The resonance of fieldwork. Ethnographers, informants and the creation of anthropological knowledge

Abstract

The article explores the analytical implications of dissolving the self/other dichotomy that historically has shaped anthropology's relation to its objects of study. It suggests that in order to study these implications we must explore the ethnographic field as an arena for intersubjective interaction in which the ethnographer and his or her informants struggle to impose social roles and cultural categories on the other. The article which draws on field data from the Peruvian Andes argues that an inquiry into the native registration, catalogisation, and indexation of the ethnographer allows for an examination not only of how the people under study classify non-natives but also how they conceptualise themselves. It also proposes that anthropological insight is produced in the shifting positions as insider/outsider and the blurred boundaries between what is defined as included/excluded.