Pre-textual Ethnographies
Challenging the Phenomenological Level of Anthropological Knowledge-making
Published on 15. November 2018
Book
Hardback
254 pages
978-1-907774-47-8 (ISBN)
Description
Anthropologists often have fieldwork experiences that are not explicitly analysed in their writings, though they nevertheless contribute to and shape their ethnographic understandings, and can resonate throughout their work for many years. The task of this volume is precisely to uncover these layers of anthropological knowledge-making.
Contributors take on the challenge of reconstructing the ways in which they originally entered the worlds of research subjects - their anthropological Others - by focusing on pre-textual and deeply phenomenological processes of perceiving, noting, listening and sensing. Drawing on a wide range of research experiences - with the Dogon in Mali, immigrant football players in Spain, the Inuit of the Far North, Filipino transnational families, miners in Poland and students in Scotland - this book goes beyond an exploration of the development of increased ethnographic sensitivity towards words or actions. It also commences the foundational project of developing a new language for building anthropological works, one stemming from recurring acts of participation, and rooted primarily in the pre-textual worlds of the tacit, often non-visible, and intense experiences that exceed the limitations of conventional textual accounts.
Anthropologists often have fieldwork experiences that are not explicitly analysed in their writings, though they nevertheless contribute to and shape their ethnographic understandings, and can resonate throughout their work for many years. The task of this volume is precisely to uncover these layers of anthropological knowledge-making.
Contributors take on the challenge of reconstructing the ways in which they originally entered the worlds of research subjects - their anthropological Others - by focusing on pre-textual and deeply phenomenological processes of perceiving, noting, listening and sensing. Drawing on a wide range of research experiences - with the Dogon in Mali, immigrant football players in Spain, the Inuit of the Far North, Filipino transnational families, miners in Poland and students in Scotland - this book goes beyond an exploration of the development of increased ethnographic sensitivity towards words or actions. It also commences the foundational project of developing a new language for building anthropological works, one stemming from recurring acts of participation, and rooted primarily in the pre-textual worlds of the tacit, often non-visible, and intense experiences that exceed the limitations of conventional textual accounts.
Contributors take on the challenge of reconstructing the ways in which they originally entered the worlds of research subjects - their anthropological Others - by focusing on pre-textual and deeply phenomenological processes of perceiving, noting, listening and sensing. Drawing on a wide range of research experiences - with the Dogon in Mali, immigrant football players in Spain, the Inuit of the Far North, Filipino transnational families, miners in Poland and students in Scotland - this book goes beyond an exploration of the development of increased ethnographic sensitivity towards words or actions. It also commences the foundational project of developing a new language for building anthropological works, one stemming from recurring acts of participation, and rooted primarily in the pre-textual worlds of the tacit, often non-visible, and intense experiences that exceed the limitations of conventional textual accounts.
Anthropologists often have fieldwork experiences that are not explicitly analysed in their writings, though they nevertheless contribute to and shape their ethnographic understandings, and can resonate throughout their work for many years. The task of this volume is precisely to uncover these layers of anthropological knowledge-making.
Contributors take on the challenge of reconstructing the ways in which they originally entered the worlds of research subjects - their anthropological Others - by focusing on pre-textual and deeply phenomenological processes of perceiving, noting, listening and sensing. Drawing on a wide range of research experiences - with the Dogon in Mali, immigrant football players in Spain, the Inuit of the Far North, Filipino transnational families, miners in Poland and students in Scotland - this book goes beyond an exploration of the development of increased ethnographic sensitivity towards words or actions. It also commences the foundational project of developing a new language for building anthropological works, one stemming from recurring acts of participation, and rooted primarily in the pre-textual worlds of the tacit, often non-visible, and intense experiences that exceed the limitations of conventional textual accounts.
Reviews / Votes
These edifying essays lay the groundwork for an anthropology that not only overcomes old antinomies of body-mind, text-context, representation-reality, but encourages us to see how participatory method, social attentiveness, and new forms of ethnographic writing can enhance our understanding of the affective, intersubjective, and conceptual complexities of life as lived. Michael Jackson,Distinguished Professor of World Religions, Harvard University.These edifying essays lay the groundwork for an anthropology that not only overcomes old antinomies of body-mind, text-context, representation-reality, but encourages us to see how participatory method, social attentiveness, and new forms of ethnographic writing can enhance our understanding of the affective, intersubjective, and conceptual complexities of life as lived. Michael Jackson,Distinguished Professor of World Religions, Harvard University.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxon
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
9 black & white photographs
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
549 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-907774-47-8 (9781907774478)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Tomasz Rakowski is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw. He is also a medical doctor, a specialist in accident and emergency medicine. His research interests include: anthropology and social art, phenomenology, pre-textual ethnography, studies on poverty and social trauma, bottom-up development in Poland and Mongolia.Recently he published Hunters, Gatherers, and Practitioners of Powerlessness: An Ethnography of the Degraded in Postsocialist Poland (2016).
Helena Patzer is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute of Ethnology, CzechAcademy of Sciences, in Prague. Her research interests include the anthropologyof migration and mobility, the critical anthropology of development, and heritage and urban studies. She has done fieldwork in the Philippines and inFilipino migrant communities in the United States and Denmark, focusing on transnational family life and diaspora involvement in development. She is thedirector of an ethnographic film, Money Tree (2013).
Tomasz Rakowski is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw. He is also a medical doctor, a specialist in accident and emergency medicine. His research interests include: anthropology and social art, phenomenology, pre-textual ethnography, studies on poverty and social trauma, bottom-up development in Poland and Mongolia.Recently he published Hunters, Gatherers, and Practitioners of Powerlessness: An Ethnography of the Degraded in Postsocialist Poland (2016).
Helena Patzer is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute of Ethnology, CzechAcademy of Sciences, in Prague. Her research interests include the anthropologyof migration and mobility, the critical anthropology of development, and heritage and urban studies. She has done fieldwork in the Philippines and inFilipino migrant communities in the United States and Denmark, focusing on transnational family life and diaspora involvement in development. She is thedirector of an ethnographic film, Money Tree (2013).
Helena Patzer is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute of Ethnology, CzechAcademy of Sciences, in Prague. Her research interests include the anthropologyof migration and mobility, the critical anthropology of development, and heritage and urban studies. She has done fieldwork in the Philippines and inFilipino migrant communities in the United States and Denmark, focusing on transnational family life and diaspora involvement in development. She is thedirector of an ethnographic film, Money Tree (2013).
Tomasz Rakowski is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw. He is also a medical doctor, a specialist in accident and emergency medicine. His research interests include: anthropology and social art, phenomenology, pre-textual ethnography, studies on poverty and social trauma, bottom-up development in Poland and Mongolia.Recently he published Hunters, Gatherers, and Practitioners of Powerlessness: An Ethnography of the Degraded in Postsocialist Poland (2016).
Helena Patzer is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute of Ethnology, CzechAcademy of Sciences, in Prague. Her research interests include the anthropologyof migration and mobility, the critical anthropology of development, and heritage and urban studies. She has done fieldwork in the Philippines and inFilipino migrant communities in the United States and Denmark, focusing on transnational family life and diaspora involvement in development. She is thedirector of an ethnographic film, Money Tree (2013).
Content
Introduction Pre-textual ethnography and the challenge of phenomenological knowledge-making Tomasz Rakowski and Helena Patzer; Part I - Setting the perspective; Chapter 1 Feet on the ground The role of the body in pre-textual ethnography Anne Line Dalsgard; Chapter 2 The phenomenological programme and anthropological research A mutual mirroring Gheorghita Geana; Chapter 3 Beyond the textual bias, towards pre-textual experience Therapeutic guidelines Grzegorz Godlewski; Part II - Revealing field-knowledge; Chapter 4 A pre-textual path Revealing the field in a closed-down mining centre in south-west Poland Tomasz Rakowski; Chapter 5 A praxeology and phenomenology of Dogon landscape Fieldwork practice, kinesthetic experience and embodied knowledge Laurence Douny; Chapter 6 Muscular consciousness Knowledge-making in an Arctic environment Kirsten Hastrup; Chapter 7 Sport as common ground in fieldwork On apprenticeship, habitus and habituation Juliane Muller; Chapter 8 Meeting the pre-textual Intersubjective knowledge of long-distance care in the Philippines Helena Patzer Chapter 9 The epoche, mindfulness and the body Dynamics of a phenomenological experience in the field Sonja Lenk; Chapter 10 To journey near and far The dis-illusion of perception, knowledge and the body Andrew Irving; Epilogue The organ of human perception and a supra-cultural knowledge of human being Nigel Rapport.