Do anthropologists have the right to speak for their informants? Is this a form of exploitation? Discuss with reference to at least two ethnographic examples.

The first 200 words of this essay...

Do anthropologists have the right to speak for their informants? Is this a form of exploitation? Discuss with reference to at least two ethnographic examples.

Since its roots in colonialist academia, anthropology has come a long way in its thoughts and behaviour towards its informants. In this essay, I will use the work of Asad, Clifford, Said and Abu-Lughod in discussing, theoretically, the question of authority in ethnography, looking at the traditions of anthropology and the methodology of ethnographic work. I will use Abu-Lughod's ethnography to show how these theories can work in practice, contrasting it with Marjorie Shostak's work on a !Kung woman which, although it 'lets her informant speak', still maintains some of the potentially exploitative traditions of anthropology.

Relations of power between anthropologist and informant must be discussed in respect to this question. As Asad notes in the introduction to the collection of essays he compiled connecting anthropology and colonialism, the very existence of the discipline is due to the imbalance of power that existed (and still exists?) between the West and the non-West during colonialism (Asad 1973). This political and economic dominance enabled Western anthropologists to go and live with non-Western communities