Reflections of a Deaf Scholar 177
The volume The Ethnographic Self as Resource (Collins & Gallinat, 2010) explores
the question, “To what extent can the self of the anthropologist be used as a resource
in doing ethnography?” (p. vii). In their answer, the authors refer to theoretical and
epistemological changes in the rationale behind anthropology. When anthropology
was first recognized as a field of study around 1900, it was assumed that the study of
others could contribute to a better understanding of ourselves. Epistemologically
grounded in scientism, the idea that the scientific method can be applied to all fields
of investigation, this perspective stipulated that the anthropologist himself or her-
self should not be involved in the ethnographic scene; consequently, the anthropol-
ogist was invisible in ethnography.
By the 1970s, after numerous colonies in Africa and elsewhere had achieved inde-
pendence, the field increasingly reflected on the relation between self and other and
on the role of the person of the anthropologist in doing ethnography. The publica-
tion of Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Clifford & Marcus, 1986)
illustrated this trend toward self-conscious and critical anthropology. These develop-
ments in anthropology also mirror the trend toward self-reflexivity in late modernity.
The appearance of the anthropological self in ethnography necessarily includes
experimentation with ethnographic writing. In the 1990s, self-narrative and biog-
raphy were increasingly explored in ethnography, including feminist and minority
“experience-near” ethnographies, which reflect on the subjectivity of the ethnogra-
pher and the interactions of the ethnographer and participants in the joint construc-
tion of research (e.g., Abu-Lughod, 1993; Behar, 2003). The sociological experimen-
tation with nonstandard writing forms, such as auto-ethnography (i.e., ethnography
that highlights broader themes by drawing only on the source of the self in daily life
settings), is also illustrative of this movement of reflexivity and writing.
The emergence of “anthropology at home” (i.e., ethnography in the anthropolo-
gist’s home environment), which involves sources from both the self and others, neces-
sitates further reflection on research ethics. Topics of further exploration in the pres-
ent volume are the “insider” position and what Collins and Gallinat (2010) describe as
“there being different systems of self-knowledge from one to the other” (p. 8).
In this chapter, as a “native anthropologist” (Narayan, 1993; see further in the
section of this chapter titled “Toward an Anthropology of Deaf Flourishing and a
Strength-Centered Ethnography”) working from a reflexive stance, I practice what
Collins and Gallinat (2010) call “integrated ethnography” (p. 16). The practitioner
of integrated ethnography draws on both the self and others and attempts to work
toward more transparency in knowledge production through a systematic analysis
of the anthropologist’s personal experiences and memories:We therefore imagine an ethnography where the voice of the anthropologist,
drawing on remembered experience, is one among others, and by this means
we demonstrate a self-conscious methodology, which moves between the two
poles of conservative self-reflexivity (as criticized by Salzman, 2002) and po-
etic auto-ethnography (à la Ellis & Bochner, 1996, 2002). (p. 17)To achieve further insight into this process, I also draw on methodological and epis-
temological theorizing on reflexivity, positionality, and intersectionality in gender