Between Ethnography and Mission in India: The Anthropology of Stephen Fuchs

Abstract

This essay is an inquiry in the anthropology of Stephen Fuchs who worked as a missionary in India for more than half a century. As any ethnographer, Fuchs faced the epistemological problems of observation, participation, judgement and explanation. These problems are shaped by the set of values an anthropologist displays in either hidden or more open ways. That is why knowledge of the ‘personal anthropology’ (David Pocock) of a scholar is important for the assessment of his or her anthropological research. The personal anthropology of Stephen Fuchs in his descriptive ethnographies of small-scale communities in central India around the middle of the last century is a good case in point. Its retrieval reveals the epistemological dilemma between scholarly and missionary work.