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- Convenor:
-
Chikako Ozawa-de Silva
(Emory University)
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- Chair:
-
Rebecca Lester
(Washington University in St. Louis)
- Format:
- Roundtable
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 6 April, -
Time zone: America/Chicago
Short Abstract:
Anthropologists are trained in research ethics and how to protect interlocutors during fieldwork, yet similar concerns arise in the writing process, particularly with vulnerable individuals. We explore the the role of compassion in both conducting and publishing ethnographic research.
Long Abstract:
Anthropologists are trained in research ethics and how to protect our interlocutors during fieldwork. Yet similar concerns can also arise in the writing process, particularly when writing about individuals or groups who are vulnerable and who are participating in research on the basis of trust. In this roundtable, we explore the the role of compassion in both conducting and publishing ethnographic research.
Of all anthropology’s sub-disciplines, psychological anthropology tends most to engage questions of emotional, spiritual, and existential import to both interlocutors and researchers. When it comes time to write about our research, we can find ourselves confronted with a series of dilemmas: How do we write compassionately, and what does that look like in scholarly publications? How do we honor our interlocutors and avoid harm, while also adding something useful to anthropological theory? How do we massage intense interpersonal relationships into text? How do we deal with the ethics of representation? How do we put ourselves and our own experiences into the text without becoming self-indulgent?
In anthropology, "smart" critique is often conflated with hyper-cynicism and deeply politicized rhetoric. Conversely, anti-critique tends to romanticize the perspectives of interlocutors and devalue the productive insights that can come from informed interpretation. How can "critical distance" be balanced with compassion and empathy, especially when we, ourselves, may be deeply implicated in the work?
In this roundtable, five authors of recent ethnographies in psychological anthropology discuss the affective and practical dimensions of writing with and from the heart in today's academia.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1 Tuesday 6 April, 2021, -Contribution short abstract:
How do we write in a way that is theoretically sophisticated, critically engaged, and yet compassionate to our interlocutors and to ourselves? Both compassion and critique are essential to good ethnographic writing, but involve different epistemic commitments. How do we do both?
Contribution long abstract:
How do we write in a way that is theoretically sophisticated, critically engaged, and yet compassionate to our interlocutors and to ourselves? As anthropologists we are trained to become experts in de(con)struction. We learn to break ideas down, tear them apart, and find the holes and gaps so that we can position ourselves as contributing constructively to existing knowledge. We learn that interlocutors are data sources, and the "best" ethnographies dismantle institutions and practices from a place of profound suspicion. It can be challenging, then, to pivot from this place of critique to write in a way that is more compassionate. Why strive for compassion? Compassion involves a different kind of knowledge-making than critique. Critique is an outside-in approach that privileges the perspective of the researcher. Compassion, instead, builds knowledge from the inside out. It requires developing a deep understanding and appreciation of how and why people experience the world the way that they do, and how they understand their places within it. This does not mean uncritically endorsing everything our interlocutors say or do--we can be compassionate with someone whom we don't especially like or who is doing something that we find problematic. Rather, compassion is an epistemic stance that configures the anthropologist as learner (tell me how the world is for you) rather than expert (I can tell you how the world really is). Both compassion and critique are essential to good ethnographic writing. Learning how to effectively balance them requires careful practice.
Contribution short abstract:
While writing about the experiences of young people in the United States growing up with an autism spectrum diagnosis, their families, and the professionals who work with them, I faced linguistic, conceptual and relational challenges in representing a disorder of social relatedness.
Contribution long abstract:
Writing about the experiences of young people in the United States growing up with an autism spectrum diagnosis, their families, and the professionals who work with them, I faced many decisions. Some were questions of terminology: What language should I use for writing about autism, when terms like "autistic" and "person with autism" are each contested and controversial in their own ways? When is autism a "disorder" and when is it a "condition"? Others were questions of relationship: how do I translate a friendship into a narrative? What is gained and what is lost when a person, through their transformation into text, becomes an example of a phenomenon? Above all, the most difficult question I faced was: how do I represent disorder in social relatedness? How do I depict the struggles and vulnerabilities of youth diagnosed with autism a way that honors both the difficulties of their lives and the creativity and agency they bring to their situations?
Contribution short abstract:
In this Round-Table discussion I consider the experience of secondary or vicarious trauma in ethnographic writing, particular in fieldsites embroiled in war, political and other forms of violence, and forced migration.
Contribution long abstract:
An abundance of compassion and empathy when writing ethnographies of trauma, violence, war and displacement seems to be an ethical stance. Yet we might ask: can "too much" empathy get ethnographers into trouble? It is not uncommon (though perhaps not readily discussed) for researchers writing on trauma to experience what is known as secondary or vicarious trauma--that is, activation related to prolonged and repeated exposure to disturbing material. In this instance, empathy and compassion can lead to challenges. Yet, here I would like to consider how compassion and empathy also provide a way to work through the experience of vicarious trauma--perhaps in ways that can bring the ethnographic writer closer to the experience of their interlocutors, ultimately being instructive in the writing process.
Contribution short abstract:
We often leverage moral logics that are at odds with those of our informants. Here I share some of the lessons that moments of moral tension can hold for changing scholarly approaches to ethics, and suggest ways to engage empathetically without assuming empathy’s uniform nature around the world.
Contribution long abstract:
Anthropologists are often faced with ethical dilemmas in the field, as we work to compassionately represent the lives and struggles of our interlocutors. Sometimes make choices that are not easily aligned with the moral worlds we encounter. When we decide to intercede in our informants’ lives - whether simply through the act of participant-observation or through high-stakes decisions - and write about their personal struggles, we often leverage moral logics that are at odds with those of our informants. In this talk I will relate two ethical dilemmas I have faced in my experiences conducting fieldwork among people in a small Buddhist community in Northern Thailand, to demonstrate how such dilemmas can come about, and how their resolution can add theoretical fodder to the ethics of ethnographic methods. The first involves a decision to intercede in a medical crisis against the wishes of the field informant involved in it. The second involves a decision to share that experience in writing, in my book Living Buddhism, and to involve my field informants in its translation into Thai. In facing these dilemmas I was struck by the differences in moral frameworks of my informants and I, as we navigated the ambiguities that arose in privileging autonomy and community in our ethical stances. In tracing the outcomes of these dilemmas I share some of the lessons they hold for changing approaches to ethics in the anthropological field, and suggest thoughts for expressing empathy without assuming its uniform nature around the world.
Contribution short abstract:
Drawing on my research for Scripting Death: Stories of Assisted Dying in America (University of California Press, 2021), I discuss how writing about death has forced me to grapple with the ethics of representation and address questions about who has the moral authority to speak for the dead.
Contribution long abstract:
My contributions to this roundtable center on a challenge I encountered while writing my current book, Scripting Death: Stories of Assisted Dying in America (University of California Press, 2021). The book chronicles my ethnographic research documenting the experiences of patients, caregivers, health care providers, activists, and legislators with the implementation of Vermont’s 2013 medical aid-in-dying law. In the course of the research for this book, I collected hundreds of stories about deaths. Stories of death are necessarily partial, fragmented, and incomplete. Most of the stories of death in my book concern people whom I never met. Some of them had been previously described in media reports and other literary forms shared with me by my interlocutors. Writing about these deaths has forced me to grapple with the ethics of representation and address questions about who has the moral authority to speak for the dead. In my comments, I will address how a deeply felt obligation to write with compassion and care helped me to navigate the tension between exploitation and memorialization—that is, telling stories of death for professional gain, and telling stories that would not otherwise be told to change public debates.