More than a decade ago, at the beginning of my doctoral fieldwork, I was kidnapped and robbed one morning in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. As I negotiated the logistical and emotional aftermath of this traumatic event, I took refuge in elite, privileged spaces. In doing so, I grappled with difficult problems: my privilege, my fear and feelings of vulnerability, and my broader moral concerns about Tanzania's poverty, gross wealth inequities, and the impacts these have on public health. Here, using Harrison's framing of multiple consciousness, I reflect on my vulnerability and privilege, and how they illuminate the impact the kidnapping had on my research and my perspectives on knowledge production. I call for our discipline to continue dismantling narratives of heroic fieldwork and to make more compassionate space for honest stories of our mistakes and privileges. Doing so would allow anthropologists to more faithfully account for fieldwork's messy unpredictabilities and tangled relations.
{"title":"Reflections on unheroic fieldwork","authors":"Meredith G. Marten","doi":"10.1111/amet.13383","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13383","url":null,"abstract":"More than a decade ago, at the beginning of my doctoral fieldwork, I was kidnapped and robbed one morning in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. As I negotiated the logistical and emotional aftermath of this traumatic event, I took refuge in elite, privileged spaces. In doing so, I grappled with difficult problems: my privilege, my fear and feelings of vulnerability, and my broader moral concerns about Tanzania's poverty, gross wealth inequities, and the impacts these have on public health. Here, using Harrison's framing of <jats:italic>multiple consciousness</jats:italic>, I reflect on my vulnerability and privilege, and how they illuminate the impact the kidnapping had on my research and my perspectives on knowledge production. I call for our discipline to continue dismantling narratives of heroic fieldwork and to make more compassionate space for honest stories of our mistakes and privileges. Doing so would allow anthropologists to more faithfully account for fieldwork's messy unpredictabilities and tangled relations.","PeriodicalId":48134,"journal":{"name":"American Ethnologist","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142887419","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Displaced people have not escaped war and do not live apart from it. This is evident in the material life of internally displaced Iraqi farmers seeking refuge in a concrete construction site, downstream from a cement‐processing plant in Iraqi Kurdistan. There, one family has repeatedly tried to build a traditional tannour (bread oven) out of unworkable, cement‐infused materials in their environment. As their experience shows, physical brushes with the cement industry, rather than kinetic violence like bombs and battles, lie at the heart of what war is. Through ambiguously embracing cement's contaminating qualities, displaced people open a space to reckon with their predicament.
{"title":"Cement and displacement","authors":"Kali Rubaii","doi":"10.1111/amet.13377","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13377","url":null,"abstract":"Displaced people have not escaped war and do not live apart from it. This is evident in the material life of internally displaced Iraqi farmers seeking refuge in a concrete construction site, downstream from a cement‐processing plant in Iraqi Kurdistan. There, one family has repeatedly tried to build a traditional <jats:italic>tannour</jats:italic> (bread oven) out of unworkable, cement‐infused materials in their environment. As their experience shows, physical brushes with the cement industry, rather than kinetic violence like bombs and battles, lie at the heart of what war is. Through ambiguously embracing cement's contaminating qualities, displaced people open a space to reckon with their predicament.","PeriodicalId":48134,"journal":{"name":"American Ethnologist","volume":"124 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142879975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this commentary I interrogate the implicit picture of anthropological knowledge as vulnerable to errors because its primary scene is taken to be an encounter with an alien society. Using a method of autobiographically inflected ethnographic writing, I ask how the philosophical fantasy of “the logical alien,” which Wittgenstein untangles, finds another version in the anthropologist's imagination of anthropology as the scene of encounter with the wholly Other. In such cases the idea of a mistake settles on dramatic moments when the anthropologist avows an error in translation, a misrecognition, or an instance of unknowingly breaking a taboo. By taking a long‐term perspective on the vulnerability of knowledge, which reveals itself over time, I draw attention, instead, to the connections between the knowledge of the alien and our own everyday modes of knowing. We miss these connections if we stay with the stark oppositions of truth and falsity, mistakes and correction.
{"title":"“What even the cowherds and women know”","authors":"Veena Das","doi":"10.1111/amet.13382","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13382","url":null,"abstract":"In this commentary I interrogate the implicit picture of anthropological knowledge as vulnerable to errors because its primary scene is taken to be an encounter with an alien society. Using a method of autobiographically inflected ethnographic writing, I ask how the philosophical fantasy of “the logical alien,” which Wittgenstein untangles, finds another version in the anthropologist's imagination of anthropology as the scene of encounter with the wholly Other. In such cases the idea of a mistake settles on dramatic moments when the anthropologist avows an error in translation, a misrecognition, or an instance of unknowingly breaking a taboo. By taking a long‐term perspective on the vulnerability of knowledge, which reveals itself over time, I draw attention, instead, to the connections between the knowledge of the alien and our own everyday modes of knowing. We miss these connections if we stay with the stark oppositions of truth and falsity, mistakes and correction.","PeriodicalId":48134,"journal":{"name":"American Ethnologist","volume":"123 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142884373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Difficult challenges are an unavoidable aspect of doing ethnographic fieldwork in sensitive spaces or on sensitive subjects. A less commonly discussed problem, however, is the impact that vicarious or secondary traumas can have on researchers. Here, I discuss my experience of secondary trauma in conducting research with legal advocates in family‐detention facilities in the US. Even in work in which trauma is centered, I show, the traumatic “wounds” of fieldwork can go unidentified, to the researcher's own detriment. I echo calls for our discipline to better recognize how ethnographers experience trauma, which results in part from continued disciplinary norms, and to reconsider our work as care. Additionally, I call for further attention to the more complex psycho/somatic traumas that can result from field research.
{"title":"A vicarious scar","authors":"Erin Routon","doi":"10.1111/amet.13379","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13379","url":null,"abstract":"Difficult challenges are an unavoidable aspect of doing ethnographic fieldwork in sensitive spaces or on sensitive subjects. A less commonly discussed problem, however, is the impact that vicarious or secondary traumas can have on researchers. Here, I discuss my experience of secondary trauma in conducting research with legal advocates in family‐detention facilities in the US. Even in work in which trauma is centered, I show, the traumatic “wounds” of fieldwork can go unidentified, to the researcher's own detriment. I echo calls for our discipline to better recognize how ethnographers experience trauma, which results in part from continued disciplinary norms, and to reconsider our work as care. Additionally, I call for further attention to the more complex psycho/somatic traumas that can result from field research.","PeriodicalId":48134,"journal":{"name":"American Ethnologist","volume":"140 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142879976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Theory occupies a central, if curious place in contemporary anthropology. It is needed and valuable, enabling the articulation and use of insights from field research. But it is also feared at times as hard, and also used in exclusionary ways. In this commentary, I review how my understanding of and relationship to theory have changed over time, primarily through an understanding of ethnography as always already theoretical. After considering what theory and ethnography are, as well as the importance of story to theory, I then offer 10 lessons I've learned that shape my theoretical practice.
{"title":"I was wrong about theory","authors":"Carole McGranahan","doi":"10.1111/amet.13378","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13378","url":null,"abstract":"Theory occupies a central, if curious place in contemporary anthropology. It is needed and valuable, enabling the articulation and use of insights from field research. But it is also feared at times as hard, and also used in exclusionary ways. In this commentary, I review how my understanding of and relationship to theory have changed over time, primarily through an understanding of ethnography as always already theoretical. After considering what theory and ethnography are, as well as the importance of story to theory, I then offer 10 lessons I've learned that shape my theoretical practice.","PeriodicalId":48134,"journal":{"name":"American Ethnologist","volume":"85 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142879629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Disability worlds By FayeGinsburg and RaynaRapp. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2024. 271 pp.","authors":"Timothy Y. Loh","doi":"10.1111/amet.13372","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13372","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48134,"journal":{"name":"American Ethnologist","volume":"77 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142776611","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The composition of worlds: Interviews with Pierre Charbonnier By PhilippeDescola. Cambridge: Polity, 2024. 200 pp.","authors":"Laura Rival","doi":"10.1111/amet.13376","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13376","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48134,"journal":{"name":"American Ethnologist","volume":"82 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142763363","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Zainab's traffic: Moving saints, selves, and others across borders By EmrahYıldız. Oakland: University of California Press, 2024. 191 pp.","authors":"Sana Chavoshian","doi":"10.1111/amet.13375","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13375","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48134,"journal":{"name":"American Ethnologist","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142763358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Passport island: The market for EU citizenship in Cyprus By TheodorosRakopoulos. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2023. 262 pp.","authors":"Nicole Constable","doi":"10.1111/amet.13374","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13374","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48134,"journal":{"name":"American Ethnologist","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142763163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The violence of recognition: Adivasi indigeneity and anti‐Dalitness in India By PinkyHota. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024. 230 pp.","authors":"Svati Shah","doi":"10.1111/amet.13373","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13373","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48134,"journal":{"name":"American Ethnologist","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142763357","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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