Transforming Ethnographic Knowledge

Toward a Critically Engaged Ethnographic Practice

137 To­ ward a Crit­ i­ cally En­ gaged Eth­ no­ graphic Prac­ tice ka­ mari max­ ine ­ clarke The re­ cent de­ bates over the ap­ pro­ pri­ ate­ ness of em­ bed­ ded ­ American anthro­ pol­ o­ gists serv­ ing U.S. mil­ i­ tary inter­ ests in Af­ ghan­ i­ stan and Iraq have ­ raised some of the most con­ tro­ ver­ sial is­ sues in­ American anthro­ po­ log­ i­ cal eth­ i­ cal cir­ cles today. Among African­ ists, the most re­ cent debates over the U.S. Army’s involvement in various outposts throughout Africa have been es­ pe­ cially ur­ gent, rais­ ing con­ cerns about the ex­ tent to which eth­ no­ graphic knowl­ edge ­ should or ­ should not be used to serve the inter­ est of AF­ RI­ COM, one of six of the U.S. De­ fense ­ Department’s re­ gional head­ quar­ ters. My own di­ lemma re­ lated to the prac­ tice of eth­ nog­ ra­ phy, and its ap­ pli­ ca­ tion ­ emerged when I re­ ceived an ­ e-mail from a U.S. Army Study of­ fice agent in­ vit­ ing me to par­ tic­ i­ pate in a ­ one-day semi­ nar ti­ tled “Ex­ trem­ ism in West Af­ rica: ­ Groups and Con­ di­ tions That En­ able or In­ hibit Them.” The meet­ ing was de­ scribed as set­ ting out to con­ sider the “po­ ten­ tial ac­ tiv­ i­ ties of ex­ tre­ mist ­ groups” in West Af­ rica with the goal of brain­ storm­ ing with other “knowl­ edge­ able peo­ ple about the pos­ sible di­ rec­ tions these­ groups may take in the fu­ ture.” The ob­ jec­ tives out­ lined aimed to pro­ tect the in­ no­ cent ­ through ed­ u­ cat­ ing de­ ci­ sion mak­ ers on the front­ lines who may ben­ e­ fit from the in­ sights of ex­ perts in ac­ a­ de­ mia. This at­ tempt by govern­ ments to gain in­ tel­ li­ gence from its spe­ cial­ ists has its his­ tory in the for­ ma­ tion of anthro­ po­ log­ i­ cal stud­ ies. The back­ lash has been known to have con­ trib­ uted to the col­ o­ ni­ za­ tion of oc­ cu­ pied peo­ ples and, as a re­ sult, has led to the de­ vel­ op­ ment of a wide­ spread anthro­ po­ log­ i­ cal pub­ lic in which the over­ arch­ ing pre­ sump­ tion was that eth­ nog­ ra­ phers ­ should be en­ gaged in tech­ nol­ o­ gies of data pro­ cure­ ment that study or pro­ tect mar­ gi­ nal ­ groups or serve the dis­ en­ fran­ chised. Such stan­ dards of anthro­ pol­ ogical 138 kamari maxine clarke pur­ poses took shape with the his­ tor­ i­ cal emer­ gence of anthro­ po­ log­ i­ cal in­ quiry in which pre­ vi­ ous gen­ er­ a­ tions were en­ gaged in con­ flicts over co­ lo­ nial eth­ nog­ ra­ phy and a range of anthro­ pol­ o­ gists were in­ volved in mount­ ing ­ wide-scale re­ ac­ tions to power ­ abuses as a re­ sult of Naz­ ism. Thus, for many, eth­ nog­ ra­ phy and its eth­ i­ cal uses are under­ stood in terms that dis­ tin­ guish the “pow­ er­ ful” (read: the U.S. Army) from the “pow­ er­ less” (read: ci­ vil­ ians, often in the glo­ bal South, but also those mar­ gi­ nal­ ized in the North), and many iden­ tify eth­ nog­ ra­ phy as meant to pro­ tect those who are dis­ en­ fran­ chised. Those lo­ cals seen as en­ gag­ ing in the de­ struc­ tion of oth­ ers have been iden­ tified as those who are not to be stud­ ied; they exist below the eth­ no­ graphic radar and are nei­ ther to be under­ stood nor pro­ tected. How­ ever, de­ ter­ min­ ing “who is the dis­ en­ fran­ chised” is a com­ plex en­ deavor, for it often in­ volves going be­ yond in­ di­ vid­ ual ac­ tors to look at root ­ causes of vi­ o­ lence in which fur­ ther ex­ plo­ ra­ tion makes ev­ i­ dent that guilt or in­ no­ cence go be­ yond the en­ act­ ment of in­ di­ vid­ ual vi­ o­ lence. In keep­ ing with Laura ­ Nader’s (1972) pro...