Reflexive Ethnographic Practice

"This moving book offers a profound vision of all that reflexive ethnography can be if carried out with sensitivity, humility, and respect for the multiple layers of history in which our work is always enmeshed."

-Ruth Behar, Professor at the University of Michigan, USA, and author of Traveling Heavy: A Memoir in Between Journeys

"In essays which span forty years of immersion in Yanyuwa culture and ethnographic fieldwork, the authors reflect on their professional practices through the lens of self-scrutiny, discomfort, uncertainty and awe, exploring the tensions and contradictions between academic rigour and the visceral apprehension of different ways of perceiving the world. This book is a timely and essential contribution to the increasingly complex discourse around how to live with, work with, and write about Indigenous people."

-Kim Mahood, award-winning Australian author and artist

Putting the anthropological imagination underthe spotlight, this book represents the experience of three generations of researchers, each of whom have long collaborated with the same Indigenous community over the course of their careers. In the context of a remote Indigenous Australian community in northern Australia, these researchers-anthropologists, an archeologist, a literary scholar, and an artist-encounter reflexivity and ethnographic practice through deeply personal and professionally revealing accounts of anthropological consciousness, relational encounters, and knowledge sharing. In six discrete chapters, the authors reveal the complexities that run through these relationships, considering how any one of us builds knowledge, shares knowledge, how we encounter different and new knowledge, and how well we are positioned to understand the lived experiences of others, whilst making ourselves fully available to personal change. At its core, this anthology is a meditation on learning and friendship across cultures.

Auteur

Amanda Kearney is Matthew Flinders Fellow and Professor of Indigenous and Australian Studies at Flinders University, Australia.

John Bradley is Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the Monash Indigenous Centre at Monash University, Australia.

Texte du rabat

Putting the anthropological imagination under the spotlight, this book represents the experience of three generations of researchers, each of whom have long collaborated with the same Indigenous community over the course of their careers. In the context of a remote Indigenous Australian community in northern Australia, these researchers-anthropologists, an archeologist, a literary scholar, and an artist-encounter reflexivity and ethnographic practice through deeply personal and professionally revealing accounts of anthropological consciousness, relational encounters, and knowledge sharing. In six discrete chapters, the authors reveal the complexities that run through these relationships, considering how any one of us builds knowledge, shares knowledge, how we encounter different and new knowledge, and how well we are positioned to understand the lived experiences of others, whilst making ourselves fully available to personal change. At its core, this anthology is a meditation on learning and friendship across cultures.

Contenu
ForewordChapter 1: Introduction - The Scene for a Reflexive Practice The start of a story

Collaboration and change

Our approach to the book

Yanyuwa families, country and Law

On becoming reflexive

Overview References

Chapter 2: Writing From the Edge: Writing What Was Never Meant to be Written Introduction

Living on the edge: Suffering and loss

Field notes and reflections: Transitioning into the academy

Writing of knowledge

Songs, stories and relationships

Knowing loss and finding words

Final thoughts

Contributor Response, by Philip Adgemis

References Chapter 3: Mobility of Mind: Can We Change our Epistemic Habit Through Sustained Ethnograpic Encounters? Introduction

What do I know?

How did this happen?

Mobility of mind: Epistemic habit in the context of fieldwork encounters

Sustained ethnographic encounters as acts of testimony and witnessing

Did I always know?

Why have Yanyuwa taught me?

Am I permitted to know an Indigenous epistemology in a settler colonial context?

Final thoughts

Contributor Response, by John Bradley

References Chapter 4: Mapping the Route to the Yanyuwa Atlas Introduction and orientation

Changes, shifts and paradoxes

On the road to Borroloola

Getting lost: The idea of a map

Moving in from the edges

Art as ways to express

Creased maps and field jottings

Jijijirla that comes around again

Country and loss

Publishing and what next?

Contributor Response, by Liam Brady

References Chapter 5: "Invisible Things in Nature": A Reflexive Reading of Alexis Wright's Carpentaria Introduction

Carpentaria's unexpectedness

The many strands that make up Carpentaria Reading Carpentaria in the light of an apprenticeship in Yanyuwa Cosmology

Reading Wright's Rainbow Serpent

Final reflection

Contributor Response, by Amanda Kearney

References Chapter 6: Encounters with Yanyuwa Rock Art: Reflexivity, Multivocality, and the 'Archaeological Record' in Northern Australia's Southwest Gulf Country Introduction

Reflexivity in archaeology practice

Archaeology and the southwest Gulf country

Research questions and entering the field

Looking for a donkey

Kurrmurrnyini and sorcery rock art

Discussion and final thoughts

Contributor Response, by Nona Cameron

References Chapter 7: So Did You Find Any Culture Up Here Mate?: Young Men, 'Deficit' and Change.

Introduction

Realisations and motivations

Discourse and deficit framings: 'Some people just hate us'

Expectations and intersubjective connections

Change and the shame in not knowing

Reflections Contributor Response, by Frances Devlin-Glass

References