<論文>フィールドワークとリアリティ : 東アフリカ都市調査の経験から

Abstract

This article aims to clarify the potentialities of understanding based on the perception of reality in fieldwork research. In recent years, the number of studies, which criticise invisible power the fieldworker has arbitrarily exercised to represent others and try to deconstruct it, has increased dramatically in sociological and anthropological research. Certainly there exists an asymmetric power relation between the represented other and representing self (fieldworker). But those discursive criticisms to make exposure of this asymmetricity cannot change real world both the other and self live in. They are only transfixed in front of this situation. This article will investigate possibility of interactive communication in the everyday life world even with keeping such asymmetric power relation. The author examines the actual stage of interactive experience in his fieldwork in Kenya; living in an informal settlement, making everyday relations, participating in the community, realising the asymmetricity, and recreating the higher dimension of understanding.