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Girls who like Boys who like Boys – Ethnography of ... - Yuuyami.com

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that writing in and for Anthropology, I would have to face the fact that my<br />

discipline, as a lens through which I observed, read, and projected, was only<br />

one lens, after all. How this text has been written innately affects how the<br />

topic in question is received. Yet even more so, the concepts <strong>of</strong> ethnography,<br />

self-ethnography and culture, have been loaded with additional connotations,<br />

as the opposing sides, both those advocating self-reflexivity and those<br />

criticizing it, have assumed strong normative stances, dichotomizing a “good”<br />

self-reflexive ethnography and a “bad” objectivist one <strong>–</strong> and vice versa. As<br />

the researcher is faced with the need to justify her/his choices throughout the<br />

course <strong>of</strong> research and text production, writing an ethnography, far from<br />

having been the simple matter it was in the past, has been increasingly caught<br />

in a politicized environment <strong>of</strong> factions. Though I would, naturally, prefer to<br />

leave this text as is, this would miss the point <strong>of</strong> translating the meaning <strong>of</strong> a<br />

fan-identity to an academic audience. In order to do so appropriately, it is<br />

necessary to clarify what methodology was used in the process, or in other<br />

words, in what context I encountered fans and in what context I let my fanmode<br />

and my academic-mode meet each other. Yet, facing this need to<br />

clarify, it is necessary to pass by the discipline, or rather pass by the concept<br />

<strong>of</strong> social analysis, and to acknowledge where in Anthropology this text is<br />

situated. What follows immediately then, is a sketched outline <strong>of</strong> the changes<br />

some key concepts have undergone in the last twenty years, a “crash course”<br />

23

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