Theory of Knowledge - Course Companion for Students Marija Uzunova Dang Arvin Singh Uzunov Dang

III. Methods and tools
their presence in the field,
Despite
observations are conspicuously
ethnographers’
from their otherwise detailed accounts
absent
what happened. Writing about the work of
of
Evans-Pritchard among the Nuer in South
E.E.
anthropologist Richard Fox notices
Sudan,
artfully Evans-Pritchard first personified
“how
among the Nuer and then ‘disappeared’
himself
in favor of a scientific omniscience
himself
the remainder of his text” (Fox 1991). A
for
example came about in 1967, when
problematic
Diary in the Strict Sense of the Word, Bronislaw
A
private diary from his fieldwork
Malinowski’s
New Guinea, was published posthumously
in
his widow. Intensely personal, the diary
by
most likely never meant for publication.
was
was and remains among the most
Malinowski
and influential anthropologists, and yet
famous
diary reveals “a crabbed, self-preoccupied,
his
narcissist, whose fellow-
hypochondriacal
for the people he lived with was limited
feeling
the extreme” (Geertz 1967). In his diary, the
in
Trobrianders are stereotyped as savages,
local
yet “in his ethnographic works they are,
and
a mysterious transformation wrought
through
science, among the most intelligent, dignified,
by
conscientious natives in the whole of
and
literature” (Geertz 1967). What
anthropological
explain this apparent contradiction?
might
affect how we think about other
Doesit
a researcher be so simultaneously detached
Can
involved as to hold views of intense
and
prejudice, but still be able to construct
personal
value-neutral account? When can we separate
a
knowledge from the values of the person
the
produced it, and when does this become
who
Anthropology continues to ask
impossible?
questions, and Malinowski’s diary has
these
a classic in the history of the discipline
become
providing a behind-the-scenes glimpse into
for
making of anthropological knowledge.
the
a method where researchers
Autoethnography,
experience in the field, has been
subjective
to respond to this problem. This
oneway
is suspicious of the ability of scientific
method
and description to produce
observation
knowledge. Instead, the values of the
objective
their position in a given context and
researchers,
relationship with their subject also become
their
of the analysis. In this view, the subjectivity
part
the research is not a barrier to knowledge, but
of
the only intellectually and politically
possibly
has also grappled with the
Anthropology
of the “ethnographic present”,
phenomenon
term referring to the idealized context
a
by an ethnographer’s description of
created
timeless cultural life of Indigenous Peoples,
the
by outside influence and unaffected
untainted
contact. Malinowski has written about the
by
magic, by which he is able to
“ethnographer’s
the real spirit of the natives, the true
invoke
of tribal life” (1922). This problematic,
spirit
account requires the reader
hyper-romanticized
see the encounter between “the natives”
to
the ethnographer as taking place outside
and
history. of
8
honest pathway towards it.
Making connections
Presence and the present in art and history
ethnographic works?
Autoethnography nds use outside the eld of
anthropology. For example, this method is explored
in the context of political theatre in Chapter 10.
Autoethnography has an element of closing the
distance between the producer of knowledge and the
knowledge produced. To what extent is this distance
greater between science and scientist as compared
to art and artist?
The idea of coexistence in time between a
globalized modern culture and local and Indigenous
communities arises in Chapter 5 and Chapter 9. How
does knowledge from these disciplines promote or
undermine our understanding of epistemic diversity?
foreground their presence and embrace their
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