Abstract

Reviewing the economic-anthropological concept of reciprocity, this chapter discusses the conceptual limitations and ethical implications of a research ethic of reciprocity. As an economic concept, the author argues, “reciprocity” is imbued with anti-market sentiments. Transferred into the ethical realm, these sentiments feed into a disciplinary skepticism toward material interests, leading to a neglect of the economic dimension of fieldwork. Constricted to a morality of equivalence and balance, the ethical principle of reciprocity offers little guidance to address economic asymmetry in research relationships, while reinforcing fieldworkers’ feelings of disappointment and guilt. Shifting focus from idealism to practice, this chapter drafts an alternative ethical–methodological framework of “economic participation.” Advocating for the active and conscious economic integration of anthropologists into their field, it draws attention to the multiple practices of economic transaction which shape and produce our research relationships. As a methodological–ethical framework, economic participation challenges fieldworkers to acknowledge their tangible privileges and accounts for the material inequalities that shape their research encounters, while promoting conversation about the practicalities of doing so. Reflecting on her own fieldwork in a lower to lower-middle class neighborhood in Jakarta, Indonesia, the author abstracts general strategies for anthropologists to negotiate diverging “abilities and needs” with their interlocutors.