Unsettling Ethnography: Tales of an ‘Ōiwi in the Anthropological Slot

Tengan, Ty P. Kāwika

doi:10.1080/00664670500282030

Cited by 40 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…As a white woman anthropologist, my goal is to build anthropological knowledge from Indigenous theorizing to see health anew. Working at the intersection of anthropology and Pacific studies, this means drawing from theory that lies outside of the anthropological canon because of the ways that Pacific studies scholars have often been alienated from anthropology (see Tengan, 2005; Trask, 1991). 10 Writing with Oceanic theory to situate movement as knowledge production is also a way to follow the legacy of Katherine Dunham (2006), as her work sought to affirm “the dignity and wisdom of black and brown bodies as knowing and profoundly human” (Roberts, 2014, 19).…”

Section: Theorizing With Oceanic Epistemologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Moving materialities: Oceanic epistemologies and embodied knowledge production in Pentecostal women's health mentorship in Samoa

Hardin

2023

American Anthropologist

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This article employs Oceanic epistemological theories to explore the body as a site of knowledge production among Samoan Pentecostal women as they dance in a church‐sponsored Zumba session, tracking foods, words, and feelings: I call these moving materialities. In their work together, these women contextualized health, sickness, and weight as generated from the circulation of these kinds of moving materialities. Their work theorizing health through material change is quite different from those imagined and circulated in the literatures on diabetes and obesity. The article orients critical studies of health toward an interrogation of the dynamic qualities of materiality, including both the moving body and materials that move between or within bodies. By expanding what might be considered material and movement in the context of health, this article offers an alternative to theories of metabolism that have come to dominate how we understand the body in terms energy expenditure. Ultimately, this approach calls for anthropologists to consider the circumstances in which theory is understood to be “culturally specific” or “generalizable.”

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Section: Theorizing With Oceanic Epistemologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Moving materialities: Oceanic epistemologies and embodied knowledge production in Pentecostal women's health mentorship in Samoa

Hardin

2023

American Anthropologist

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“…If the project is collaborative from the outset, analysis happens throughout the research process, in relationship with the people we work with, and then the theorizing and the doing of research become less distinct between the ethnographer and the 'field'. The communities we work with and from can be part of the process of building ethnographic theory, and thus the knowledge creation processes become interrelated with our ethical conduct (Tengan, 2005). These ethics are rooted in a desire to produce accountable knowledge which is for the people rather than the neoliberal academy (Hammana & Klinkert, 2021).…”

Section: The Fourth Piece Of Firewood: Ethics Of Accountability Vs Reflexivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Fires Within Us and the Rivers We Form

Collective¹,

Pattathu²,

Barnett-Naghshineh³

et al. 2021

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This paper is a creative, poetic and experimental intervention in the form of collective reflections and writings on Anthropology, as the discipline we have experienced and/or been a part of within the University. It is also a reflection on the process of how the authors came together to form the River and Fire Collective. As a collective we have studied, worked and taught in more than 15 universities, and the aspects we point to here are fragments of our experiences and observations of the emotionality of the discipline. These are experiences from different forms of Anthropology from Northern Europe and settler-colonial contexts including Great Turtle Island Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand. In a metaphorical manner we invite the reader to our collective fireside dialogues and reflections, to be inspired, to disagree or agree and to continue a process of transformation. The paper sets out to provocatively question whether Anthropology is salvageable or whether one should ‘let it burn’ (Jobson, 2020). Exploring this question is done by way of discussing decolonial potentialities within the discipline(s), the classroom and exploring fire and water as a radical potential to think through the tensions between abolition and transformation. The reflections engage with concepts of decolonization, whiteness/white innocence, knowledge creation and -sharing, the anthropological self, ethics and accountability and language. The paper emphasizes Anthropology’s embeddedness in colonial narratives, structures and legacies and draws attention to how these colonial, able-bodied realities are being continuously reaffirmed through multiple educational practices and methodologies. It suggests that collectivity in writing, thinking and being is part of a healing process for those of us feeling our way through colonial continuities and prospective potentialities of Anthropology.

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“…However, for many both in and outside of the discipline, this is not how it appears or feels. Instead, to many Indigenous scholars and to anthropologists such as Ifi Amadiume (1987) -it seemed anthropologists were mostly whites who came to 'observe' (or sneak around) and then write about Brown and Black people (Biolsi & Zimmerman, 1997;Harrison, 1997;Tengan, 2005;Trask, 1991). Whilst the discipline has mutated and created new missions for itself, especially since the reflexive turn, and now 'studies up', this does not negate the origins of its methodologies, or the tools that continue to be used by states and corporations to 'make sense of' or order those that reside in peripheries, yet to be 'modernized' (Khosravi, 2014).…”

Section: Decolonization Terminology and Anthropologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction to the Special Issue Decolonizing Anthropology: Race, Emotions and Pedagogies in the European Classroom

Barnett-Naghshineh¹,

Pattathu

2021

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Here we open up the special issue with an introduction to the topic of decolonizing anthropology through the consideration of the emotionality of race, racism, and whiteness within the classroom and the discipline. Focusing on the European Classroom as a construct, we reflect on what the implications of decolonizing anthropology are for teaching the discipline, particularly in regard to the positionality of “European Others” (El Tayeb, 2011) as students and educators. While demands for structural changes in the discipline and the restructuring of canons and curriculums have been widely proposed, the role of affect and emotions in relation to colonialism, race, and whiteness in the decolonizing process have been addressed only marginally. We offer a contribution to the conversation through the focus on emotions, taking these as a form of knowledge and political action. Bringing together literatures on postcolonial studies, decolonial theory with critiques of anthropology, we suggest a space for thinking about the emotional dimensions of decolonization within the university and across disciplines and describe the contribution of each article included herein that show the power that comes from thinking critically about the emotionality of the classroom, and the role of emotions in reproducing colonial epistemics.

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Unsettling Ethnography: Tales of an ‘Ōiwi in the Anthropological Slot

Cited by 40 publications

References 15 publications

Moving materialities: Oceanic epistemologies and embodied knowledge production in Pentecostal women's health mentorship in Samoa

Moving materialities: Oceanic epistemologies and embodied knowledge production in Pentecostal women's health mentorship in Samoa

The Fires Within Us and the Rivers We Form

Introduction to the Special Issue Decolonizing Anthropology: Race, Emotions and Pedagogies in the European Classroom

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