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Field of Dreams: The Anthropologist Far Away at Home
Author(s) -
D'Alisera JoAnn
Publication year - 1999
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 - 10.1525/ahu.1999.24.1.5
Subject(s) - narrative , ethnography , reflection (computer programming) , field (mathematics) , sociology , epistemology , aesthetics , literature , anthropology , philosophy , art , computer science , mathematics , pure mathematics , programming language
The extent to which personal narrative is seen as a valid component of ethnography has been debated by generations of anthropologists. Critics contend that self‐reflection trivializes the text, while supporters assert that self‐reflection mediates contradictions between personal and scientific authority inherent in the discipline. Through such self‐reflection and description, this essay challenges the basic fieldwork narrative in which notions of distance/nearness and foreign/native are imagined as bounded categories of experience.