Description
Book SynopsisIn
Multisituated Kaushik Sunder Rajan evaluates the promises and potentials of multisited ethnography with regard to contemporary debates around decolonizing anthropology and the university. He observes that at the current moment, anthropology is increasingly peopled by diasporic students and researchers, all of whom are accountable to multiple communities beyond the discipline. In this light, Sunder Rajan draws on his pedagogical experience and dialogues to reconceptualize ethnography as a multisituated practice of knowledge production, ethical interlocution, and political intervention. Such a multisituated ethnography responds to contemporary anthropology’s myriad commitments as it privileges attention to questions of scale, comparison, and the politics of ethnographic encounters. Foregrounding the conditions of possibility and difficulty for those doing and teaching ethnography in the twenty-first-century, Sunder Rajan gestures toward an ethos and praxis of ethnography
Trade Review“The remarkable transformations over the past thirty years in the nonetheless emblematic research process that still defines anthropologists have never been explored so comprehensively, so instructively, and so passionately by a gifted, imaginative teacher to those who become anthropologists today in a historically key department.” -- George E. Marcus, coeditor of * Fieldwork Is Not What It Used to Be: Learning Anthropology’s Method in a Time of Transition *
"This challenging and stimulating monograph is intended for faculty involved in training graduate students in ethnographic practice. . . . Highly recommended." -- W. Kotter * Choice *
"
Multisituated is a passionate and eloquent contribution to contemporary discussions about anthropology’s pasts, presents, and possible futures that deserves to be widely read and keenly debated." -- Stuart McLean * American Ethnologist *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction. A Problem, a Paradox, a Politics . . . and a Praxis 1
1. Scale 29
2. Comparison 57
3. Encounter 91
4. Dialogue 136
Conclusion. Toward a Diasporic Anthropology 169
Notes 189
References 229
Index 245
