In this chapter, the authors stand on a reciprocal research with indigenous gnoseology and try to make space to contribute to the people. This is basically the author's (Jahid's) PhD thesis fieldwork, where this 2020 pandemic has stopped the author from being engaged with people physically. However, using digital tools, maintaining an ethnographic manner and centering reciprocity as a theme, they found that digital ethnography can be meant to stay connected and contributory with the people instead of being a mere contact, rapport, or friendship. As a reflection with a prevailing methods like collaborative, ethnography, or authoethnography, or even phenomenological reciprocal ethnography, the authors negated and showed that all have been suffering from the practice of the original essence of knowledge practice, and this is the aim of this chapter.
TopThe Root Of Our Motivation
If, Anthropology is the study of humans, past and present1 (dare to extend, to support the colonial and Coloniality? Harrison, 2011) why then, the blame of being colonial? An easy question and the answers in known too. But what is the solution? Many answers are here, and all answers (Critical, Reflexive, Analytical, Collaborative, and Reciprocal, which we are to discuss in the next section) are deeply rooted in a direct colonial legacy or bifurcated, shaded power dichotomy. The question is as old as five hundred years since the overseas connections of Europe with other parts of the World took the shape of armed conquest, permanent colonies, and colonial states—in other words, the structures of empire. The great botanist Linnaeus didn’t go himself but sent out his apostles: one of them was aboard Lieutenant Cook’s Endeavour, sent to make astronomical observations from Tahiti when the ship arrived at “Botany Bay.” Information from the colonized World was crucial for the growth of—among other fields—botany, linguistics, geography, geology, evolutionary biology, astronomy, atmospheric science, oceanography, and of course, anthropology and sociology. Since Du Bois, then Talal Asad, and more particularly, by American Anthropological Association’s masterpiece, Anthropology came to the fore, Faye V Harrison’s Decolonizing Anthropology came in 1992. What was said Professor ERA Seligman, the first Anthropology Encyclopedia editor, would like to say for Professor Harrison; [She] knew nearly everything, but not how to make an [anti-colonial guideline] (Sills, 1968). This Decolonizing Anthropology takes a new shape during the first Indigenous Decades. Still these are abstract academic debates on Decolonizing Anthropology under the shadow of Postcolonial Discourse. Many vanguards are to be named theory or critique in the humanities. Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Ali Shariati, and Hussein Alatas are a few of its best-known documents. Surprisingly, being a student of Bronislaw Malinowski (BM), Kenyan youngster Jomo Kenyatta, where BM wrote a 9-page introduction, well managed the incredible feat of turning Malinowskian ethnography into a critique of colonization in his ‘Facing Mount Kenya.’ Along with the Decolonization movement, in Anthropology, the trends were sidelined; however, not silent. These were a sociological critique of colonialist culture, postcolonial stagnation, and intellectual dependence in theme and essence, which are just some high points. Besides, from Sociology, Farid Alatas, Sujata Patel, Michael Burawoy, Junial Go, Gurminder Bhambra, Sinha are leading scholars are as the significance—beyond their specific arguments—of our understanding. This movement has already moved beyond initial statements and yet on the academic debate of Decolonization. Underlying, in 1999, two major prolific publications appeared; one is Patrick Wolfe’s Settler Colonialism and Anthropology, and the second one is Linda Smith’s Decolonizing and Indigenous Methodologies changed the landscape of Decolonizing Anthropology. However, this is the starting, and soon after, we see a stand for Ethnographic refusal (Simpson, 2007) and then, more systematically, a call for politics of denial by Audra Simpson’s refusal (Simpson, 2014). A very few numbers ethnographic works appeared, such as Mishuana Goeman’s Mark my words, Moreton-Robbinson’s feminist standpoint with an Indigenous setting, Glen Coulthard’s Red skin, white masks: Rejecting the colonial politics of recognition, then Ambelin Kwaymullina’s recent work Living on Stolen Land are only recently that a plan of transforming the discipline of Anthropology from a Postcolonial or Decolonial abstract debate to an Anti-colonial and Indigenous practical direction. These said works have gained attention, citation, and traction and have begun to look like a collective undertaking. These masterpieces are helpful, and insightful, leading to critique and reformulation of the conceptuality. However, how can a novice, new student gets familiar with these deep and thoughtful texts without a conduit? How can one academician congruence with Indigenous Collectivity, Holism, and Relationally when no known Chapter exists? So, an introductory chapter is pertinent.