The Devlopment of Reflexive Anthropology Essay -- Cultural Anthropolog

The Devlopment of reflex(a) AnthropologyReflexive anthropology has pressured scholoars to agnise their admit biases and look increasingly inwards when studying different cultures. Reflexive anthropology is a break away from the traditional study of a distinctly defined us and them, that seeks to shift towards indentification rather than difference. It attempts to uncover the politics in arrears ethnography. Reflexivity shows how we are effected by others, and how others are effected by us. It holds anthropologists accountable for what they publish, and how they represent culture. Anthropologists like Dorinne Kondo and Renato Rosaldo have greatly influenced the devlopment of reflexive anthropology by means of their enthnographies.When Kondo, a Japanese-American woman, went to Japan to for research, she was unprepared for how her own identity would complicate her study. Because she looked Japanese, and in some ways felt Japanese, but did not have the ethnical knowledge a nd language skills of a true native, she was pressured by others to conform. They wanted her to be a Japanese women, and she (initi anyy) 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 much like them. Kondo evincesI emphasize here the collusion between all parties involved, for it is important to recognize the ways in which informants are also actors and agents and that the talks 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 grief that he believed was related to the Ilongots feelings. Through his own disturbing experience, Rosaldo thought that could understand the Ilongots deeper reason for headhunting.Rosa ldos belief that the great unwashed might truly be able to understand each other on all levels is quite problomatic. He even states that the notion of home also refers to how life experiences both enable and inhibit particular kinds of cortical potential (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 differentiate 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.