Abstract

The appeal for a radical bodily and sensory engagement through fieldwork is based upon the idea that the body and senses permit an immediate experience that can help anthropologists experience and come to know the subject of their research in a direct manner. Legitimated by the phenomenological project of overcoming Cartesian dichotomies, bodily engagement promotes the idea that emotional and sensory openness to the world and the Other can help the subject avoid the supposedly distancing nature of modernist formed perception. Yet this idea, as I conclude on the basis of my own fieldwork and autoethnographic insights, is a symptom of a specific type of subject that emerged with postmodernity and expresses values and an ideology in accordance with the logic of late-capitalist Western societies.

Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call