Judith Okely – författare

This volume examines some crucial issues in the conduct of fieldwork and ethnography and provides new insights into the problems of constructing anthropological knowledge. How is anthropological knowledge created from fieldwork, whose knowledge is this, who determines what is of significance in any ethnographic context, and how is the fieldsite extended in both time and place?

Nine anthropologists examine these problems, drawing on diverse case studies. These range from the dilemmas of the religious refashioning of the ethnographer in contemporary Indonesia to the embodied knowledge of ballet performers, and from ignorance about post-colonial ritual innovations by the anthropologist in highland Papua to the skilled visions of slow food producers in Italy. It is a key text for new fieldworkers as much as for established researchers. The anthropological insights developed here are of interdisciplinary relevance: cultural studies scholars, sociologists and historians will be as interested as anthropologists in this re-evaluation of fieldwork and the project of ethnography.

Own or Other Culture challenges those anthropologists who suggest that fieldwork in the ''West'' is easy or merely a reiteration of what is already ''known'' to either Westerners or non Westerners. Revealing some pioneering articles in social anthropology written over a period of twenty years, Judith Okely discusses selected themes which include: * questions of reflexivity and autobiography * anthropology in Europe * the cultural location of the anthropologist * feminism in anthropology. Illustrated with photographs, Own or Other Culture covers subjects ranging from the author''s own boarding school revealing a British exotica and colonial comparisons, to how Gypsies, who treat non-Gypsies as the ''other'', act to create or manipulate cultural difference. Feminist anthropology is developed in a reassessment of de Beauvoir and Kaberry while gender and bodily experience is explored in the face of popular demands by women readers for cross-cultural examples.

Own or Other Culture challenges those anthropologists who suggest that fieldwork in the ''West'' is easy or merely a reiteration of what is already ''known'' to either Westerners or non Westerners. Revealing some pioneering articles in social anthropology written over a period of twenty years, Judith Okely discusses selected themes which include: * questions of reflexivity and autobiography * anthropology in Europe * the cultural location of the anthropologist * feminism in anthropology. Illustrated with photographs, Own or Other Culture covers subjects ranging from the author''s own boarding school revealing a British exotica and colonial comparisons, to how Gypsies, who treat non-Gypsies as the ''other'', act to create or manipulate cultural difference. Feminist anthropology is developed in a reassessment of de Beauvoir and Kaberry while gender and bodily experience is explored in the face of popular demands by women readers for cross-cultural examples.

Contrary to the negative assessments of the social order that have become prevalent in the media since 9/11, this wide-ranging collection of essays, mostly by social anthropologists, focuses instead on the enormous social creativity being invested as collective identities are reconfigured. Using fieldwork findings drawn from Africa, Asia, and Europe, special emphasis is placed on the reformulation of ethnic and gender relationships and identities in the cultural, social, political, and religious realms of public life. Under what circumstances does trust arise, paving the way for friendship, collegiality, knowledge creation, national unity, or emergence of leadership? How is social life constructed as a collective endeavour? Does the means towards sociability become its end? And what can be said about the agency and collegiality of women? The inspiration for examining these conundrums is the work and persona of Shirley Ardener, to whom the volume is dedicated.

Contributors: Jonathan Benthall, Deborah Fahy Bryceson, Gina Buijs, Sandra Burman, Hilary Callan, Gaynor Cohen, Janette Davies, Tamara Dragadze, Ronnie Frankenberg, Peter Geschiere, Kirsten Hastrup, Paula Heinonen, Maria Jaschok, Grazyna Kubica, Rhian Loudon, Sharon Macdonald, Zdzislaw Mach, Fiona Moore, Judith Okely, Lidia D. Sciama, Shui Jingjun, Cecillie Swaisland, Jacqueline Waldren, Jonathan Webber.