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.
