Being There The Fieldwork Encounter and the Making of Truth

• Main Authors: Borneman, John, Hammoudi, Abdellah
• Format: eBook Book
• Language: English
• Published: Berkeley University of California Press 2009
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Anthropological methodology; Anthropology; countertransference; cultural studies; ethical responsibility; ethics of representation; ethnographic authority; ethnographic encounter; Ethnographic research; Ethnography; Ethnology; Field work; Fieldwork; fieldwork experience; fragile subject; germany; identification; india; interlocution; morality; morocco; personal experience; power of knowledge; russia; saudi arabia; SOCIAL SCIENCE; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / General; social structures; speech translation; surrogate ethnography; syria; tanzania; textualism; the canadian arctic; Truth; ethics of representation; saudi arabia; personal experience; surrogate ethnography; power of knowledge; speech translation; germany; textualism; countertransference; india; fieldwork experience; identification; russia; the canadian arctic; morality; ethnographic authority; fragile subject; ethical responsibility; ethnography; tanzania; anthropology; social structures; syria; ethnographic encounter; interlocution; cultural studies; morocco
• ISBN: 0520257758; 9780520257757; 9780520257764; 0520257766; 9780520943438; 0520943430
• DOI: 10.1525/9780520943438

Challenges to ethnographic authority and to the ethics of representation have led many contemporary anthropologists to abandon fieldwork in favor of strategies of theoretical puppeteering, textual analysis, and surrogate ethnography. In Being There, John Borneman and Abdellah Hammoudi argue that ethnographies based on these strategies elide important insights. To demonstrate the power and knowledge attained through the fieldwork experience, they have gathered essays by anthropologists working in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tanzania, the Canadian Arctic, India, Germany, and Russia that shift attention back to the subtle dynamics of the ethnographic encounter. From an Inuit village to the foothills of Kilimanjaro, each account illustrates how, despite its challenges, fieldwork yields important insights outside the reach of textual analysis.