Everyday I grow closer to strangling a driver in this fucking city hit and run bastards this is my thirteenth reason

Hi anon. Hope you don’t mind me doing it like this:

“ I can't access the Abu-loghod piece from my institution so I'm basing this reply pretty much entirely off of the Stacey article, and parts of Lewin’s edited reader. Also, I'm an archaeology student so some of this is outside of what I'm used to (which I also get is LOADED with its own history). (1/8)

I am completely on-board with the notion that ethnography is inherently exploitative of the disenfranchised, and that, especially without its applied component(and when considering the history of neglect and abuse), is useless. At it’s core, you’re right. Kinda fucked. I’d be curious to see what you end up proposing by the end of this project, and how you feel about the field (whether you continue with it in some form or abandon it entirely). (2/8)

I don’t like Stacey’s final “suggestion”, if you can call it that. My least favorite thing about theory is the post-modern cop-out, and how the response to any ethical dilemma is to plow forwards with more awareness. This is exactly what Stacey invokes… But she argues that it’s eventually “worth” the attempt (although at best it can only get halfway). I want to agree that it’s worth the effort. (3/8)

Social science occupies a unique space in its ability to hopefully inform social policies (although that’s unlikely under the current administration). It would be an enormous shame for the field to completely abandon any attempt at a feminist approach. Fortunately, some like Zavella (1993, in Lewin’s volume) seems even more optimistic. Again, it might be fair to assume that these positive views are motivated by a self-preservation, (4/8)

... just a desire to keep their job and not to invalidate all the work they’ve done. I don’t know what’s driving this intense fatalism about disentanglement. Maybe the Abu-Loghod piece deals with that, but she still continued work and publication in social science after this. Behar, though, interprets her message as being more positive than Stacey’s, so I don’t know where to go with that. (5/8)

I also agree that just because the ethnographer may be a woman, and as such better in a place to understand disenfranchisement, it doesn’t change the reality of a power imbalance, (hell, even attempting a true emic perspective, when done by a fully educated and informed “insider other”, is questionable at best). Authorship gives considerable privilege, no matter the researcher or ‘informant’. Does remaining within the field, even, undermine their arguments about these complications? (6/8)

A critical perspective on methodology is a must, but, your position seems extreme and “unsettling” (just to use the language I’ve been reading). Maybe I’m just resorting to the same postmodern fallback here, but isn’t this description of power relations a core tenant of domains of (Marxian) anthropology? (7/8)

This stuff’s important to think about, but I don’t think it dooms any feminist ethnographer from being trapped solely within “White Feminism ^(tm)” so long as other elements of their practice, such as the eventual application of their work can, in essence, supersede any negative impacts of their research. Sorry if any of this is a lot I'm just curious what you have to say about any of it. Tonight's been an interesting couple of hours of reading on the topic. (8/8)

Ok actually one last thing. Stacey’s entire postmodern prosaic style overlooks intersectionality with class and the accessibility of research (though it is clearly for an academic audience), which as a point I think works well for her critique, yet undermines the declaration of it as “inevitable”. (9/8)”

My response:

Thank you for writing this, it’s so great to actually communicate with someone who has done the reading, is well informed on the topic, and has taken the time to start a dialog. I will say that I really recommend you read the Abu-Lughod piece. She is more positive than Stacey who writes that she is not convinced, actually, by postmodernists’ attempts. While you seem to have gotten a more positive impression of Stacey, I actually incorporate her reading into my syllabus as an example of how ethnography will never be feminist. But I’m sure I’ll re-read her again, since my final paper is on her and Abu-Lughod’s similarities and differences.

Abu-Lughod does address how women in anthropology have been less inclined to push a feminist agenda for the sake of their jobs. It’s no secret in anthropology that, while it’s mostly women, men receive more notoriety and tenure as professors than women do. She believes that, as you say, self-preservation is a strong motivator for a lack of feminism in anthropology.

While I understand that you think anthropology is worth saving because of how it can impact policy, I’m afraid I haven’t seen that impact since Mead. Anthropologists are typically co-opted by the CIA if they are recruited for govt. purposes, which isn’t a good thing by any means. Anthropologists being used for policy is even further an exploitative step for the studied, who go from being published about to having in-depth cultural knowledge being used for state-sanctioned violence and control.

Besides all that jazz, I’m afraid that none of what was said in these asks addresses the root problem, which Abu-Lughod emphasizes: A Western, colonizer, researcher self; and a non-Western, colonized, researched Other. This is similar to what Stacey is saying, with maybe less focus on race and colonization than Abu-Lughod. I will tell you, Abu-Lughod does say that anthropology can work to disrupt this self/Other binary by seeing the Other in the self, and the self in the Other. By that, she advocates for indigenous, native, or halfie anthropology. However, in her own words, the power imbalance between women, especially Western female anthropologists studying women from other cultures, is the “unequal structure of the world and the structure of anthropology” (25). Abu-Lughod is admitting that anthropology is designed to perpetuate, instill, and recreate the power imbalance between the Western self and studied non-Western Other.

Maybe what was ignored in this discussion are things like Lewin’s lesbian ethnography. What if I only study myself? What’s the role of autoethnography? I personally relate to this since I am a bisexual woman and I’ve spent the last two years studying other bisexual women. What I can say with that is I am brought back to Stacey’s arguments. I still have authority over my ethnography. I am still imposing myself onto a complex web of relationships and social systems, which I am more free to remove myself from than the researched. I am still using their data, while most of them are my friends, for my own academic gain. I’m afraid the ethnographic process ensures this. We need to develop another method which allows us to communicate with each other and produce knowledge without exploited third parties. I recommend Collins’ reading for that. Black feminist epistemology has struggled with this question, and she actually has an answer for it. It’s just that the answer is not ethnography, and definitely not anthropology.