Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects on the process of writing an ethnography of/as apprenticeship into a book, using dialogic and collaborative methods. It examines different ways of integrating in the text reactions and comments by the teachers whose knowledge forms the basis for the research.

Paper long abstract:

Since 2010 I have been studying the ecological knowledge of initiated donso hunters in Burkina Faso, as an anthropologist and as an apprentice of donsoya. In the feature-length documentary that accompanied my dissertation, Kalanda – The Knowledge of the Bush, I have found space to collaborate with my hunting teachers through feedback screenings, re-creating with them the experience of an apprentice for the viewer. In this paper, however, I reflect on the experience of writing that research in an academic monograph, and on the differences and obstacles that this format presents compared to a film. Specifically, whereas in the documentary I could narrate from the point of view of a student, giving authority to the master hunters who explained things to me and to the viewer, a monograph tends to treat their teachings as data and my interpretations as upper-level knowledge – thus starkly inverting the hierarchy. Conscious that, as Tedlock reminded us in 1979, anthropology starts out as a fieldwork dialogue but anthropologists often present us with monologues, I am experimenting with dialogic editing (Feld) to make the phase of theorising open to my teachers. After having extensively discussed my manuscript with them, I examine several possibilities for writing their feedback into the text, inspired by recent examples of collaborative ethnographies. In the process, I reflect on issues of censorship and secrecy of initiatory knowledge, of authorship and responsibility, and on the role of a multimodal website that will accompany the book.