Reshaping Ancestry - Revealing What Has Been Hidden.
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THE SARAWAK MUSEUM JOURNAL |
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Title :
Reshaping Ancestry - Revealing What Has Been Hidden. |
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Author :
Valerie Mashman |
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Abstract:
“...Anthropology should not only be demystified ...people-oriented and popular, it should be representative and reciprocal” (Wazir, 1996: 135). For anthropology to be “reciprocal” as Wazir puts it, the people studied should derive as much benefit from the anthropological encounter as the anthropologist. Further to this, Wazir states that it should be participatory, equitable and accessible to southern (or indigenous) scholars and audiences. This echoes Peacock’s plea for anthropology to be relevant to wider publics (1997: 9), which is supported by Lassiter (2005: 83). In addressing these issues, I have opted to embrace the notion of collaborative ethnography. This is defined as “the collaboration of researchers and subjects in the production of ethnographic texts, both fieldwork and writing” (Lassiter, 2005: 84). Collaboration is not new in fieldwork. It is a result of its antecedents, the notion of rapport, espoused by the reflexivity of the 1980s and the notion of dialogue, promoted by interpretative ethnography. Collaboration has, as Lassiter claims, moved from the background to the fore with the development of critical ethnography. Ethnography today involves a critical and reflexive process whereby ethnographers and their interlocutors regularly assess not only how their collaborative work engenders the dialogic emergence of culture (and the verity of their shared understandings) but also the goals and audiences of the ethnographic products these collaborative relationships produce (2004: 93).
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| DOI: https://doi.org/10.61507/smj22-2012-YY18-02 |
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How to cite:
Valerie Mashman. (2012). Reshaping Ancestry - Revealing What Has Been Hidden. The Sarawak Museum Journal, LXX (91): 21-38 |
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References
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