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Truth, Shame, Complicity, and Flirtation: An Unconventional, Ethnographic (Non)fiction
Author(s) -
Elliott Denielle
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
anthropology and humanism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1548-1409
pISSN - 1559-9167
DOI - 10.1111/anhu.12052
Subject(s) - complicity , ethnography , shame , narrative , sociology , objectification , aesthetics , politics , white (mutation) , anthropology , gender studies , art , literature , psychology , epistemology , political science , social psychology , philosophy , law , biochemistry , chemistry , gene
Summary This unconventional, nonfiction paper begins by exploring the entanglements of subjects and researchers in the inner city, a space marked by economic and political marginalization and disparities in health and well‐being. Blurring genres, the imaginative ethnographic narrative begins with the story of the lives of two men—an impoverished, homeless, Aboriginal man and a privileged, white clinical epidemiologist—and then drifts to consider the politics of sharing such stories for the ethnographer. Reflecting on the telling of the story at an academic conference, it illuminates tensions, contradictions, and the messiness of anthropology and the everyday lives of the anthropologist.