Revisiting ‘Nativity’
Doing ‘Anthropology at Home’ in Rural Bangladesh
- Author
- Ishrat Jahan Durham University & Dhaka University
Abstract Auto-anthropology is where an anthropologist works in his/her own society (Strathern, 1987: 17). It is often taken for granted that doing such ‘auto-anthropology’ or ‘anthropology at home’ is the easiest option for anthropologists to carry out ethnographic research. Since the 1980s, many researchers have therefore enquired into the lives of rural women in Bangladesh (Abdullah, 1982; Begum, 1983; Blanchet, 1984; Jansen, 1987; Ahmad, 1991; Kabeer, 2009) and in some instances (Islam, 1982; Begum, 1983, Rizvi, 1982) the tendency was to research on Bengali women as they share wit