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A Pathway to Knowledge
lives with, and studies, while urging us to clarify the way in which our
knowledge is grounded in practical perspectives and participatory ex-
periences in the field as much as our detached observations” (Jackson
1989 , 3 ). Jackson goes further and notes that the method of partici-
pant observation is built upon the idea that the experiences of the re-
searcher are crucial in ethnographic knowledge production. Here the
experiential field is defined as one of “interactions and intersubjectiv-
ity” (Jackson 1989 , 3 ). Focusing on lived experience in this way al-
lows for the inclusion of diverse forms of knowledge acquisition and
recognizes indigenous ways of knowing and doing, such as the possi-
bility of dreaming about tabla and the master, his compositions and/
or highly complex rhythms.
Re-evaluating what we mean by participation, action, or involve-
ment in the ethnographic way of life is an important but difficult task.
Traditionally, the experiences of the participant–observer have been
presented in ethnographies as a way of maintaining and gaining au-
thority in the discipline. I know the other because “I was there.” The
crisis in the anthropological representation of others has moved its
practitioners toward reflection on ethnographic authority. Clifford
( 1997 ), Van Maanen ( 1988 ), and Geertz ( 1988 ) are among those
who have pointed to the use and abuse of the anthropologist self as a
textual strategy in knowledge production. These writers have, how-
ever, offered little discussion on the importance of theorizing anthro-
pological practice as an embodied, contextually dependent mode of
doing. As Fabian ( 2001 ) rightly points out, the anthropological fo-
cus on representation, to the exclusion of other critical issues such as
knowledge production, has created a discourse that does not attend
to experiential knowledge in any significant way. “If it is true, as we
have said, that the question of ethnographic objectivity has been dis-
placed by a shift of emphasis in critical thought from production to
representation, then our response should be to explore again body
and embodiment as involved in objectification and the grounding of
objectivity” (Fabian 2001 , 30 – 31 ).
Re-evaluating the meaning of ethnographic experience and knowl-
edge production must begin with our assumptions about the relation-
ship of the fieldworker self and the subsequent textual other. Engag-
ing in an apprenticeship, in an experience with other cultural selves,
