Community Collaboration and Other Good Intentions

摘要

Collaborative and community-based archaeological research encompasses a broad spectrum of approaches; however, there are often discrepancies between how researchers ‘sell’ the collaborative endeavour in theory and how it is actually practised. Over the past several years, I have had the opportunity to participate in several projects, ranging from those that claimed to be ‘truly collaborative,’ to research that maybe should have asked, ‘what community?’ These experiences raised difficult and disturbing questions concerning the nature and practice of collaborative and community-based archaeology. In this paper, I confront these issues as I have experienced them personally. While community-based practices aim to redress a historical and ongoing power imbalance between the researcher and the researched, constant vigilance is required lest the ‘good intentions’ of anthropologists inadvertently mask an exploitation that may be inherent in the structure of research itself. In considering the corporate nature of academia, I query whether the collaborative research model represents a break with the past, or is instead simply the same old practice dressed up in fashionable new language.