Place yourself in the following situation based on a true story. You are an anthropologist who is attending the annual meeting of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania. One of the panels at the meeting involves popular writing about the South Pacific, and you are one of three panelists who will be discussing the image of the South Pacific in popular books about the area. During your panel discussion, the conversation turns to Paul Theroux's best-selling book, The Happy Isles of Oceania. Although the book has put the South Pacific back on the map, the first two panelists are deeply divided on their opinions of Theroux's odyssey through the islands.

The first panelist, an anthropologist with a good deal of fieldwork behind her, argues that The Happy Isles of Oceania may be a popular success, but it is superficial, gossip-ridden, and full of stereotypes about islanders (as thieves, ex-cannibals, and sex maniacs) that border on racism. She believes that it is really a book about the mid-life crisis of a mean-spirited man who has produced caricatures of islanders that are insulting to indigenous people. She also notes that the book does not involve intensive fieldwork from which Theroux might have learned something about the people he visited, but rather is a book based on "drive by" anthropology, where short stays substitute for in-depth field experience. Compared to real ethnographic field work of the kind described, for example, in Cathy Small's Voyages (pp. 1-120), The Happy Isles of Oceania has little to offer. The audience gives the first panelist an ovation for voicing their disapproval of work popularizing "their people".

The second panelist then offers his opinion, presenting a very different argument. While he agrees with the first panelist that Oceania has suffered, and continues to suffer, from overdrawn images of paradise, he likes The Happy Isles of Oceania. He doesn't entirely agree with the reviewers who have labeled the book "wonderful", "probing", "insightful", and "penetrating", but he does think it is a good travel-adventure book that presents a candid look at "paradise lost". He says that the book does not pretend to be anthropology in the sense of in-depth ethnography, but it is certainly more than sugar-coated travelogue. He thinks that Theroux, by visiting many of the island groups in Oceania, gives people a sense of the diversity of islands and their cultures. He recommends that people going to the South Pacific read Theroux, among other books, and that students in South Pacific courses read it too.

The audience is mildly shocked at this defense of Theroux. Almost everyone had agreed with the first panelist's condemnation of the book. After the second panelist's presentation, the first panelist replies that Theroux's portraits of indigenous people are so personal and distorted that his book should be kept away from students, declaring that no anthropologist would write about indigenous people in this manner. She offers to retitle it The Unhappy Isles of Oceania and place it in the section of books by obnoxious authors like Howard Stern.

The second panelist responds by saying that Theroux's depictions of indigenous people may be more on the mark than anthropologists will publicly admit, although he agrees that anthropologists themselves would never write about indigenous people this way for fear of being labeled "unprofessional" by their colleagues. He then asks the audience: if providing an accurate portrait of the peoples of the South Pacific to the general public is so important, why is it that no anthropologist has done so? If anthropologists know so much about the area, why don't they tell the public? Is it that popularization is bad? One member of the audience states that anthropologists don't write for the public because it won't get them tenure at their universities. The second panelist sighs and says, "I rest my case."

At this point, the moderator and the panelists turn to you and ask you your opinion of The Happy Isles of Oceania. The moderator wants you to reply to three specific questions:

Your assignment is to answer these questions in a short paper, 6-7 pages in length, typewritten and double-spaced please. Write as if you were an anthropologist speaking to the other panelists and the audience at the meetings. Question #1 will take more space than the other two questions. Remember that this is an "opinion" paper, but you do need to provide an informed opinion based on your reading of Theroux's book (Chapter 1 and then Parts 2, 3, and 4), Small's Voyages (p. 1-125 only) and, if you wish, some of the readings for In-Class Exam #1. Be sure to use evidence to inform your opinions.

This assignment counts for 25% of your final grade and is due in my office in Hale 466 no later than 7 pm on March 10th. Good luck. For general grading criteria, see the handout on "HOW TO EARN A GOOD GRADE...." on the following pages.