Ethnography and the politics of absence

Abstract

This article is about the silences that often are registered but not so often highlighted and analysed with the anthropological tools of the ethnographer, referring as these do to the empirical world that can be captured. While there is abundant literature that helps the ethnographer refine the technical aspects of the writing of the narrative, it has been only recently that die political implications behind the epistemology and ontology of ethnography as a research strategy have been addressed in any depth. Rather than, therefore, looking at ways of improving the collection of data, this paper will consider an aspect that hitherto has been largely ignored in ethnography. The focus will be on what the ethnographic text leaves unsaid. A number of silences will be identified with reference to the process, content, and political effectiveness of ethnographic narratives, although it will be argued that these silences or gaps are not all of the same kind, and that some rather than others are more promising in the construction of radical educational theory and practice.