Work

Friction in the field: Milpa, missionary, and scales of refusal in 1960s highland Guatemala

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: This article takes a scalar view of “friction” (Tsing 2005) and “refusal” (Ortner 1995) between ethnography and the archive. The concept of friction was originally formulated in the context of a globalizing world, but friction's perception and experience are highly local. By recurrently destabilizing interactions, friction generates the constant possibility of contestation at the same time that it fosters ongoing renewal and reshuffling of social relations. Refusal, in turn, is shaped by a combination of individual agency and the contextual parameters delimiting any given social interaction. Based on a K'iche’ Maya narrative recorded by Catholic missionary James L. Mondloch in the area of Nahualá, Sololá, Guatemala, I illustrate how refusal not only informs interpretation of the oral history but shaped its 1968 telling. As debate continues over the ethics and logistics of working with legacy fieldwork data, I consider the frictions that anthropologists have to live with when working with archival data and those that we ourselves may generate.

Source: American Anthropologist

DOI: 10.1111/aman.28054

Author: Mallory E. Matsumoto

Institution: The University of Texas at Austin

Language: English

Topic: Anthropological Studies and Insights

Subfield: Anthropology

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,400