Fieldwork in Common Places

Pratt, Mary Louise

doi:10.1525/9780520946286-004

Cited by 303 publications

(33 citation statements)

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“…More than a decade of cultural and autobiographical studies has extensively problematized narrative representation of hegemonized voices (Anzuldua, 1990;James & Busia, 1993;Jerome & Satin, 1999;Jones, 1997;Morago & Anzuldua, 1983;Personal Narratives Group, 1989;Simpson, 1996;Smith, 1993). Mary Louis Pratt (1986) argues that autoethnography originates as a discourse from the margins of dominant culture-at which academe is central-identifying the material, political, and transformational dimensions of representational politics. Informed by recent work in autobiography, autoethnographic methods recognize the reflections and refractions of multiple selves in contexts that arguably transform the authorial "I" to an existential "we.…”

Section: Being Here: Autoethnographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Performing Autoethnography: An Embodied Methodological Praxis

Spry

2001

Qualitative Inquiry

708

390

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This article argues the personal/professional/political emancipatory potential of autoethnographic performance as a method of inquiry. Autoethnographic performance is the convergence of the “autobiographic impulse” and the “ethnographic moment” represented through movement and critical self-reflexive discourse in performance, articulating the intersections of peoples and culture through the innersanctions of the always migratory identity. The article offers evaluative standards for the autoethnographic performance methodology, calling on the body as a site of scholarly awareness and corporeal literacy. Autoethnographic performance makes us acutely conscious of how we “ Iwitness” our own reality constructions. Interpreting culture through the self-reflections and cultural refractions of identity is a defining feature of autoethnographic performance.

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Section: Being Here: Autoethnographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Performing Autoethnography: An Embodied Methodological Praxis

Spry

2001

Qualitative Inquiry

708

390

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“…Ethnographic fieldwork-especially an anthropologist's first experience of longterm fieldwork-has long been theorized variously as a literary device (Pratt 1986) and as a rite of passage (Wagner [1975(Wagner [ ] 2016. Within this paradigm of ethnographic validity established by Malinowksi and further stressed by Geertz (1988), 'being there' becomes central to the construction of anthropological authority, dramatized most vividly in the anthropologists' perpetual balancing act between empathic insider and neutral, attentively observing and analyzing outsider.…”

Section: Fieldwork As Initiation-and Its Dissolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Staying Tuned

Hughes¹,

Walter²

2021

Social Analysis

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Ethnographers today find themselves experimenting with new approaches to digital ethnography amid pandemic-related restrictions on research. Yet such developments only accelerate a broader trend toward the dissolution of the traditional ethnographic ‘field’ due to new communications technologies and the emergence of a globalized ‘knowledge economy’. Through six contributions from around the world, this forum explores how the emergence of a more diffuse, interconnected ethnographic field is impacting fieldwork's status as a rite of passage, creating new affective entanglements and shifting power relationships between researchers and participants. Despite the potential for influence and surveillance that new technologies cede to already powerful institutions, the discussions underline how ethnographic interlocutors are auteurs in their own right—and that ethnographers are also often bit characters in other people's stories.

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“…Although severely undermined by questionable identity politics, representation has nonetheless been the telos of the ethnographic enterprise, with each epistemological and methodological turn being offered with the goal of providing a more full and accurate depiction of cultures. Nevertheless, because of its long history of methodological, epistemological, and ethical shortcomings, ethnographic work has been long implicated in the maintenance of the imperial project because of its fetishization of the exotic and problematic constructions of the Other (Hymes, 1972;Pratt, 1986;Said, 1979) in its textual representations. Beginning with the late 19th-century anthropological work of the "lone ethnographer" (Kamberelis & Dimitriadis, 2005;Rosaldo, 1989), ethnographic fieldwork and writing have been consistently marred by inattentiveness to the ways that human subjectivity is concealed within its texts.…”

Section: Representingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Representin(g)

Hill

2006

Qualitative Inquiry

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In this article, the author examines the dilemmas that emerged in his role as teacher-researcher in Hip-Hop Lit, a hip-hop-centered literature class within an evening education program. Specifically, the author examines the complex and often competing roles and identities that he performed within the research context, as well as during the process of ethnographic writing. The author details how these roles and identities were mediated by the various allegiances, commitments, and beliefs that prompted the study, as well as those that developed in response to the relationships that were forged with research participants. The article argues for a constant reflection on and response to issues of identity, authority, and power while in the field and "behind the desk."

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Fieldwork in Common Places

Cited by 303 publications

References 0 publications

Performing Autoethnography: An Embodied Methodological Praxis

Performing Autoethnography: An Embodied Methodological Praxis

Staying Tuned

Representin(g)

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