Reflexive understandings between A-4B pilots and an anthropologist

GUBER, ROSANA

Chicago

Congreso; IUS on Armed Forces and Society; 2013

Armed Forces and Society

In the famous introduction to The Argonauts of the Western Pacific, Polish anthropologist Bronislav Malinowski wrote that the ethnographer's magic lies in living amidst the natives and taking one?s time to get a full understanding of the natives' point of view. In fact, he spent four years (during WWI) in the Trobriand Islands. Based in Malinowski?s lessons, this paper suggests that the ethnographer's magic may lie in understanding social reflexivity, such as in my research process of Argentine A-4B pilots? experience in the Malvinas (Falklands) War in 1982. By reconstructing a 4-year-professional relationship between a former hunting pilot and an anthropologist, I portray my understanding of anthropological fieldwork and writing in terms of the ways in which those pilots learned to fly and wage war against the high-tech ships of the Royal Task Force. I suggest that the ethnographer's magic lies in the acknowledgement of the process through which I learned to conceive my research in terms of how this former officer and his mates have turned their passage through war into war experience.