Paper short abstract:

Drawing on dialogues with anthropologists, this paper explores examples of knowledge through confrontation or transformation. The latter might occur through breaking unknown indigenous rules but also in the rejection of formulaic research procedures.

Paper long abstract:

With the increasing bureaucratisation of knowledge grant applications are ever subject to well honed topics and themes all set in advance. The positivist tradition continues its hegemony of hypotheses which exclude deviation and transformation. Pre-ordained formulaic methods which anticipate aims and outcomes permit minimum scope for the traditions and continuing practices in anthropology. In encountering other cultures through participation and active intervention, the fieldworker has to be open to what the people prioritise. By definition, s/he cannot know the beliefs, values and even the most ordinary practices of cultural difference. Drawing on dialogues with numerous anthropologists this paper explores examples of knowledge through transformation. The latter frequently occurred through transgressing rules which the hosts had taken for granted which were inevitably strange to the outsider.

The anthropologists rarely adhered to agenda set back home by research managers. Nor did they follow mechanistic, scientised methods. Once in the field, the majority of anthropologists changed topics. Some changed locations, if not continents. Innovation was required. The ensuing research emerged from openness to what was there and the peoples' politics and concerns. The anthropologists, who conducted fieldwork in Asia, S. America, Africa or Northern and Southern Europe also learned when confronted with and sometimes colluding in transgression. This became crucial knowledge through rupture, both in a supposedly familiar Europe and beyond.