Collaborative Scriptwriting

This discussion focuses on my struggles to merge anthropological theory and practice to most benefit the community and my discovery of collaborative scriptwriting for street theater as an effective strategy. I was fortunate to attend a graduate program that boasted a rich tradition of critical, reflexive, and engaged ethnography. While our mentors conveyed the absolute necessity of giving back to the communities and taking our scholarly work to broad audiences, they also cautioned us against the neo-imperialist tendency to ‘impose our ideas’ on communities where they might not be wanted or simply not work. Anthropology's dark history, in gathering knowledge that “justified” colonialism, added to our fear. As somewhat idealistic graduate students we wanted to recover subjugated knowledge in our respective communities and plotted how best to minimize power relations between researcher and the researched. Sharing our data and publications with the communities was the first step. The second was never to impose our ideas on poor, marginalized communities but to let them find their own solutions to problems and then provide support. The third step was to always engage with the community in whatever way possible, as expert witness, op-ed writer, lobbyist etc. Soon after graduation, however, we realized that intentions, plans and results may not converge in the real world

Colonialism · Drama · Ethnography · Media studies · Merge (version control · Political science · Reflexivity · Social science · Sociology · Sri lanka · Visual arts · Witness · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Cambodian History and Society · Computer Science · Law · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

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