The once and future ethnographic archive

This article is concerned with the literal and metaphoric senses in which a nthropology's accumulation of knowledge through the production of ethnograp hy on the world's peoples can be considered an archive. The relevance of th is concept to ethnography has a very different past, present, and emergent associations. The Human Area Relations Files project as visionary science d ependent on the making of an archive of ethnography contrasts with the uses of the past ethnographic record in the pursuit of contemporary fieldwork i n a so-called postmodern world.