Anthropology traverses the fine and delicate line between art and science. It dances through meanings, suspending belief one minute, entering into dialog the next, and presenting 'findings' for the world to digest. It is a craft of balance. A balancing craft.
Reading ethnographies laced with purpose, with insight into society, family, and culture, I am delighting in discovering a science full of poets. In the dry world of scientific reports, of psychological studies, and medicinal jargon, the writing of anthropologists comes as a relief.
And, I have some freedom here! We are being crafted into writers of ethnographies, observers of identities. Our own and the other. It is the beauty of showing, revealing.
Some years ago, lyrics were my written and realized voice. I sung my transformations of thought and printed them as poetry and art. Now my craft is changing in official papers, websites, blogs, but that can be rich with meaning.
If there is a way to affect change, it is in writing. In crafting to a page a voice for something. A voice for the voiceless. A voice for meaning. Sometimes, it is just a voice for me! But there it is fixed: a word, an expression, disembodied but yet suddenly available.
And what we write, gives shape to the world, and to ourselves in it.
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