The Collaborative Power Struggleстатья из журнала
Аннотация: The Collaborative Power Struggle Samuel R. Cook (bio) In the discipline of anthropology the term collaborative is a loaded one to say the least. As Field and Fox (2007) argue, ethnographic research has always required a degree of collaboration between primary researcher (the anthropologist or ethnographer) and research communities or individuals (even those once identified by the archaic distinction as "informants"). Yet while collaborative has been a technical moniker for methodological applications for some time (see, e.g., Stull and Schensul 1987), this journal purports in part to operationalize the term as a designator for a malleable field of theory, methodology, and praxis aimed at leveling the epistemological and ideological space between ethnographer and research community or consultants. Indeed, the dialogue coming of age over the past decade that has seemingly formalized collaborative ethnography as a distinct, if not notorious, new direction in anthropology has generated more questions than answers. Consider Lassiter's succinct definition of collaborative ethnography, in which he argues for "an approach to ethnography that deliberately and explicitly emphasizes collaboration [with community co-intellectuals] at every point in the ethnographic process, without veiling it-from project conceptualization, to fieldwork, and especially, through the writing process" (Lassiter 2005, 16, emphasis in original). By adding the phrase "Can there be" to the beginning of this sentence one creates a challenging question that simultaneously asserts an ideal ethnographers may strive to attain but may never reach. In this light it is clear that all of collaborative ethnography is experimental inasmuch as such endeavors seek the best means to an end while realizing that the means are always determined by the context and, paradoxically, that there is no true end. [End Page 109] When Marcus and Fischer (1986) elucidated "an experimental moment in the human sciences" (specifically anthropology) they were addressing the problem of social representation in the postmodern world and particularly the sobering reality of the privileged position an ethnographer holds in interpreting the realities of others. The essays in this section are thematically bound by their head-on efforts to breech this power dynamic by placing community agendas first. While such endeavors may seem just another rendering of applied anthropology-and specifically advocacy anthropology (e.g., Gray and Heinen 1990; Paine 1985), insofar as "in particular cases [of anthropological fieldwork] advocacy is no option but an implicit requirement of the social relationship established between the anthropologist and the local people" (Hastrup and Elsass 1990, 301)-the following essays reflect deliberate efforts to be moved by community agendas, reactions, and even resistance. These efforts necessarily required experimentation, not only in an effort to reach certain ends (not always entirely successfully) but, more important, to learn actively from successes and failures in communication between anthropologist and community co-intellectuals. This refunctioning of ethnography (Holmes and Marcus 2005, 2006) is perhaps at the crux of truly integrated collaborative ethnography. "Key to this refunctioning," state Holmes and Marcus (2008, 82), "is drawing on the analytical acumen and existential insights of our subjects to recast the intellectual imperatives of our own methodological practices, in short, the para-ethnographic practices of our subjects." Accordingly, the three essays that follow articulate divergent efforts to navigate community imperatives, to realize the profound differences between ethnographer and community collaborator-whether in the form of age, race, class, gender, sexual preference, education, or other differences-and to assess successes and shortcomings in reconciling these differences and advancing disparate agendas. In the context of post-Katrina New Orleans, Rachel Breunlin and Helen A. Regis ask: "Can there be a critical collaborative ethnography?" They attempt to forge an answer by reflecting on their involvement both as community residents and as anthropologists living and working in the city's Seventh Ward, a historically Creole neighborhood that has become increasingly diverse, yet seemingly enjoying a sense of solidarity built on a post-hurricane state of communitas. After Katrina numerous high-profile city and state officials seemed to take advantage [End Page 110] of the forced evacuation of the majority of New Orleanians and proposed a new plan for radical demographic and political restructuring (in essence replacing the pre-Katrina underprivileged, predominantly nonwhite population with a new class of cosmopolitan migrants, so it seemed...
Год издания: 2009
Авторы: Samuel R. Cook
Источник: Collaborative anthropologies
Ключевые слова: Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture, Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics, Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy
Открытый доступ: closed
Том: 2
Выпуск: 1
Страницы: 109–114