Trouble in Para-sites

Deference and Influence in the Ethnography of Epistemic Elites

Dados Bibliográficos

ID18972707
AutoresP R Gilbert (0000-0002-1059-029X, University of Sussex, autor correspondente)
Ano2015
Volume22
Fascículo3
Data de publicação2015-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAnthropology in Action (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0967-201X • E-ISSN: 1752-2285
EditoraBerghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3167/aia.2015.220307
OpenAlexW2315941607
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas9
Referências citadas34

Through his enduring efforts to interrogate the regulative ideals of fieldwork, George Marcus has empowered doctoral students in anthropology to rethink their ethnographic encounters in terms that reflect novel objects and contexts of inquiry. Marcus' work has culminated in a charter for ethnographic research among 'epistemic communities' that requires 'deferral' to these elite modes of knowing. For adherents to this programme of methodological reform, the deliberately staged 'para-site' – an opportunity for ethnographers and their 'epistemic partners' to reflect upon a shared intellectual purpose – is the signature fieldwork encounter. This article draws on doctoral research carried out among the overlapping epistemic communities that comprise London's market for mining finance, and reviews an attempt to carve out a para-site of my own. Troubled by this experience, and by the ascendant style of deferent anthropology, I think through possibilities for more critical ethnographic research among epistemic elites

Deference · Deferral · Elite · Epistemic community · Epistemology · Ethnography · Political science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Law · Philosophy · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies