Side by side? : practices of collaborative ethnography through creative arts

Abstract

In this thesis I investigate collaborative ethnography through creative arts as a growing global field of practice, based on common influences from anthropology and contemporary art. I seek to understand the nature of this field and to critically examine some of the assumptions that we make as collaborative ethnography/art practitioners about our work as forms of collaboration and social change. Practices of collaborative ethnography through creative arts occur in diverse settings around the world and produce different creative forms such as books, films, photography and theatre. Despite this diversity they share similar ways of working, relationship dynamics and socio-political motivations. I examine the range of social and political agendas that are being furthered using collaborative ethno/art practices and consider the ways in which the motivations of project facilitators shape these agendas and the social relations surrounding projects.

The original contribution that this thesis makes is a critical examination of notions of authorship in collaborative ethnographic/arts practice and the flow of benefits from this kind of work over time. I use the recent history of conflict surrounding control of materials from the Archivo Fotogr{u1EA5}fico lnd{u1E2F}gena and the Chiapas Photography Project in Mexico as a major case study. This case illustrates that the social, organisational and economic dynamics surrounding collaborative production, and the reception of resulting works by audiences and markets, shape the ways in which authorship and creativity are being understood within collaborative ethnographic/art projects over time. I argue that although collaborative ethno/art practices are acts of co-creation the nature of co-creativity in these projects is frequently obscured by modernist preoccupations with individual authorship. The complexities and potential of co-creativity as a growing form of contemporary cultural creation risks being obscured and misunderstood by the focus on this concern.

Examining the social and organisational structures surrounding collaborative ethnographic/art projects, with a focus on the New Orleans based Neighborhood Story Project another major case study in my research, I argue that there is a professionalization of collaborative ethno/art practice occurring. The recent experiences of the Archivo Fotogr{u1EA5}fico lnd{u1E2F}gena reveal the institutional and organisational structures accompanying the professionalization of this kind of work risk reinforcing the very social and economic inequities that motivated the practices in the first place. The ways in which dynamics of control and flow of benefits from works created in collaborative ethno/art projects play out over time can inadvertently yet directly contradict the socio-political goals which motivated their original establishment.

My research methods included participatory research with a number of projects in Australia, the USA and Mexico; interviews with twenty-five project facilitators from a range of international projects; and examination of the works and histories of a number of long running projects, including the twenty-year history of Chiapas Photography Project in Mexico.