1 The Anthropologist as Apologist?: Colonial Heritage, ethnographic representation and the ethics of advocating practice.

This paper is primarily concerned with the origin and consequence of the so-called “crisis of representation”, particularly in relation to the ethical and moral dilemma facing anthropological advocacy, and the notion that anthropology is hamstrung in its attempts to become “relevant ” to the modern world by its colonial legacy. Having initially surveyed the “colonial ” origins of anthropology as a discipline, the paper then examines the anxiety of anthropological (mis)representation, and the denial of “expertise”, found in the critiques of anthropology and colonialism of the 1970s and 80s, which in turn have caused profound existential angst amongst a generation of anthropologists. The paper argues that it is only through an assertion of the politics of anthropology, through advocacy, that a self-aware, useful brand of anthropological engagement, of cultural writing and re-writing, can and should emerge