Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This article offers a sketch of the past uses of the concept of rapport in anthropological discussions of its core identifying method of fieldwork. The trope of collaboration, emphasized in the 1980s critiques of ethnographic authority, failed to displace the rhetorical power of rapport in defining the ethos of fieldwork. Only the changing conditions of many contemporary fieldwork projects have dislodged the naturalness and symbolic strength of the concept in anthropology’s professional culture, but without offering any alternative. Instead, the complicities of fieldwork relations emerge in the shadow of rapport “under erasure” as a focus for reimagining the elements of the classic, regulative ideals of fieldwork.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Beck, U. , Giddens, A. , & Lash, S. (1994). Reflexive modernization: Politics, tradition and aesthetics in the modern social order. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Clifford, J. , & Marcus, G. E. (1986). Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Marcus, G. E. (1998a). Ethnography through thick and thin. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Marcus, G. E. (1998b). On ideologies of reflexivity in contemporary efforts to remake the human sciences. In G. E. Marcus, Ethnography through thick and thin (pp. 181-203). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Marcus, G. E. (1998c). The uses of complicity in the changing mise-en-scene of anthropological fieldwork. In G. E. Marcus, Ethnography through thick and thin (pp. 105-133). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Marcus, G. E. (Ed.). (1999). Critical anthropology now: Unexpected contexts, shifting constituencies, changing agendas. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.

Marcus, G. E. (Ed.). (2000). Late editions: Vol. 7. Para-sites: A casebook against cynical reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Rabinow, P. (1977). Reflections on fieldwork in Morocco. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Rabinow, P. (1999). American moderns: On science and scientists. In G. E. Marcus (Ed.), Critical anthropology now: Unexpected contexts, shifting constituencies, changing agendas (pp. 304-334). Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.

10.

Schensul, S. L. , Schensul, J. J. , & LeCompte, M. D. (1999). Ethnographer’s toolkit: Vol. 2. Essential ethnographic methods: Observations, interviews, and questionnaires. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira.

From Rapport Under Erasure to Theaters of Complicit Reflexivity

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References