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). autobiography and biography in this Left Handed proceeds to describe literature (Brumble 1988:12). his feelings toward members of his family, his relations with his wife, his preparations for the hunt, his ‘affairs,’ Left Handed his hogan building, his gaming, and, finally, his wife’s unfaithfulness and To be sure, there is something strangely their resulting separation. disconcerting about reading a title like Walter began editing this volume ‘A Navajo Autobiography’ yet seeing himself, but due to a long illness, he the by-line attributed to somebody was unable to finish the work. After besides the subject of the autobiography. his death in 1972, Ruth continued the Left Handed: A Navajo Autobiography editing using her husband’s guidelines: was recorded by a husband and wife ‘add nothing and leave out only minor team. Walter and Ruth Dyk collected experiences, repetitious episodes, and the autobiographical data during the recurring passages...so that the edited years 1934-35 except for the last version differs in no essential way chapter that was recorded in 1947- from the first telling’ (Dyk and Dyk 48. The life experiences, however, 1980:xviii). The problem here, of derive from three years at the end of course, is what constitutes ‘minor’ and the 1880s—almost fifty years earlier. who determines it? Moreover, although According to Walter Dyk, Left Handed repetition disturbs the Western ear, for could ‘remember conversations many indigenous peoples, repetition directly, word for word,’ (Dyk and Dyk serves as a rhetorical feature in oral 1980:x) but I doubt his memory was so narrative (Brumble 1988:11). In good that he could recount day-to-day addition, editors like Ruth Dyk always order the material chronologically Sam Pack Towards a Reflexive Ethnography | 47 even though this distorts the sense of topic for an anthology titled Natives and time implicit in the narratives. The end Academics: Researching and Writing result is that the edited version differs about American Indians (1998). A substantially from its original telling. persistent theme echoed repeatedly by the ten native scholars is the need for Indian voices to finally be heard. Anthropologist as Ventriloquist According to Donald L. Fixico, more than 30,000 manuscripts have been Historically, anthropologists and other published about American Indians and researchers have employed what I call a more than 90 percent of that literature ‘ventriloquist approach’ in their studies has been written by non-Indians of indigenous peoples. By essentially (1998:86). These scholars recognize speaking on their behalf, they have a fundamental contrast between how rendered their native subjects as little Native American cultures and histories more than exotic puppets. In his article are interpreted and portrayed by non- ‘Here Comes the Anthros,’ Cecil King native academics and how Indians see expresses the frustration of being themselves and their past. One native imprisoned by anthropologists’ words: scholar, Angela Cavender Wilson, asserts that as long as history continues We have been redefined so many to be studied and written in this manner, times we no longer quite know the field should more appropriately who we are. Our original words be called ‘non-Indian perceptions of are obscured by the layers upon American Indian history’ (1998:23). layers of others’definitions laid I, Rigoberta Menchu appeared to be a on top of them. We want to come step in the right direction. back to our own words, our own meanings, our own definitions of ourselves, and our own world.... Rigoberta Menchu Most important, we want to appraise, critique and censure In 1987, a Mayan Indian from what they feel they have a right to Guatemala narrated her autobiography say about us (1997:117-118). in which she described an early life Within anthropology in recent years, of indentured servitude under the there has been interest in reversing the rule of European-descended colonials academic perspective by using native and included horrific accounts of epistemologies to critique our own witnessing the murder of family assumptions. Dan Rose, in particular, members at the hands of the military. urges a more radical democratization I, Rigoberta Menchu won a Pulitzer of knowledge that simultaneously de- Prize and became a staple in college privileges our academic inquiry while classrooms. The book’s publication helping to recover ideas and practices transformed Menchu into an overnight from historically marginalized points sensation and attracted worldwide of view (1990:11). recognition for her cause, culminating The state of scholarly research and with the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize.6 Her writing on Native Americans was the story was so compelling that Menchu 48 | IRSR Volume 2, Issue 3, October 2012 became the revolutionary movement’s circumstances when the family was most appealing symbol and she was not present (Rohter 1998:8). anointed as the poster child for the The reason Menchu’s story struggles of all indigenous peoples. achieved such credibility and notoriety Twelve years later, David Stoll is that the notion of native people as revealed in his controversial book, innocent victims dispossessed by Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of colonialism seemed so familiar. Like All Poor Guatemalans, that the story Steven Siegal’s movies, the names was not true—at least not completely. may change but the plot is always While Stoll was interviewing other the same. Stoll believes that some of violence survivors in her hometown, his colleagues were offended because he stumbled upon a conflicting they had unwittingly fallen into the portrait of the village and the violence trap of idealizing indigenes to serve that destroyed it. Among the more their own moral needs (1999:232). significant discrepancies, the author Similarly, what makes I, Rigoberta found that most peasants did not share Menchu so attractive in universities is Menchu’s definition of the enemy. also what makes it misleading about Although the book describes guerillas the struggle for survival in Guatemala: as liberation fighters, Stoll’s sources it lulls readers into believing that they considered both the soldiers and are gaining a closer understanding of the guerillas as threats to their lives Guatemalan peasants when they are (1999:8). Contrary to the image she actually detracted by mystifications paints of herself as an unschooled wrapped up in an iconic figure (Stoll peasant, Menchu’s childhood was in 1999:247). fact a relatively privileged one as she Stoll’s revelations appeared even attended two prestigious private to render Menchu’s so-called boarding schools operated by Roman autobiography another classic example Catholic nuns. Moreover, since she of the ventriloquist effect: an outsider spent much of her youth in the boarding anthropologist speaking through a schools, it is extremely unlikely that she native to further her own agenda. could have worked as an underground For her part, Menchu deferred all of political organizer and spent up to eight the blame to the anthropologist who months a year laboring on coffee and edited the book, Elisabeth Burgos- cotton plantations, as she describes in Debray,7 by claiming distortion of her great detail in her book (Rohter 1998:8). testimony: ‘That is not my book…It She did lose members of her family but is a work that does not belong to me fictionalized or sensationalized their morally, politically, or economically’ 8 deaths for shock value. A younger (Stoll 1999:178). Of course, Menchu brother whom Menchu says she saw had no qualms about accepting all of 9 die of starvation never existed while a the accolades, the countless speaking 10 second, whose suffering she says she engagements, and the considerable 11 and her parents were forced to watch wealth that came as a direct result of as he was being burned alive by army the book. troops, was killed in entirely different Sam Pack Towards a Reflexive Ethnography | 49

Black Elk When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can Before Rigoberta Menchu, there was still see the butchered women Black Elk, one of the first Indian voices and children lying heaped and to be heard, or so it seemed. His life and scattered all along the crooked though first came to public attention gulch as plain as when I saw them in 1932 courtesy of John Neihardt in with eyes still young. And I can arguably the most well known Native see that something else died there American life history, Black Elk in the bloody mud, and was buried Speaks, and another favorite among in the blizzard. A people’s dream university professors. The Black Elk died there (Neihardt 1979:230; portrayed in what Vine Deloria, Jr. emphasis mine). 12 calls the ‘Indian Bible’ has become These are the most frequently the paradigm of the pre-modern quoted words in the entire book. Native American. Neihardt’s Black Unfortunately, according to Clyde Elk is depicted as solely a nineteenth Holler, they were never uttered by century figure, born when the buffalo Black Elk (1984:36). still roamed the plains and conquered Neihardt chooses to end Black Elk’s by the heartbreak at Wounded Knee in life story at Wounded Knee despite the 1890. However, Neihardt focuses only fact that he was only twenty-seven years on the first twenty-four years of Black old in 1890! Readers are presented Elk’s life and neglects the last sixty. with a timeless portrait of an old and The general public is made unaware feeble man, suspended in nostalgia that Black Elk spent most of his life and melancholy and hermetically in the twentieth century and even less insulated from the modern world. know that he was a devoted Christian Black Elk Speaks is a literary work that for almost thirty years before he ever interprets Black Elk’s life as a tragedy ‘spoke’ to Neihardt. that symbolizes the larger tragedy of Black Elk Speaks consists largely Native Americans. Perhaps more than of first-person narratives that portray any other, this book demonstrates Sioux life as it existed during the latter how Indian autobiography is a half of the nineteenth century. Black post-colonialist literary form that Elk shares his boyhood memories, has been predicated on defeat and early adult experiences, village and disappearance.13 As Stoll demonstrated family life, and traditional religious was the case with I, Rigoberta Menchu, rituals. With the rapid encroachment organizing scholarship around sim- of whites, these pre-modern days are plistic images of victimhood can be romantically portrayed as a precursor used to rationalize the creation of more to the downfall of the Sioux as a self- victims. Neihardt took many personal sufficient people. The book ends with liberties by making substantial changes the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee to Black Elk’s testimony. He glaringly and the infamous ‘death of a dream’ omitted certain passages, added speech: some, and blatantly altered others. And so it was all over. I did not For Neihardt, Black Elk served as a know then how much was ended. passive, malleable icon to be shaped at 50 | IRSR Volume 2, Issue 3, October 2012 his mercy in order to reinforce popular data generation’ (1980:153). More pre-modern perceptions of the ‘noble specifically, it is to be accountable savage.’ Instead of ‘Black Elk Speaks,’ to the three components of the a more fitting title would have been communicative process: producer, ‘John Neihardt Speaks Through Black process, and product (Ruby 1980:157). Elk.’ While all life histories focus on the last, very little is explicitly mentioned about the first two. Reflexive Ethnography In his essay ‘The Ethnographic Self and the Personal Self,’ Edward Despite all of the uproar surrounding M. Bruner calls the tendency for the ‘crisis of representation’ (Marcus ethnographers to segment one from and Fischer 1986) and all of the the other an exercise in futility: literature spawned as a result, there ‘The idea of a scientific, supposedly has been little more done than just objective, ethnographic report that talking about and around it. Countless left the individual observer out of books and articles are filled with self- the account is not only a cliché, it is righteous theoretical pontifications, but an impossibility. Every ethnographer only a minute percentage of these are inevitably leaves traces in the text’ field-tested. Methodological rigor, or (1993:2). Ethnographers generally honesty, has not yet come to fruition. keep anything of a personal nature out Instead, it appears that most scholars of the final manuscript as a protective are content by continuing to practice mechanism for fear of compromising academic sleight-of-hand. scientific integrity. However, accor- If there is indeed such a ‘crisis’ of ding to Bruner, to divorce the personal representation, it seems to me that the from the ethnographic is to create a obvious solution is to disclose the ways false dichotomy because data are not and manner in which the representation independent of how they were acquired takes place. It is no wonder that (1993:4). qualitative research has been given As already mentioned, life histo- the cold shoulder by certain academics ries are induced and elicited by a who consider it to be unscientific. researcher. The enterprise in toto If anthropologists purport their dis- is unnatural and tantamount to cipline to be a scientific endeavor, it forcing a round peg into a square is incumbent upon them to treat it as hole. Kathleen Sands, for example, such. Although examining how texts describes how her native informant’s are constructed may spoil the aura of ‘narrative resistance’ thwarted her inviolability, it also lends credibility to notions of a comprehensive and the research. linear autobiography (Rios and Sands What I am advocating here, of 2000:xiii). Similarly, Julie Cruikshank course, is reflexivity. According to Jay quickly discovered that the elderly Ruby, to be reflexive ‘is to insist that Athapaskan women approached the anthropologists systematically and interviews with a different narrative rigorously reveal their methodology model of life history from her own and themselves as the instrument of (1988:200). Sam Pack Towards a Reflexive Ethnography | 51

Life history interviews are highly what he or she wants the researcher processed, constructed, and reified. to know. Therefore, the quality and Questions have been removed, entire depth of the relationship between the sections have been reordered, and two individuals determines what will redundancies have been deleted. be said. Usually, the longer and more With refreshing candor, Sands amiable the relationship, the richer and demonstrates the multiple stages more consistent is the final product.15 involved in transforming a narrative Although narrators answer a prepared life into an inscribed text. In the set of questions, how they respond appendix to her book, she includes the depends entirely on the level of rapport. original transcription of the interview, As Navajo scholar, Clyde Kluckhohn her editorial changes, and then the has stated: ‘No two researchers will published product (Rios and Sands ever see ‘the same’ culture in identical 2000:269-306). Like those deceptive terms any more than one can step twice weight loss ads, the ‘before’ and ‘after’ into the same river’ (1959:254 cited in versions differ dramatically. Pandey 1972:335). The traditional method of compo- The notion that only the native’s sing the life history as a flowing point of view carries validity reflects narrative is not only morally dishonest a recent trend towards anti-colonialist but also intellectually inadequate sentiments. However, the life history as because it conveys the false impression monologue reduces the anthropologist of a chronologically timeless and to little more than a transmitter. By uninterrupted soliloquy.14 Clifford conveniently eliminating half of and Marcus call collaborative the communication equation in life autobiographies ‘fictions’ (1986:5), histories, anthropologists have also not in the sense of being false but as been practicing a methodological monologues made from dialogues. sleight-of-hand. The only honest Those who have collected life histories alternative, it seems to me, is to on their own knows that it entails acknowledge our particular role much more than pressing the ‘record’ in the process. Specifically, I am button on the tape recorder. Because advocating the fundamental necessity communication is a symbiotic process of incorporating the author’s voice that requires both a sender and a and emotional reactions into the receiver, researchers cannot arbitrarily ethnography. The first place to start eliminate their presence—especially is by including the ethnographer’s when what is said is invariably questions in the final product. contingent upon who it is being said The inclusion of questions into the to. text is not such a novel approach. In The form that a particular life fact, question and answer interviews history takes emerges in discourse. In with celebrities have become other words, a life history interview increasingly common in mainstream is a highly personal encounter that is magazines such as Sports Illustrated, shaped by the interpersonal exchange Playboy, and Rolling Stone. However, between the ethnographer and the the difference between these interviews informant. The speaker will only reveal and their academic counterparts is that 52 | IRSR Volume 2, Issue 3, October 2012 the former rarely divulges the identity Not coincidentally, Mikhail of the interviewer and, even then, the Bakhtin’s theories focus primarily on reader does not know anything about the concept of dialogue. According the person or the nature of his or her to him, a dialogue consists of three relationship with the celebrity they elements: a speaker, a listener, and a are interviewing. To my knowledge, relationship between the two (1981). this methodological technique has It should be our goal as researchers never been attempted with published to weave all three elements into a ethnographic narratives. cohesive study. Thus, the life history Of course, anything this innovative can serve as an experiment for a new is sure to meet with initial resistance. way of writing vulnerably about the Some criticism will surely be expected, ‘other’ by not only refusing to hide as certain readers are sure to find such ourselves as authors but by sharing extreme ‘navel gazing’ annoyingly self- equal billing in a dialogic ‘I-Thou’18 absorbed. Indeed, Bruner warns that encounter with our informants.19 Ien there is a danger in putting the personal Ang has similarly called for a radical self so deeply back into the text that it contextualism: ‘I must know on whose completely dominates and, as a result, behalf and to what end I write…that the work becomes narcissistic and is, our stories cannot just tell ‘partial egotistical (1993:6).16 The challenge is truths,’ they are also, consciously or to return the ethnographer to the text not, ‘positioned truths’’ (1996:78). If but not to the extent of squeezing out it is true that all truths are not only the object of study. The ultimate goal is partial but positioned, I believe that a balance that dissolves the distinction a reflexive ethnography in the form between the ethnographer as theorizing of a reciprocal exchange between being and the informant as passive researchers and informants constitutes data, that reduces the gap between the logical extension of reflexivity in subject and object, and that presents anthropological research. both ethnographer and informant as having active voices (Bruner 1993:9). The ethnographer can engage in An Alternate Model a dialogue with the informant, just as there is a dialogue in the field In my view, re-conceptualizing the life between persons. Appropriately, the history means that it should consist word ‘interview’ can be broken into of four distinct tiers: 1) profile; 2) two revealing parts: ‘inter’ is the root interview transcription; 3) editor’s meaning ‘between’ and ‘view’ means commentary; and 4) the participant’s outlook or perspective. An interview response to all of these. is literally an inter view, an exchange First and foremost, it is of of perspectives between two persons fundamental importance to reveal the conversing about a theme of mutual circumstances of engagement. In this interest.17 Instead of the linear, one capacity, each life history narrative way, top down model typical of most will be introduced by a profile of the life histories, I prefer the circular and narrator as well as a brief but thorough reciprocal approach of dialogue. description of the nature of the Sam Pack Towards a Reflexive Ethnography | 53 relationship between the narrator and life may not be worth living, as the editor. Socratic saying goes, but the unedited Admittedly, the vast majority of life is not worth reading. life histories are highly constructed A life history also requires by their editors. A classic example of interpretation. The editor’s commen- their decontextualized nature is Oscar tary provides additional information Lewis’ The Children of Sanchez: as well as a clarifying perspective Autobiography of a Mexican Family that attempts to ‘fill in the holes’ (1961). A statement from the book’s caused by missing historical, social, or preface clearly illuminates Lewis’ cultural background information. This tendency towards creative editing: space also imparts researchers with a ‘In preparing the interviews for stage to share their own insights and publication, I have eliminated my experiences related to the individual. questions and have selected, arranged, Essentially, the main purpose of the and organized their materials into commentary is to offer readers the coherent life stories…I believe this perspective of another voice that can in no way reduces the authenticity of say things in a different way than the the data or their usefulness for science voice of the person telling his or her (1961:xxi; emphasis mine). Contrary to story. By providing both a transcription what Lewis may believe, his ‘mix and and a commentary, the reader will be match’ style of editing most definitely able to critically compare the editor’s and irreparably compromises the assertions against the participant’s integrity of the original telling. Indeed, account and vice versa. the traditional editing process consists The final component will feature the of leaving out the interviewer’s participant responding to the previous questions, creating sentence and three sections. It is exceedingly rare paragraph structure, discarding extra for interview subjects to be allowed things, adding missing things, and an opportunity to comment about reorganizing certain sections to keep what the researcher has written about common subject matter together them because this may compromise (Atkinson 1998:56). Spradley contends the researcher’s definitive authority. that most life histories are heavily edited Interpretation of field experience has by the anthropologist and estimates that historically been a one-way process, only 60% of the narration is actually in with no consideration for the input of the narrator’s own words (1979:205). the native informant (Rios and Sands As the editor, it is my responsibility 2000:8). Because Native American to walk the fine line between narrators rarely possessed any control preservation and pollution. There are in the actual presentation of their certain unavoidable pitfalls involved stories, Rose recommends what he in transforming a narrative life into an calls the ‘reversal of perspectives’: the inscribed text, and every editor of life critique of the ethnographer by those histories must reach his or her own for whom the ethnographer usually compromise. In my case, my proclivity had provided the framing discourse for ‘raw’ data does not mean that I (1990:38). It is precisely this reversal prefer it uncooked. The unexamined of perspectives that can serve as an 54 | IRSR Volume 2, Issue 3, October 2012 antidote to the corporate strain of ties to the interest bodies of Native bureaucratic ethnography that has now literary canons produced culturally and become standardized in anthropology. historically’ (1998:121). d4dWithout qualification, all ‘as-told- to’ autobiographies are induced texts. Notes In David Brumble’s American Indian Autobiography, the author of the definitive d1dAnthropologist Paul Radin concurs: bibliography of Native American ‘For a long time most ethnologists have autobiographies asserts: ‘It would never realized that the lack of ‘atmosphere’ in have occurred to these people to sit down their descriptions is a very serious and and tell the story of their lives whole’ fundamental defect, and that this defect (1988:4). could only be properly remedied by having d5dThe recording process was exacerbated a native himself give an account of his by the fact that Dyk could not speak Navajo particular culture’ (1920:383). and Left Handed could not speak English. d2dEven readers within the same ethnic As a result, Philip Davis (a Navajo) served community of the narrator have also stated as an intermediary between the two men. the case for representative authenticity. Left Handed would speak for a minute For example, Maxine Hong Kingston’s or two, Philip would then translate, and Woman Warrior (1976) was attacked by Walter would transcribe the translation— many Chinese American critics for being hardly an accurate means of recording, to ‘a very personal description of growing up say the least. in Chinese America’ (Browder 2000:5-6). d6dIt was no coincidence that the award th The notion that Kingston was presenting coincided with the 500 anniversary of the an example of Chinese American life that European colonization of the Americas. was misleading or inaccurate implied that d7dPrior to the publication of this book, the author did not have the right to present she was best known as the wife of French her personal experience as such. In the philosopher and Marxist, Regis Debray eyes of her critics, she was not telling her (Stoll 1998:178). own story but (mis)telling the story of her d8dMenchu elsewhere accuses Burgos- people. Debray of substituting other persons’ life d3dCook-Lynn is adamantly critical of stories for her own (Stoll 1999:182). Yet the publication of all Native American in another book titled Crossing Borders, personal narratives not only because she Menchu asserts precisely the opposite sees them as stolen intellectual property by maintaining there that she had full but because they undermine the integrity of and final authority over her book (Rohter Native American expression and mislead 1998:8). Needless to say, the controversy both non-natives and natives alike about exacerbated any relationship between the Indian identity: ‘Though I’ve referred to women, which was already strained by a the ‘informant-based’ Indian stories as disagreement over publishing royalties. ‘life-story’ works, I would like to suggest Menchu even excluded Burgos-Debray that they are offshoots of biography, a from the Nobel campaign. traditional art form in European literature. d9dIn addition to the Nobel Peace Price, Ethnographic biography is not an Indian Menchu was showered with honorary story at all and does not have significant doctorates (Stoll 1999:5). Sam Pack Towards a Reflexive Ethnography | 55 d10dStoll reports that Menchu had to choose defined by mutuality and reciprocity while from more than 7,000 invitations (1999:5). the latter is a subject-to-object relationship d11dThe Nobel Peace Price includes a $1.2 defined by separateness and detachment. million purse for each recipient (Stoll d19dAnthony P. Cohen concurs: ‘As an 1999:212). anthropologist, I cannot escape myself; d12dIn his introduction to Black Elk Speaks nor should I try. In studying others I do not (1979:xiv). regard myself as merely studying my self; d13dKrupat has written that while ‘victory but rather, as using my self to study others is the ennobling condition of western (1992:224). autobiography, defeat is the ennobling condition of Indian autobiography’ (1985:34). d14dSometimes, anthropologists get caught in the act, as evident in this passage from Virgil Wyaco’s life history: ‘He married Janice Wyaco’s mother, so it wasn’t too bad. Janice? Janice is my sister’ (1999:14). It is obvious from the text that the narrator is responding to a question from his editors. d15dThis is not always the case as a new relationship with an interview subject may work just as well or better in certain situations. d16dJudith Okely, a vocal advocate of inserting the ‘I’ into ethnographic monographs, responds to such charges: ‘Self-adoration is quite different from self-awareness and a critical scrutiny of the self. Indeed those who protect the self from scrutiny could as well be labeled self- satisfied and arrogant in presuming their presence and relations with others to be unproblematic. Reflexivity is incorrectly confused with self-adoration (1992:2). d17dThis approach is the basis of Steinar Kvale’s manual on qualitative research titled, appropriately enough, InterViews (1996). d18dThe reference here is to Martin Buber’s I and Thou (1958) wherein the author describes how personal dialogue can define the nature of reality. According to Buber, human beings may adopt two attitudes toward the world: I-Thou and I-It. The former is a subject-to-subject relationship 56 | IRSR Volume 2, Issue 3, October 2012

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Academics, 23-26. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Wyaco, Virgil (1998) A Zuni Life: A Pueblo Indian in Two Worlds. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Copyright of International Review of Social Research is the property of University of Bucharest, Faculty of Sociology & Social Work with Polirom Publishing House and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.