The Devlopment of Reflexive Anthropology Essay -- Cultural Anthropolog

The Devlopment of Reflexive AnthropologyReflexive anthropology has pressured scholoars to recognize their own biases and look increasingly inwards when studying other cultures. Reflexive anthropology is a break outside(a) from the traditional study of a clearly defined us and them, that seeks to shift towards indentification rather than difference. It attempts to uncover the politics behind ethnography. Reflexivity shows how we are effected by others, and how others are effected by us. It holds anthropologists account equal for what they hold open, and how they represent culture. Anthropologists like Dorinne Kondo and Renato Rosaldo have greatly influenced the devlopment of reflexive anthropology through their enthnographies.When Kondo, a Japanese-American woman, went to Japan to for research, she was unprepared for how her own indistinguishability would complicate her study. Because she looked Japanese, and in some ways felt Japanese, but did not have the cultural knowledge and language skills of a true native, she was pressured by others to conform. They valued her to be a Japanese women, and she (initially) readily complied. In doing so, the lines between informant and ethnographer became blurred, as she examined her own transition, and her own dissolution and reconstitution of self. It become increasingly impossible for Kondo to write an ethnography from a distanced, us/ them, point of view, as she was (outwardly) becoming more like them. Kondo statesI emphasize here the collusion between all parties involved, for it is classic to recognize the ways in which informants are also actors and agents and that the negotiation of reality that takes place in the doing of ehtnography involves complex and ... ...after the death of his wife that Rosaldo felt the anger and distress that he believed was related to the Ilongots feelings. Through his own sad experience, Rosaldo thought that could understand the Ilongots deeper reason for headhunting.Rosald os belief that people might truly be able to understand each other on all levels is quite problomatic. He even states that the notion of position also refers to how life experiences both change and inhibit particular kinds of insight (19). Whereas he applies this comment to his own ablity to understand headhuntung because of his feelings about his wifes death, he dismissed other cultural factors that compare the Ilongot people from himself. Although he is able to feel some sort of connection to his informants through his own pain, he is in no position to be able to state that he understands the cultures ritual.