Customer Reviews

Portraits of "The Whiteman" - Linguistic play and cultural symbols among the Western Apache

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"Portraits" allows for an insider's view of a social practice virtually unknown outside of anthropological cricles. Concise, and written with an economy of language, the author manages to relate the topic without sliding into the boredom of dry essay. Humor is hard to study, and harder to write about, without killing the joke. Basso actually made me laugh out loud.

Unless you have a special interest in linguistics or Goffman's dramaturgic model of human communication, you may feel the idea of this book too specialized to engage your interest. If you aren't interested in anthropology, you probably won't be reading this review anyway. My suggestion to readers is---start from Chapter Two, read the rest, enjoy the author's cartoons, and don't forget the Appendix either. Then go back and read Chapter One. The book will make a lot more sense and you will know what the author is talking about.

The Apaches find the behavior of Anglo-Americans bizarre and often insulting. The "portraits" referred to in the title concern little dramatic skits put on spontaneously by one person to a) pull someone's leg and b) express commonly-held feelings about whites. Such skits or "portraits" can create animosity if the butt of the skit is not close to the performer. If close, then the proximity is expressed through the butt's toleration of the fun being poked at him (i.e. "he can say what he wants, but we're still friends"). Though Basso strangely does not touch on the subject, perhaps out of consideration for his hosts and friends among the Apaches, there is definitely a colonial relationship here. The oppressor/colonizer can speak or behave as he likes while the oppressed/colonized are powerless. Unable to push back when pushed, the Apaches (those who are in the subordinate position) resort, like many colonized peoples, to humor and mockery to even the score. Subaltern studies anyone ?

This is all well and good, but to me the value of this book lies elsewhere. I would say it provides an extremely accurate description of cultural contrasts. Due to the presentation of the "portraits" and to Basso's writing, you get a clear explanation of Apache ways or values in personal behavior and how they see whites due to that. A question arises as to whether the Apaches need to be culturally sensitive too, or only the whites, due to past history. No matter, the Apaches at least have to be aware of the differences while the whites can ignore them. The book can be used in a first year Anthropology course or for any course or lecture on cultural relativity, developing cultural sensitivity, how to study cultural contrasts, culture clash, etc. An excellent book for such a purpose.

Basso is one of the premier ethnographers in the U.S. His studies of the Western Apache are excellent models for how to do good ethnography. More importantly, Native American students in my classes find this book to be a faithful depiction of communication among many Native peoples.

I', very glad that I didn't need this book right away because it took absolutely forever to get. I understand that with inexpensive shipping you can't always expect things to come quickly, but with every other seller I've dealt with I've gotten products within a week. This is the first time something took more than that and it was even outside of the allotted time period.

The only saving grace was that the book itself was in good condition, though it had to be in the weirdest packaging I've ever seen, which stuck to the book and was a bit difficult to get off.