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--- 1001:2021:13 [2021/05/30 01:20] – [References] Ryan Schram (admin)
+++ 1001:2021:13 [2021/06/01 00:06] (current) – [How might ethnography speak to its own object?] Ryan Schram (admin)
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 Week of May 31, 2021 (Week 13)
-Slides available at http://anthro.rschram.org/2700/2021/13
+Slides available at http://anthro.rschram.org/1001/2021/13
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 Should anthropology then have another kind of audience, the people that are described in ethnography?
 ===== The injustices that research ethics cannot solve =====
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   * By contrast, Sherry Ortner speaks of an “ethnographic refusal.” Ortner means specifically the refusal by an anthropologist to emphasize the emic perspective over an etic perspective (Ortner 1995)
     * Ortner’s concept of ethnographic refusal is when an anthropologist foregrounds the effects of colonialism and integration with the global system of capitalism as an explanation for people’s contemporary life, and refuses to look at these experiences in emic terms as part of a particular worldview.
-    * One example is the way people talk about so-called “cargo cults” in PNG. Are they an example of “episodic time” or do they represent people’s resistance to colonial domination (Billings 2002; Burridge 1954; Errington 1974; Robbins 2004; Kaplan 1995; Lattas 2007; McDowell 1988)?
+    * One example is the way people talk about so-called “cargo cults” in PNG. Are they an example of “episodic time” or do they represent people’s resistance to colonial domination (Billings 2002; Burridge 1954; Errington 1974; Jebens 2004; Kaplan 1995; Lattas 2007; McDowell 1988)?
+===== Ships passing in the night =====
+There is an irony in the history of anthropology.
+Most research in anthropology today is conducted in a critical mode.
+  * Most anthropologists want their work to “speak truth to power” (American Friends Service Committee 1955).
+  * Most ethnography written today seeks to situate the object of description in a larger, even global, context. The ethnographer of today writes against a fictional “ethnographic present.”
+And yet, many other critical social sciences have ethnography envy.
+  * Many people outside of anthropology think classical ethnographic writing, particularly the kind that seeks to capture a distinct emic perspective, is a great way to do engaged, political work that advocates for change, or “action research.”
+===== Feminist “participatory action research” is ethnography =====
+Consider what feminist sociologist Shulamit Reinharz says about participatory action research:
+> In feminist participatory research, the distinction between the researcher(s) and those on whom the research is done disappears. To achieve an egalitarian relation, the researcher abandons control and adopts an approach of openness, reciprocity, mutual disclosure, and shared risk. Differences in social status and background give way as shared decision-making and self-disclosure develop. (Reinharz 1992, 181)
+For her, participatory research means the researcher:
+  * “abandons control”
+  * strives for “an egalitarian relation”
+  * relies on mutual trust between researcher and researched.
+Sound familiar?
+===== Participatory research has been treated skeptically in anthropology =====
+Anthropologists are always skeptical. They like the idea of activist research, since they generally want to do good for their research subjects, but they question whether it’s possible
+  * “In ‘community-based’ research, how do you know who is included and excluded from this community?”
+  * “Who speaks for this community? How do you know you’re not just be co-opted by the ‘loudspeakers’ in the community?”
+  * “What are the unintended consequences?”
 ===== How might ethnography speak to its own object? =====
-More recently, scholars have revived this label and argued for a positive interpretation of refusal. When they use the term, they mean refusal to represent specific topics in pubilshed academic ethnographic writings, and instead collaborate with their informants on ways to for them to speak for themselves and create knowledge about themselves that is valuable for their community (Simpson 2007) * Intellectual ownership * Secrecy * Refusal to make people into ethnographic objects
+More recently, scholars have revived Ortner’s skeptical label of “ethnographic refusal” and argued for a positive interpretation.
+When they use the term, they mean refusal to represent specific topics in pubilshed academic ethnographic writings, and instead collaborate with their informants on ways to for them to speak for themselves and create knowledge about themselves that is valuable for their community (Simpson 2007)
+* Intellectual ownership
+* Secrecy
+* Refusal to make people into ethnographic objects
+===== What makes community-led research successful? =====
+Indigenous-controlled and directed research has only grown since Christen’s work on this topic. But it seems like there are several crucial elements that have to be present for it to work.
+  * The community that directs the research on itself, and may even commission the research project, usually already has some degree of political recognition as an autonomous body, and has its own institutions to exercise its rights of self-determination in a larger sphere.
+  * Like all communities, it already generates knowledge of itself. In community-led research, people have also developed a consciousness of themselves as a community and can thus more effectively communicate their knowledge of themselves to others, including
+    * the dominant society in which they are embedded
+    * networks of communities, scholars, and activists with similar identities and in similar situations.
+Does a community that has empowered itself to create, transmit, and develop its own knowledge of itself even need anthropologists to help it create new knowledge?
+Would becoming an anthropologist of oneself and one’s own community be the best way to know yourself?
+===== References and further reading =====
+American Friends Service Committee. 1955. //Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence//. Philadelphia: American Friends Service Committee. http://www.quaker.org/sttp.html.
-===== References =====
 Bell, Kirsten. 2014. “Resisting Commensurability: Against Informed Consent as an Anthropological Virtue.” //American Anthropologist// 116 (3): 511–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.12122.
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 Errington, Frederick. 1974. “Indigenous Ideas of Order, Time, and Transition in a New Guinea Cargo Movement.” //American Ethnologist// 1 (2): 255–67. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1974.1.2.02a00030.
+Jebens, Holger, ed. 2004. //Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique//. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. http://books.google.com?id=F5v7UD4FOigC.
@@ Line 136: / Line 199: @@
 McDowell, Nancy. 1988. “A Note on Cargo Cults and Cultural Constructions of Change.” //Pacific Studies// 11 (2): 121–34.
 Nader, Laura. 1972. “Up the Anthropologist: Perspectives Gained from Studying Up.” In //Reinventing Anthropology//, edited by Dell Hymes, 284–311. New York: Pantheon Books.
-Pels, Peter. 1999. “Professions of Duplexity: A Prehistory of Ethical Codes in Anthropology.” //Current Anthropology// 40 (2): 101–36. https://doi.org/10.1086/200001.
+Ortner, Sherry B. 1995. “Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal.” //Comparative Studies in Society and History// 37 (1): 173–93. http://www.jstor.org/stable/179382.
-Robbins, Joel. 2004. “On the Critique in Cargo and the Cargo in Critique: Toward a Comparative Anthropology of Critical Practice.” In //Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique//, edited by Holger Jebens, 243–60. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press.
+Pels, Peter. 1999. “Professions of Duplexity: A Prehistory of Ethical Codes in Anthropology.” //Current Anthropology// 40 (2): 101–36. https://doi.org/10.1086/200001.
-Simpson, Audra. 2007. “On Ethnographic Refusal: Indigeneity, ‘Voice’ and Colonial Citizenship.” //Junctures// 9: 67–80.
+Reinharz, Shulamit. 1992. //Feminist Methods in Social Research//. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://archive.org/details/feministmethodsi0000rein.
+Simpson, Audra. 2007. “On Ethnographic Refusal: Indigeneity, ‘Voice’ and Colonial Citizenship.” //Junctures// 9: 67–80.