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The Thief and the Anthropologist: A Story of Ethics, Power, and Ethnography
Author(s) -
Nelson Nancy L.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
city and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.308
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1548-744X
pISSN - 0893-0465
DOI - 10.1525/ciso.1996.8.1.119
Subject(s) - ethnography , privilege (computing) , scrutiny , sociology , subject (documents) , power (physics) , face (sociological concept) , respondent , focus (optics) , anthropology , product (mathematics) , aesthetics , epistemology , social science , law , political science , philosophy , computer science , physics , geometry , mathematics , optics , quantum mechanics , library science
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN privilege, power, and ethnography is the subject of much critical contemporary anthropology. While this focus is long overdue, it remains extremely narrow. The product of anthropology— our texts—receives close scrutiny, but the process of ethnography—our fieldwork—is rarely examined. Based upon an encounter with a would‐be thief, this article makes the case that just as our writing techniques are politicized, our research techniques are also politicized. The face‐to‐face encounter between the ethnographer and her respondent is politically constituted. Research cannot be separated from real life, and to believe that it can raises many ethical issues.