Ethnography :: Ethnography Reflexivity Anthropology Essays

EthnographyWorks Cited MissingReflexivity has recently been designated as an power of postmodernism in anthropological texts. In this context, the practice is attacked as self-indulgent narcissism, besides its true scope reaches much further. While some ethnographic texts butt on an overemphasis on the author, and his position within the work, this is unrivalled extreme of the range reflexivity, which as well serves as a methodological tool, unincorporated into the writing, and as a way to account for the ethnographers biases and affects on his informants. This entire span of meaning is shown in anthropological research and writings, in varying manners and to different ends.An poignant shell of reflexivity in writing is the much critiqued and criticized essay by Renato Rosaldo, affliction and a Headhunters Rage, wherein he explores his reactions to and understanding of Ilongot headhunting, as based on his personal insures with death, or lack thereof. He argues that near anthropological studies of death eliminate emotions by assuming the position of the approximately attached observer, a precarious position which often leads to actual indifference. (15) He similarly ack directlyledges that reflexivity can easily slip into self-absorption, wherein one loses bundle of differences which do exist. Despite attacks, by Michaelson and Johnson, that Micheles death gives Renato a newfound sense of ethnographic authority, a sense that he is capable of olfaction everything that the Ilongot do, he never, in fact, makes this maintain. (Behar, 171) Rosaldo, after sharing his experience of his wifes death, and the grief that followed, emphasizes that the statement should not lead anyone to derive a global from somebody elses personal knowledge. (15) The authors own experience does not give him a full understanding of the Ilongot, nor does he claim that it does so, but allows him to understand his informants explanations of headhunting which he had previo usly dismissed, not equating grief with rage. Ilongot anger and his own overlap, rather like two circles, part overlaid and partially separate. (10) Or, as Marcus states it, in any attempt to interpret or develop another cultural subject, a surplus of difference always remains. (Marcus, 186)Renato excessively briefly addresses the question of authority raised by reflexivity, and the admission of ones shortcomings. What was once accepted as absolute truth is now being questioned, as the ethnographer acknowledges his own subjectivity, and with the realization that the objects of analysis are also analyzing subjects who critically interrogate ethnographers.