Crafting Anthropology Otherwise: Alterity and performance (original) (raw)

Crafting Anthropology Otherwise: Affinity, Alterity and Performance

WHO ARE 'WE'? Reimagining Alterity and Affinity in Anthropology, 2018

Subjects: LCSH: Ethnology--Case studies. | Group identity--Case studies. | Ethnicity--Case studies. | Other (Philosophy)--Case studies. Classification: LCC GN495.6 (ebook) | LCC GN495.6 .W5 2018 (print) | DDC 305.8--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017056918 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78533-888-5 hardback ISBN 978-1-78533-889-2 ebook

01 Intro_Whose Anthropology is it Anyway?.doc

The event aimed to explore a variety of perspectives concerning the production and the ownership of anthropological knowledge, including issues of authority and ethical responsibility. We also welcomed reflections on the opening of new interstitial fieldsites in between the structured components of anthropological research. Our interest focused on the dilemmas arising from the definition of the field itself, in the guise of the epistemological delimitation of its boundaries and how these affect the relational world within it. We focused on the co-dependence between these factors and on the influence of increasing interconnectedness through advanced and progressively widespread communication technologies (cf. Kelty 2009).

Whose Anthropology Is It, Anyway?

Anthropology in Action, 2015

This special issue of Anthropology in Action collects essays arising from the 4th Postgraduate Conference of the Royal Anthropological Institute, held at Brunel University (London) on 3-4 September 2014. The event aimed to explore a variety of perspectives concerning the production and the ownership of anthropological knowledge, including issues of authority and ethical responsibility. We also welcomed reflections on the opening of new interstitial fieldsites in between the structured components of anthropological research. Our interest focused on the dilemmas arising from the definition of the field itself, in the guise of the epistemological delimitation of its boundaries and how these affect the relational world within it. We focused on the co-dependence between these factors and on the influence of increasing interconnectedness through advanced and progressively widespread communication technologies (cf. Kelty 2009). The scholarship on fieldwork that could inspire our work is vast. In drafting our call for paper, however, we were influenced by Edmund Leach's Reith Lectures, A Runaway World (1967), through which he argued the importance of a scientific awareness of 'the evolving system as a whole' against epistemological reductionism (Leach 1967; cf. also Tambiah 2002). As Grimshaw observed, the title carried within itself a 'mixture of optimism and fear', highlighting how Leach's 'interest was in movement, not stasis; […] he articulated the problem as one of disjunction, of reconciling the reality of change with conventional notions and cultural categories which guaranteed order' (1990: 77). Leach 'warned against withdrawal […] masqueraded as scientific objectivity', which translated in a sense of estrangement of the man from the 'world out there' (ibid.: 77-8). Significantly, his last lecture was titled after Forster's poem 'Only Connect ...' (1999), giving Leach the frame to his conclusive invitation to 'live in fragments no longer'. Leach was concerned with the expansion and progressive discontinuity in the experience and production of knowledge, its compartmentalisation and, thus, about the inclination of the discipline towards it. The concern over the dialectics between the general and the particular in the discipline had surfaced in a time of crisis and redefinition of anthropology, and has done so recursively since this time of introspection and reassessment (cf. Appadurai 1988; Clifford and Marcus 1986; GDAT in Rapport 2009; Wolf 1980). As graduate students recently back from quite diverse fieldwork settings, we felt that the production of anthropological knowledge as a result of interaction as something else altogether compared to its single components-had often been glossed over in its most recent developments. We noted the tendency for ethnography to privilege the 'heroic' anthropologists and their quest for understanding, often framing research through its successes and minimising its failures, and thus making fieldwork appear as a journey from personal ignorance to personal enlightenment and revelation. Quite apart from their fetishisation of 'success' within the fieldwork process, such accounts are inclined to minimise the role of those other than the anthropologist, their understandings and their knowledge production. Interconnectedness, we had begun to realise, had had a considerable impact on how we conducted research and surfaced as an additional dimension of the research process. Our different experiences had led us to rethink several classificatory terms and concepts that were meant to define (in its etymological meaning of reaching completion through the establishment of finis, of boundaries) our experiences: from the mere location of the field, whether 'at home' or far away, to the idea of 'far away' itself-how 'far' is 'away'? In a moment of technological (r)evolution, of migration beyond

transnational anthropology Fin-dSNT DM ed May 121 2018 docx.doc

To forge an anthropology that speaks to the full range of human experiences, especially our domains of commonality, we need to critically examine the historical and locational positioning of the anthropological project. In this essay, I argue that is best to understand anthropology in terms of a history of transnational schools of anthropology, rather than in terms

Applying v. Using Anthropology.

Practicing Anthropology

: [19][20][21][22]. Although not collaborative in the same sense, other articles that share some or all of the characteristics I am about to discuss are "Keeping Some Distance: Anthropology in Urban Planning" by Jeffery F. Dow (16,2[1994]:24-26) and "Reforming Electric Utility Regulation: The Engineer as Anthropologist" by Eric Hirst (16,2[1994]:27-30). The methodological approach suggested in these articles has some very disturbing features. These features have the potential to transform applied anthropology into the Mac-Science of the ninties-with its practitioners reduced to the role of flipping technocratic hats according to what disciplines "collaborate" in the research. If we are to avoid this, we must establish the difference between applying and using anthropology. To apply anthropology is to expand the knowledge base to a different reality through careful contextualization of previously acquired knowledge. New insights developed in the process can contribute towards the improvement of methods, theory, and research procedures. The user of anthropology, on the other hand, is mostly concerned with the gathering of information to prove or disprove the effectiveness of this or that instrument or mode of analysis; the user of anthropology treats the social realm as yet another laboratory where human interaction is to be replicated though not understood. The first disturbing feature is the idea that the best way to undertake anthropological research is to hyphenate it with another discipline. While there is nothing in principle that can be damaging to applied anthropology from its interaction with other disciplines, careful attention must be paid to the conditions under which such interaction takes place. A second, related disturbing feature is the heavy reliance on the so-called partnership arrangement as the preferred vehicle to undertake field work. Partnerships of the kind advocated might very well mean that field work is reduced to information scavenging on the remains of "the other," i.e., the research participants. Let us look closely at these two paradigmatic characteristics and the methodological consequences of using vs. applying anthropology. The principal reason for cross-discipline cooperation is to join forces in order to solve common problems. In applied anthropology, however, collaboration too often means applying our research tools to problems defined by other disciplines--or even loaning our tools to those disciplines. It is . irresponsible for Baba and Falkenburg to suggest that an engineering graduate student who takes notes and asks questions can become an ethnographer solely on the basis of this "experience." To reverse their simplistic analogy, to behave like an engineer but to think like an ethnographer is not a sufficient condition to conduct sound quantitative research. Mastering the tools of the trade cannot and must not be confused with the need to obtain scientifically rigorous results. Another problem with the cross-disciplinary collaboration described by Baba and Falkenburg is that it omits active involvement from the workers at the site. Throughout the article, the workers appear as nothing more than lower-order information devices whose very livelihood activities need "translation" via engineering students who know the jargon used, though not the human beings who use it. Clearly, this kind of cross-discipline interaction is intended to act on people rather than with them. In the Old Days, when glorifying corporations and putting academic credentials at their service was not part of a researcher's duties, this kind of research was called exploitative and manipulative. It is the inevitable result of putting applied anthropology at the service of third party interests under the guise of collaborative efforts. Within the practitioner/ researcher model there can be no legitimacy whatsoever in a study that systematically denies participation to those who are most affected by it. However, if applied anthropology is seen as a user-friendly discipline, willing to bend and twist as the requirements of the user demand, this type of research becomes possible. In such a case, we are not applying anthropology; we are using anthropology to suit someone else's needs. The reliance on partnership as the preferred way to conduct field work has similarly negative results. Partnership is conceived of as a combined effort on the part of two disciplines that, while taking part in a common task, nevertheless remain totally independent from one another. This sort of "coequal partnership" leads-as Baba and Falkenburg show-into various kinds of power-plays and mind-games between "professionals of different occupational subcultures." The main component in these power-plays is the issue of control over the definition, design, and implementation of field work. Three-quarters of field work time, it seems, was spent trying to convince engineers of the benefits of qualita, tive methods. The focus of the field work, however, was "what was wrong at the informant's work site"-that is to say, workproductivity improvement. Engineers alone cannot figure out the problems in an industrial setting, so let's bring in the anthropologists. Thus, the task is not to do what ethnographic work demands (careful, long-term investigation); rather, the task is to take the path of least resistance and do what works. Partnerships of this type are, in essence, opportunistic arrangements entered into to manipulate the social realm. It is ironic that, while some of us are not prepared to accept the disintegration of indigenous societies in the name of progress, others, it seems, have no quarrel with the prospect of turning