Ethnography and Epistemology
Jonathan Marshall, University of Technology Sydney
That ethnographers are investigating new domains throws more sharply into question the relationship among theory, image and practice. Does the theory the ethnographer uses to apply to the field being studied also apply to themselves? In this paper it is argued that the processes involved in ethnography add vital insights into the ways that people have to conduct themselves online (in so called virtual communities) and the problems they face. They too are trying to understand, or construct and sometimes to control) the culture they are coming into. They too are affected by necessary uncertainties. They too have a trajectory which influences their contacts, intimacies and placings by others. The social categories they employ, which are likewise often employed by the anthropologist, have effects on their understanding of, and relation to, the people they are interacting with. The images and poetics which affect Western societies’ assumptions about technology are also working themselves out within the anthropologist’s imagination. If this is the case then what monopoly can anthropology claim?
