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The Dragon and the River: Poetic Parallelism in Hazardous Research
Author(s) -
Zani Leah
Publication year - 2018
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.12194
Subject(s) - parallels , poetry , contradiction , parallelism (grammar) , authoritarianism , context (archaeology) , ethnography , field (mathematics) , sociology , literature , politics , epistemology , democracy , history , art , political science , philosophy , law , archaeology , linguistics , engineering , operations management , anthropology , mathematics , pure mathematics
SUMMARY I offer poetic parallelism as evidence for an ethnography of authoritarian power in Laos and as a conceptual frame for understanding hazards in ethnography and anthropological knowledge production. Parallel poems take the form of juxtaposed statements, often characterized by multiplicity and contradiction. In an authoritarian context marked by state violence, the very form of the parallels is data on Lao society. I examine poetic parallels as a provocation to write field poems rather than field notes.