Distinguished anthropologist George Marcus and his co-author Fernando
Mascarenhas engage in a new experiment in anthropological writing.
Ocasião reveals the key relationship between anthropologist and subject
through the letters and commentaries exchanged between Marcus and
Mascarenhas, Marques of Fronteira and Alorna in Portugal. The authors
discuss the persistence and survival of the contemporary Portuguese
nobility, who serve as witnesses to important transitions in modern
Portuguese history. The epistolary form is the medium of this innovative
ethnography, and will stimulate a new critique of ethnographic genres,
originating in the work of James Clifford and Marcus in Writing Culture.
This new book will appeal to readers concerned with anthropological
methods and fieldwork; the anthropology of elites, and a diverse
European and American community of scholars interested in Portuguese
culture.