Hi all and welcome to this first installment of our short series of meet the anthropologist
conversation today I'm joined by Alpa Shah who's an anthropologist at the London School of Economics
we read her article titled "ethnography participant observation a potentially revolutionary Praxis" on
this course she has also authored a very large amount of articles and also books I won't
mention all of them here but only draw your attention to a relatively recent one that came out not
too long ago it's titled night march and it looks like this, and it is available at our library which
is a very unusual and also spectacular account based on field work among Maoists in India a very
both unique book and also a very unique form of ethnographic fieldwork so Alpah thank you for
for joining us today and
taking a break from your summer holiday to talk with me. It's a pleasure to be here
Kenneth yeah hi everyone. So if we have a look at the article that we are reading as part of
this course you begin by referring to a statement by the Anthropologist Tim Ingold and he
simply says that's enough about ethnography. In this course we haven't read Ingold's piece so our
students will have no knowledge
really about what's in Ingold's article so could you please tell us a bit more about his claim
about enough ethnography and also the kind of debate about ethnography that you are
stepping into with this article. A: Sorry Kenneth one second.
Sorry summer holidays here so do expect to get bombarded by lots of kids wanting
To listen to our conversation. So yeah let's get back to Tim Ingold yeah well you
know what Kenneth I mean to be honest is kind of a sideshow the Tim Ingold statement in my
article I'll give you the context. I had done this field work that you referred to amongst the
Adivasis indigenous people of India and amongst this
left-wing maoist underground insurgency was spreading and I happen to spend a lot of time not only
with the indigenous people but also with these guerrillas you know and I'd come out
of this study and I was back in England and I was back in London and I was you know trying to make
sense of it all like what I'd experienced and so it's in trying to make sense of what I
had experience and what it contributed the new kinds of knowledge it contributed to what we
understood about the situation about the Indian adivasis the maoists and what literature was already
there, and what I thought my ethnographic work was contributing in trying to make sense of all of
that I realized you know that I really had some significant things to say about ethnography and
participant observation and its powers
I was invited to be I think we have in London we have something called ?laminar? anthropology
where students especially PhD students aspiring PhD students master students who are inspiring
undergraduates who wanted PhDs they all come together once a year in this London
anthropology day and it's a lovely place you know full of like young people who want to be anthropologists
Or who is becoming anthropologists and
and we have like a day of papers that are being presented mainly by people who young anthropologists
have done their fieldwork and some people commenting on them and just place to meet
each other get to know each other's work and just a very nice lovely warm atmosphere and I was
asked to be the opening panelists at this London anthropology day and so I thought well
you know let's go out and
And you know we share the sparks of anthropology and what's so beautiful about it and especially ethnography
and especially participant observation and inspire all of these young people and give them more
power to do what they're you know to carry on their Journeys and so I wrote this piece on
participant observation and why it's so significant what it enables us to say about the world and
also how it might enable us to
to change it you know. I did this piece and then somehow the editor of HAU who was at
At a time a man called Giovanni ?DeCall? he heard about this piece and he said oh I
heard you speak about participant observation and you know I've got this like papers
coming out and how you know it's all driven by this debate that Tim Ingold has ignited by saying
that's it about ethnography
and so you know can I have your piece for this and I said sure I don't know anything about
this debate but you know you can have a look at my paper if you think it fits in your going to take
it you know so he looked at the paper and he said yes I want to put it out and I said oh
okay well he said well you weren't addressing this debate you know at the beginning and I'm telling
you all this because this is how I articles are made right sometimes
and so then I said okay that means I have to read this stuff okay
so I read this stuff and frankly I was like so kind of uninspired by it you know it
was basically about territory marking or that's what it felt like you know Ingold was saying well
ethnography ethnography all Anthropologist is saying that we do is ethnography
and that's what makes us anthropologists and you're saying well no no we can't just
become you know it's not just ethnography we're doing ethnography is different from anthropology and
you know anthropology is amazing because it enables this comparative critical understanding of human
being and human knowing you know, and ethnography is really just description and actually everybody
is using this term ethnography whether your geographer or sociologists and it's becoming so diluted
you know what they do and what we do is so different and you know we
don't just do ethnographic description we do we do comparative you know theory which is
Anthropology and he is basically getting fed up with others using this term ethnography and trying
to separate these two and so you know
there's much more to be said about this but you know that's what he was driving this you know that's
enough about ethnography and let's focus on anthropology and you know and so
frankly I just thought you know this is all kind of although he wanted us not to be navel-gazing and
I thought well this actually is navel-gazing and and I thought well let's just you know there was
all these other pieces that came out in fact a wonderful piece by a Nordic anthropologist you know
Signe Howell who actually wrote one of the best pieces in that debate which is about
ethnography and the power of ethnography
and I thought well let's just unite what's the best of all of these pieces and think through
what is so amazing about ethnography because it isn't just pure description you know it does produce
knowledge about the world that is new that is revelatory and that has a potential to change things
and so I thought I'll just frame my my contribution my little contribution on participant
observation and in terms of let's just take the best out of all of these debates and
let's put that to the floor so the whole Ingold thing you can definitely look up more into the debate
it's all in those pages of the HAU but for me it was in some ways a sideshow is not as interested in
what was going on in those debates as I was in trying to elicit the best out of it and show the
power of ethnography and participant observation in particular
K: and you capture your argument about the power of ethnography in the
subtitle of the article itself where you write that if ethnography at least potentially
revolutionary praxis and as readers we note that you write practice with an X and not practice
with a c and the T and that's of course a subtle but important difference between using the X
and not using an X in the word Praxis
could you maybe first just give us a summary of your main argument about ethnography as a
revolutionary praxis and then also maybe explain to us the wider theoretical inspiration that you
have for this claim I mean you go back to some of the grand old masters like Marx and Gramschi
in making this argument about praxis
A: sure yeah so what I really wanted to focus on is what is at the core of ethnography which is
participant observation right. This extraordinary thing that we do is unfold as soon as I said in the
article it's not only us that do it you know there are definitely people in other disciplines who
sometimes do it even better than some of us do you know that's why I started with Paul
Willis and James Scott's you know particular works
anyway so what I was trying to say is that participant observation basically it's so incredible
because what it makes us do it makes us live the lives of other people and see the world from
Their point of view and in through that process it enables us to discover new ways of thinking
about seeing and also acting in the world you know and it is
is because we're forced to in a way shed are ways of knowing the world and to really try to
inhabit other people's worlds and their ways of being and seeing and doing and also
in a way that is extremely democratic right there's a two-way process you know you're in constant
conversation with the people you're living and working with but it's also really Democratic in the
sense that it's you know it makes us
we look at everything together we look at you know we don't separate off religion from
economics from politics we look at how everything is intertwined we try and actually do everything
we do too much you know. We try to become masters of everything and not separate
separate out different aspects of society and that also enables us to see connections that we
wouldn't if we just you know focused on one aspect and
so I think that was like one of the things that I was really trying to focus on and
and the other aspect which I think is really important why I use it particularly the X versus the
practice you know is that by doing this it enables us to see the relationship between history
ideology and action in ways that we could never
See so I think I where I depart maybe from some of the kind of more old-fashioned ideas of
anthropology where you're living with one culture and understanding that culture is I'm trying to
also grapple with the fact that we're always all changing you know and and transformation is an
inherent part of societies and we're not like islands of history, and that we are related to other
people all the time and they're these longer
term processes that are impacting on any particular group of people and so that's why I'm really
interested in the relationship between history, ideology, and action in the ideology and action that
the processes of change and that's why when I talk about you know long-term engagement that the
relationship between intimacy and estrangement I'm also talking about revealing social
relations of a group of people
in which I consider the processes you know to the longer-term processes in which across time and
space which people are involved in to be crucial. For me you know ethnography is
potentially revolutionary because it's not only teaching us to see the world through other people's
points of view and other ways other ways of being and acting in the world
but it also enables us to see the kind of relationship between those perspectives and the
longer-term processes of history the processes of change which are constantly transforming Society
right so that you know means it for me it's like it we can see how things remain the same but
also how you know dominant structures of power or authority can be challenged and that's like what
I was really trying to get at and yes of course this is very much inspired by a long
tradition of you know thinking about revolutionary social transformation which you can you know
Marx who said you know philosophers have only interpreted the world the point is to change it and
any of this is of course also influence its for me also I've always been interested in how you know
how we can make a better world and you know you both know
night March which is engaged in people who are actually trying to do this and these maoists
revolutionaries and so I'm really trying to understand the world from their from the point
of view of the adivasis who they're living with but also from the point of view of the
revolutionaries and thinking through with them you know their own kind of processes of change which
in you know as night March which is a kind to to highlight to everybody here
the outset kind of you know it's like a big tragedy because it looks at how these groups this group
of people is amazingly trying to transform the world but also you know how it how they fail at it
you know the beauty of their Vision but also how they're completely undermining what they're doing
the whole time from within and in a way I'm like you know I'm showing the powers that
anthropology might have in that
Power of transformation that they're also interested in and my older work is also
influenced in fact by similar Visions but maybe we can talk more about that later but yeah so and
and yeah you mentioned Marx of course Gramschi too you know who is very much thinking about ideology
and ideology and social transformation, and a lot of my work contributes to that you know comes from
that tradition trying to rethink those traditions see the place that anthropology what anthropology
Whether ethnography what participant observation can bring to
some of those debates. K: there's one line of argument in your article that also made me think
about your first monograph in the shadows of the state that came out now I think 10 years ago
where
you adopt a somewhat critical position against the certain forms of
social activism and I note that in the article that we are reading on this course you argue
strongly precisely forcing ethnography so profoundly political act as you just said now an act that
allows us to challenge authority and to act better in the world so this is to me a kind of
activist anthropology or at least engaged or committed anthropology if you can use those terms but to
you how does this kind of ethnography driven form of activism differ from other kinds of social
activism that you also find in abundance in India for example where where you work. A: thanks
Kenneth that's a really good question
so I think that a both in this piece and also in my earlier work a position that I'm really trying to
explore is you know it's very tempting to join hands you know totally with those people that are
already engaged in a kind of activism on the ground so in this article it's these
Maoists right engaged anthropologists could be and an anthropology that jumps in completely
with the maoists and you know really tries to these are obviously people who are being portrayed
as terrorists or being imprisoned they are under great a very challenging circumstance as far as the
state is concerned
you know they are they're being killed the whole time and you know you could see that
there could be an argument for not you know not showing I guess the darkest side of their own
practices or you know the temptation would be to these are the persecuted guys right these are the
activists on the ground they're the ones that have given up their lives they're sacrificing
themselves for the cause and who am I'm just
An anthropologist I come from London for a couple of years and then you know it's lives in these areas and
then goes back to the comfort of my you know family home and what's my responsibility you know
shouldn't I just be like you know if I'm going to be living with these guys you know who are engaged
on the ground who are activists on the ground I should be just joining hands with them and I
guess that is what I find quite disturbing
about you know the relationship between anthropology and a kind of very self-professed form of activists
anthropology right and what I'm trying to say here is that actually maybe if we do commit ourselves
to that kind of long-term engaged anthropology of which comes from a very old-fashioned even a kind
of anti revolutionary tradition you know we might actually
we have something that we can contribute which is you know which offers the activists a new way
to engage in their own world you know so like the maoists themselves you know they're like that they
are very interested in this criticism and self-criticism and you know and they were actually
very interested they are the only things that they said of me was you know you can write whatever
you want you can do whatever you want but just make sure you read our documents and
they wanted me to read the documents because they wanted me to understand you know the world what
they were trying to do from their point of view and I did read their documents and you know then I've
written this this piece which is you know this book which is very sympathetic to them but also very
critical of what they're trying to do and particular of many of the things that they're doing on the
ground and I think that if I had just done an Engaged an activist anthropology of the kind of you
know the militant anthropology of the kind that Nancy Scheper-Hughes for example has asked us to get
all of that you know it wouldn't have allowed me to have this kind of critical
perspective which on the activists themselves and so what I'm trying to do is yeah it is definitely
a very engaged anthropology but not one in which we are we become activists only you know and
otherwise you know what's the point of our anthropology I mean might as well just become an activist
on the ground you know what's you know what's
the point of this like silly process called participant observation and of course I'm
still asking myself all these questions but you know in a way that is still the
seeds of that were laid in my book in the shadows of the state which which is a kind of
critique of some kinds of indigenous rights activism but if you you know when you read the book
At the end you know I end on this
epilogue which is called you know what I think I told that I was debating like what to call it and
in the end I call it you know Arcadian spaces so it's really like one of those like trying to
resurrect these you know what could be a more engaged anthropology it's
just a kind of it's throwing out a few ideas that's all you know and I remember one of the reviewers
of the book you know who
who reviewed the book as in before it was published said well this is a beautiful book and it's all
you know excellently researched and everything has been beautifully presented but then you know and
it's all very grounded and critical and but then at the end she goes away and throws us these
romantic ideas of what it would mean to have a better world and you know it
completely departs from what the book is trying to do and you know and that was because
I was even in
that book and in everything I've done I guess still I was looking for you know what it is to
Be an engaged anthropologists and so that kind of engagement with the world the desire to make
things better for the people that you're working with that has kind of been there from the beginning
and I guess I'm developing it much further in this article. K: yeah we've taken quite a
bit of your time already but if you have a few more minutes there's
one last thing I would like to hear your views on which is something that I find myself thinking
a bit about these days as well basically every time I teach this methods course and you
mentioned in this article and this is claim that many seasoned anthropologists would
endorse that solid ethnographic fieldwork requires between 12 to 18 months of full immersion in an
unfamiliar social setting so we are talking about
year to a year and a half. If I look at the kind of anthropology degrees we offer at our
departments I think our MA students they might be able to manage six months of fieldwork within the
study framework and the funding they are offered even those of our MA students who go on to do a
PhD afterwards they may do a year of fieldwork for their PHD some to do slightly more so
that
always makes me wonder about whether we are actually in our methods teaching and our methods courses
preaching ideals that are very difficult to practice I mean we have a hard time practicing what we
preach because very few of our graduates will actually be able to do the kind of field work that we
argue that they should properly be doing to do solid field work what's your view on this
dilemma or this paradox?
A: yeah I feel that it's not about preaching it's about politics right I feel that we have to create
these spaces it's our responsibility to fight to create more space for field work or for that long
term field work because I think it's really important firstly you know that you have to learn a
language right I mean most of the time we're going to places where we don't speak the language you
need to learn a language I mean that's absolutely crucial and
that takes time and I mean your MA students do six
months fieldwork I think that's amazing I think that's really great that MA students do six
months fieldwork it gives them a taste of what field work is about. Our MA students don't do fieldwork
usually at all you know and because as this realization that you can't really do very much in
they don't have so long they have just like three months over the summer
And most write their MA thesis and that's not enough for field work so we don't even in fact often
encouraged fieldwork for MA thesises has but PhD's I think is like it's a different kettle of fish and
you know I think we have to fight the cause we have to you know we have to aim within our own
departments create the space for longer term field work and this is not just for PhD students is
also for colleagues because it's really hard as I say in my article as well like you
you get the chance maybe once when you do a PhD field work to do long-term fieldwork but afterwards
It's so hard right once you are teaching as you are kind of you know like when are you going
to get leave to go away for a year how are you going to be able to let you know about your family you
know by this time you know we have like kids and folks back home how do we leave them for so long I
mean all of these things are really tricky and really you know it's really difficult to
achieve of course many anthropologists what they do is then they have long-term relationships with
the field sites and they keep going back to the same field side then once they have already built
the connections and deep deep relationships but yeah no I feel that it calls for us to make space
to argue within our own departments why this is really important to create space for longer term
field work and then as a united force speaking
you know to the university as a whole to funding bodies like we you know we have to explain and I
think that there's real potential here because so many people are really interested you know and now
in ethnography more and more departments are on the one hand there's this drive towards Mass data
and you know this kind of statistics and mass data and algorithms but on the other hand there's also
this desire to you know we see ethnography being really
used by so many other disciplines and I think it's a space for us as I argue in the
article I don't think we should like disregard this and just say oh you know it's geographers they
just don't you know don't know how to do it and they doing something so weak and you know what's the
point of complaining I think it's a space for us to take hold off and expand our vision and get
into those debates and there are clearly people out there and Gillian Tett I don't know if you know
she's produced this new book called
anthrovision she is a financial journalist she was originally an Anthropologist she's so you know
she's so transformed by the power of what anthropology can do what ethnography can do
and you know now this is like a best-selling book called anthrovision and she's researching how
businesses can use anthropology there's a real thirst right for people want to want to know more
about ethnography how to do it and and it's a space that we can claim right now and expand our
vision and see this
the time to kind of strengthen our position and through that you know make more space for us make
more space for our own PhD students our own colleagues it's a really I see it as a very hopeful time
right now in many many ways to create that space for longer term participant observation of the kind
that I described in the article even though it might seem that the forces are against us. K: thank
you so much for
ending on such an optimistic note I must say I do share your optimism about the prospects of
ethnography and anthropology also in the future and thank you not least for joining us for this
conversation the first in the series of our short meet the Anthropologist conversation. This went
on for much longer than I had hoped so thank you so much for contributing with critical insights
and also perspectives on your own article thank you.
A: It's a pleasure Kenneth and sorry to have gone on but I hope some of it is useful I hope
some of it humanizes this piece of paper that you see in front of you or people that you see on your
screen okay all the best to all of you and to you Kenneth.