Paper short abstract:

The paper considers Köpping’s idea of ethnographic practice as an acknowledgement of common humanity (including disapproval, disagreement, even disgust), in fieldwork with Indonesian activists in Sydney. What alternatives are there to one-dimensional advocacy and deification-as-engagement?

Paper long abstract:

Anthropological forays into the political sphere have tended to concentrate on an advocacy role, whereby anthropologists 'speak out' in defence of the beleaguered marginal populations with which they work. Such activity entails creating anthropological knowledge that will demonstrate the practical and moral superiority of the relatively powerless, faced with domination, exploitation or persecution. As such, it frequently involves the selective shaping of micro-level ethnographic experience into morally one-dimensional categories. In particular, it is expected that the professional ethnographer is an indiscriminate champion of his or her 'informants', and that such deification is an indicator of engagement.

This process reflects the tensions inherent in an ethnographic ideal that advocates a denial of self in the name of scientific method. Köpping invites us to reconsider ethnographic practice as a means of understanding anthropological knowledge production in dialectical terms. His conception of ethnographic research as a dynamic, transgressive location, wherein frames of social practice are continually shattered and remade, and theoretical concepts moulded and adapted, points not to a deconstructivist reflexivity, but to a manifesto for an ironic self-awareness. Such a project recognises the need for disapproval, difference, even disgust, in ethnographic encounters with otherness that crucially acknowledge a common humanity as the basis for authentic anthropological knowledge.

This paper considers Köpping's ideas with reference to fieldwork with Indonesian organisations in Sydney in 2003 and 2004. It describes situations in which anthropological knowledge production rubs shoulders with 'native' understandings. What is the nature of interaction when informants are also colleagues? How can academic writing reflect ethnographic experience without being construed as betrayal? What do these problems teach us about the potential for activist anthropology, as opposed to an anthropology of activism?