AustLit

'Since the beginning of my career as an anthropology undergraduate in the mid-80s, and then as a PhD student in the early 90s at the London School of Economics, I have been aware of the issues raised by the so-called reflexive turn in the discipline. I was, in fact, particularly affected by the methodological and ethical concerns of what is known as ‘cultural critique’ or more generally the ‘politics of representation’: dismantling the power of the interpreter, the strategies of othering, as well as debunking the pitfalls of essentialism, the illusion of objective truth, and the partiality of ethnography (Clifford 1988; Fabian 1983; Marcus & Fisher 1987; Rosaldo 1989; Torgonvick 1991). I was equally exposed to some of the proposed solutions to these questions, such as the shift to embodied experience, and intersubjectivity in everyday life and in fieldwork research (Jackson 1983, 1989, 1998; Stoller 1989). My past interest and ongoing commitment to these issues in my current practice as a fieldworker, author, and lecturer also stem from personal, as well as professional motivations, choices, experiences and encounters which have brought me to anthropology.' (Introduction)