Preface: Ethnographic knowledge and the aporias of intersubjectivity

Abstract

The argument set out in this preface rests on a twofold premise: 1) the production of ethnographic knowledge must be situated in the shared time and copresence of fieldwork, and 2) to the extent that the production of ethnographic knowledge is political (and this proposition must be properly demonstrated) the ethics and politics of ethnographic knowledge take place primarily in the field and not in particular products or political postures. It is from this vantage point that we seek to critically examine how anthropology knows and, by extension, what is political about anthropological knowledge.