AO: Objective/subjective; researcher/researched; insider/outsider; first world/third world
AO: The analyst calls into question the viability of and the kind of ethnographic knowledge that a “detached researcher” who enters the field and pretends not to define their positionality in the field has. As such, she would argue that working with contemporary indigenous communities, anthropologists must position themselves in regards to issues and reframe their relationship with indigenous actors. Analyst holds that collaborative practices can question colonialist tropes (other; insider/outsider; first world/third world) by focusing on the conditions and contexts in which indigeneity becomes either a justification for violating human rights in the name of progress or for resisting such abuses.
AO: The analyst hlds that anthropology can challenge assumptions of ‘feel-goodness’ in collaborative methodologies on the one hand, and by producing critical knowledge that is skeptical of easy rendering of political engagements and solidarity (108)
AO: She does not describe this but it would be assumed that the colonial acts of taking native lands and one's relationship to those lands.
AO: She does not point to data practices explicitly although she mentions methodology and attempts to develop more “decolonized methodologies” (citing Smith).
AO: The analyst describes a collaborative co-taught course on Indigenous Agency and Innovations offered in various institutions where various scholars and activists would offer a lecture to be recorded and delivered via podcast or live conference all. The analyst notes that there was difficulty in the synchronizing of academic calendars and resources that made the co- teaching particularly challenging. But affirms that she believe this type of proposals should be revisited and implemented as viable forms of collaborative methodologies.
AO: The analyst notes that even within the discipline, there is great divide over the “integrity” of research as it relates to engagement with the study community.
AO: Citing Kelty, the analyst calls collaboration: “mutifaceted and rhizomic” and asks if it could be too weak of a word to describe the entanglements of complicity, cultural orientation, suspicion and paranoia, commitment and intimate involvement, credit and authority, and the production of reliable knowledge for partially articulated goals” (102)
AO: The analyst asks if collaboration might be too much of a “feel-good” or friendly term for the commitment, fights and compromises that all actors involved experience.
AO: the analyst highlights the situated nature of the moment and its change over time. She seems to hold that polyvocality is important for collaboration: “taking into consideration the different perspectives, experiences, and points of views of the many voices involved in the collaborative moment as well as the multitextual nature of the knowledge produced in collaboration.”
AO: The analyst looks at collaborative relationship anthropologists establish with indigenous intellectuals and activists, arguing that these relationships necessarily make anthropology political because the boundaries of knowledge are pushed to other milieus beyond the academy.
AO: The analyst also calls the relationship between engaged anthropology and indigenous studies a “collaboration” because it can produce a “multi-textual hermeneutics” and represents and embodies the different and at times contradictory positioning of actors (101).
AO: The analyst also looks at her own research collaboration with an indigenous activist Cristina Cucuri (107), who she calls her “research partner.” This term “research partner” was also used by Alev Coban (2018) but in that case, she did not name the person(s?) who remained anonymous (and thereby did not receive “credit” or acknowledgement for being partners). I am interested in what the term “research partner” entails or signals.
AO: The analyst notes complaints that went to AAA against unethical practice by some anthropologists in the field which led to reports against that individual.
AO: The analyst looks at how the positions held on the objective/subjective spectrum by individuals at funding institutions
AO: The analyst notes the inherant power in anthropologists translating and making intelligible subjects that are not intelligible to others. She asks: “if translation is anthropology’s straight jacket, how can we decolonize such translations?
AO: The analyst notes that equal attention needs to be put on the perverse modalities with which racism, discrimination, and exclusion still affects (and in some cases alter) relationships and interactions within indigenous societies (Harrison 1997) (AO: not idealizing or homogenizing “indigenous communities”)
AO: The analyst notes that decolonization in the 60s led many anthropologists to reflect on the role of the discipline in the colonial project and to be sensitive to the role of anthropology and anthropologists.
AO: The analyst notes the push towards critical reflection of social sciences also came from disenfranchised groups and indigenous activists (96)
AO: Analyst notes the collapse of Soviet Union and destruction of Berlin Wall and communist and socialist ideologies led to post-modern critique of reason and empirical truth (Writing Culture as epitomizing the idea for debunking an anthroplogical discourse of truth).