ABSTRACT
Some researchers aim to give anthropology away, in the sense of making ethnography freely available. In the best sense, giving anthropology away means making a gift of it, an act of making a connection to readers. In giving anthropology ‘a way’ into the debates of other scholars, anthropologists make their research results vulnerable to the scrutiny of others; and by implication they make vulnerable those who assisted in the research, the informants. Each time anthropologists ‘give anthropology away’ they make the value of anthropology vulnerable to challenges: against their authority to speak and write what they know, against their claims for how they know it and for the routines of their disciplinary practice. In the best sense of intellectual exchange, giving anthropology a way opens the pathways for debate. Anthropologists communicate their research and thereby make a way for the research to be used by others. They become vulnerable by sharing ideas, just as the people with whom an anthropologist lives become vulnerable by inviting him or her to stay with them and risking that they will be treated fairly. An anthropology that builds on ethical practice exchanges in the vulnerability of humans from fieldwork to publication.
