“Ba pi ai?”—Rethinking the relationship between secularism and professionalism in anthropological fieldwork

Abstract

Epistemological commitments shape notions of what constitutes an ethical presence in the field. The article examines the assumption of secularism, linked to objectivity, implicit in codes of ethics. It argues that in fieldwork, the secular position neither guarantees ethical behaviour nor improves data collection. Reflecting on research encounters among Palikur-speakers in Brazil, the article examines the ways in which objectivity unexpectedly forecloses some avenues of research. Drawing on the Palikur idiom of ‘minahwa’ (to draw one's canoe alongside), the paper posits a change in the relationship between the anthropologist and the subject of research to an I-Thou relationship of mutual presence in which the anthropological self is hospitable to the other. An ethics of facing is posited.