Critical interventions: Dilemmas of accountability in contemporary ethnographic research

Anthropologists are accountable in unique ways to “the people we study” in “the field.” Yet today “the field” is more likely to be some transnational process linking multiple actors, sites, and agendas rather than a bounded physical space. To whom, then, are we accountable in a world of blurred boundaries and of intersecting and often contradictory oppressions based on gender, class, ethnicity, nationality, and sexuality? Are we equally accountable to everyone we encounter in “the field?” If not, are there some ethical or political principles that we can use to help us determine to whom we are most accountable and how? In this essay I explore these questions through an interrogation of my own work on the cultural politics of “indigenous” development among Maasai in Tanzania.

Key words:

• Accountability
• Ethics
• Politics of ethnography
• Indigenous development
• Gender