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Towards a Reflexive Ethnography: (Re-)Inserting the Producer and Process Into the Research Equation

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Towards a Reflexive Ethnography: (Re-)Inserting the Producer and Process Into the Research Equation DOI: 10.1515/irsr-2012-0026 IRSR INTERNATIONAL REVIEW of SOCIAL RESEARCH Volume 2, Issue 3, October 2012, 43-58 International Review of Social Research Towards a Reflexive Ethnography: (Re-)inserting the Producer and Process Into the Research Equation Sam PACK• Kenyon College (USA) Abstract: The individualistic orientation of life histories has long been hailed as an antidote to the generalizing tendencies of ethnographic research. However, the life history method is not without problems of its own, as I explain by referencing some of the most well celebrated life histories and so-called ‘autobiographies’ in the anthropological corpus. The traditional method of composing the life history as a flowing narrative is not only morally dishonest but also intellectually inadequate because it conveys the false impression of a chronologically timeless and uninterrupted soliloquy. By focusing only on the final product, life histories ignore the other two components in the communicative process. In this article, I emphasize the need to (re-)insert the producer and process into the research equation. Keywords: life history, autobiography, reflexivity, ethnography. Introduction description. When the anthropologist generalizes from experiences with a The tendency to generalize has number of specific people in a given historically plagued anthropology’s community, he or she tends to flatten depiction of the ‘other.’ Pronouncements out differences among them. The of homogeneity purport the singular appearance of an absence of internal (‘the native’) as being representative differentiation makes it easier to of the whole. Generalization, the conceive of a group of people as a characteristic mode of operation and generic entity who do this or that and style of writing of the social sciences, believe such-and-such. can no longer be regarded as a neutral A healthy distrust of representing •e-mail: [email protected]. Sam Pack, Ph.D. is an associate professor of anthropology at Kenyon College. His research interests revolve around the intersection of media and culture. His prior publications have addressed such topics as television, feature film, ethnographic film, indigenous media, and photography from an anthropological perspective. He is currently revising a manuscript, Television Through Navajo Eyes: Situating Reception in Everyday Life, for publication. © University of Bucharest, October 2012 44 | IRSR Volume 2, Issue 3, October 2012 peoples as coherent entities has mine). An autobiography, in contrast, emerged in recent years, and refers to a person’s self-initiated ethnographies written from feminist retrospective account of his or her life. standpoints and other critical positions Life histories are hardly new as now commonly argue that essentialized the method has been utilized as a representations obscure members’ source of information about the human diverse experiences (Frank 1995:145). condition in social science research Feminist anthropologist Lila Abu- for over sixty years. Anthropologists Lughod, for example, has advocated regularly used life histories to what she calls ‘ethnographies of ascertain shared cultural meanings, the particular’ by focusing closely the insider’s view of a community, on particular individuals and their and the dynamics of cultural change changing relationships (1991:149). (Langness and Frank 1981). However, This methodological turn to the this method has generally occupied a marginal role relative to more individual in anthropological studies established ethnographic techniques corresponds to postmodernism such as participant-observation and and the much-ballyhooed ‘crisis of structured interviewing. Consequently, representation.’ As a result, through the the individual has been reduced 1980s and 1990s, the lived experiences to a rather insignificant role as of individuals have seized the ethnographic writing often fails to academic spotlight. In a culture that is capture the sense of self embodied becoming increasingly heterogeneous, in the autobiographical accounts of it is important to understand how their informants and instead produces individuals construct their own sense accounts of the ‘other.’ of self and world given their particular, The only way to protect the ‘self’ dynamic, and complex lives. If we from the ‘other’ is through a first- want to know the unique experience person account. Life histories are and perspective of an individual, there especially valued for their ability to is no better way to understand this than capture the ‘native’s point of view.’ in the person’s own voice.1 No less an authority as Claude Levi- Strauss has asserted that life histories ‘allow one to perceive a foreign culture Life History as Method from within, as a living whole, rather than as a set of seemingly conflicting As a research method, the term ‘life norms, values, roles, rituals, and the history’ refers to an oral account of the like’ (cited in Bertaux 1984:232). The experiences in an individual’s life, told life history method holds considerable by that person—typically in the form of potential as a way of recovering discrete stories in a linked narrative— hidden histories as well as reinstating to a researcher. According to Lawrence the marginalized and dispossessed as C. Watson and Maria Barbara Watson- makers of their own past. As a method Franke, it is ‘any retrospective account of looking at life as a whole and as a by the individual of his [or her] life in way of carrying out an in-depth study whole or part, in written or oral form, of individual lives, the life history that has been elicited or prompted by stands alone. another person (1978:2; emphasis Sam Pack Towards a Reflexive Ethnography | 45 Life History as Problematic Method Life Not Lived Like A Story All of this promotion should not The unavoidable dilemma intrinsic to suggest that the life history method is the life history approach is entrenched not without its problems. Although in converting a life into a story. Is life life histories provide the illusion of narratively structured or is a story an unmediated relationship between imposed on the structure post hoc? I narrator and audience and of an would contend that it is the latter. In authentic voice speaking to one reader contrast to the title of Julie Cruikshank’s at a time, they should not be viewed book, life is not lived like a story (1990). purely as vehicles for the delivery of Stories arbitrarily impose a narrative uncontaminated facts about the past. structure that simply does not exist (Browder 2000:272). The key here is in the way people recount their lives. that the voice invariably belongs to a Episodes in memory are cinematic and member of a minority group and the events are not expressed in the linear, intended reading audience is composed step-by-step fashion espoused in these 2 primarily of middle-class white people. books. Since life anticipates narration, There is an implicit understanding that it could be stated that stories falsify or the narrator is not telling his or her own reify experience. story as much as the story of a people. Regardless of good intentions, Expected to serve as the representative critics have argued that the accounts voice of their people, narrators (and, of outsiders are fundamentally biased more importantly, their editors) must because they hail from very different often conform to their audience’s cultural traditions from those who stereotypes about their ethnicity. they are representing (DeMallie Indeed, most life histories permeate 1993). The logical solution, then, with the distinctive air of a travelogue. is for documents to be written Always told in the first person, they by native peoples themselves. To are usually as much about the journey borrow the anthropological idiom, of the writer/collaborator as they are autobiographies or native-made texts about the natives’ experiences. By represent the truest emic perspective. becoming a part of the narrative, the The form of writing generally author operates as a kind of proxy known to the West as ‘autobiography’ for the race and class biases of the had no equivalent among the oral reader. Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, a Native cultures of the indigenous inhabitants American scholar, criticizes the life of the Americas. Although tribes, like history method for being essentially people everywhere, kept material as anti-intellectual. She asserts that ‘the well as mental records of collective writer almost always takes sides with and personal experience, the notion of the ‘informant,’’ with the result being ‘a manuscript that will satisfy any telling the whole of any one individual’s voyeur’s curiosity’ (1998:123).3 life or taking merely personal experience as of particular significant was ‘in the most literal way, foreign to them, if not also repugnant’ (Swann and Krupat 1987:ix). Strictly speaking, 46 | IRSR Volume 2, Issue 3, October 2012 therefore, ‘Indian autobiography’ is an activities in specific detail from a half- oxymoron. century earlier.5 Instead, Native American This volume comprises the second autobiographies are generally part of Left Handed’s autobiography. collaborative efforts, ‘jointly produced The first part, Son of Old Man Hat, by some white who translates, recounts his life from birth to the transcribes, compiles, edits, interprets, time of his marriage at age 20. This polishes, and ultimately determines compendium—all 571 pages of the form of the text in writing, and it—treats just three years in the late by an Indian who is its subject and 1880’s. The narrative, needless to whose life becomes the content of say, is extremely detailed. Walter Dyk the ‘autobiography’ whose title may was interested in mundane behavior bear his name’ (Krupat 1994:30). The rather than the descriptions of highly majority of Indian autobiographies dramatic episodes which characterized were actually written by whites in the other elicited autobiographies. He form of ‘as-told-to’ autobiographies.4 therefore asked Left Handed to ‘relate Concerns about editor/narrator whatever he could remember of his relationships have led many scholars life, leaving out nothing, however to erase the distinction between trivial’ (Dyk and Dyk 1980:xvii).
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