Skip to content

Regional traditions of ethnographic writing

May 14, 2012

There’s a lively #anthropology debate on over at the collective blog Savage Minds. Do check it out! Here’s my tuppence worth (as posted in the comments section):

I’d like to accept Kerim’s invitation to go with the quasi-orality of blogging and think aloud for a moment, not as hastily as in a real-time interaction, but certainly not as sluggishly as in a peer-reviewed publication.

I agree with the need to draw more theoretical inspiration from our ethnographic encounters, and would add to this an often forgotten component of anthropological work, namely regional traditions of ethnographic writing, e.g. see Localizing strategies. Fardon, Richard, ed. (1990). That is, those of us who develop a regional specialisation or two have rich regional traditions (e.g. SE Asia, Europe, Melanesia) to draw inspiration and concepts from and to critique, a middle-range field of knowledge to write for and against. Some theoretical challenges will be commonly found across regions (e.g. internet activism), others will be region-specific (e.g. the cultural salience of notions of ‘malu’ in Insular SE Asia) but not for that reason less worthy of attention.

In our efforts to appeal to as wide a metropolitan market as possible, it seems to me that we tend to downplay this crucial regional dimension of ethnographic research – certainly when it comes to theorising for an interdisciplinary audience.

Advertisements
%d bloggers like this:
{"cc_re__cc_re__cc_by_3_0": ["href=\"https://johnpostill.com/feed/\">Entries <abbr title=\"Really Simple Syndication\">RSS</abbr></a></li>\n\t\t\t<li><a href=\"https://johnpostill.com/comments/feed/\">Comments <abbr title=\"Really Simple Syndication\">RSS</abbr></a></li>\n\t\t\t<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.com/\" title=\"Powered by WordPress, state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform.\">WordPress.com</a></li>\t\t\t</ul>\n\t\t\t</li><!-- Invalid Facebook Page URL --><li id=\"text-10\" class=\"widget widget_text\">\t\t\t<div class=\"textwidget\"><a rel=\"license\" href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/\"><img alt=\"Creative Commons Licence\" style=\"border-width:0;\" src=\"https://i2.wp.com/i.creativecommons.org/l/by/3.0/88x31.png\" /></a><br /><span>media/anthropology blog</span> by <a href=\"https://johnpostill.com/\" rel=\"cc:attributionURL\">John Postill</a> is licensed under a <a rel=\"license\" href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/\">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License</a>.</div>\n\t\t</li>\t\t<div class=\"wpcnt\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"wpa wpwidesky\">\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"wpa-about\">Advertisem", "ing platform.\">WordPress.com</a></li>\t\t\t</ul>\n\t\t\t</li><!-- Invalid Facebook Page URL --><li id=\"text-10\" class=\"widget widget_text\">\t\t\t<div class=\"textwidget\"><a rel=\"license\" href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/\"><img alt=\"Creative Commons Licence\" style=\"border-width:0;\" src=\"https://i2.wp.com/i.creativecommons.org/l/by/3.0/88x31.png\" /></a><br /><span>media/anthropology blog</span> by <a href=\"https://johnpostill.com/\" rel=\"cc:attributionURL\">John Postill</a> is licensed under a <a rel=\"license\" href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/\">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License</a>.</div>\n\t\t</li>\t\t<div class=\"wpcnt\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"wpa wpwidesky\">\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"wpa-about\">Advertisements</span>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"u\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div style=\"padding-bottom:15px;width:160px;height:600px;\">\n\t\t<div id=\"atatags-286348-5ab3670ee759d\">\n\t\t\t<script type=\"text/javascript\">\n\t\t\t__ATA.cmd.push(function() {\n\t\t\t\t__ATA.initSlot('atatags-286348-5ab3670ee759d',  {\n\t\t\t\t\tcollapseEmpty: 'before',\n\t\t\t\t\tsectionId: '286348',\n\t\t\t\t\twidth: 160,\n\t\t\t\t\the"], "copyright__copyright__copyright": ["ges will be commonly found across regions (e.g. internet activism), others will be region-specific (e.g. the cultural salience of notions of \u2018malu\u2019 in Insular SE Asia) but not for that reason less worthy of attention.\n\nIn our efforts to appeal to as wide a metropolitan market as possible, it seems to me that we tend to downplay this crucial regional dimension of ethnographic research \u2013 certainly when it comes to theorising for an interdisciplinary audience.\n\nAdvertisements\n%d bloggers like this:"]}