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Reflexivity In Ethnography Essay

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The Role of Reflexivity in Ethnography

Reflexivity, as I understand it, is very well named.It is the practice of reflecting upon oneself and one’s work, of being self-aware and self-critical. In anthropology, it is well exemplified by the work of Renato Rosaldo, Ruth Behar, and Dorinne Kondo, among others. In its most obvious form (or at least the form most obvious to me), reflexivity is manifest in the practice of an ethnographer including herself in her own ethnographic research---seeing herself not as an “unbiased, impartial” (Malinowski 18) observer, but as an essential and un-removable part of her study. The effect of reflexivity on ethnographic writing has been, however, much broader than just that. It signals “a departure from …show more content…

One should remember to be critical of one’s own work, to be open to the idea that one may be wrong.

Among the semester’s readings, one in particular stands out for me as utterly self riteous and lacking in self-criticism. The introduction to Bronislaw Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific is an assault upon my (admittedly) politically correct, postmodern (is that a bad word?), early 21st century sensibility. His “unbiased” writing is chalk-full of condescension, bigotry, and Eurocentricism. These are easy enough to dismiss (although not excuse) as the mind-frame of the era in which he was writing. It is, instead, his arrogant belief in his own irrefutable authority that (ironically) decreases his credibility for me. Malinowski writes of obtaining ethnographic success “by a patient and systematic application of a number of rules of common sense and well known scientific principles” (6). He refers alternately to missionaries, traders, and even natives as “untrained minds” (5) “and inferior amateur[s]” (6). He writes of ethnography as the be all and end all of understanding “primitive” cultures, of decoding the “chaotic and freakish” (9). I should say here that I do not wish to dismiss ethnography in any way. On the contrary, I believe it to be of great value in the study of any kind of culture. I don’t even entirely disagree with Malinowski. I suppose my main qualm with his work is in its total lack

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