Anthropologist George Marcus and Fernando Mascarenhas, Marques of Fronteira and Alorna, reveal the key relationship between anthropologist and subject through their letters and commentaries. This innovative and experimental ethnography is a reflection on the survival of the contemporary Portuguese nobility. It will appeal to scholars of anthropological methods and fieldwork, and to researchers interested in the anthropology of elites and in Portuguese culture.

1 Foreword by Fernando Mascarenhas 2 Introduction by George E. Marcus 3 Letter Exchanges 4 Epilogue by George E. Marcus 5 Appendix A. Sermon to my Successor by Fernando Mascarenhas 6 Appendix B. Preamble to the Chart of the Foundation 7 Appendix C. The Portuguese Nobility Today: A Preliminary Report by George E. Marcus and Diana L. L. Hill

George E. Marcus is Chancellor's Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. From the 1980s, he has been concerned with the study of upper classes and elite institutions in the United States and other Western societies. His major publications include The Nobility and the Chiefly Tradition in the Modern Kingdom of Tonga (1980), Elites: Ethnographic Issues (1983), (with Michael Fischer) Anthropology As Cultural Critique (1986), (with James Clifford) Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (1986), and (with Peter Dobkin Hall) Lives in Trust: The Fortunes of Dynastic Families in Late Twentieth Century America (1992). Fernando Mascarenhas is Marques of Fronteira and Alorna, and lives in Lisboa, Portugal.