Tobacco Capitalism, an Afterword: Open Letters and Open Wounds in Anthropology

Abstract

This open letter to a North Carolina tobacco grower reflects on important ethical, methodological, and political issues in ethnography. Addressing the informant in the modes of apologetic and confessional discourse, critical self‐reflection, and reparative work, this letter offers reflexive thoughts on inevitabilities of friendship and intimacy in ethnography and analytical insights into the possibilities and pitfalls of politically‐motivated anthropological scholarship on sensitive issues of culture and power, as informants critically read and rebuke publications. This letter is also an effort to humbly reconnect with an estranged informant across an intensely divided America.