Un/knowing and the practice of ethnography

Abstract

Framed by a critical take on the anthropological use of Western epistemological and cosmo-ontological notions, this article explores their applications to different cultural life-worlds that anthropologists explore and write about. I assess the inadequacy of this enterprise and offer a constructive corrective based on a positive and critical anthropological appreciation and appropriation of Western intellectual tradition. More specifically, this is carried out by means of the phenomenologically grounded considerations of the history of Western philosophy, theology and religiosity. My exercise is primarily motivated by my pursuit of the interpretation of the originality of the cosmo-ontological dimensions constitutive of New Guinea life-worlds, the region where I have done long-term field research. Accordingly, although I will primarily draw on ethnographies from New Guinea, relevant examples from other parts of the world are also used. As for the critical epistemological problematics of the article, it is relevant for anthropology’s universal and ongoing constructive self-elucidation and transformation.