Work

Troubled landscapes, troubling anthropology: co‐presence, necessity, and the making of ethnographic knowledge

Year: 2015

Type: article

Abstract: If ‘co‐presence is a condition of [anthropological] inquiry’ (Fabian), what sort of knowledge does it produce? I explore this question through an ethnography of a ‘troubled landscape’ in Malaysian Borneo: a lush, hilly region that has been the site of a dam construction and resettlement project since the late 2000s. My article uses the notion of co‐presence as both a lens through which to explore the predicaments of the four small communities affected by the scheme and a reflexive device that underscores the embeddedness of the ethnographic encounter in a larger relational field – one characterized as much by chance and necessity as it is by anthropologists’ intellectual agendas. In the process, I seek to trouble some of the methodological and ethical issues posed by anthropology's recent ‘ontological turn’, notably the long‐standing questions of what it means to ‘take seriously’ and how ethnography and the ethnographer are implicated in this project.

Source: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

DOI: 10.1111/1467-9655.12254

Author: Liana Chua

Institution: Brunel University of London

Language: English

Topic: Anthropological Studies and Insights

Subfield: Anthropology

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: British Academy

Award: G1854464266