Exploring the Narrative Paths of a Kalinga Ethnography: Edward Dozier's "Mountain Arbiters"

Abstract

The narrative paths of Edward Dozier's works "Mountain Arbiters" and "The Kalinga of Northern Luzon, Philippines" are examined and discussed. Dozier's field notes (on file at the Arizona State Museum Archives), recent interviews with both Fred Eggan and William Longacre, as well as Dozier's biographical data and professional orientations are utilized to assess his narrative work in a postmodern framework. Dozier's narrative structure is found to be constrained to neither of Bruner's (1986) categories of dominant emplotments; instead, Dozier's work is described as transitional between the 1930s narratives of acculturation and the 1970s narratives of resistance.