Editors' Introduction

Abstract

Editors' Introduction Luke Eric Lassiter and Samuel R. Cook Volume 5 of Collaborative Anthropologies marks an important milestone for our journal. Since 2007, when the Editorial Board was first organized, we have fielded an increasing number of submissions. Thanks to a committed group of reviewers both internal and external, our annual continues to provide a forum for a variety of thoughtful and engaging discussions of collaborative research in anthropology and closely related fields. This issue is no exception. Many anthropologists have addressed issues of power within the unfolding dynamics of collaborative and other research. But as more anthropologists increasingly "study up" or "study sideways," the need to tackle difficult questions—about divergent agendas, control, or research outcomes, for example—has become increasingly critical. In her article "Toward a Feminist Para-Ethnography of Gender in Business," Melissa Fisher considers how newer forms of para-ethnography can intersect with feminist anthropology. Fisher, who has conducted fieldwork with Wall Street women for nearly two decades, suggests how her study of gender and equity within institutions of power point us toward complicated and nuanced modes of collaborative research and its implications, including those that lead anthropologists to act as change-agents. In their article "Dying to Be Represented: Museums and Día de los Muertos Collaborations," Gwyneira Isaac, April Bojorquez, and Catherine Nichols consider a somewhat similar set of issues, albeit in a different context. Isaac and colleagues reflect on how the entry of Day of the Dead celebrations into public institutions, like museums, engenders a complex array of negotiations that require broader considerations of collaboration beyond representational frameworks. Detailing the introduction of Día de los Muertos celebrations into the Arizona State Museum of Anthropology, the authors suggest that things like vocality and [End Page vii] presence can play prominently into the workings behind presentational and representational forms. Opening larger and more dialogic spaces for discussion and reflection—especially that which moves beyond issues of representation—also has potential to open museum and community collaborations to a broader array of possibilities. In addition to these two research articles this issue also includes a commentary section from a professor and PhD student from the University of Montreal, Bob White and Kiven Strohm, respectively. Though they tackle different issues from different angles, they both question some of the underlying assumptions, current practices, and future trajectories of collaborative anthropologies. In his article "From Experimental Moment to Legacy Moment: Collaboration and the Crisis of Representation," White sets out to challenge a "self-perpetuating narrative" about the 1980s critique (marked by the publication of Writing Culture) and how it supposedly "changed the rules of the game" for doing anthropology in the present. Far from being certain, the legacy of the 1980s critique still remains an open question. In a pointed and carefully crafted analysis, White suggests that while the crisis of representation literature opened doors for collaborative work, current ideas about and ideals for collaboration are still undertheorized. Others have built similar cases, but White suggests that until we address some very specific questions about how collaboration and collaborative research is conceptualized and operationalized, "the relationship between epistemological orientation and ideology" will continue to be elusive. Strohm critiques another set of assumptions about collaboration and collaborative research—especially those that presume cooperative relationships to be primarily ethical in scope. Strohm suggests that "collaboration as an ethical commitment" has stunted the impact of collaborative work in other fields, such as critical anthropology. In particular Strohm scrutinizes the assumption that the researcher is automatically at an advantage in the power dynamic between ethnographer and community or that such relations are always inevitably skewed. He looks to the writings of French philosopher Jacques Rancière, and to works that connect art and anthropology, to suggest alternatives that potentially yield collaborations more politically engaged and, in turn, more disruptive to anthropology-as-usual. Continuing a new series of interviews begun in volume 4, this issue features a conversation with Angie Hart, academic director of the Community [End Page viii] University Partnership Programme (CUPP) at the University of Brighton. Angie Hart's work is well known in the United Kingdom, and her work and that of CUPP to create "a democratic learning space...