Polyphonic Voices in Rethinking Ethnography

Ethnography can no longer be confined to documenting what is visible, it must also interrogate the opacity of social life, the silences that structure communities, and the refusals that resist incorporation into dominant narratives. This was the central argument raised in Panel 2.2, "Addressing the Polyphonic Voices and the Increasing Complexity of Human Life: Developing Diverse Ethnographic Genres," at the 9th International Symposium of Jurnal Antropologi Indonesia (9^th ISJAI 2026), held at Universitas Indonesia, Depok, from 4–7 August 2026.

Presenting within the panel, Dr. Dra. Sri Alem Br. Sembiring, M.Si., a lecturer at the Department of Social Anthropology, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Sumatera Utara (USU), traced the genealogy of ethnography and proposed methodological openings for studying what remains hidden, withheld, or deliberately silenced in the circulation of knowledge within communities. Her presentation called for ethnographic genres capable of confronting polyphonic voices and the layered complexity of contemporary human life, rather than relying on established documentary conventions.

Situated within current anthropological debates on opacity, refusal, and the politics of representation, the panel's discussion pointed toward a theoretical reconfiguration of ethnography, one that embraces incompleteness, acknowledges partial connections, and foregrounds the multiplicity of epistemic worlds. This orientation positioned ISJAI 2026 not only as a forum for academic exchange but as a site of epistemic provocation, opening new directions for a pluriversal anthropology attuned to the complexities of a multipolar world.

The panel was coordinated by Prof. Dra. M.A. Yunita Triwardani Winarto, M.S., M.Sc., Ph.D., and Dr. Iwan Meulia Pirous, S.Sos., M.A., and held during the symposium's second-day parallel session. Dr. Sri Alem Br. Sembiring presented alongside fellow panelists Muhammad Zamzam Fauzanafi, Uus Faizal Firdaussy, Riri Kusumarani, Widjajanti M. Santoso, Yoshimi Nishi, Jesse Hession Grayman, and Al Chaidar Abdurrahman Puteh.

Themed "Pluriversal Futures in a Multipolarising World: Global South Perspectives," 9^th ISJAI 2026 convened nearly 300 scholars and practitioners from a range of countries, with dozens of parallel panels, book launches, and ethnographic film screenings addressing epistemic plurality in an increasingly multipolar academic landscape.

Related Tags: Indonesia, Universitas Sumatera Utara, Universitas Indonesia