Reciprocal Anthropology: Re-defining Epistemology through Indigenous Gnoseology and Intellectual Wholism

Abstract (English)

This paper proposes a critical redefinition of epistemology in anthropology by foregrounding reciprocity, spiritual praxis, and Indigenous Gnoseology (IG). Rooted in lived experience and philosophical wholism, IG challenges dominant Western epistemologies that valorize abstraction, neutrality, and methodological detachment. In contrast, it centers the ethics of being-in-relation—with people, land, and cosmos—through voluntary academic engagement, Ihsanic ethnography, and knowledge democracy.

Using the metaphor “Wings of Reciprocity,” we present a decolonial model for reimagining research purpose, ethics, and methodology. This model draws inspiration from Aristotle’s phronesis, Al-Farabi’s vision of intellectual happiness, Ghazali’s moral anthropology, Patanjali’s inner discipline, and Gautama Buddha’s path of self-realization. Together, these traditions inform a scholarship that is not only analytical but also spiritually and ethically inhabited.

We argue that epistemology must be relational, phronetic, and spiritually embodied. Reciprocity, in this view, is not a mere method but a metaphysical stance—an ontological attunement to the pulse of the community. Indigenous Gnoseology emerges as a generative pathway that integrates the Rakhain Indigenous standpoint, cosmic interconnectedness, and academic contribution, positioning research as a reciprocal and transformative act.

By offering a working definition of Indigenous Gnoseology as “guidelines for being practical, reciprocal with academic wisdom, and grounded in Indigenous wholism for intellectual happiness,” this paper provides a grounded and actionable alternative to hegemonic paradigms. Anthropology, we contend, must shift from extraction to reciprocity, from epistemic detachment to epistemic responsibility.