In three distinctive essays, we focus on what anthropologists “stand
to gain by taking up challenges posed by ways of knowing alien from
ours” (Wikan 1991 , 296 ) and explore the merits of various epistemo-
logical and ethical frameworks within which to act and think, once in
the midst of our hosts in their homes and homeland. Together these
essays make the critical point that the experience of the field carries
on well beyond the geographical and temporal boundaries of one’s
fieldwork. Over the years, the full impact of one’s engagement with
others in their world unfolds. As it does, one gains significant insights
into one’s own personal and professional life, the meaning of events
lived while in the field, and of the relationships between one’s self in
and out of the field. Far from being a single experience of transfor-
mation in the field, fieldwork is here seen as an integral part of con-
tinuous personal and professional development.
In “The Politics of Ecstatic Research,” Bruce Granville Miller illus-
trates how “experience-near,” or ecstatic, anthropology builds on an
idea of collaborative ethnographic research that takes local ideas of
knowledge, power, experience, and the transmission of knowledge seri-
ously. His own field experiences with Coast Salish people and commu-
nities reveals the practical and political advantages of this approach.
Among these are the consequent unexpected insights into worldview
and community processes, the creation of new questions, new sources
of data, and an enhanced sense of beauty. Most significantly, he in-
verts the commonsense understanding to argue that it is the failure to
participate in the belief systems that may be politically naive rather
Part Three
Epistemological and Ethical Thresholds