This page was created by Collin Hardwick.
Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places
Discipline/Field: Anthropology; this book is also considered Creative Nonfiction.
Year: 1996
Main Arguments & Concepts
In Wisdom Sits in Places, Basso compiles ethnographic work to illustrate the importance of place and place-naming in Western Apache culture, and demonstrates that in the Apache context, understanding place is vital for understanding “conceptions of wisdom, notions of morality, politeness and tact in forms of spoken discourse, and certain conventional ways of imagining and interpreting the Apache past” (Preface -- 128). Basso describes the importance of a personal relationship with places for the Western Apache. He also calls for more ethnographic study of place.Quotes
“Never had I suspected that using Apache place-names might be heard by those who use them as repeating verbatim -- actually quoting -- the speech of their early ancestor” (307).“Spaces receive their essential being from particular localities and not from ‘space’ itself” (1929).
“Placeless events are an impossibility; everything that happens must happen somewhere.”
Notes
This book is helpful in understanding the importance of land rights, and illustrates well why it is essential not to develop land without input from Indigenous communities — Basso really well describes the cultural importance of places. In particular, the description of the significance of actually seeing the places to remember connected stories from was illustrative (like the girl who wore curlers to the ceremony, was told a story about Men Stand Above Here and There, and told Basso that the places not “stalks me every day” (1081).The description of the Western Apache view of conversation -- “voluntary cooperation” (1568) had me thinking of it in contrast to Western/European rhetorics, which are considered agonistic rhetorics. The Western value in not over-describing seems radically different than Western discourse, where we do indeed “demand that you see everything that happened, how it happened, and why it happened, exactly as I do” (1568). For example, I’ve spent a lot of time teaching first-year comp students to flesh out their papers so that we can understand exactly how they understand their topic.
Related
Arola, “Composing as Culturing: An American Indian Approach to Digital Ethics”Basso and Feld, Senses of Place
Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection
Stewart, A Space on the Side of the Road
