Ecologies of mistrust

Fish, fishermen, and the multispecies ethics of ethnographic authority

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2260046
AutoresKyrstin Mallon Andrews (0000-0002-2121-9349, Department of Anthropology Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs Syracuse University New York USA, autor de correspondencia)
Año2023
Volumen125
Número2
Páginas283-297
Fecha de publicación2023-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAmerican Anthropologist (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0002-7294 • E-ISSN: 1548-1433
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/aman.13828
OpenAlexW4323538180
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas14
Referencias citadas54

How do you conduct research with beings that are deeply suspicious of you, who don't trust your presence, and with good reason? This was a central question in my ethnographic work with diver fishermen in the changing marine environments of the Dominican Republic, waters populated by trickster barracuda, parrotfish who knew the schedules of fishing bans, and escape-artist grouper. Ethnographers have historically considered mistrust as something to be overcome, an obstacle to the necessary rapport of the anthropologist. This article considers ethnographic encounters in subaquatic multispecies worlds and the methods practiced amid inherently unequal relations of power. Instead of considering trust as the ultimate achievement in ethnographic research and the gatekeeper of anthropological authority, I consider mistrust as a way of perceiving the myriad inequalities, political ecologies, and power dynamics animating our fieldsites and their human and more-than-human inhabitants

Environmental ethics · Ethnography · Fish · Fish <Actinopterygii> · Fishery · Fishing · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Trickster · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies