that more social and cultural critics would step
out of their usually negative positions, and start envisaging **very
concretely** improvements. Only in this way can things improve. After
all, that is the idea, the reasons, for critiquing things in the first
place, right? Not merely the joy of showing intellectuall prowess?

Within the erotic film genre there have been some very good examples of
this; people who say “We are very unhappy with the erotic material
available today, but we don’t think that depictions of naked people are
wrong in principle. Let’s make something better.” This has resulted in
everything from

-   [Fuck for Forest](http://www.fuckforforest.com), a group that sells
  access to amateur porn and uses the money to fund environmental
  projects, thus addressing the criticisms towards the “porn industry”
-   [Masters of the Pillow](http://www.mastersofthepillow.com) -
  UC-Davis professor Darrell Hamamoto wrote academic essays
  criticizing the lack of, and the feminization of Asian American
  males in porn movies. He decided to make his own, starring all Asian
  Americans. This is the documentary about his project.
-   [Selma and Sofie](http://www.story.se/productions.html) is an erotic
  movie about lesbian love made by feminist filmmaker Mia Engberg. She
  filmed the movie with an all-female crew, and used an existing
  lesbian couple in the roles.

For some, making a porn movie might seem extreme, but what I am
exhorting is merely: give us positive role models, examples and ideas
for making this world a better place - with less “othering”, “gaze” and
“post-colonialism”. Perhaps it will make your academic work less
interesting, but that is a risk we must be willing to take!

Stian, all post-colonialized out.\
 *(Photos by [Roland](http://www.flickr.com/photos/roland) and [Ian
Fuller](http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianfuller))*