Vulnerability, Empathy, and Allyship in Syria: Reflections of an Ethnographer
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Abstract
Longterm anthropological fieldwork in Syria often relies on relationships with interlocutors forged across ideological and other divisions, generating ethical dilemmas for which there are no easy solutions. Although they can never be taken for granted, such relationships feel ever more perilous with wartime displacement. For anthropologists, they involve a vulnerability of position that stems from the impossibility of reciprocating hospitality. This essay ponders the changing roles of the ethnographer in Syria by presenting my own fieldwork, conducted since the early 1990s, as a case study. It questions anthropology’s ethos of empathy and proposes a move towards allyship.
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