Breaking the Frames

CHAPTER 3

Processes

AbstractFredrik Barth’s work is exemplary for the study of social pro-
cesses. He used his ethnographic studies as ways of breaking previously
applied frames of analysis. His work with Swat Pathans of Pakistan and the
Baktaman of Papua New Guinea is adduced to show how his ethnographic
findings led him to break or modify other frames of analysis. He inserted
the study of competitive power politics into segmentary lineage theory.
He struggled with thefluidity of Baktaman ideas, and the workings of
secret knowledge, leading him to consider memory, loss of information,
and ritual variation among different groups. He eschewed whole system
typologies and a temptation to impose too structured an interpretation of
data. His work verges on what we now call embodiment theory.

KeywordsBaktaman
Embodiment theory
Fredrik Barth
Power

Segmentary lineage
Swat Pathans

We take here the work of Fredrik Barth as an example of a dedicated
thinker who constantly related his ethnographic work to the production of
theory, by examining how, in mindful ways, theory and ethnography can
feed into each other. Ethnographic experience leads to the identification
of problems that do not yield to some previously formulated frame of
interpretation, and therefore provokes a re-think of these frames. In other

© The Author(s) 2017
P.J. Stewart, A.J. Strathern,Breaking the Frames,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47127-3_3

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