Ethnographic Pollination: A Response to McNamara’s ‘Reassessing “Ethnographic Extractivism”’

This article by Rosalie Metro, an anthropologist of education and Associate Teaching Professor at the University of Missouri, and Min Layi Chan, Research Program Manager at TeacherFOCUS Education Consulting, responds to Owen McNamara's essay reassessing the concept of "ethnographic extractivism." The authors argue that the debate has been framed defensively. Establishing that not all ethnography is extractive does not change the power dynamics that shape fieldwork. Critiques of extraction are normative rather than merely descriptive, aimed at changing practice rather than abandoning the method. What is missing from a defense of ethnography, they contend, is any account of what ethnographers could do better.

Drawing on their own work on the Thai-Myanmar border, the authors discuss how positionality operates in practice. Metro describes navigating gender and age hierarchies in exile communities. Chan describes realizing that a theoretical framework he helped set limited the questions a supposedly participatory project could ask. They argue that being closer to a community moves the blind spot rather than removing it. They identify harms that extend beyond the physical, including the collapse of community initiatives when a researcher's funding ends and the exposure of informal survival strategies to the authorities they were designed to evade. Returning to the bee-and-mosquito analogy from their earlier Tea Circle conversation, they propose equitable partnership extending before, during, and after a study. They conclude with the argument that organizes the piece: "Instead of defending ourselves against accusations that our work may harm our informants, let's take positive measures to make it more likely to benefit them."

Citation:  Metro, R., & Chan, M. L. (2026). Ethnographic Pollination: A Response to McNamara’s ‘Reassessing “Ethnographic Extractivism.”’ Anthropological Theory.