One of the ethical dilemmas of anthropology involves the telling of other people's stories.
There's the matter of privilege. Who is in a position to tell, who is in a position to be told on? Who's business is it to visit other people without a compelling invitation to do so, and write about them?
On the other hand, there's also the matter of not telling, of not even bothering to know another person, another culture. Is ignorance an ethical alternative? Should we really live in a siloed world?
A third way might be to own the story one tells: the anthropologist - the fieldworker - writes her own story, her own experience, shaped inevitably by the writer and the other together.
It's a question of ownership: Who's story? Who gets to tell it?
Perhaps this is the impulse to fiction in anthropology, the desire to own not just the privilege but also the authority to tell the story.
There's the matter of privilege. Who is in a position to tell, who is in a position to be told on? Who's business is it to visit other people without a compelling invitation to do so, and write about them?
On the other hand, there's also the matter of not telling, of not even bothering to know another person, another culture. Is ignorance an ethical alternative? Should we really live in a siloed world?
A third way might be to own the story one tells: the anthropologist - the fieldworker - writes her own story, her own experience, shaped inevitably by the writer and the other together.
It's a question of ownership: Who's story? Who gets to tell it?
Perhaps this is the impulse to fiction in anthropology, the desire to own not just the privilege but also the authority to tell the story.