The (Po)ethics of Ethnographic Writing: Ethnographic Prototexts Between Privacy and Transparency in Anthropological Theory and Practice
Keywords:
ethnographic writing, field notes, ethics, reflexivity, epistemologyAbstract
Exploring the complex relationship between the (recording) immediate field experience, its subsequent textual shaping, and the ethical challenges arising from this process, this paper focuses on analyzing the role and imperfect classification of socalled
ethnographic prototexts—notes, diaries, and other preliminary records produced during fieldwork—with the aim of showing that they are not merely auxiliary tools in the production of knowledge. Drawing on the impact of the publication of The Diary of Bronisław Malinowski, the most well-known ethnographic prototext, as well as the postmodernist insights crystallized during the 1980s—which profoundly influenced epistemological and ethical shifts within the discipline—ethnographic writing is examined here not as a technical conclusion to the research process, but as its fundamental component and as an element in the articulation of meaning and the establishment of relationships between the researcher, the population we work with, and the reading audience. In the final part, special attention is given to contemporary media forms, such as blog, which contribute to the further redefinition of the boundaries between the private and the public, opening new spaces for ethnographic (self-)representation in the digital environment.
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