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Accepted Paper:

Using reflexive auto-ethnography to exercise agency and contribute scholarship within multiple socio-cultural and institutional structures  
Michelle Rooney (Australian National University)

Paper short abstract:

The term 'agency' invokes notions of action and thought that are independent of the structures that socialise and constrain individuals. Used ethically, reflexive auto-ethnography is one way that PNG scholars can exercise agency and make important scholarly contributions within multiple structures.

Paper long abstract:

The term 'agency' invokes notions of action and thought that are independent of the structures that socialise or constrain individuals. For many Papua New Guinean (PNG) scholars, exercising agency involves navigating through our identities as members of PNG society and Western-based scholarly institutions. The arrival into scholarship is often through formal Western based education systems in which concepts like decolonising and Indigenous methods are backgrounded. The new scholar's journey involves multiple discoveries, including sensory and affective responses, of the self, and the self within the scholarly 'other'. There is delight in the novelty of learning about our people in texts written by foreigners. There can be trauma when we learn about the colonial violent past and its continuing legacy. There is the uneasy realisation that 'decolonising' and 'Indigenous' methods resist and destabilise the epistemic violence of Western scholarship that we are socialised to value. Internalising these new insights invokes feelings of self-indignation over ones lack of prior knowledge. In this paper, I discuss my use of reflexive auto-ethnography to narrate, navigate, overcome challenges, and embrace opportunities in my research. Often dismissed as self-indulgent or lacking scientific rigour, reflexive auto-ethnography is certainly not applicable to all scholarship or fieldwork circumstances. I argue that it is consistent with decolonised, indigenous, and anthropological methods. Used ethically, reflexive auto-ethnography is a powerful tool for PNG scholars to exercise agency, while making important scholarly contributions, within the structures we encounter in our cultural and social settings, and in Western based scholarly institutions we operate within.

Panel P09
Valuing destabilisation, resistance, and agency in a continuing and changing Papua New Guinean anthropology
  Session 1 Tuesday 3 December, 2019, -