“Captain Cook’s Tools for Ethnography”

Ruth Mack, English Photographer: Douglas Levere

In “Captain Cook’s Tools for Ethnography” on November 11th, English professor Ruth Mack explores the relation between Cook’s navigational experience on the Endeavour Voyage (1768-71) and the descriptions of societies Cook offered in his journal. How does Cook, the technical navy man, comfortable with terse entries in the captain’s log, come to write in a fashion we might now call “ethnographic”? Mack argues that navigation does not merely accompany but provides the very basis for Cook’s self-conscious and experimental writing about culture.