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- Convenors:
-
Paloma Gay y Blasco
(University of St Andrews)
Mattia Fumanti (University of St Andrews)
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- Stream:
- Who Speaks and for Whom?
- Sessions:
- Monday 29 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The panel will assess the strengths and weaknesses of collaborative research as an outlook and a set of diverse practices in anthropology. We will explore the potential and the limits of collaboration, what it can and cannot deliver for the world and for the discipline.
Long Abstract:
Collaboration, the process through which anthropologists and locals interlocutors share in the design, implementation and dissemination of research, is currently emerging strongly as a transformative drive in anthropology. Across the humanities and social sciences, collaborative research aims to make academic work accountable and relevant to the communities under study, enhancing its importance and impact. And yet, collaboration is not without its challenges and pitfalls. Our aim is to assess critically the strengths and weaknesses of collaboration both as an outlook and a set of diverse practices. We will explore the potential and the limits of collaboration, what it can and cannot deliver for the world and for anthropology. We will debate the place of collaborative research in the future of the discipline, exploring what collaborative entanglements reveal about the conflicting responsibilities of anthropologists. Specifically, we are looking for contributions that investigate critically the assumption that collaborative work is a more accountable and egalitarian way of knowing and representing the Other. We seek to examine the personal, disciplinary and institutional constraints and expectations that shape and limit collaborative work. Lastly, we look for contributions that assess the status of the various kinds of outputs that collaborative work produces, and their relevances and uses. Both textual and non-textual contributions are welcome.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 29 March, 2021, -Kirsty Kernohan (University of Aberdeen)
Paper short abstract:
Collaborations around the context and care of Taonga Māori at the University of Aberdeen require engagement with Māori academics, weavers and families as well as 19th century diaries. This paper explores how competing narratives depend on one another in collaborations involving colonial legacies.
Paper long abstract:
In the 1890s, Māori weavers gave taonga (treasures) to the Countess of Kintore on her visits to Aotearoa New Zealand. She took the taonga back to Aberdeenshire and donated them to the University of Aberdeen Museums. Since 2018, I have collaborated with Māori academics, weavers, and people with family ties to the taonga: we established links between the taonga and descendants of their makers, exchanged information about provenance, and sought to establish better care of the taonga in the museum. This kind of collaboration is best practice in museum anthropology and has a concrete impact on the way in which objects are understood and cared for. These collaborations were facilitated by reading the Countess’ diaries. In this paper, I argue that this archival research is a form of collaboration. The Countess’ control of the archival narrative forged the direction of our collaborations around the taonga: her decision to donate the taonga dictated their legal ownership; her choice of which names and places to record affected which taonga could be involved in connections, and her descriptions of collecting them provide evidence for the legitimacy of those acquisitions. Collaborating with the Countess was not an egalitarian process which celebrated her voice. Engaging with hundreds of pages of derogatory language and colonial rhetoric, I took an ethnographic approach which restricted, challenged and criticised her narrative. Nevertheless, subsequent collaborations have relied heavily on her words and experiences. These interdependent processes of collaboration illustrate the tangled negotiation of competing narratives in collaborations involving colonial legacies.
Michele De Laurentiis (Spectacle) Sonja Marzi (London School of Economics and Political Science)
Paper short abstract:
This paper reflects on the facilitation of a participatory filmmaking process done remotely and as part of a collaborative research investigating the impact of COVID-19 on women’s everyday lives. It focuses on the challenges and opportunities for collaboration when shifting training and editing activities to an online space.
Paper long abstract:
Participatory video (PV) practice seeks to include participants in all phases of the filmmaking process to collaboratively create films, knowledge and transformation. Usually conducted face-to-face, in one geographical place together, the process includes collaborative teaching, learning, as well as decision making during filming and editing activities. This paper will reflect on the challenges and opportunities when facilitating a participatory filmmaking process entirely online.
During 2020 I have been involved as facilitator of a participatory documentary film production in a research project led by Dr Sonja Marzi and funded by the LSE Knowledge Exchange and Impact fund. Initially planned as a face-to-face PV project with women in Medellin, due to COVID-19 pandemic, we had to shift to an online space, including all film training and editing activities, while at the same time sustain a collaborative research design.
Women in this study had either limited or no experience of web-based platforms and tools, only limited access to technology and no prior filming experience, yet they became ‘directors’ of their own film. Filming was done by participants using their own smartphones, while training, film planning and editing activities took place during online workshops. I focus on the impact of an online work environment on the activities of training women in filming using their smartphones and collaborative editing of the final film. I argue that, especially compared to face-to-face PV projects, this innovative online approach provides new avenues of collaboration but also poses new challenges when facilitating the co-creation of a documentary film.