Collaborative ethnography and public anthropology

Collaborative ethnography-the collaboration of researchers and subjects in the production of ethnographic texts-offers us a powerful way to engage the public with anthropology. As one of many academic/applied approaches, contemporary collaborative ethnography stems from a well-established historical tradition of collaboratively produced texts that are often overlooked. Feminist and postmodernist efforts to recenter ethnography along dialogical lines further contextualize this historically situated collaborative practice. The goals of collaborative ethnography (both historical and contemporary) are now powerfully converging with those of a public anthropology that pulls together academic and applied anthropology in an effort to serve humankind more directly and more immediately.