Ethnography :: Anthropology Culture Reflexivity Papers

EthnographyPersonal experience and reflexivity should be mapd within anthropology as a tool to reflect on the finishing that is being studied and not a refoc employ of financial aid on the self. Works such as Dorinne Kondos Dissolution and Reconstitution of ego, wont the idea of reflexivity as a mirror in which to look on the civilization being studied in a different manner. This use of reflexivity allows for the focus to stay on the culture being studied. A move a representation from this is the new branch of humanistic anthropology represented in this essay by Renato Rosaldos Grief and a Headhunters Rage and Ruth Behars Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart allows anthropologists to use reflexivity as a way to explore universal human feelings. For me, this is not the direct of anthropology as much as self- reflexive pronoun psychology. The focus shifts from culture to self. The anthropologists completely understands the feelings of the pile he/she is studying. I thin k that it is rather ambitious to state that sense is univeral, and I do not think that it is the job of anthropologists to do so. The reflexive voice is a necessary aspect of ethnographic writing, but the anthropologist essential be careful not to shift focus from concentrating on culture to concentrating on herself.Dorinne Kondo does an excellent job in her essay Dissolution and Reconstitution of Selfin using the reflexive voice as a way in which to describe culture and break down the observer/ other(a) dichotomy by giving agency and power to her informants. Not wholly does the anthropologist interpret the people, but the people give their interpretation of the anthropologist. She statesI emphasize here the collusion between all parties involved, for it is important to recognize the shipway in which informmants are in any case actors and agents, and that the negotiation of reality that takes place in the doing of ethnography involves complex and shifting relations of power in which the ethnographrapher acts and is also acted upon. (Kondo 75)Kondo acknowledges the move that the Japanese go through on her character and by so doing she acknowledges their power. Instead of standing in the place of supreme authority, the anthropologist, by using reflexivity, can give the authority to her informants.Not only was she reflexively examining her positioning and the affect it would have on her informants, but she also looks at the affect that her informants have on her while still centering her discussion on the culture being studied.