Addressing the Polyphonic Voices and the Increasing Complexity of Human Life: Developing Diverse Ethnographic Genres
Convener: Yunita T. Winarto
Co-convener: Iwan M. Pirous
In the past decades, a diverse range of ethnographic genres have been developed by anthropologists in the world, including Indonesia. The conventional ethnography—in which the ethnographer (the Self) and the subjects (the Other/s) were engaged intimately in a long period of time—could no longer sufficiently address the increasing complexity of human life and the polyphonic voices of the multiple-epistemic-subjects. The latter are the products of the influx of global penetration of discourses, policies, technologies, economy, commodities, and others into the permeable boundaries between nations, countries, collectivities, and local communities. The Others are no longer a single bounded entity, and so are their voices and perspectives which may be converged or diverged in a dynamic communication and negotiation.
Such complexity demands a shift in our methodological metaphors and ethical postures. We must move beyond the interpretative authority of “reading over the shoulders” of natives toward a practice of “reading alongside” them. This approach repositions subjects not merely as informants, but as co-intellectuals and consultants in the production of ethnographic texts. Furthermore, navigating these permeable boundaries and power dynamics requires more than standard self-reflection, it demands an “uncomfortable reflexivity”. This form of reflexivity pushes ethnographers to acknowledge the messiness, failures, and interruptions in their research without seeking a comfortable or transcendent resolution, thereby critically interrogating their own authority and the “ethnographic toolkit” they bring to the field.
Such are the challenges any ethnographer has to face nowadays to be able to carry out a meticulous study, so as to keep producing a “rich-detailed fieldwork as the basis for writing up a classic ethnography”. Any ethnography should also contribute novel arguments for the advancement of anthropology as a scientific discipline on human kind within a more constraining time and circumstances. How could ethnographers deal with those challenges?
The panel invites abstract submissions by anthropologists who have developed a peculiar ethnographic genre throughout their studies addressing those challenges in diverse dimensions of people’s life. Their proposed abstracts could cover either a single or a combination of diverse ethnographic genres addressing the emerging “puzzling phenomena” discovered in their fieldworks. Examples are: autoethnography that transcend the “confessional tale” by employing uncomfortable reflexivity to interrogate the researcher’s entangled self, and/or archival autoethnography practising “reading alongside” personal and public collections, literature ethnography, multimodal ethnography, multi-sited ethnography, collaborative ethnography, para-ethnography, sonic ethnography, hidden-ethnography, empowerment ethnography, abductive method in ethnography, and/or other genres.
A compilation of the selected papers presented in the conference based on the accepted abstract-submissions will be prepared for a special volume in an international journal or an edited book.
Please submit your abstract for a maximum 300 words and 5 key-words with your name, institution and email address.